HER OWN WOMAN by DIANE JACOBS

Author:DIANE JACOBS
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Feminism/Literature
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2001-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Mary’s comments on the baby’s father are a bit starchier: “The constant tenderness of my most affectionate companion makes me regard a fresh tie”—the baby—“as a blessing,” Mary wrote Ruth. She wrote too of her lover’s impatience with French shipping policies, for it seems that even in the clamor of Fanny’s arrival, Imlay could be distressed by business cares.

Mary, on the other hand, was totally caught up in her marvelous infant. At seven weeks, Fanny was “not only uncommonly healthy, but already, as sagacious as a child of five or six months old, which I rather attribute to my good, that is natural, manner of nursing her, than to any extraordinary strenghth of faculties,” 60 Mary told Ruth. But, of course, Mary did believe her daughter extraordinarily clever and talented.

Gilbert was ill and had been “for some weeks past, and during the last few days he has [been] seriously feverish. His mind has been harass[ed] by continual disappointments—sh[ips] do not return, and the government is perpetually throwing impediments in the way of business.” Loyally, Mary purported to share Imlay’s “disquietude,” though it was perfectly clear she wished Imlay could forget his fevers and ship delays and enjoy the miracle of Fanny’s life. But Gilbert was not to be bound by Mary’s wishes.

And so in their private life, in the spring and summer of 1794, there was an abundance of milk and joy and irritation and illness.

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