The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Book

One of the reasons I found these letters so enthralling is that it feels like Mary Wollstonecraft is talking to me--about issues I'm currently thinking about.

For example, yesterday I was commenting to a friend on an article about Anne-Marie Slaughter in the New York Times (6/15/13):

"Interesting how Anna Marie Slaughter sees our new world as one where one of her sons could say: I want to be an actor, and she could say: fine, all you have to do is find a professional woman who will support you. And she was okay with this! She did not seem to see what jumped out at me: One of the big reasons for the woman's movement is that woman did NOT want to be in a situation where they had to marry and then were dependent on someone else for life and livelihood--because no human should be so treated."

Shortly there after I found myself reading Mary W's words: "at fifteen, I resolved never to marry from interested motives, or to endure a life of dependence." (to Godwin 9/4/1796)

Later in Letter 330 she adds: "This ignoble mode of rising in the world [i.e. to "seduce and marry [a rich] fool"] is the consequence of the present system of female education."

Some other points:

1. In footnote 789, Godwin talks about marriage in a way that would fully support Shelly dumping his first wife for Godwin's daughter.

2. In a review (by Mary Hays?) in footnote 827 the writer seems to see Education's Common Core on the horizon:

"If novels, romances and fables, be held an inferior and insignificant species of literary composition, it must be by those who have paid little attention to the human heart."

3. A theme running through Mary W's life: She is before her time--while the time she is living in has really strict and uncomfortable constraints on women. She seems to summarize this in Letter 322: "Those who are bold enough to advance before the age they live in, and to throw off, by force of their own minds, the prejudices which the maturing reason of the world will in time disavow, must learn to brave censure."

4. In Letter 325 we see how she'd probably feel about the current box office domination of special effects laden movies:

"what are termed great misfortunes [e.g. the world is destroyed] may more forcibly impress the mind of common readers [think: viewers], they have more of what may justly be determined stage effect [think: special effects (emphasis in original)] but it is the delineation of finer sensations which, in my opinion, constitutes the merit of our best novels [films.]"

5. Aso from Letter 325: "One word more[:] strong indignation in youth at injustice &c appears to me the constant attendant of superiority of understanding." Kids recognizing injustice are people who are awake and aware.

6. In Letter 330 she writes: He seems "to expect that homage paid to his abilities, which the world will readily pay to his fortune. I'm afraid that all men are materially injured by inheriting wealth; and, without knowing it, become important in their own eyes, in consequence of an advantage they contemn [i.e. despise]" Take that you snobby old rich person while Mary W was shadowed by debts.