Angela Monsam

To examine the cause of life, we must first have recourse to death. —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein1

when mary Wollstonecraft died, shortly after giving birth to a baby girl named Mary, Wollstonecraft’s husband William Godwin marked her grave with a stone and planted two willows over it. In 1809, when Mary Godwin was about twelve years old, her father published An Essay on Sepulchres; or, A Proposal for Erecting Some Memorial of the Illustrious Dead in All Ages on the Spot Where Their Remains Have Been Interred. Years later, during their courtship, Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley would, from time to time, go to the St Pancras parish churchyard and sit near the grave of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. Ruth Richardson argues that “the need to commemorate—to preserve, identify, and signalize—the remains of the dead clearly held some emotional resonance for Godwin.”2 I am intrigued by William Godwin’s memorializing of and Mary’s pilgrimages to Wollstonecraft’s gravesite; Richardson’s argument that both father and daughter

1 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, ed. D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf (1818; Peterborough: Broadview Press, 1999), 79. References are to this edition.

2 Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection, and the Destitute (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), xiii. Richardson points out Mary Shelley and William Godwin’s memorialization and visitation of Mary Wollstonecraft’s gravesite in her discussion of the prominent nineteenth-century fear of bodysnatching.

Biography as Autopsy in William Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”

Eighteenth-Century Fiction 21, no. 1 (Fall 2008) © ECF 0840-6286

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shared a “familial preoc cupation”3 with commemorating the dead informs my reading of William Godwin’s authorial choices in Memoirs. Like most readers of Memoirs, I question what appears to be his overzealous commitment to “frankness,”4 and, as most critics do, I find challenging any attempt to categorize Memoirs as a genre—is it biography, autobiography, or, as Mitzi Myers argues, an “unusual hybrid” of the two?5 In comparing Memoirs to contemporary medical writings and dissection reports from the 1790s, I agree with Myers that this work certainly is an “unusual hybrid,” but of biography and autopsy, which I term “autopsical biography.”

My argument offers an explanation for William Godwin’s bio graphical approach that both reconciles his authorial choices and elucidates the overwhelmingly negative response that Memoirs garnered from contemporary readers. In my explora-tion of Memoirs, I will examine Godwin’s authorial choices in light of contemporary fears of and fascinations with the science of autopsy and the common, late-eighteenth-century practice of dissection. Memoirs was influenced by, if not modelled after, contemporary medical writings, particularly dissection reports. Specifically, Godwin’s apparently insensitive, factual detailing of Wollstonecraft’s life may have been influenced by his interest in contemporary science, including anatomy. Godwin’s intel-lectual milieu in the 1790s situates him as an intimate of medical men, including his personal friends chemist William Nicholson and acclaimed surgeon Anthony Carlisle. And Political Justice, The Enquirer, and Caleb Williams, Godwin’s political and fic-tional writings published prior to Memoirs, evidence both his interest in and familiarity with contemporary science.

3 Richardson argues that this “preoccupation” along with “events in the social history of medicine” led Mary Shelley, in Frankenstein, to warn readers of “the dangers of subordinating life to science” (xii, xvii); the real monster of the story is “the doctor who loses touch with his own humanity” (xvii).

4 Godwin’s commitment to frankness and truth is evident throughout his writ-ing, including “Of Deception and Frankness,” in The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature (1797; New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1965). References are to this edition.

5 Mitzi Myers, “Godwin’s Memoirs of Wollstonecraft: The Shaping of the Self and Subject,” Studies in Romanticism 20 (Fall 1981): 299–316. Myers argues that “Godwin’s memoir is an unusual hybrid, one which unites Wollstone-craft’s notion of herself, Godwin’s reading of her character, and his analysis of that character’s impact on himself and his philosophy” (300).

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Tilottama Rajan places Memoirs within the tradition of Romantic biography, arguing that “Godwin looks to the reader to potentialize the revolutionary idealism in such appar ently base occurrences as her love for [Henry] Fuseli and [Gilbert] Imlay.”6 While Rajan’s assertion of Godwin’s desire to “romanticize” Wollstonecraft is compelling, contemporary readers’ responses to Memoirs illustrate that Godwin, at least in the execution of this project, missed the mark.7 Rather, Memoirs, when considered as an instance of a biographical form, which I argue was a precursor to the Victorian “scientific autobiography,”8 was ahead of its time, like the majority of Godwin’s writings. As well, in classic Godwin fashion, his praise of Wollstonecraft’s unconventional relationships with Fuseli and Imlay was peculiar, if not rhetorically alienating to contemporary readers. While the negative popular reception of Memoirs may simply be attributed to these controversial revelations, which, no doubt, were a shock

6 Tilottama Rajan, “Framing the Corpus: Godwin’s ‘Editing’ of Wollstonecraft in 1798,” Studies in Romanticism 39 (Winter 2000): 512.

7 Rajan writes: “Godwin’s choice is rather to ‘romanticize’ Wollstonecraft, in the sense that Novalis uses the word in writing (also in 1798) that the world ‘must be romanticized’ through a ‘qualitative raising to the powers (Potenzirung)’ in which the ‘lower self is identified with a better self ’” (512). See also Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), Werke, Tagebücher und Briefe, ed. Hans-Joachim Mähl and Richard Samuel, 3 vols. (Munich: Karl Hanser Verlag, 1987), 2:334.

