Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman [Paperback]

Mary Wollstonecraft (Author), William S. Godwin (Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 29, 2005

A pioneer champion of women's rights illustrates the grim reality of 18th-century England's draconian marriage laws in the tale of a wife locked up in an asylum by her abusive spouse. Combining the spirited rhetoric of a philosophy with a narrative as gripping as any gothic fiction, this is the book that laid the groundwork for modern feminism.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications (November 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486445038
• ISBN-13: 978-0486445038
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #836,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Maria - The Female Caleb Williams, July 18, 2000

By 

mp - See all my reviews

This review is from: Maria: Or, the Wrongs of Woman (Paperback)

"Maria" is an unfinished novel which Wollstonecraft intended to display the cruelty, injustice, and utter lack of personal freedom of women in the late 18th century. Drawing on sources from Rousseau, to her husband William Godwin's "Political Justice" and "Caleb Williams," to her own "Vindication of the Rights of Woman," Wollstonecraft sets up a scenario in which a woman falls prey to the maddening strictures of law. Although it may not initially appear so, "Maria" is very much in the strain of gothic literature. Wollstonecraft takes pains to illustrate that the gothic need not be enacted in castles or by demons, but can be just as horrifying, if not more so, when 'normal' society proves to be an intractable villain itself.

The novel reads like a philosophical treatise, the main action being life stories told by the primary characters, Maria, her mad-house warden Jemima, and her unlikely lover, Henry Darnford, including their digressive running commentaries. As the novel begins, Maria is in the mad-house, deprived of her infant daughter by her greedy husband, George Venables, whom she despises.

As in Godwin's "Caleb Williams," Wollstonecraft does not scruple to pile severe mental anguish upon clear injustices to drive home her points regarding society's treatment of women. Her most vicious attacks are reserved for the law and surprisingly, for women. The law preserves a basis for treating women as perpetual minors, and unfortunately, women, realizing their powerlessness, too often resign themselves to their lot.

Though fragmentary and incomplete, "Maria" has the same kind of power as "Caleb Williams," and the two should be read together for maximum effect. The force of Wollstonecraft's writing comes from the fact that her observations were just, and that she dared to voice them on behalf of all women.

5.0 out of 5 stars ANOTHER EXCELLENT WORK BY THE AUTHOR OF THE "VINDICATION", September 7, 2011

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Maria: Or, The wrongs of woman (The Norton library, N761) (Paperback)

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights, best known for Vindication of the Rights of Woman and The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria (Longman Cultural Editions). She married the anarchist philosopher William Godwin, with whom they had a daughter, Mary Shelley (i.e., of "Frankenstein" fame).

The earlier review by "mp" gives an excellent summary of the book; I would just like to give some quotations from the book itself:

"And to what purpose did she rally all her energy?--Was not the world a vast prison, and women born slaves?" (Pg. 27)
"Such indeed is the force of prejudice, that what was called spirit and wit in him, was cruelly repressed as forwardness in me." (Pg. 76)
"By allowing women but one way of rising in the world, the fostering the libertinism of men, society makes monsters of them, and then their ignoble vices are brought forward as a proof of inferiority of intellect." (Pg. 88)
"Men who are inferior to their fellow men, are always most anxious to establish their superiority over women." (Pg. 95)
"She had abilities sufficient to have shone in any profession, had there been any professions for women..." (Pg. 96)
"Truth is the only basis of virtue; and we cannot, without depraving our minds, endeavour to please a lover or husband, but in proportion as he pleases us." (Pg. 102)
"But, born a woman---and born to suffer, in endeavouring to repress my own emotions, I feel more acutely the various ills my sex are fated to bear---I feel that the evils they are subject to endure, degrade them so far below their oppressors, as almost to justify their tyranny; leading at the same time superficial reasons to term that weakness the cause, which is only the consequence of short-sighted despotism." (Pg. 131)