"Why was I not born a man, or why was I born at all?"

This quote from the end of the first volume or "Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman" seemed a good one for summing up the book. We are introduced to the eponymous character as she finds herself in a lunatic asylum, having been thrown in there by her corrupt husband. Her story is revealed to us through the memoir she has written her daughter (who has been taken away from her and subsequently dies).

Through the telling of her own story and that of the nurse Jemima's, Wollstonecraft is highlighting the injustices suffered by women in the eighteenth century. This would have been incredibly controversial at the time as Wollstonecraft pulls no punches at exposing the glaring double standards that were considered commonplace in society at that time.

This book was an engrossing read and especially interesting for anyone with an interest in literature of that time. It is disappointing that the story was never finished and the detached sentences garnered from Wollstonecraft's writings hint at what could have been. And WHAT a novel it could have been!