8 For more on scientific autobiography, see Linda H. Peterson’s chapter “Gosse’s Father and Son: The Evolution of Scientific Autobiography,” in her Victorian Autobiography: The Tradition of Self-Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 156–91. Peterson argues that “Although the early accounts by scientists tended to assume the form of memoirs, and although the incompatibility of traditional autobiography and scientific models be-came evident later in the nineteenth century, there were some indications at mid-century of the direction that a new autobiography might take. These indications, in the personal accounts of [Charles] Darwin, [Thomas Henry] Huxley, and their lesser contemporaries, suggest the possibility of replacing biblical hermeneutics with scientific methods of interpretation and of other-wise expanding or revising the autobiographical form” (158). Perhaps the most prominent example of the “scientific autobiography” is Charles Dar-win’s Autobiography (1876). Like Godwin, Darwin was focused on “the facts.” According to Peterson, “In the first pages of the Autobiography, Darwin sim-ply gathers the facts ... Darwin intends to be ‘as objective and as detached’ in his ‘private-experimental’ book as he had been in his ‘public-scientific’ work” (159). Herbert Spencer’s Autobiography (1904) evokes Godwin’s bent for family history. Peterson points out that “Not only does Spencer analyze the dominant characteristics of parents and grandparents, he also cites those of his father’s siblings” (161).

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to contemporary manners and decorum, readers’ responses to Memoirs echo contemporary responses to dissection.

In form and function, Memoirs reads like late-eighteenth-century dissection reports, which were also titled Memoirs (see figure 1). In the 1790s, the Medical Society of London published ten volumes that included accounts of disease and dissection under the title Memoirs of the Medical Society of London.9 Both Godwin’s Memoirs and the dissection report function to dispel suspicion regarding an uncommon subject, with a didactic pur-pose in mind. Similarly, the biographical and autopsical sub jects are “extraordinary.” In Memoirs of the Medical Society of London, C. Bisset details “A Case of an Extraordinary Irritable Sympathetic Tumour.”10 Transactions of a Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge offers numerous examples of the uniqueness of the autopsical subjects’ ailments: titles include “Of Uncommon Appearances of Disease in Blood-Vessels,” “Of Remarkable Deviation from the Natural Structure of the Urinary Bladder,” and “An Account of an Uncommon Tumour”; and other writings highlight singularly peculiar occurrences, such as “A Case of an Extra-Uterine Foetus Discharged by the Rectum.”11 Clearly, these medical writings did not detail the mundane or ordinary. Helen Deutsch, in her discussion of Samuel Johnson’s physical and biographical autopsy, explains the impetus for dissection: “the unanswerable question of cause of death gives way to the need to penetrate the interior of an uncommon individual.”12 Johnson and James Boswell’s biography Life of Samuel Johnson figure prominently in my exploration of Memoirs as an autopsical biography; Johnson is a rich example of the proximity of physical and biographical autopsy as both his medical autopsy and, as Deutsch argues, multiple biographies allow readers to penetrate the public exterior of this literary genius. However, I am most interested in the influence that

9 The ten volumes of the Memoirs of the Medical Society of London published in the 1790s include: vols. 1, 2, 3 (1792), vols. 1, 2 (1794), and vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (1799).

10 Medical Society of London, Memoirs of the Medical Society of London, vol. 3 (London, 1792), 58.

11 Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge, Trans-actions of a Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge, 3 vols. (London, 1793–1812), 1:119, 1:189, 2:264, 2:287.

12 Helen Deutsch, Loving Dr. Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 56.

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Figure 1. J.C. Lettsom and J. Ware, “History and Dissection of a Fatal Case, Attended with a Painful Affection of the Head,” Memoirs of the Medical Society of London, vol. 3 (London: Medical Society of London, 1792), 44, 45. For the complete text, see Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (Gale database), Medical Society of London, Memoirs of the Medical Society of London, Instituted in the Year 1773, Vol. III, London, 1792, 669pp., Vol. 3 of 3 (Medicine, Science and Technology), Article V.

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Boswell’s Life of Johnson, along with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Confessions, had on shaping Godwin’s authorial choices in Memoirs. Godwin presents Wollstonecraft, “a person of eminent merit” and “ingenious mind,” as a rare gem in Memoirs ; like the dissecting surgeon opening the morbid body to reveal the “unusual” or “uncommon” organs or aliments concealed inside the flesh, Godwin opens the treasure chest that was Wollstonecraft’s life and work, displaying its contents for all to see.13

Memoirs and the late-eighteenth-century dissection report were united in the shared mission to dispel suspicion and gen-erate knowledge. Thomas Pole, member of the Corporation of Surgeons in London, asserts the importance of post-mortem dis section: “The examination of dead bodies will, in many instances, clear up suspicious appearances as to the cause of fatal ity.”14 Deutsch points out that surgeons autopsied John-son’s body with the intent to “dispel rumors of suicide.”15 Godwin similarly, in Memoirs, aims to dispel all “malignant misrepresentation[s]” of Wollstonecraft (43); Pamela Clemit argues “it is central to Godwin’s view of Wollstonecraft as a revolutionary figure that she is not fundamentally damaged by personal and social disappointments.”16

For both Godwin and the dissecting surgeon, the ultimate benefit in dispelling suspicion is the spread of knowledge through discovery; the frontispiece in Johann Adam Kulmus’s Tabulae Anatomicae (1732) illustrates this benefit well (see figure 2). The engraving depicts a body resting on a dissecting table, which sits in the middle of a library. Attending the dis section, two female allegorical figures likely represent two of Asclepius’s three daughters: Meditrina, Hygeia, and Panacea were symbols of medicine, hygiene, and healing (or all-healing), respectively.17

13 William Godwin, Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. Pamela Clemit and Gina Luria Walker (Peterborough: Broad-view Press, 2001), 43, 122. References are to this edition.

