Sophie Gee

other girl, some other woman.

She was devastated by it.

And she actually attempted suicide.

She stood in the rain so that her clothes were very heavy.

And then she threw herself into the Thames from Putney Bridge.

But she was rescued.

And she went on to marry William Godwin, a radical activist and very progressive social thinker.

And they had a happy marriage and sort of a wonderful life in London before she died.

So I'll leave us with one other very short passage from Wollstonecraft.

It's actually, again, from the journey to Sweden.

And she's thinking about death.

She says...

I cannot bear to think of being no more, of losing myself, though existence is often but a painful consciousness of misery.

Nay, it appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust.

ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps or the spark goes out which kept it together.

Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable and life is more than a dream.

I feel so sure that her daughter Mary Shelley must have read those lines when she was composing Frankenstein, the idea of the spark going out which kept the dust together.

Oh, you're so right.

And all I would say in response to that is that I don't think we can hear about any of these women and to hear a little snapshot of their voices in print and not know immediately that Austen is profoundly influenced by all of them.

She's really looking at what they're doing.