MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY

A Biography of Mary W ollstonecraft "The Jeffersonians" "Spindrift," a Book of Poems

by Ralph M. War die '31. U.of Kansas Press, 1951, 341 pp. Notes andIndex, $4.50.

This is indeed a critical biography. The multitude of facts, many of them unavailable hitherto, is sorted and set forth with a perspective always in terms of the person, Mary Wollstonecraft, who lived in those swirling times of the French Revolution, absorbed some of the current assumptions, rejected others, and eventually commented on them all. But while the author is copious in detail he is not lost in it. He draws attention to Mary's ill-digested belief in Locke's thesis that environment is all that makes the man, while he demonstrates from her actions and her words in other contexts that her native spunk and spinsterish common-sense rejected this smug behaviorism as clearly as her passions rendered nearly every doctrine futile in itself. Those were times when righteousness and peace kissed each other while the Old Adam crept in from the wings and twitched off their clothes. Mr. Wardle observes this comedy with a humor more confident than cynical and with a respect for Mary's spiritual energy which is both warm and contagious.

Wordsworth's Prelude, written in those same times, is an autobiographical attempt to assess the interaction between his world and his own soul, but it lacks the humor or the perspective that even a woodchuck seems to show in providing two doors to his burrow, just in case. Mary Wollstonecraft seldom had two doors at the same time, but the life Mr. Wardle sets forth shows that she never stayed long in despair or despondency without having recourse to other doors than the one just closed. Love saved her from the aridity of her hard-won independence, but scornful and self confident common-sense was almost always available when she rallied, as she always did, to save her from the sordidness of defeat in love, or, what would have been worse for her, from losing the essential kindness that underlay her irritating superiority.

In matter of detail, I am grateful for the good manners which does not obtrude all the notes upon the page, but places whatever does not belong gracefully within the text at the end of the book. This is an engaging' biography, set in a lively era, and taking frequent account of progress as it moves, along its human path, for the author reflects upon his facts with a shrewd and genial mind.