Maria; or The Wrongs of Woman & Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman

by Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin

This book represents for the first time The Wrongs of Woman; or Maria and Memoirs of the Author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" have been published in the same volume, but their history and reception have been inextricably linked since the publication of both in January 1798, less than five months after Mary Wollstonecraft's tragic early death. Designed as the fictional embodiment of Wollstonecraft's notions against patriarchy and for the rational and emotional independence of women, The Wrongs of Women tells the story of Maria, who makes a disastrous marriage and then must undergo confinement in a madhouse for her rebellion against it. Godwin's Memoirs of the Author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" honored Wollstonecraft's memory with a frank and detailed account of her life and death, but instead of the profound admiration he hoped to invoke, most contemporary readers felt shock at Wollstonecraft's sexual freedom and an odd mix of pity and wonder at Godwin's willingness to share such details of his wife's life with the world. The College Publishing edition includes an erudite and accessible introduction detailing the changing critical fortunes of both works, and in order to gain an appreciation for the rich cultural contexts of these texts, a selection of contemporary reviews appears in the appendix. In addition, Wollstonecraft and Godwin's other works and, uniquely, Gilbert Imlay's novel The Emigrants, are judiciously excerpted. Short essays throughout the text provide critical background material on such subjects as maternal breastfeeding, Gilbert Imlay, employment opportunities for lower-and middle-class women, marriage laws, and childbirth in the eighteenth century.

Genres: Feminism

340 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2003

About the author

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth century British writer, philosopher, and feminist. Among the general public and specifically among feminists, Wollstonecraft's life has received much more attention than her writing because of her unconventional, and often tumultuous, personal relationships. After two ill-fated affairs, with Henry Fuseli and Gilbert Imlay, Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin, one of the forefathers of the anarchist movement; they had one daughter, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. Wollstonecraft died at the age of thirty-eight due to complications from childbirth, leaving behind several unfinished manuscripts.

During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason.


After Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for a century. However, with the emergence of the feminist movement at the turn of the twentieth century, Wollstonecraft's advocacy of women's equality and critiques of conventional femininity became increasingly important. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and work as important influences.

Information courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Reviews

[Nut Meg · Rating 2 out of 5]

This dual volume includes both a Memoir of Mary Wollstonecraft's life, and her last unfinished novel, a pairing that does service to both works given how much her life inspired and informed her writing. However, because of the different authors, each work suffers from its own unique flaws and inadequacies.

The memoir, written by Wollstonecraft's widower, the radical intellectual William Godwin, tells the story of her life more succinctly than I would have liked, considering the incredible nature of it. Though his review of her life is comprehensive, it is far from satisfying. Despite repeatedly noting her genius, Godwin fails to give much attention to the incredible nature of her accomplishments; that Wollstonecraft not only pursued a literary career, but achieved fame and enough success to be a source of financial support for her father for much of her adult life, in a time when most women struggled for financial independence, is hardly given the praise it deserves. Similarly, his descriptions of her major relationships suffer from a frustrating brevity; in describing her intense friendship with Fanny, he seems to imply a romantic affection on Mary's side, but in such vague terms its impossible to be sure. Though there's no such ambiguity in his review of her relationship with Gilbert Imlay, the matter-of-fact discussion of it is in itself astounding; they essentially conned the French govt into thinking they were married to protect her during the revolution. She took his name, moved in with him, and got pregnant, only to be abandoned shortly after, setting off a two year saga complete with love triangles, suicide attempts and repeated attempts at reconciliation. It's the stuff of high melodrama, but he somehow treats it as totally unexceptional. However, given that Godwin himself was considered a radical at the time, I suspect the company he kept left him genuinely oblivious to just how extraordinary the elements of her life were. This would explain why he was blindsided by the reaction to the memoirs which scandalized London society, effectively ruining his late wife's reputation and consigning her to historical obscurity until her resurrection as the fore-mother of feminism during the women's liberation movement in the 20th century.

The one thing in the Memoir's favor, is that it clearly shows the inspiration for the characters in Wollstonecraft's novel, though as such, it probably would have served better as the first work in the volume. Given that it was an unfinished draft, it's unfair to judge "Maria" too harshly. All the same, the glaring deficiencies are hard to ignore. Though her seminal work, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," proved Wollstonecraft to be a powerful writer, her efforts here betray the limits of her skill; "Maria" is a novel with a point, laying the ground work for a solid, logical argument and eliciting sympathy for the plight of women, without ever succeeding in its attempts to move the reader. The raw materials are there for a classic gothic romance; the heroine, unwittingly married for her money, finds herself robbed of her child and locked in a mad house as a result of her attempts to flee her beastly husband, and finds help and comfort with her caretaker Jemima and another inmate, similarly imprisoned under false pretenses for his fortune. I can't help but think of what it could have been in the hands of someone like Charlotte Bronte, with greater skill for fiction. Unfortunately, rather than providing the kind of characterization or interiority that would engender empathy, Wollstonecraft merely provides a laundry list of tragedies for her heroine and friends to recount. Though this serves to paint a portrait of the unfairness of women's lot in the 18th century, as a work of fiction it fails to engage.

Although it may serve as a valuable source for women's history scholars (the introduction and historical notes from the editor make this a particularly good edition for that purpose), I would hesitate to recommend it to anyone outside of academia. Even the most sincere history buff would likely be better served by a good biography. Unless you genuinely need primary sources, there's little reason to read this.