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WorkMary Wollstonecraft

An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution

A history of the Revolution written from inside it — by a British writer who registered as an American's wife to stay out of prison.

by Mary Wollstonecraft386 passages held

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First published
(aged 35)
Original language
English

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Overview

The history breaks off in October 1789, with a crowd of women walking out to Versailles and bringing the king back to Paris behind them. It starts with the calling of the Estates General, and that is as far as it goes: no further volume ever came. Wollstonecraft wrote it in France in 1794, her last full year there. Britain had declared war, British residents were being arrested, and she had kept herself out of a prison cell by being registered as the wife of Gilbert Imlay, an American she never married. So she was writing the story of 1789 in the fifth year of the Revolution, under the Terror — and rather than work around that, she made it the book's question: how does someone who welcomed 1789 account for what followed without handing the whole argument to Edmund Burke? Her answer is that the cruelty belongs to the old regime rather than to the Revolution. A people kept for centuries in ignorance, servility and court manners cannot be handed liberty and be expected to handle it well; what Burke read as the character of the French is the character despotism had manufactured. She had the documents — journals, records and papers she could reach in Paris and London, and what she had watched herself — at a moment when British opinion was being told daily that the Revolution had been a horror from the first hour. Joseph Johnson published it in London in 1794, and Thomas Dobson reprinted it in Philadelphia the next year with Volume I on the title page. A facsimile appeared in 1975; it was not set in type again until 1989, by which time scholars had begun reading her most neglected mature book as one of her most ambitious.

Key concepts

Why does Wollstonecraft treat history as a moral argument rather than a record of events?

She treats history as an inquiry into how political institutions form moral habits. Her account begins with the calling of the Estates General and ends with the women’s march to Versailles in October 1789, but those events matter because they expose the relation between power, character and judgment. The book therefore asks what political causes make certain actions likely, not merely what happened next.

How can a nation’s character be distinguished from the institutions that formed it?

Wollstonecraft separates the French people’s inherited conduct from any permanent national nature. Centuries of monarchy, ignorance and servility had trained people to imitate court manners and submit to authority; those habits could survive the fall of the old regime. The distinction matters in 1794, when British critics treated revolutionary violence as proof of French depravity rather than as damage produced by despotism.

Why do court manners matter politically in Wollstonecraft’s history of 1789?

Court manners matter because they spread political corruption beyond the palace. Privilege, vanity and dependence taught people to seek favour instead of justice, while rulers learned to govern through display and personal influence. When the Revolution challenged that order in 1789, it confronted habits embedded in social conduct as well as laws. Wollstonecraft therefore treats manners as institutions in miniature.

What role do documents and personal observation play in her account?

Documents and observation give Wollstonecraft two kinds of evidence: the public record and the experience of events as they unfolded. She drew on journals, records and papers available in Paris and London, while also writing in France during 1794, the fifth year of the Revolution. That combination lets her challenge accounts of 1789 produced from Britain by critics who treated the Revolution as corrupt from its beginning.

How does the book turn sovereignty into a test of political legitimacy?

The book treats sovereignty as legitimate only when power answers to the people rather than to hereditary privilege. The calling of the Estates General makes representation a practical question, not an abstract principle: who may speak for France, and under what authority? Wollstonecraft’s history follows that dispute into the upheaval of 1789, where political reform must replace obedience with accountable government.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Liberty After Despotism

The book asks how a people formed by centuries of ignorance and servility can receive liberty without reproducing the habits of its rulers. The answer determines whether the violence of the 1789 Revolution condemns its principles or exposes the damage left by monarchy.

Wollstonecraft argues that the Revolution’s cruelty belongs chiefly to the old regime, which trained people in dependence, vanity and court manners before liberty arrived. Her target was Burke. Writing in France in 1794, during the Terror, she refuses to let contemporary violence erase the political promise of 1789, or to let British opinion treat French character as the cause. The history stops in October 1789, when women bring the king from Versailles to Paris; the unfinished account leaves reform as a task rather than a settled triumph.

  • liberty
  • sovereignty
  • despotism
  • political reform
  • political legitimacy
  • justice
  • public opinion
  • reason
  • civilization
  • constitutionalism
  • reform
  • monarchy
  • revolution
  • morality
  • rhetoric
  • representation
  • vanity
  • executive power
  • patriotism
  • privilege
  • social change
  • accountability
  • political strategy
  • political stability
  • legitimacy
  • political psychology
  • popular sovereignty
  • political violence
  • aristocracy

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Within this work

passages held
386
distinct concepts
670
by passages held, corpus-wide
#84

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: despotism with liberty.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 9 pairings. 28 shared passages in all. 91 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
despotismliberty8
constitutionalismsovereignty4
constitutionalismexecutive power3
justicereason3
constitutionalismgovernance2
constitutionalismliberty2
despotismjustice2
executive powersovereignty2
governancesovereignty2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1787 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life

    Her first published book, and the one that works from inside the conduct-book trade rather than against it. The arguments about reasoning, dependence and a girl's prospects come back radicalised five years later in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

     EN
  2. 1788 Original Stories from Real Life (Original stories from real life)

    Edmund Burke handed her a political subject not long after it appeared, and the argument moved from a schoolroom to a nation.

     EN
  3. 1790 A Vindication of the Rights of Men

    Burke's Reflections turned a writer on education into a political author. The pamphlet war it opened went on to produce Thomas Paine's Rights of Man and William Godwin's Political Justice.

     EN
  4. 1792 A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

    For two centuries her name has meant this title alone, and the rest of the shelf has been read, when read at all, as approach or aftermath. Behind it stand two books on the schooling of girls; ahead of it, a history of the French Revolution written in France under the Terror.

     EN
  5. 1794 An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution you are here EN
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