Mary Wollstonecraft [mother of the
author of "Frankenstein"] wrote 'Vindication of the Rights of Women'
in 1792:
I wish to sum up what I have said
in a few words, for here I throw down my gauntlet, and deny the existence of
sexual [gender defined] virtues, not excepting modesty. For man and woman,
truth, if I am understanding the meaning of the word, must be the same; yet the
fanciful female character, so prettily drawn by poets and novelists, demanding
the sacrifice of truth and sincerity, virtue becomes a relative idea, having no
other foundation than utility, and of that utility men pretend arbitrarily to
judge, shaping it to their own convenience. Woman, I allow, may have different
duties to fulfill; but they are human duties, and the principles that should
regulate the discharge of them, I sturdily maintain, must be the same. To
become respectable, the exercise of their understanding is necessary, there is
no other foundation for the independence of character; I mean explicitly to say
that they must bow to the authority of reason, instead of being the modest
slaves of opinion.
In her "Essay on Fiction"
(1795) Germaine de Stael wrote:
"If most men had the wit and
good faith to give a truthful, clear account of what they had experienced in
the course of their lives, novels would be useless - but even these sincere
narratives would not have all the advantages of novels. We would still have to
add a kind of dramatic effect to the truth; not deforming it, but condensing it
to set it off. This is the art of the painter: far from distorting objects, it
represents them in away that makes them more immediately apprehended. Nature
sometimes shows us things all on the same level, eliminating any contrasts; if
we copy her too slavishly we become incapable of portraying her. The most
truthful account is always an imitative truth: as a tableau, it demands a
harmony of its own. However remarkable a true story maybe be for its nuances,
feelings, and characters, in cannot interest us without the talent necessary
for the composition of fiction. . . .a scrupulously detailed account of an
ordinary event diminishes verisimilitude instead of increasing it. Thrown back
on a positive notion of what is true by the kinds of details that belong only
to truth, you soon break out the illusion, weary of being unable to find either
the instruction of history or the interest of a novel. . .
" Even if purely philosophical
writings could predict and detail all the nuances of actions, as novels do,
dramatic morality would still have the great advantage of arousing indignant
impulses, an exaltation of the soul, a sweet melancholy - the various effects
of fictional situations, and a sort of supplement to existence*. The
impression resembles the one of real facts we might have witnessed, but it is
less distracting for the mind than the incoherent panorama of events around us,
because it is always directed towards a single goal. Finally, there are men
over whom duty has no influence but who could still be preserved from crime by developing
within them the ability to be moved.* Characters capable of adopting
humanity only with the help of such a faculty of emotion, the physical pleasure
of the soul, would naturally would not deserve much respect; nevertheless, if
the effect of these touching fictions became widespread enough among the
people, it might give us some assurance that we would no longer have in our
country those beings whose character poses the most incomprehensible moral
problem that has ever existed. The gradual steps from the known to the unknown
stop well before they reach any understanding of the emotions which rule the
executioners of France. Neither events nor books can have developed in them the
least trace of humanity, the memory of a single sensation of pity, any mobility
within the mind itself for them to remain capable of that constant cruelty, so
foreign to the impulses of nature - a cruelty which has given mankind its first
limitless concept- the complete idea of crime.
* italics mine
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