14 Thomas Pole, The Anatomical Instructor (London, 1790), xxxi. References are to this edition.

15 Deutsch, 55.16 Clemit, introduction to Memoirs, 22.17 Many thanks to Antoinette Emch-Dériaz for her aid in identifying the

allegorical female figures. Similar female figures frame an illustration of a dissection being performed in an anatomical theatre in the added engraved title page of Johann Vesling, Syntagma Anatomicum (Patavii [Padua], 1651). See the Vesling engraving at Anatomia 1522–1867: Anatomical Plates from the

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Figure 2. Johann Adam Kulmus, Tabulae Anatomicae (Amsterdam, 1732), frontispiece (dated 1731). With thanks to the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), Images from the History of Medicine (IHM), National Institutes of Health.

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One female figure stands at the foot of the dissecting table; in her right hand she holds a scalpel, and with the other hand she gestures towards the body. A skeleton stands in an alcove behind her, and the other female figure stands on the left of the engrav-ing, drawing back the curtains before the “performance.” Surgi cal instruments are displayed on a pedestal in the foreground. This image, by combining the physical public spaces of the library and the dissection theatre, illustrates that both literary and anatomical exploration share the same aim—the pursuit of knowledge. It offers a powerful visual display of the necessity of penetration in both pursuits: books are like bodies, in that the only way to learn about their contents is to open them.

Pole defends the practice of post-mortem dissection because of its didactic potential:

Anatomy, therefore, when studied on the healthy subject, is a source of the highest utility. Nor is the inspection of the morbid body less useful and interesting ... fair inferences may be drawn of the real structure and true function of parts to which disease has not been extended; the absolute condition of organs, whose original office may have been materially changed, will be ascertained with accuracy, and evidence adduced of the propriety, as to the use of remedies, which were intended for the removal of the disease: in some instances, their effects known, and the unsatisfactory knowledge attained might have saved life; though unsatisfactory in the present instance, yet this may govern the judgment in future similar cases to the most happy ends. The lives of survivors may be preserved through such means. This alone would induce us to conclude on the great utility of morbid dissection. (xxviii–xxvix)

In Gentleman’s Magazine (February 1785), Thomas Tyers, a lawyer and amateur man of letters, employs similar reasoning to defend the post-mortem dissection of Johnson, suggesting “the dead may sometimes give instruction to the living.”18 Godwin echoes Pole and Tyers in Memoirs : he offers his biography of Wollstonecraft as “the fairest source of animation and encouragement to those who would follow [her] in the same career ... as it teaches them to place their respect and affection, upon those qualities which best deserve to be esteemed and loved” (43). More than a

Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, http://www.library .utoronto.ca/anatomical/RBAI017/0001-0-0.jpg (accessed 3 July 2008).

18 Thomas Tyers, “Mr Tyers’ Additional Sketches Relative to Dr Johnson,” Gentleman’s Magazine 55 (February 1785): 85, cited in Deutsch, 56.

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decade after the publication of Memoirs, Godwin, in An Essay on Sepulchres, laments the loss of knowledge that accompanies the loss of “the Illustrious Dead,” stating “let us consider how many parts of his skill never came forward as topics of conversation, and what extensive portions of learning and observation existed in him, that were never poured out upon you.”19 Godwin, in writing Wollstonecraft’s life, attempts to extricate what would otherwise be lost knowledge; he opens Wollstonecraft’s body to facilitate the dispersal of “learning and observation ... that were never poured out upon” readers.

Godwin’s assertion that it is “a duty incumbent on survivors” to preserve in literary form “the life of a person of eminent merit deceased” evokes the practice of embalming and links this medical practice to Godwin’s aforementioned “familial preoccupation” with memorializing the dead.20 Godwin’s desire to “embalm” Wollstonecraft further posits her as an “extraor dinary” individual. Whereas the subject of the dissection report is unique only because of an unusual ailment, the subject of the practice of embalming is almost always “some great personage.”21 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, a model for Memoirs, presents the biography as a literary embalming; Boswell, in writing of Johnson’s illustrious career as a biographer, notes “had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”22 Godwin, like Johnson, seemed to view biography in its most perfect state as writing that

19 William Godwin, An Essay on Sepulchres: or, A Proposal for Erecting Some Memorial of the Illustrious Dead in All Ages on the Spot Where Their Remains Have Been Interred (New York: M. and W. Ward, 1809), 25–26. References are to this edition.

20 In Memoirs, Godwin writes: “It has always appeared to me, that to give to the public some account of the life of a person of eminent merit deceased, is a duty incumbent on survivors” (43).

21 Robert White, in Practical Surgery (London, 1796), writes of the practice of embalming that “the surgeon is very seldom called upon to perform this of-fice, except upon the death of some great personage” (361). Benjamin Gooch echoes this statement in The Chirurgical Works of Benjamin Gooch, Surgeon, 3 vols. (London, 1792): “it has long been disused in almost all countries except for great personages” (1:457).

22 James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 2 vols. (London: Henry Baldwin, for Charles Dilly, 1791), 1:1. References are to this edition.

