Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

Date

1796 - about journey Wollstonecraft undertook in 1795

Godwin later publishes the personal letters to Imlay that thos text was adapted from. In letters to Imlay there is emphasis on MW’s dependence on her correspondent and anxiety over his lack of replies.

Give the background details as to why Wollstonecraft is going on this journey

Gilbert Imlay lover - she has child with Fanny Imlay born 1794 in Le Havre. 2 weeks pre trip MW takes overdose so Imlay sends her on this journey = trust in her capabilities?

Imlay made money by trading with France through using scandinavian merhcants as commercial agents such as Elias Backman of Gothenburg. Backman and Imlay license a frnech ship and rename as the Maria and Margaretha - load it with french silver to transac for scandinavian grain at Gothenburg but ship never arrived. Big scandal - royal commission set up Jan 1795 - MW going as a rep for Imlay against the captain of the ship.

What was the political situation in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark at the time?

poised between monarchy and democracy - 1793 Northern kingdoms declare themselves neutral in France-England conflict. imaginative middle ground and compelling parallels to England and France.

BUT still instability - Swedish King Gustav III murdered 1792 by liberal intelligentsia and Prime Minister of Denmark-Norway A P Bernstorff was introducing enlightenment reforms under an otherwise despotic monarchy headed by an imbecilic King.

What does WIlliam Godwin say about this text

“If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the work”

How does Perkins describe the genre of travel writing

changing nature of travel and women entering cultural visibility.

2020 - “generic slipperiness”

WHat does Brekke and Mee suggest the letters encode about the writing self

2009 - “awareness of the precarious nature of the writing self”

Thompson - travel writing and gender - travel as masculine domain

2025 - “simultaneously gendered and gendering activities”

Name some female travel writers who Wollstonecraft reviewed in The Analytical review

Lady Anna Miller and Hester Piozzi - had very desultory approach. MW attempting to position herself between masc tradition of informative travel and the passionate immediacy of female writing

What are some pretexts and notable travel writing in the late 18th century

travel writing as information-gathering exercise - Royal Society founded 1660 - fund travel.
Linnaeus’ 1735 Systema Naturae, 1751 Philosophia Botanica, 1753 Species Plantarum

Captain Cook 3 voyages - overt scientific exploration and Linneaean exploration as colonial prokect. George Forster joined on 2nd vouage and wrote account in 1777 - “two travellers seldom saw the same object in the same manner and each reported the fact differently, according to his sensations, and his peculiar mode of thinking”

Lawrence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768) - subjectivity of travel.

Favret - what do the letters make the imagiantive self into

1993 - “the imaginative self is commercial property”

How do we read WOllstonecraft’s response to commercialism in this text

she seems anti-commercial - criticises greed of men chasing wealth - but also acknowledges the importance of commercial developemnt in response to social conditions. She publishes this text to support herself and her daughter - self consciousness about own position as a professional writer within a rapidly developing print culture.

What are other letters that might have influenced Wollstoncraft’s writing, emphasising letters as a form of female power?

Catherine Macauley’s ‘letters on education’ 1790 - epistolary as feminine? promotes equal education, advocates pe and discusses female moods.

Manon de Roland, correspondent in French Gironde party - notoriety as correspondent in Paris Journals, letters to ppl in her network published in revolutionrry newspapers. Author of ‘Letter to Louis XVI’ and published it before he could respond.

Olympe de Gouges’ ‘Letter to Citizen Robespierre’ published 1792, creating a public voice and insisting on right to be familair w tyrant.

What was the Traitorous Correspondence Bill and why is this significant for Wollstonecraft

introduced 1793

Meant to suggest to the nation that traitorous correspondence did exist, prohibiting commercial transactions between english citizens and the french army or government. Anuone “supplying France or frencg-men” witth goods “a traitor to be punished by death”

more a propraganda plot = replacing notion of sociable friendly epistle with sense of danger of traitorous letter

This was what Wollstonecraft was doing by assisting with Imlay’s search for the missing boat.

How does WOllstonecraft describe her task of writing in the preface

desultory as an accusation she levels against Burke in Vinidication on the Rights of Man

“In writing these desultory tales, I found I could not avoid being continually the first person - the little hero of every tale”

How does Burke define beauty and the sublime in his Philosophical Inquiry on our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757)

defined beauty as the more sociable category, identifying with feminine softeness - MW insists on possibility of women displaying a masculine understanding of grasping the sublime in her Vindications.

