ABSTRACT
How did Wollstonecraft meet Gilbert Imlay? What was it about him that she found irresistible? What were Wollstonecraft’s views on marriage? If she married him in France, would have their marriage been recognized in England? Why did Imlay not stay with her in France, especially when her life was in danger? Most scholarship conveys Imlay as a fiend. Was he that? Why did he abandon Wollstonecraft? What was the effect of this relationship on her that translated into her later writing? How did her eyewitness account of the events of the French Revolution change her politics? The chapter will identify the feminist characteristics in An Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution; and the Effect It Has produced in Europe (1794). The chapter is a close examination of the Imlay romance that effected a psychological sculpturing that remodeled Wollstonecraft into a feminist who was much different from the one who penned Rights of Woman.
