6 - Negotiating Equality

Summary

Godwin’s relatively new experience with women following the publication of Political Justice opened him up to a wider range of discursive and deliberative styles and helped lay the ground for his subsequent relationship with Wollstonecraft.In a society of stark gender inequality, it was a relationship in which something like equality was achieved, even if that was painfully won and remained fragile.Following Wollstonecraft’s death, a new set of imperatives faced Godwin which led him into a series of relationships in which he resorted to older and more traditional patterns of communication and with more traditional expectations.For all their egalitarianism, it is clear that class and gender inequality were far more deeply engrained than many of the radicals had assumed.