Image by John Rabone Harvey.
by Joshua Lofting
Where does human happiness reside? This is a question Mary Wollstonecraft frequently contemplates in Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In the text, she provides two potential answers to this question: “[h]as it taken up its abode with the unconscious ignorance, or with thee high-wrought mind?” (Wollstonecraft 108). In other words, is ignorance bliss, or does happiness come from a developed, imaginative mind? In terms of society, she poses imagination and curiosity as the primary factors that separate the ‘primitive,’ ‘barbaric’ societies from the developed ones that she encounters on her journey through Scandinavia. In his paper, “Wollstonecraft and World Improvement”, Mark Canuel considers the depiction of societal progression in the text, crucially noting how “[Wollstonecraft’s] hopes for a future of ‘benevolence’ and ‘industry’ depend on her mind’s powers of imagination” (141). Imagination – cultivation of the mind – leads to development, but development is not always depicted as completely beneficial in the text. Throughout Letters, Wollstonecraft’s vast imagination frequently drags her down into deep pits of misery, exacerbating the deep depression that haunts the text. Because of her depression, she appears to envy those with uncultivated minds who live lives devoid of imagination. Her mind – as she sees it – has become overcultivated, but as Ágnes Péter suggests in her paper, “Who is at the Helm? Mary Wollstonecraft’s Contribution to the Romantic Construct of the Imagination”, her vast imagination is not something she can necessarily even control. Péter describes how Wollstonecraft herself arrived at “a definition of the imagination as the supreme mental faculty” (613) – that the only thing controlling the imagination is the imagination itself. Despite how Wollstonecraft establishes imagination as a powerful tool in the development of self in relation to the natural world, as well as a powerful tool in the development of civilization, it is also made clear many times throughout the text that imagination in excess is dangerous and to an extent uncontrollable, causing Wollstonecraft to believe that ignorance, in contrast, is the only path to true bliss.
Throughout her journey in Scandinavia, the natural world often inspires Wollstonecraft’s imagination to enter profound thought. Her eloquent observations of the picturesque, the sublime, and the beautiful always tend to turn inwards into self-reflection. This is seen in the beginning of Letter VIII where, after waking from sleep in the ruins of a fort on a mountain near the shore, she takes in the scene and regards how “[e]very thing seemed to harmonize into tranquility”, and goes on to describe at length the vast beauty of her surroundings, which all leads to her measuring the temperature of her soul, coming to the conclusion that “[she] must love and admire with warmth, or [she will] sink into sadness.” (Wollstonecraft 97). Wollstonecraft also often admires the many cultivations of the lands she passes through, including them and their labourers in the picturesque portraits she paints, thereby rejecting the conventions of aestheticism. As she says as she passes through the Sweden countryside, “[t]he little cultivation which appeared did not break the enchantment” (Wollstonecraft 76), and thus these cultivations contribute to the picturesque and the beauty of the natural world rather than detract. This “enchantment” that Wollstonecraft refers to is something that Canuel takes note of. As he puts it, “her use of the word ‘enchantment’ leaps off the page, for the resonance of that word suggests that she is not simply providing contrasting views aligned with celebrated thinkers who were well known to her. ‘Enchantment,’ rather, connects with other expansive states of mind—most often described as ‘imagination’—and of the enlivened ‘soul’ described throughout the letters” (Canuel 140). Thus, it is a different kind of cultivation that allows one to appreciate and ponder this enchantment in the first place: the cultivation of the mind. As Wollstonecraft insists, “the cultivation of the mind, by warming, nay, almost creating the imagination, produces taste, and an immense variety of sensations and emotions, partaking of the exquisite pleasure inspired by beauty and sublimity” (Wollstonecraft109). Cultivating one’s mind, like the labourers cultivate the land, creates opportunity for observation and profound self-reflection through imagination.