What is Wollstonecraft’s reaction to the falls of Fredikstad - sensibility of reaction to environment

“I stretched out my hand to eternity, bounding over the dark speck of life to come”

What does Mills say about Wollstonecraft’s navigation of the feminine sublime and what shes concerned about

2000 - “More able than male romantic writers to foreground the variety of subject positions available”

Wollstonecraft’s relation to sublime and loss

“losing my breath through my eyes my very soul diffused itself in the scene”

How does Wollstonecraft respond to Swedish Cottagers and what does Pratt say about it

leaves them - “I was eager to climb the rocks to view the country”

Pratt 2008 - promontary descriptions v common in romantic and victorian writing. landscape estheticized and rendered in familiar terms = MW controlling the scene aesthetically.

What is a text of Rousseau’s that is a significant pretext for the letters

Reveries of the Solitary Walker 1778 - unfinished, divided to ten chapters called promenades - senerity, resignation, persecution

What does MW do that echoes Rousseau’s The Reveries of the Soliatry Walker

Pratt - systemising of nature

also “botanises” and refers to Linneaus

2008 - “a European knowledge-building project … created a new kind of eurocentered planetary consciousness”

How does Rousseau respond to spotting a peasant family

with confusion - “I felt myself sigh without knowing why”

How does Wollstonecraft respond to a peasant family - asserting connections and shared maternal identity

“an involuntary sigh whispered to my heart that I envied the mother. I was returning to my babe who may never experience a fathers care or tenderness”

What is Rousseau’s response to stumbling on a factory within the dense forest?

in forest casts himself “another Columbus” - sees presence of factory as personal torment

How does Wollstonecraft also respond to the forest and then the factory within them

doesnt picture herself a conqueror “does homage to their venerable shadows”

approves farmers industry - “The world requires the hand of man to perfect it; … Rousseau’s golden age of stupidity”

How does Rousseau summarise his guiding principle of isolation

“I write my reveries only for myself”

How does WOllstonecraft respond to Rousseau’s emphasis on isolation

“I bury myself in the woods but find it necessary to emerge again … what a time it requires to know ourselves”

How does Wollstonecraft emphasise the androgynous nature of her travel writing

asks “mens questions” but also solo female traveller with her daughter and nursemaid

Give example of Wollstonecraft quoting from King Lear A3S4 as she discusses her mental anguish

“‘When the Minds free, the bodys delicate’; mine has been too much hurt to regard trifles”

How does Wollstonecraft infuse her letters with intertextualty

quotes from at least 6 Shakespeare plays on 16 different occasions, spekaing as Lear in the storm, as Hamlet arriving in Denmark, fearing the “thick coming fancies” of LMB when seperated from child and quotes from bible and mIlton as well as chaucer and ppe and dryden. englishness!

How does Wollstonecraft relate the rosy tint of the dawn to

“will never more charm my senses, unless it reappears on the cheeks of my child … she is still too young to ask why starts the tear, so near akin to pleasure and pain?”

When Wollstonecraft is discussing educating Fanny Imlay, what emotion takes over her

“I dread to unfold her mind, lest it should render her unfit for the world she is to inhabit. Hapless woman! What a fate is thine!”

Where, if at all, can we sense a lingering presence of Gilbert Imlay as the recipient

the shady pronoun “You” - “I therefore assure you that I am yours”

tries to collapse the i and you into a we - “Tomorrow we will talk of tonsberg” - but never any reply

WOllstonecraft husbands and tyrants - cf. Vindication

““Most men treat their mistresses as kings do their favourites; ergo is not man then the tyrant of creation?”

How does Wollstonecraft make reference to the death of Fanny Blood in Portugal in 1785

emphasis on voice - lack and loss. cf. Ann in Mary. comes to this after confronting aspers and junipers in the forest

“The grave has closed over a dear friend, the friend of my youth; still she is present with me, and I hear her soft voice warbling”

How does Wollstonecraft criticise commerciality and wealth-chasing (veiled crit of Gilbert Imlay)

“all the endearing charities of citizen, husband father, brother become empty names”

Wollstonecraft and awareness this text is largely an exploration of self

“I am weary of changing the scene, and quitting people and places the moment they begin to interest me. – this also is vanity!’

Weakness of Britain againats sublimity of Europe - sense of vulnerability? Describing dover cliffs

“appear so insignificant to me, after those I had seen in Sweden and Norway

Gilroy - travel and its impact on notions of home

2000 - “the experience of geographic displacement … helped romantic-era writers to renegotiate the cultural verities of home”