Feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft writes to political thinker William Godwin, to whom she’d be wed in March the following year. Their daughter, Mary Shelley, would become an important novelist and essayist in her own right, penning the classic Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818. Wollstonecraft died soon after giving birth.
[London, September 13, 1796]
You tell me, William, that you augur nothing good, when the paper has not a note, or, at least, Fanny to wish you a good morning—
Now by these presents let me assure you that you are not only in my heart, but in my veins, this morning. I turn from you half abashed—yet you haunt me, and some look, word or touch thrills through my whole frame—yes, at the very moment when I am labouring to think of something, if not somebody, else. Get ye gone Intruder! though I am forced to add dear—which is a call back—
When the heart and reason accord there is no flying from voluptuous sensations, I find, do what a woman can— Can a philosopher do more?
Mary
From Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Edited by Ralph M. Wardle. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979. 439 pp.