But what happens when the land is cultivated too extensively? The woods become deforested, cleared away for more farmland, as is seen in the countryside of Norway. As Wollstonecraft puts it, “[n]ecessity will in future more and more spur them on; for the ground, cleared of wood, must be cultivated, or the farm loses its value: there is no waiting for food till another generation of pines be grown to maturity” (131) – further cultivation of the land is prioritized over replanting the trees that have been cut down. Such industry cannot be sustained forever though, for the slow removal of the natural world creates lasting negative environmental effects on the climate. Such is the case when Wollstonecraft later comes across a forest devastated by wildfire. She describes that the fires were caused by “the wind suddenly rising when the farmers [were] burning roots of trees, stalks of beans, &c. with which they manure the ground” (134). As a result, this carelessness of the farmers as they seek to further cultivate their land causes “[t]he soil, as well as the trees, [to be] swept away by the destructive torrent; and the country, despoiled of beauty and riches, is left to mourn for ages” (134). The industriousness of cultivation seems destined to reach this desolation, this point of no return, ultimately taking an irreparable toll on the natural world.
Thus, the cultivation of the land is invariably tied to the cultivation of the mind in the text. As Canuel points out in his paper, “while the imaginative work in Wollstonecraft’s text may appear to be abstracted from conditions of cultivation […] it would be still more accurate to describe it as enabling an inventive commentary on those conditions” (140) – she uses the cultivation of the land as a lens in which to view the cultivation of the mind, and vice versa. So, by extension, there is a parallel between the overcultivation of the land and the overcultivation of the mind, the overindulgence of imagination. There are many instances in the text where Wollstonecraft sinks too deep into her imagination, and in these cases her reflections from observations of the world route to dark places. When she arrives in Sleswick, the sight of the soldiers she sees training there only serves to magnify her depression at this point in her journey. She comes to the bleak conclusion that “[c]hildren peep into existence, suffer, and die; men play like moths about a candle, and sink into the flame: war, and ‘the thousand ills which flesh is heir to,’ mow them down in shoals, whilst the more cruel prejudices of society palsies existence, introducing not less sure, though slower decay” (166). In a similar fashion in Norway, “[a] rainy morning [prevents her] enjoying the pleasure the view of a picturesque country would have afforded [her]” (125). Her reflections on the fact that she cannot enjoy the beauty surrounding her that she nevertheless acknowledges exacerbate the “black melancholy [hovering] round [her] footsteps” (125), deepening her misery.
In these situations, having such a cultivated, clear-cut, imaginative mind causes Wollstonecraft to think too much, and thus perpetuate her sadness – her imagination becomes its own wildfire wreaking desolation and misery upon her mind. Just like the overcultivation of the land, the overcultivation of the mind has negative, near-fatal after-effects; her imaginative musings on the world amplify her bleak outlook on life, and this most likely contributes to her second attempted suicide after returning to England. As she sees it, “[n]ature is the nurse of sentiment, —the true source of taste; —yet what misery, as well as rapture, is produced by a quick perception of the beautiful and sublime” (86) – her vast imagination has a profound effect on her state of mind, and not always for the better.
But, while one may be able to choose to stop cultivating the land, to what extent can one stop cultivating their mind? Frequently throughout Letters, Wollstonecraft depicts instances in which her imagination seems to control her, like when she describes how her “imagination hurries [her] forward to seek an asylum in such a retreat from all the disappointments [she is] threatened with” (132). She even characterizes it as its own entity as she writes, “[i]n solitude, the imagination bodies forth its conceptions unrestrained, and stops enraptured to adore the beings of its own creation” (105), or when she describes how “[e]motions become sentiments; and the imagination renders even transient sensations permanent, by fondly retracing them” (87). In these passages, it begins to become clear that the only thing in control of Wollstonecraft’s imagination is her imagination itself.
In her paper, “Who is at the Helm? Mary Wollstonecraft’s Contribution to the Romantic Construct of the Imagination”, Ágnes Péter expounds on this idea, analyzing Wollstonecraft’s depiction of the imagination in Letters and other her published works. Péter outlines how Wollstonecraft “[replaces] reason with imagination as the distinctive attribute of the human mind”, later arriving at “a definition of the imagination as the supreme mental faculty” (613). Thus, from the perspective spearheaded by Wollstonecraft herself, it is imagination that trumps all other mental faculties, imagination – not reason – that dictates one’s thoughts. Péter explains that Wollstonecraft contributed to “[t]he valorisation of the imagination in the Romantic anatomy of the mind” in her works with the revolutionary idea of “the imagination taking over the place at the helm [of the mind]” (616). As has already been discussed, in Wollstonecraft’s eyes, it is in “growing intimate with nature, […] unseen by vulgar eyes” that “[gives] birth to sentiments dear to the imagination, and inquiries which expand the soul, particularly when cultivation has not smoothed into insipidity all its originally of character” (Wollstonecraft 68) – it is through an intimacy with nature that imagination is cultivated. But once cultivated, it is imagination that is at the helm, in the driver’s seat, “[i]magination which moves the whole personality of man” (Péter 629). Thus, the overcultivation of the mind, unlike the overcultivation of the land, is not something one can necessarily ever control.