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“might lay open to posterity the private and familiar characters of [the subject]” (1:5).23 While both the dissection report and biography “preserve” the subject in written form, the autopsical biography, as a story of an individual self “opened up” to allow for the penetrating eyes of biographer and readers, becomes emblematic of the physical body, and therefore the text can be read as body. The late-eighteenth-century belief that “the body came to be regarded as identical to the self ” bears this out.24

The inseparability of the self and the physical body influ enced both physical and biographical embalming; time is of the essence in both instances, as the purpose of embalming is to “preserve [the subject] from decay.”25 Late-eighteenth-century physician Matthew Baillie, in “Of the Embalming of Dead Bodies,” bases his embalming approach on the method of London’s premier dissecting surgeon, William Hunter, which emphasizes the importance of prompt action. Baillie states that “according to Dr Hunter’s method, embalming is begun as soon after death as decency will permit ... the body begins very soon to putrefy, and putrefaction advances very rapidly; therefore, if the body of such a person is required to be embalmed, the operation should take place after a very short interval.”26 In much the same way that the embalmer must work quickly to prevent the “putrefaction” of the morbid body, so must the biographer promptly publish his work, thereby “embalming” and “preserving” the memory and reputation of the subject before rumours and gossip begin to “putrefy” the subject’s legacy. Godwin’s rush to publish Memoirs less than six months after his wife’s death is justified in this sense, considering that his biographical approach was intended to preserve the deeds and memory of Wollstonecraft.

Godwin and the dissecting surgeon not only share an allied motive for their respective investigation, but also employ similar methods. Both aimed to dispel suspicion by presenting the facts in minute detail, collected through industrious examination.

23 Boswell quotes Samuel Johnson’s Rambler no. 60.24 Michael Sappol, A Traffic of Dead Bodies: Anatomy and Embodied Social

Identity in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 43.

25 Matthew Baillie, “On the Embalming of Dead Bodies,” Transactions of a Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge, 3:7.

26 Baillie, 3:13–14.

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Charles Bell, in his A System of Dissections (1798), links all “science” to the study of “details and minutiae, which, although disagreeable and tedious in themselves, are yet abso lutely necessary.”27 Godwin shares Bell’s commitment to min utiae; in his “Essay of History and Romance” (1797), he argues that “the men I would study upon the canvas of history, are men worth the becoming intimately acquainted with ... I am not contented to observe such a man upon the public stage, I would follow him into his closet ... I should rejoice to have, or to be enabled to make, if that were possible, a journal of his ordinary and minutest actions.”28 Godwin’s emphasis on detail and minutiae can be traced back to Life of Johnson and Rousseau’s Confessions, the two biographical works that most influenced his approach in Memoirs.29 Clemit suggests that Godwin’s emphasis on detail evokes Johnson’s assertion of “the importance of domestic minutiae as a source of historical truth in The Rambler, No. 60,” and that Johnson’s method of gathering “minute particulars ... gained currency in the revolutionary decade.”30 Boswell wrote in Life of Johnson that the details of private life inform the public character: “I remain firm and confident in my opinion, that minute particulars are frequently characteristick, and always amusing, when they relate to a distinguished man” (1:7). In Confessions, Rousseau asserts the necessity of detail: “it is not enough for my story to be truthful, it must be detailed as well.”31

In his committed pursuit of detailed investigation in Memoirs, Godwin follows the industrious examination of the dissecting surgeon. Pole links industry to genius: “A sedulous attention, persevering industry, and a love of science, should be the invariable characteristics of an anatomical genius” (xi–xii). Godwin, in describing his biographical approach, espouses a kindred philosophy, stating that “the writer of this narrative”

27 Charles Bell, A System of Dissections (Edinburgh, 1798), v. 28 William Godwin, “Essay of History and Romance” (1797), in Political and

Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, gen. ed. Mark Philip, 7 vols. (Lon-don: Pickering and Chatto, 1993), 5:292–95.

29 Myers notes that “like so many others, Godwin was strongly impressed with Rousseau’s Confessions and began at one point to write a minutely ‘explicit’ account of himself on that model” (300).

30 Clemit, 13–14.31 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions (1782–89), trans. J. M. Cohen (Har-

mondsworth: Penguin, 1953) 21, 169–70.

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embarked on an “industrious enquiry” (44). Both Godwin and the dissecting surgeon, through detailed and industrious enquiry, acquire knowledge from their subjects and spread that knowledge through the publication of their written words.

Rajan does not present Godwin as a dissecting surgeon, but describes Godwin as the “editor” of Wollstonecraft’s life and work, alluding to dissection as “the memorializing of Woll-stonecraft in the twin texts of 1798 [which] creates a contiguity between corpus and corpse.”32 Myers stops just short of positing Godwin as a dissecting surgeon, arguing “Godwin the bi ographer tries hard to get inside his subject’s skin, to understand how and why she developed as she did.”33 Unlike Rajan and Myers, I argue that Godwin does not simply try to get inside his subject’s skin, he succeeds. In Memoirs, Godwin asserts his agency: “the facts detailed ... are principally taken from the mouth of the person to whom they relate” (43–44). Significantly, “the facts” are “taken” by Godwin, rather than given by Wollstonecraft; Godwin’s taking facts from “the mouth” of the deceased person is an assertion of his agency as a dissecting surgeon, as it evokes the penetration of autopsy.

