Original Stories from Real Life

The only book she wrote for children: a governess who softens nothing, and two girls taught by being shown things rather than told them.

by Mary Wollstonecraft102 passages held

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1788(aged 29)
Original language: English

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Overview

Margaret King walked out of her marriage in 1805, left Ireland for Italy, and spent the rest of her life under a borrowed name — Mrs Mason, the teacher in a children's book written by the woman who had been her own governess. Wollstonecraft spent a year with the Kingsboroughs in 1786 and 1787, and this is what she made of the household: in the book, two girls, Mary and Caroline, fourteen and twelve, are handed over to a woman who keeps taking them out to look at things. A walk on which they are caught tormenting insects; a poor family in London. Every outing is followed by conversation, and the conversation is the lesson; there are no rules to memorise, because Wollstonecraft did not believe a child could be told into virtue. The method is Rousseau's, out of Emile, and Thomas Day's, out of Sandford and Merton; the difference is that the teacher is a woman and the pupils are girls. Mrs Mason corrects before she consoles. Her first business is to clear out what the girls have picked up — the borrowed prejudice, the accomplishment mistaken for knowledge — and only then to build. Joseph Johnson published it anonymously at two shillings; the second edition of 1791 carried Wollstonecraft's name and six plates by William Blake, who designed and engraved every one himself. Some Blake scholars have read his Mrs Mason as a figure of tyranny rather than instruction. It was reprinted in Dublin, translated into German in 1795, and stayed in print for decades — the last edition was 1820 or as late as 1835, depending on which scholar is counting. By the end of the nineteenth century people bought it for the pictures.

Key concepts

Why does Mrs Mason teach through particular scenes instead of moral rules?

Mrs Mason teaches through encounters because virtue must become a way of judging and acting, not a recital of rules. She takes Mary and Caroline outdoors, lets them see suffering or cruelty, then uses discussion to expose their first response and redirect it. The scene supplies experience; reflection supplies moral discrimination.

What makes an accomplishment an obstacle to knowledge in this book?

An accomplishment becomes dangerous when it gives a girl polish without judgment. Wollstonecraft sets borrowed accomplishments against knowledge gained by examining things and consequences: knowing how to appear cultivated does not teach a person what deserves admiration or pity. Mrs Mason therefore clears away social vanity before attempting moral formation.

Why does Wollstonecraft treat vanity as a moral fault, not merely bad manners?

Vanity becomes a moral fault when it makes appearance more important than truth or another person's condition. A vain person seeks admiration instead of judging what deserves it, and may mistake social approval for knowledge. The book opposes this habit with observation, honest self-correction, and attention directed beyond the self.

How does Original Stories measure moral progress when the girls still make mistakes?

The book measures moral progress by the quality of a child's response after an error, not by an impossible record of flawless conduct. Mary and Caroline encounter their own cruelty, prejudice, or vanity and must reconsider it in conversation. Improvement therefore means learning to judge one's conduct and alter it, rather than merely reciting the correct answer.

Themes of the book

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

Virtue Learned in the World

Can a child become virtuous through seeing, judging, and acting, rather than memorising rules? The answer determines whether education produces independent moral agents or merely obedient pupils.

Wollstonecraft rejects the idea that virtue can be poured into a child through instruction. Mrs Mason takes Mary and Caroline, aged fourteen and twelve, into the world, where an outing to see insects they have tormented or a poor London family exposes the habits behind their conduct. Conversation follows each scene: she corrects prejudice and vanity before offering consolation, then trains reason, empathy, and compassion. Against Rousseau’s model, she makes a woman teach girls to judge for themselves.

virtue
character
benevolence
reason
compassion
moral development
animal welfare
habit
poverty
education
vanity
suffering
duty
truth
charity
cruelty
dignity
justice
moral education
virtue ethics
grief
moral psychology
procrastination
religion
anger
animal ethics

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 102
distinct concepts: 251
by passages held, corpus-wide: #497

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “compassion” and “moral education”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 19 pairings. 78 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
compassion	moral education	7
benevolence	moral education	4
charity	poverty	4
compassion	poverty	4
moral education	virtue	4
charity	compassion	3
moral education	virtue ethics	3
benevolence	charity	2
benevolence	grief	2
benevolence	poverty	2
moral education	poverty	2
benevolence	compassion	1
benevolence	virtue	1
benevolence	virtue ethics	1
charity	grief	1
charity	virtue ethics	1
compassion	grief	1
compassion	virtue	1
grief	poverty	1

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.

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
1788 Original Stories from Real Life you are here EN
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
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
1794 An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution
Where A Vindication of the Rights of Men answered Burke in a pamphlet, this answers him again four years later at the length of a history.
EN

— or open another of their works