I came to Mary Wollstonecraft late, as it were, not even having come across her name until relatively recently. Perhaps that is a shameful admission, but I think she has become much more visible of late, not least due to a variety of interesting books. For me, my first introduction was via Clare Tomalin’s biography (The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft), via Charlotte Gordon’s Romantic Outlaws (covering the lives both of Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley), through the relevant parts of Richard Holmes’ Sidetracks and just now concluding with Bee Rowlatt’s In Search of Mary.
This last is less a biography of Wollstonecraft, more an exploration of how her intentions and views back then might translate into the 21st century. Some of what was radical at the time (for instance, calling on a man without a chaperone) hasn’t stood the test of time as revolutionary, but other aspects of her life and her clarion call for equality are still highly relevant and as important as ever. How does one make a better society? Well, we’d all like the answer to that one and the answer is as elusive as ever. One central part of the answer Rowlatt comes up with, having talked to what felt at times during reading like a random selection of people ranging from witches to librarians, with many stops in between, is to ‘pick up the pieces of trash that land in your path’.
I’m sure readers of my blog all want to do their bit about making the world a better place, but it can feel an impossible challenge. Furthermore, it can also feel – to my mind at least – as if the bit one does do doesn’t compare with what your neighbour is doing (assuming you have a nice neighbour). By this I mean it’s all too easy to feel that you’re not doing enough because someone you know is doing more/bigger/better things/ in wider spheres, and you just feel inadequate. It’s important to remember, and I will do my best to do so when feeling low and as if I’m no longer (as a retired professor) making enough of a contribution, that all one can do is ‘pick up the pieces of trash that land in your path’. In other words, however many challenges or problems you know surround you, you can only do so much but doing that – whatever it may be – is still worth doing.
People ask me regularly what my post-retirement plans are. As yet, I don’t know the full answer, although pieces of the jigsaw may be coming together. Those who follow me on social media will know that I’ve recently been appointed as Chair of the Department for Education’s Science Advisory Council. The Council hasn’t met yet, so I can’t give away any secrets about what we’re going to be doing, but I’m sure bringing a more explicit science grouping within the ambit of DfE can only be a good thing. I thoroughly enjoyed my earlier stint as chair of the equivalent council for DCMS, where the challenge of bringing a diverse group of experts together to make progress on pressing problems I found intensely interesting and also satisfying. Now I’m no longer Master of a college, I can admit that I find such committees more appealing than those, however vital, more concerned with formal governance, of which I have chaired many over the past decade.
In the spirit of the earlier paragraphs, though, I will say that I was very touched by the colleague who responded to my tweet about taking on this role by saying ‘You never stop serving, never stop inspiring!’. I didn’t take up the role either to serve or inspire in any conscious way. I just felt this was a job that was worth doing and that I thought I had the experience to be good at. Sometimes one does things from a sense of duty, and sometimes for personal satisfaction. It is excellent when those two coincide.
I am surprised to find my diary getting quite full with different small tasks, conversations or visits. Not really roles as such, but actions that feel as if they might make a difference to someone or something and also keep my brain in gear. It is nice to feel I have time to read interesting reports that appear, it feels, on a daily basis, about education, skills or innovation (all of which come together in the recently published Industrial Strategy Green Paper, even if I feel that coming together and coherence isn’t always obvious in that document, which highlights skills early on, and then says little about them thereafter). But there is also still a lot of work to do settling into our newly refurbished house and I need to leave time for such domesticity. For the last ten years we’ve been spoiled by living in the equivalent of a ‘tied cottage’, with the College taking responsibility for the usual tedious issues of leaks or hot water systems failing. Now it’s down to us.
There is much to consider in this rebalancing of my life, but I need to hold on to that zest for living that Wollstonecraft showed during her sadly short life, and remember that each of us can only do so much to make the world a better place.
