Fanny Imlay
Fanny grew up in the household of anarchist political philosopher William Godwin, the widower of her mother, with his second wife Mary Jane Clairmont and their combined family of five children.
Both had moved to France during the French Revolution, Wollstonecraft to practise the principles laid out in her seminal work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and Imlay to engage in speculative business ventures.
At one point during Wollstonecraft and Imlay's relationship, the couple could meet only at a tollbooth between Paris and Neuilly, and it was there that their daughter was conceived; Fanny was therefore, in Godwin's words, a "barrier child".
Wollstonecraft playfully wrote to one friend: "My little Girl begins to suck so manfully that her father reckons saucily on her writing the second part of the R[igh]ts of Woman" [emphasis in original].
Her letters to him are full of needy expostulations, explained by most critics as the expressions of a deeply depressed woman but by some as a result of her circumstances—alone with an infant in the middle of the French Revolution.
[8] Wollstonecraft returned to London in April 1795, seeking Imlay, but he rejected her; the next month she attempted to commit suicide, but he saved her life (it is unclear how).
[9] In a last attempt to win him back, she embarked upon a hazardous trip to Scandinavia from June to September 1795, with only her one-year-old daughter and a maid, in order to conduct some business for him.
[10] Using her diaries and letters from her journey to Scandinavia, Wollstonecraft wrote a rumination on her travels and her relationship—Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)—in which, among other things, she celebrated motherhood.
With trembling hand I shall cultivate sensibility, and cherish delicacy of sentiment, lest, whilst I lend fresh blushes to the rose, I sharpen the thorns that will wound the breast I would fain guard—I dread to unfold her mind, lest it should render her unfit for the world she is to inhabit—Hapless woman!
Godwin grew to love Fanny during his affair with Wollstonecraft; he brought her back a mug from Josiah Wedgwood's pottery factory with an "F" on it that delighted both mother and daughter.
Her copy of Wollstonecraft's only completed children's book, Original Stories from Real Life (1788), has the initials "F. G." written in large print in it.
[28] On 21 December 1801, when Fanny was seven, Godwin married Mary Jane Clairmont, a neighbour with two children of her own: three-year-old Claire and six-year-old Charles.
He contends that after Wollstonecraft's death Godwin wrote to a former pupil to whom she had been close, now Lady Mountcashell, asking her advice on how to raise and educate his daughters.
[36] Yet, the adult Imlay is described by Charles Kegan Paul, one of Godwin's earliest biographers, as "well educated, sprightly, clever, a good letter-writer, and an excellent domestic manager".
[41] As Fanny grew up, her father increasingly relied on her to placate tradespeople who demanded bills be paid and to solicit money from men such as Place.
For example, during former American vice-president Aaron Burr's self-imposed exile from the United States after his acquittal on treason charges, he often spent time with the Godwins.
Also, her aunts were considering her for a teaching position at this time, but were reluctant because of Godwin's shocking Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798).
[63] At this time, Charles Clairmont (Fanny's step-brother), frustrated with the tension in the Godwin household, left for France and refused to help the family any further.
He relied on Shelley's money, and the stain on his family's reputation only increased when the public learned that the group had left to join the rakish Byron.
The utopian socialist Robert Owen came to visit Godwin in the summer of 1816 and he and Fanny discussed the plight of the working poor in Britain.
On 9 October 1816, Fanny left Godwin's house in London and died by suicide by taking an overdose of laudanum at an inn in Swansea, Wales; she was 22.
[72] In his 1965 article "Fanny Godwin's Suicide Re-examined", B. R. Pollin lays out the major theories that had been put forward regarding her suicide and which continue to be used today: Pollin dismisses the first of these, as have most later biographers, arguing that Fanny had access to her mother's writings and Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which openly discuss the circumstances of her birth.
[74] Pollin is also sceptical of the second explanation, pointing to Fanny's letter to Mary of 3 October 1816 in which she defended her step-mother: "Mrs. Godwin would never do either of you a deliberate injury.
"[75] Pollin finds no evidence that Fanny had been refused a position at her aunts' school, only that such a scheme may have been "in contemplation", as Godwin later wrote, although Seymour grants this explanation some plausibility.
[80] Godwin biographer and philosopher Don Locke argues that "most probably because she could absorb no more of the miseries of Skinner Street, her father's inability to pay his debts or write his books, her mother's unending irritability and spitefulness", all of which she blamed on herself, she committed suicide.
[78] Pollin largely agrees with Todd, speculating that Fanny saw Percy Shelley in Bath and he "somehow failed her", causing her to commit suicide.
[81] Seymour and others speculate that Shelley's only failure was to live up to his financial promises to Godwin and it was this that helped push Fanny over the edge; she was convinced, like her father, "that the worthy have an absolute right to be supported by those who have the worth to give".
[91] Todd speculates that Shelley arranged for Fanny to be declared "dead" (an appellation more common for the well-to-do) and removed any identifying items, such as her name on the note.
Think what is the situation of my wife & myself, now deprived of all our children but the youngest [William]; & do not expose us to those idle questions, which to a mind in anguish is one of the severest trials.
[93] Because suicide was considered scandalous, disreputable, and sinful at the time, which might have damaged Godwin's business,[73] the family told various stories regarding Imlay's death in order to cover up the truth, including that she had gone on vacation, that she had died of a cold in Wales, that she had died of an "inflammatory fever", that she was living with her mother's sisters, or, if forced to admit suicide, that Fanny killed herself because Shelley loved Mary Godwin and not her.