Wollstonecraft is not just concerned with posing imagination and the cultivation of the mind as powerful tools in understanding the self, however – she also poses them as powerful tools in the development of society. Through her observations of the many civilizations she comes across throughout Scandinavia, Wollstonecraft frames cultivation of the mind as the sole factor that separates the primitive from the refined. When approaching a retreat after she first arrives in Sweden, the people there remind her that “men who remain so near the brute creation […] have little or no imagination to call forth the curiosity necessary to fructify the faint glimmerings of mind which entitles them to rank as lords of the creation” (54). She believes that imagination and curiosity are the traits that progress society to higher levels, that cultivation of the mind is what leads to the cultivation of the land.
There are various points throughout Letters where Wollstonecraft praises this societal progression, like near the beginning of Letter II where she states, “[t]he more I see of the world, the more I am convinced that civilization is a blessing not sufficiently estimated by those who have not traced its progress” (61). Here she regards societal development as a blessing, a blessing that is only attainable through cultivation of the mind. As Mark Canuel puts it, “social improvement […]—by which Wollstonecraft most often means general happiness or the common good—arises from an enthusiastic dream” (141). This idyllic, imaginative dream is how societal progress is brought about, and Wollstonecraft at points in Letters appears to relish in the fruits of this labour.
Again, however, this kind of cultivation can be taken too far. Civilizational development eventually leads to industrialization, and industry gives rise to commercialism and capitalism. Wollstonecraft vehemently criticizes these practices throughout the text, believing that they bring out the worst in humanity. As she passes through Norway and encounters an underlying sense of greed in the country, she describes “a shrewdness in the character of these people, depraved by a sordid love of money which repels [her]” (Wollstonecraft 117). She is appalled by those that only seek to accumulate wealth and property; in her eyes, “[a] man ceases to love humanity, and then individuals, as he advances in the chase after wealth” (174). And in Denmark, she concludes that as civilization progresses, “a rapacity to accumulate money seems to become stronger in proportion as it is allowed to be useless” (152). People in these societies are split apart from each other in their chase for wealth and power, but as Wollstonecraft suggests, these things are useless, are mere illusions in the end. Within these passages her previous praise of societal progression appears to be contradicted, but as Canuel puts it, “her aim [in the book] is not simply to oppose the notion of progress […] but rather to recover and revise it so that it is disarticulated from a conventional logic of gradual improvement” (140). As she sees it, there are points where societal progress eventually stops being gradual improvement and can be taken too far. If it is true that imagination is what drives innovation and industry, then its eventual resulting commercialism is what creates inequality and widens the gulf between members of society, creates boundaries between the poor and rich, and all of this incites unhappiness in the hearts of many.
So, who is happier then? Those with refined, imaginative minds caught up in the throes of a complex world of industry and philosophical thought, or the primitive, barbaric people who lack imagination, and are unaware of their potential? Wollstonecraft does not come to any easy answer regarding this question, for despite the benefits one may envision in ignorance, she believes that there is a certain weariness that comes with a lack of imagination. She states that “those who, defective in taste, continually rely for pleasure on their animal spirits, which not being maintained by the imagination, are unavoidably sooner exhausted than the sentiments of the heart” (121). Those who pursue creature comforts will inevitably become bored, and those comforts will lose their effect, and a lack of imagination and the ability to cultivate one’s mind will only perpetuate their wearisome stasis in development.
She also suggests that friendship and love cannot be sustained in ignorance because, as she writes, “it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our hearts, than the common run of people suppose” (120). Péter further expands on this idea in her paper as she analyzes how Wollstonecraft “recognizes that the trinity of reason, love, and virtue is to be complemented by imagination which idealizes the object of love and gives permanence to desire” – in her eyes, “[l]ove as a physical appetite is purified and elevated by the imagination” (628). Therefore, a life of ignorance is also a life devoid of love and true connection, which further complicates the appeal of an uncultivated mind.