Once “inside,” Godwin proceeds to follow the cause-and-effect mode of analysis employed in autopsy as a means of accounting for both Wollstonecraft’s character and her deeds. As Clemit argues, Godwin is primarily concerned with the formation of Wollstonecraft’s “identity as a woman intellectual.”34 Godwin’s focus on what Wollstonecraft was “formed for” evokes the aim of the dissecting surgeon; the word “form” or one of its etymo logical derivatives is frequently found in both Memoirs and contemporary dissection reports.35 Godwin explains that

32 Rajan, 531.33 Myers, 303. In her discussion of Godwin’s attempts to provide the causes

of Wollstonecraft’s actions, Myers asserts that he thinks he has a “remark-able intuitive gift”: “Wollstonecraft filtered through such an alembic lets Godwin indulge his bent toward impressionism and psychological dissec-tion, the later perhaps most telling in the Imlay debacle” (312).

34 Clemit, 21.35 I found more than 50 uses of “form” or “formed” in contemporary dissection

reports: for example, “the fibers of the tendon ... form a ligament” (Bell, 3). See also John Innes, A Short Description of the Human Muscles (London, 1791): “the mouth has nine pair of muscles ... and a common one formed by” (34); “pectoral muscles ... all unite to form a thin muscle” (78).

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he “felt a curiosity” to be acquainted with the incidents that contributed “to form” Wollstonecraft (44). In his “dissection” of her character, Godwin begins by relating her family history, or her “biological formation” (45). He notes that she “was not formed to be the contented and unresisting subject of a despot,” but “felt herself formed for domestic affection” (46, 81). Godwin finds that “no person was ever better formed for the business of education” than Wollstonecraft (59). In his analysis of her character, Godwin, like the dissecting surgeon, observes that she “never betrayed one symptom of irascibility” and “had scarcely a tincture of obstinacy” (59–60).36

In his account of Wollstonecraft’s “biological formation,” Godwin discusses her family as if it were a biological system. In autopsy, the dissecting surgeon is able to examine internal organs; he can determine if they are enlarged, atrophied, or non-existent, and if they are diseased or healthy. In his dissection of her family system, Godwin determines that her despotic father was defective and that her inconsistent mother did not function regularly.37 Godwin considers the effects of environmental factors on Wollstonecraft’s development, noting “the rustic situation in which Mary spent her infancy, no doubt contributed to confirm the stamina of her constitution” and “it was not to any advantage of infant literature, that she was indebted for subsequent eminence” (47, 48).

Godwin focuses considerable attention on the people Woll-stonecraft interacted with, including neighbours and friends; he employs the language of contagion to describe both whom and what she was “exposed to.” Godwin remarks that she was “prob ably in some degree indebted” to Mr Clare, a clergyman neighbour, “for the early cultivation of her mind” (49). In keeping

36 Bell refers to patients’ symptoms frequently: for example, “it was naturally conceived, that if it had been a hernia so far advanced, the patient must have been more reduced, and every symptom of strangulation more urgent. But the man dies afterwards, and I saw the dissection” (101). For more examples, see 48, 73, and 87.

37 Godwin describes Wollstonecraft’s father as a “despot” prone to “fits of kindness and cruelty” (45). In describing her mother’s approach to discipline, Godwin writes, “the mother’s partiality was fixed upon the eldest son, and her system of government relative to Mary, was characterized by considerable rigour. She, at length, became convinced of her mistake, and adopted a different plan with her younger daughters” (45).

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with Godwin’s language of contagion, friends and acquaintances either contaminate Wollstonecraft or function as inoculations. In describing Wollstonecraft’s friendship with Fanny Blood, Godwin writes that “she contracted a friendship so fervent” (50). He describes influential events in Wollstonecraft’s life as injuries: when the Wollstonecrafts moved away from Hoxton, Mary “felt” the situation “as a severe blow” to her “darling spirit of friendship” (51). Godwin continues this comparison as he relates the impact that the French Revolution had on Wollstonecraft’s in tellectu al development, arguing that it “did not fail to produce a conspicu ous effect in the progress of Mary’s reflections. The prejudices of her early years suffered a vehement concussion” (72). It is interesting that Godwin chose to compare this event, which altered her mindset, to a head injury.

Godwin does not limit his autopsical biography of Woll-stone craft to a “dissection” of her character; he dissects her writing too, offering explanations for her authorial decisions and work habits. While composing an answer to Burke’s Reflections, Wollstone craft “was seized with a temporary fit of torpor and indolence, and began to repent of her undertaking” (73). Godwin notes that Wollstonecraft, “in this state of mind,” called on her publisher “for the purpose of relieving herself by an hour or two’s conversation” (73). Her publisher, Joseph Johnson, advised her to give in to her inclination to quit. Godwin determines that Johnson’s statement “piqued her pride,” and she “immediately went home” and proceeded to complete her work (74). Godwin identifies Johnson’s piquing of Wollstonecraft’s pride as the cause of the ultimate ly positive effect, her response to Burke’s Reflections. Godwin’s use of the metaphor of physical affliction as a “temporary fit” to describe Wollstonecraft’s idleness, illus trates the degree to which he medicalizes her actions (73). Nowhere is Godwin’s autopsical approach more humorous or more unsettling than in his treat-ment of Wollstonecraft’s past relationships with Fuseli and Imlay. Godwin asserts she “caught the infection” of some of Fuseli’s faults and explains that “the case”38 of her relationship 38 Dissection reports are commonly called “cases.” See, for example, “His-

tory and Dissection of a Fatal Case, Attended with a Painful Affection of the Head,” Memoirs of the Medical Society of London (1792), 3:44 (see figure 1).

