SOURCE: Blakemore, Steven. “Comedy, Tragedy, and Romance in Williams' Letters from France.” In Crisis in Representation: Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams, and the Rewriting of the French Revolution, pp. 163-79. Madison, Wis.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1997.

In the following excerpt, Blakemore discusses Williams' characterization of the French Revolution as a comedy that turned into a tragedy during the Reign of Terror.

I

In many ways Helen Maria Williams is the antithesis of Mary Wollstonecraft, even though they both have a Girondist view of the Revolution. Wollstonecraft emphasizes reason and judgement, while Williams stresses emotion and the heart. Williams' “political creed is entirely an affair of the heart,” which she opposes to her “head” (Letters, 1:1.66). She notes that political arguments are often confusing, but once “a proposition is addressed” to her heart, then she has “quickness of perception” and can “decide, in one moment, points upon which...