A philosophical journey north
Explore the Scandinavian letters, where the observation of landscapes and societies turns into a reflection on feeling, reason and commerce.
An original introduction. This guide accompanies the work; it is neither the complete text nor a translation.
Situating the text
Published by Joseph Johnson in 1796, the book was widely read and soon translated; Godwin wrote that it could make a reader fall in love with its author. The private purpose of the journey, the search for a lost cargo, is not stated in the text and was reconstructed by later research. In twenty-five letters addressed to an unnamed lover, Wollstonecraft describes a journey through Scandinavia undertaken in 1795 on Gilbert Imlay’s business. She observes landscapes, towns, trade, the condition of women and the laws she encounters, joining social criticism to reflections on nature, solitude, grief and the imagination.
Following the arguments
Observation : Customs, prisons, manners and poverty become evidence for reflecting on how institutions shape character. Nature : Descriptions of rocks, forests and sea join the sublime to an inquiry into the mind’s power to feel and to reason. Commerce : Wollstonecraft criticizes the spirit of trade and speculation, whose effects she meets in the towns and in her own life.
Continuing the reading
Read a few letters from Norway and the letters from Copenhagen near the end, then compare the travel narrative with the political arguments of the two Vindications. Published by Joseph Johnson in 1796, the book was widely read and soon translated; Godwin wrote that it could make a reader fall in love with its author. The private purpose of the journey, the search for a lost cargo, is not stated in the text and was reconstructed by later research.
In the Letters, personal experience and social observation become a way of testing the principles set out in the political works.
Your turn to think.
- How do the descriptions of nature change the narrator’s mood and reasoning in the Letters?
- Which observations about Scandinavian society echo the arguments of the two Vindications?
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