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with Imlay “admitted no remedy” (77, 94). In his dissection of Wollstonecraft’s relationship with Imlay, Godwin employs the mode of cause-and-effect reasoning to explain “why” she still desired to stay with Imlay despite the odds; Godwin rhetorically asks, “Why did she thus obstinately cling to an ill-starred, unhappy passion?” (91). In determining the cause of Wollstonecraft’s poor decision, he answers his own question: “Because it is of the very essence of affection, to seek to perpetuate itself ” (91).

I am most interested in chapter 10 of Memoirs, in which Godwin recounts the final days of Wollstonecraft’s life, and its similarities to the contemporary dissection report. Both the narrative perspective of eyewitness observation and the chron ological listing of days and events evoke the form of the dissection report. Godwin begins to refer to Wollstonecraft as “the patient” at this point in Memoirs (114).39 In the chrono logical listing of days and events in this chapter Godwin, like a doctor making house calls to check on the progress of his patient, charts the progression of Wollstonecraft’s illness, which he prefaces as “the last fatal scene of her life” (112).40 Most tellingly, Godwin aligns himself with the perspective of the dissecting surgeon in his description of his wife’s death, coldly and clinically stating that “she expired at twenty minutes before eight” (120). Simply noting “she expired” and the time of death would be uncharacteristic of any speaker outside the medical profession, let alone a spouse. While chapter 10 reads like a dissection report (see figure 1), I am puzzled by Godwin’s assertions of his ignorance of “obstetrical science,” “the nature of diseases,” and “the human form” (115, 116). Both Godwin’s political and fictional writings prior to the publication of Memoirs demonstrate his general knowledge of contemporary science. Perhaps his assertions of “total ignorance” of anatomy and disease illustrate, as Helen M. Buss suggests, his need “to say it is not his fault.”41

Godwin exhibits a scientific bent in chapters 6 and 7 of Political Justice, in which he discusses his theory of “the

39 J.C. Lettsom and J. Ware refer to “the patient” twice in the brief abstract of their “History and Dissection of a Fatal Case,” 3:45, 49 (3:45, see figure 1).

40 Lettsom and Ware use similar phrasing, referring to “the fatal event” (49).41 Helen M. Buss, “Memoirs Discourse and William Godwin’s Memoirs of

the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” in Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Writing Lives, ed. Helen M. Buss, D.L. Macdonald, and Anne McWhir (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001), 116.

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perfectibility of man” at length.42 He incorporates his theory of “perfectibil ity” the following year in Caleb Williams. Accord ing to G.S. Rousseau, “When the imprisoned Caleb Williams ... recovers from a violent bout of sickness at the precise moment when his illness is at its worst, Godwin sug gests the triumph of the mind over body” (170).43 In chapter 7 of Political Justice, Godwin specifically addresses “perfectibility” in regards to the physical body; he offers examples of physical ailments, such as “indigestion,” “a fit of the tooth-ach,” and “a pain in the head,” in which the mind has the power to heal the body (54). Godwin relates the approach he employs when he himself is struck with a physical injury: “Let the sensation be a pain in the head. I am led to reflect upon its causes, its seat, the structure of the parts in which it resides, the inconvenience it imposes, the consequences with which it may be attended, the remedies that may be applied and their effects, whether external or internal, material or intellectual” (54, emphasis added). Godwin reveals much in this statement: clearly, when afflicted with bodily suffering, he, like the dissecting surgeon, relies upon the cause-and-effect mode of reasoning. In reflecting upon “the structure of the parts” in which the affliction resides, Godwin illustrates a penchant for anatomical study. Since Political Justice was published in 1793, five years before Memoirs, it would be reasonable to speculate that a man of science with Godwin’s intellectual voracity would develop a more in-depth understanding of anatomy as time progressed. In the preface to Political Justice, Godwin makes a similar claim: “Hence it has always been desired by candid enquirers, that preceding works of this kind should be superseded, and that other productions including the larger views that have since offered themselves, should be substituted in their place” (v). Judging by his

42 William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (Dublin: Luke White, 1793). References are to this edition. See “Chapter VI: Human Inventions Capable of Perpet-ual Improvements. Perfectibility of Man ...” (41–48) and “Chapter VII: Of The Objections to these Principles from the Influence of Climate, Part 1: Of Moral and Physical Causes” (48–56).

43 G.S. Rousseau, “Psychology,” in The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Science, ed. G.S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 143–210. Rousseau includes Caleb Williams in his survey of the intersection of psychiatry and psychology with eighteenth-century literature and culture.

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statement, Godwin kept abreast of new scientific developments and trends. In 1797, in “Of the Sources of Genius,” Godwin describes the infant: “His mind is like his body. What at first was cartilage, gradually becomes bone. Just so the mind acquires its solidity.”44 Godwin’s em ployment of an anatomical metaphor to explain the process of mental development demonstrates his continued interest in anatomy. In an undated letter to an unknown recipient, Godwin appears knowledgable of diseases, doling out a “prescription” for his unidentified acquaintance to follow his theory of “perfectibility”:

Dr Darwin, you say, assures you it is a disease of the mind ... in these subtle diseases, take insanity for an example, it seems as if the remedies might sometimes be found in material, sometimes in mental applications. I see no good reason to doubt, that a certain discipline of the mind may have a powerful tendency to restore sanity to the intellect, and consequent vigour to the animal frame. I know a young man, subject in a considerable degree to the same evil under which you labour ... who has in some measure found out the remedy for himself ... by watching resolutely the operations of his own mind.”45

As evidenced in both Godwin’s public and private writings prior to Memoirs, his knowledge of anatomy and disease is impressive for a non-medical man.

