It is an interesting challenge to write about someone who has been overlooked, who is overshadowed by more vibrant characters. If they are at first glance unexceptional, is that to say dull or uninteresting? Such overshadowing might be recognized as a pattern of light and shade, largely a matter of perspective—perspective that is relative and may shift over time. Despite being part of a major literary dynasty, one such woman, definitely overshadowed, and largely overlooked, is Fanny Imlay.Article continues after advertisement
Fanny’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was famously disparaged by Horace Walpole as “a hyena in petticoats.” It is now largely forgotten that it was not her feminist principles that Walpole was objecting to, but her republican views. He was offended that she “discharged her ink and gall on Marie Antoinette.” But times change, priorities shift, and from a twenty-first century perspective, Wollstonecraft’s politics are very much overshadowed by her feminism. Where once she was ridiculed as emotionally overwrought with outlandish opinions, now she is greatly admired for her bold life choices and the progressive views of her Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Thanks to a thorough re-evaluation in the latter part of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft is recast as the fairy godmother of modern feminism. And somehow, along the way, the hyena insult became a feminist soubriquet—as for example in Angela Neustatter’s Hyenas in Petticoats: A look at twenty years of feminism. And feminism certainly brought about a change of perspective.
