"The lively heated imagination likewise, to apply the comparison, draws the picture of love, as it draws every other picture, with those glowing colours, which the daring hand will steal from the rainbow, that is directed by a mind, condemned in a world like this, to prove its noble origin by panting after unattainable perfection, ever pursuing what it acknowledges to be a fleeting dream."
— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for J. Johnson
Date
1792
Metaphor
"The lively heated imagination likewise, to apply the comparison, draws the picture of love, as it draws every other picture, with those glowing colours, which the daring hand will steal from the rainbow, that is directed by a mind, condemned in a world like this, to prove its noble origin by panting after unattainable perfection, ever pursuing what it acknowledges to be a fleeting dream."
Metaphor in Context
[...] The lively heated imagination likewise, to apply the comparison, draws the picture of love, as it draws every other picture, with those glowing colours, which the daring hand will steal from the rainbow, that is directed by a mind, condemned in a world like this, to prove its noble origin by panting after unattainable perfection, ever pursuing what it acknowledges to be a fleeting dream. An imagination of this vigorous cast can give existence to insubstantial forms, and stability to shadowy reveries which the mind naturally falls into when the realities are found vapid. It can then depict love with celestial charms, and dote on the grand ideal object--it can imagine a degree of mutual affection that shall refine the soul, and not expire when it has served as a "scale to heavenly;" and, like devotion, make it absorb every meaner affection and desire.
(p. 70)
(p. 70)
Provenance
Reading
Citation
7 entries in ESTC (1792, 1793, 1794, 1796).
See A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. by Mary Wollstonecraft. (London: Printed for J. Johnson, No 72, St. Paul's Church Yard, 1792). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading Wollstonecraft, M. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Modern Library (New York: Random House, 2001). Also The Vindications, eds. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2001).
See also Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (London: J. Johnson, 1792). <Link to OLL>
See A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: With Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. by Mary Wollstonecraft. (London: Printed for J. Johnson, No 72, St. Paul's Church Yard, 1792). <Link to ECCO-TCP>
Reading Wollstonecraft, M. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Modern Library (New York: Random House, 2001). Also The Vindications, eds. D. L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2001).
See also Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (London: J. Johnson, 1792). <Link to OLL>
Theme
Reverie
Date of Entry
09/14/2009
Date of Review
01/23/2012