Godwin’s circle of friends that included the surgeon Anthony Carlisle and the chemist William Nicholson further testifies to Godwin’s interest in and familiarity with contemporary science. Godwin’s intimacy with these prolific men of science is evidenced in his letters,46 and both Carlisle and Nicholson were Godwin’s constant companions through Wollstonecraft’s illness and death. When Wollstonecraft’s condition appeared gravest, Godwin asked for Carlisle, who “had voluntarily called on the patient on the preceding Saturday, and two or three times since”; Godwin writes in Memoirs, “Mr Carlisle left us no more from Wednesday evening, to the hour of her death” (117). Evidence of Godwin’s familiarity with science does not end with his intimate

44 William Godwin, “Of the Sources of Genius,” The Enquirer, 15.45 C. Kegan Paul, “Chapter VI: Friends and Acquaintances 1794–1796,”

William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, 2 vols. (London: H.S. King, 1876), 1:141–42.

46 Carlisle or Nicholson—or both—are mentioned in almost every letter in “Chapter X: Mary Godwin’s Death 1797” in Paul, vol. 1.

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friendships with Carlisle and Nicholson. In 1797, Godwin had a personal invitation to visit Erasmus Darwin. Godwin details his pil grimage to Darwin’s home in multiple letters to Wollstonecraft, written in June 1797. Unfortunately, Darwin was not at home when Godwin’s party arrived. Godwin was extremely dis appointed: “Dr Darwin was gone to Shrewsbury, and not expected back till Wednesday night. At this moment I feel mortified at the recollection. We concluded that this was longer than we could with propriety wait for him. I believe we were wrong. So extraordinary a man, so truly a phenomenon as we should probably have found him, I think we ought not to have scrupled the sacrifice of 36 hours.”47 Judging by his response, Godwin apparently was not only familiar with Darwin’s work, but also was a great admirer (in Darwin’s major work, Zoonomia, dissec tion is mentioned multiple times).48 Godwin’s own writings, his intimate association with two eminent sci entists, and his admiration of Erasmus Darwin, suggest that Godwin was both interested in and aware of contemporary scientific practices.

Late-eighteenth-century anatomists marketed their writ ings to “gentlemen” and “rational men” outside the field of medical science and to physicians alike.49 Pole addresses the “gentleman” reader in the preface to The Anatomical Instructor, suggesting “By the gentleman, Anatomy ought to be considered as a branch of education no less necessary to form the accomplished character, than any other department of philosophy ... [it is] con sonant to reason and sound sense” (vii–viii). He is particularly interested in “claiming superior attention from the philosopher and natural historian” (v). As a self-proclaimed philosopher, natural historian, and man of reason, Godwin would probably agree with Pole, and

47 William Godwin to Mary Wollstonecraft, 15 June 1797, in “Chapter IX: Married Life 1797,” Paul, 1:261.

48 Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life, 2 vols. (Dublin: 1796–1800). See, for example, Zoonomia, sect. 14.4, “Of the Organ of Hear-ing”: “But it appears from dissection, that the tympanum is not the immediate organ of hearing” (125). In a letter dated 4 April 1778, Charles Darwin, Eras-mus’s son, who died after slicing his finger during an autopsy, describes a case in which a man who died from diabetes was dissected (318).

49 In the introduction to The Anatomical Instructor, Pole writes, “I wish most anxiously to draw the attention of rational men; to rouse the activity of intel-ligence to a research, which promises the amplest gratification, the sublimest truth” (xviii).

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therefore would have kept abreast of the enormously popular practice of dissection.

While it is difficult to prove that Godwin intended Memoirs to be read as a type of autopsy, an examination of his rhetorical style is suggestive of the possibility. Godwin has a distinctive mode of writing: his penchant for straight description over satire positions him as a literalist. Political Justice is an especially useful means of exploring Godwin’s literalism. We can learn a great deal about how Godwin thinks by examining the way he reads Swift; the satire of Gulliver’s Travels appears lost on Godwin, who treasured it as a seditious tract that offered a “profound insight into the true principles of political justice” (402n1). As well, Godwin’s discussion of marriage in Political Justice provides examples of his literalism. Describing marriage as a “monopoly,” Godwin calls for its “abolition,” which he argues, “will create no difficulty.” Of sharing the woman he loves with other men, Godwin writes, “We may all enjoy her conversation ... we shall all be wise enough to consider the sexual commerce as unessential to our regard” (574). Godwin takes his argument a step further, suggesting that people will eventually stop having sex, except for the propagation of the species. Despite the ridiculousness of these assertions, Godwin is absolutely sincere. Judging by the rhetorical style of his previous work, Godwin’s clinical approach to writing Wollstonecraft’s life in Memoirs is intentional.

Memoirs, in which Godwin displays Wollstonecraft’s sexual relationships, suicide attempts, and other unorthodox life choices, is, as Buss describes, “an ambiguous experience of page-turning intensity and squirming dissatisfaction.”50 A considerable portion of contemporary critical backlash was political in nature, filling “the vitriolic pages of anti-Jacobin literature,” which regarded Memoirs as “a narrative of licentious amours.”51 Even though Memoirs was generally panned by critics, it did receive notable positive reviews;52 popular audi ences, however, were overwhelmingly unreceptive to Godwin’s unusual bio graphical approach. The disdain was not limited to readers 50 Buss, 114.51 Myers, 301.52 For positive contemporary critical responses to Memoirs, see John Fenwick,

“Mr Godwin,” Public Characters of 1799–1800 (London: R. Philips, 1801), 371–74; Analytic Review 27 (March 1798): 238–40; and the New Annual Register for 1798 (1799), 271, all cited in Clemit.

