The deliberative style of radicals around Godwin and Holcroft was driven by a belief in truth and candour and it was one which was especially prized in its binary form, in contrast to the tendency of public meetings and political associations to fall back on rhetoric. It was a discourse that insisted on deliberative equality, but did so in a powerfully hierarchical society, divided on lines of class, status and gender.Godwin and others were often successful in drawing young men into their circles and engaging in this deliberative practice; but it was much more challenging to do so with women.This chapter examines how a number of women sought to resist and negotiate Godwin’s deliberative dominance using a range of strategies to discomfit him, to challenge his intellectualism and to claim a position of equality.

The 1790s was a decade in which women made extensive contributions to the literary world and in which many of these women took up positions critical of the status quo.This chapter explores the case for seeing the emergence of an intensive set of relationships between those associated with the vanguard of literary exploration and feminism.In particular, the connections between Wollstonecraft, Inchbald, Hays, Alderson, Robinson, Fenwick, Smith and others are explored.Developing the argument of the previous chapter, this argues that the degree of contact and intimacy is not extensive and shows that it becomes so only towards the end of the decade and involving a very narrow group.This chapter also raises the question of how far there is a perception of a group of radical women in elite and loyalist literary culture, and points to the rather undiscriminating character of the references to such a group and to the very limited forms of attack used against those identified as key protagonists.