Despite these complications, she depicts a goodness that comes with ignorance as well. As she discusses the inhabitants of Sweden, she concludes that “[her] fancy has probably, when disgusted with artificial manners, solaced itself by joining the advantages of cultivation with the interesting sincerity of innocence, forgetting the lassitude that ignorance will naturally produce” (Wollstonecraft 72). Here she suggests a happy medium that can be made between ignorance and cultivation and highlights a solace of innocence and simplicity that ignorance provides. It is important to mention, though, that this conclusion is framed as an imaginative act – she arrives at it because of her ‘fancy’. In this context, this happy medium of cultivation and ignorance that she finds solace in comes across as no more than fantasy, an impossible dream. So, when it comes to choosing between one or the other, Wollstonecraft tends to lean towards wishing for ignorance rather than further cultivation of the mind, believing that “if contentment be all we can attain, it is, perhaps, best secured by ignorance” (131). The use of the word ‘best’ is crucial here for, as has already been acknowledged, there are certain disadvantages to ignorance, but overall Wollstonecraft frames it as more beneficial to attaining happiness than the alternative. Thus, in her eyes, ignorance is not necessarily bliss in and of itself but bliss by comparison, for as she sees it there is more contentment to be had in ignorance than in imagination and development.
Herein lies the most crucial point of Wollstonecraft’s many musings on cultivation: she views ignorance as more desirable compared to her own mental state. In the notes of the Broadview Press edition of Letters, editor Ingrid Horrocks provides some important context regarding Wollstonecraft’s life at the time of the voyage. “Wollstonecraft had been sick during much of 1795” Horrocks writes, outlining the backdrop of the book, going on to describe how “[t]his physical sickness was compounded by the deep depression she had entered” (Wollstonecraft n98). Canuel provides similarly helpful context in his paper, explaining how the book was written “in the wake of two attempted suicides following the disintegration of her relationship with Gilbert Imlay” (139). This depression can be quite clearly tracked throughout Letters, as is plainly seen in the overall bleak tone of the book, or in specific moments such as when she resolves that “[b]lossoms come forth only to be blighted; fish lay their spawn where it will be devoured: and what a large portion of the human race are born merely to be swept prematurely away” (Wollstonecraft 166). Wollstonecraft’s positioning of an uncultivated mind being preferable over a cultivated one is then recontextualized as merely a ‘grass is always greener’ mentality that has been shaped by her own depression. Because of her depression, she dreams of a life where the benefits of ignorance and cultivation can be joined together, longing for the greener grass on the other side of her depressive misery that she supposes is caused by her own overcultivation – the overcultivation of imagination that she cannot control, for it is “securely at the helm of the vessel” (Péter 629).
Despite this, Wollstonecraft remains firm with her answer to the question of where human happiness resides: she believes that it resides in ignorance. In her view – a view dictated by depression and misery – imagination tends to create more problems than it is worth, and she envies those who lack such cultivation of the mind. This is seen clearly near the end of the book when she describes the Danes, and says that “in general, [they] seem extremely averse to innovation, and, if happiness only consist in opinion, they are the happiest people in the world” (Wollstonecraft 160). While it is true that imagination is the sole force that develops both the self and civilization, that it “privileges city refinement over the barbarism of country life” (Canuel 139), Wollstonecraft resolves from her bleaker side of the fence that a far simpler happiness is found on the other side, away from a high wrought mind where imagination stands unwaveringly at the helm. From her point of view, true bliss lies in the greener grass of ignorance, in the joy of not knowing at all. But if imagination already stands at the helm of her mind, is that bliss ever truly attainable?
Works Cited
Wollstonecraft, Mary. Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Ed. Ingrid Horrocks. Broadview Press, 2013.
Canuel, Mark. “Wollstonecraft and World Improvement.” The Wordsworth Circle, vol. 41, no. 3, 2010, pp. 139-142.
Péter, Ágnes. “Who is at the Helm? Mary Wollstonecraft’s Contribution to the Romantic Construct of the Imagination.” Neohelicon (Budapest), vol. 50, no. 2, 2023, pp. 613-634.