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who opposed Wollstonecraft’s lifestyle, but “many who admired Wollstonecraft were also offended and ... puzzled at Godwin’s motivation for such candor.”53

Just as an affinity for contemporary anatomy influenced Godwin’s autopsical biography of Wollstonecraft, cultural pre-occupations and anxieties regarding dissection appear to have adversely informed readers’ responses to Memoirs. Public outcry against Godwin’s treatment of Wollstonecraft in Memoirs is best and perhaps most famously expressed by Robert Southey, who exclaimed his disgust at Godwin’s “want of all feeling in stripping his dead wife naked.”54 Southey’s description of Godwin’s biographical approach evokes similar contemporary concerns about dissection. While anatomy excited public fascin ation in the late eighteenth century, dissection was a source of fear for a public that considered the practice a “violation of the dead,” associated with “necrophilia” and “cannibalism.”55 It is important to emphasize that “dissec tion for purposes of medical instruction or ‘curiosity’ was stig matizing in the eigh teenth century, but autopsy had an entirely different social meaning” because it was considered a luxury afforded only the most exceptional individuals.56 Reading Southey’s critique of Memoirs in light of contemporary atti tudes about autopsy and dissection, it seems he failed to acknowledge any hint of the redemptive quality of autopsy as a means of preserving an extraordinary person, aligning Godwin’s bio graphical approach with the highly controversial practice of dissection. It is impossible to estimate the degree to which fears of dissection informed read-ers’ responses to Memoirs, but reading Southey’s critique in the context of these concerns provides a reasonable explanation as to why Godwin’s mode of writing Wollstonecraft’s life was so rhetorically alienating to contemporary readers.

Godwin’s biographical approach may have resonated with readers as a kind of dissection because the process of life writing mimics the process of dissection, in that Wollstonecraft’s life

53 Myers, 302.54 Robert Southey to William Taylor, 1 July 1804, in A Memoir of the Life and

Writings of William Taylor of Norwich, ed. J.W. Robberds, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1824), 1:504.

55 Sappol, 96. 56 Sappol, 103.

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and works are examined, fragmented, and dispersed. Yet I question why readers did not respond differently to what I argue are “autopsic” elements of Godwin’s biographical approach. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman plays a major role in advancing this distinction; contemporary readers familiar with Vindication may have viewed Memoirs as an antithesis of Wollstonecraft’s wishes. Any astute reader of Vindication would be aware of Wollstonecraft’s uneasiness about the body, as primarily evidenced in chapter 12, “Modesty.”57 Wollstonecraft clearly specifies that “the reserve [she] mean[s], has nothing sexual in it, and that ... it [is] equally necessary in both sexes” (159). While Wollstonecraft’s squeamish dis content is not linked to gender, it is entrenched in the body; Wollstonecraft writes, “A number of girls sleep in the same room and wash together ... I should be very anxious to prevent their acquiring nasty, or immodest habits” (157). Considering how Wollstonecraft felt about the body, contemporary readers may have read Godwin’s extreme candour in discussing both her sexuality and physical illness as violations.

Regardless of the overwhelmingly negative popular recep tion of Memoirs, I argue that Godwin, as a dissecting surgeon, in-tended to do no harm. He says of Wollstonecraft, “Never did there exist a human being, that needed, with less fear, expose all their actions, and call upon the universe to judge them” (103). Myers argues that Godwin’s benevolent impetus in Memoirs is illustrated in “the basic pattern in their letters ... the configuration of love as mutuality, as the reciprocal expansion of latent powers, as education, in short.”58 In this sense, Memoirs, as an embodiment of the autopsical desire to spread knowledge by opening the body to minute investigation, is more a testament to Wollstonecraft’s life-long passion for education than a violation of her reputation.

Perhaps the most insightful hint towards reading Memoirs as an autopsical biography comes from Godwin himself, in the form of a letter he wrote to Carlisle after Wollstonecraft’s death: “My mind is extremely sunk & languid. But I husband

57 Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” and “The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria,” ed. Anne K. Mellor and Noelle Chao (New York: Pear-son Longman, 2007), 151. References are to this edition.

58 Myers, 304.

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my thoughts, & shall do very well ... Nothing could be more soothing to my mind than to dwell in a long letter upon her virtues & accomplishments, & our mutual happiness past & in prospect. But the attractions of this subject are delusive, & I dare not trust myself with it.”59 Godwin was so devastated by Wollstonecraft’s death that he was unable to attend her funeral. As a man who has just lost his wife, it is ironic that Godwin employs the word “husband” to describe his need to manage his thoughts in an attempt to avoid being overcome with grief. Godwin’s assertion that he “dare not trust” him self “to dwell” on Wollstonecraft’s virtues and the happiness they shared together speaks to his need to distance himself in Memoirs, approaching his biography of Wollstonecraft from the vantage point of a detached observer rather than a hus band. Godwin adopted the rhetoric of a dissecting surgeon because the voice of a grieving husband would no doubt crack from the strain of such a monumental loss.

Fordham University

59 William Godwin to Anthony Carlisle, unsigned letter, 15 September 1797, Abinger MSS, Dep. b. 215/2, cited in Clemit.