"Why is our fancy to be appalled by terrific perspectives of a hell beyond the grave?"
About this Quote
Wollstonecraft’s question has the cool snap of a lantern turned suddenly on the machinery of fear. She doesn’t argue that hell is false; she asks why our imaginations keep volunteering for it, why the mind seems trained to be “appalled” by the most punitive picture available. The phrasing matters. “Fancy” isn’t mere whimsy here; it’s the faculty that powers moral panic and superstition, the same imaginative engine that can be used to educate or to intimidate. By treating dread as a cultivated taste, she implies an institution behind it.
The line lands in an era when Christian afterlife doctrine still did serious political work. Hell wasn’t just a theological claim; it was a behavioral technology, especially effective on those already policed by social norms: women, the poor, dissenters. Wollstonecraft, writing against the sentimental, submissive ideal of femininity, recognizes how fear of “beyond the grave” can shrink the present life into obedience. If you can be made to tremble at “terrific perspectives,” you’re less likely to demand material justice now.
Her move is Enlightenment to the core: shift the discussion from metaphysics to psychology and power. The subtext is radical because it reassigns authority. Instead of priests or moralists managing the afterlife, Wollstonecraft invites the reader to scrutinize the emotional economy that makes such visions persuasive. It’s not a denial of moral consequence; it’s a refusal to outsource conscience to horror stories. The real target is a culture that prefers terrified subjects to rational citizens.
The line lands in an era when Christian afterlife doctrine still did serious political work. Hell wasn’t just a theological claim; it was a behavioral technology, especially effective on those already policed by social norms: women, the poor, dissenters. Wollstonecraft, writing against the sentimental, submissive ideal of femininity, recognizes how fear of “beyond the grave” can shrink the present life into obedience. If you can be made to tremble at “terrific perspectives,” you’re less likely to demand material justice now.
Her move is Enlightenment to the core: shift the discussion from metaphysics to psychology and power. The subtext is radical because it reassigns authority. Instead of priests or moralists managing the afterlife, Wollstonecraft invites the reader to scrutinize the emotional economy that makes such visions persuasive. It’s not a denial of moral consequence; it’s a refusal to outsource conscience to horror stories. The real target is a culture that prefers terrified subjects to rational citizens.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
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