Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

The novel opens with text written not by Mary Wollstonecraft, but by her husband, William Godwin. Godwin and Wollstonecraft were both writers, intellectuals, and philosophers who shared similar beliefs about the need to reform social and political systems to create greater justice, equality, and freedom for individuals. Godwin and Wollstonecraft began a romantic relationship in 1796; although neither liked the idea of conventional marriage, they agreed to marry when Wollstonecraft found out she was pregnant to provide greater legal and social protection for their future child. After marrying in March 1797, Wollstonecraft gave birth to their daughter (best known as Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein) on August 30, 1797, and died nine days later due to complications from childbirth.

Maria was unfinished at the time of Wollstonecraft’s death; according to Godwin, she seemed to have been working erratically on the manuscript throughout 1797, meaning that she wrote the novel in the same time period that she married Godwin and prepared for the birth of their child. Godwin was both personally devastated by the loss of his partner and distraught by the intellectual loss of someone he considered capable of “giv[ing] a new impulse to the manners of the world” (57). Almost immediately after Wollstonecraft’s death, he began simultaneously preparing to publish her unfinished manuscript and writing a biography of her life. He published both in early 1798. Despite Godwin’s good intentions, there was a public outcry in response to details about Wollstonecraft’s personal life; prior to her relationship with Godwin, she had given birth to an illegitimate child and attempted suicide when her prior relationship collapsed. Godwin’s Preface to Maria reveals both his reverence for Wollstonecraft and his defiance of any critiques about his decision to publish the unfinished manuscript, arguing that “there are few […] that would have wished this fragment should have been suppressed, because it is a fragment” (57).

This context is in tension with the novel itself, as it explicitly engages with themes of female agency alongside male oppression, and suppression of women’s voices. Godwin seeks to elevate Wollstonecraft, celebrate her genius, and asserts that it is “the editor’s most earnest desire, to intrude nothing of himself into the work” (57), but there is no way to ignore that he plays a role in mediating the reader’s encounter with the text. There is no way to know for sure if Wollstonecraft would have chosen to publish the novel, or in what ways she might have altered it. Nonetheless, the Author’s Preface provides valuable clues about her intentions: Wollstonecraft connects this fictional narrative to themes she had previously explored in her many nonfiction writings, particularly her famous A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Wollstonecraft had attracted fame and sometimes notoriety for her proto-feminist beliefs, including arguing that women should receive better educations and be encouraged to aspire to intellectual accomplishments rather than merely being valued for attractive appearances and docile manners.

While building on these themes, Wollstonecraft’s Preface introduces a new, and arguably somewhat more radical, topic, which she deems “the matrimonial despotism of heart and conduct” (59). A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is fairly optimistic about the possibility of happy and fulfilling personal relationships between men and women if the right reforms are enacted. Indeed, many of Wollstonecraft’s arguments in that text are grounded in the suggestion that women becoming more intellectual and rational beings might make them more stimulating companions to their husbands. In Maria, however, Wollstonecraft explores how women might experience “the agony [of] the pangs of disappointment” (59) when trapped in unhappy marriages with men who prove to be unpleasant.

This exploration of the dark side of marriage, especially for women, is also a feature of Wollstonecraft’s one previous work of fiction, a novel called Mary (1788). Since novels often focused on courtship and romantic relationships in their plot, Wollstonecraft may have felt this form was better suited to exploring her beliefs and concerns about this topic, rather than writing a work of nonfiction. The intimate insights into a character’s thoughts and feelings generated by a fictional narrative might also have been intended to generate more sympathy when tackling a controversial topic, such as a woman’s right to pursue an emotionally and sexually satisfying relationship. Finally, while intellectual works of nonfiction such as Vindication were likely to find a primarily male readership, a novel would more likely be read by both men and women. Thus, while Wollstonecraft might have targeted her philosophical arguments about the need for political and social reform to a male readership (who ultimately were the ones who could have achieved such reforms), she might have found it more important to ensure that a grim portrait of the suffering that could result from an unhappy marriage be available to women as well.

The novel begins with a setting and mood that would have been familiar to readers of the Gothic genre, which was extremely popular in the 1790s when Wollstonecraft was writing. She refers to “abodes of horror […] and castles, filled with spectres and chimeras” (61) to refer to tropes associated with the Gothic genre, in which a woman is often trapped in an isolating and foreboding mansion or castle, frightened by grotesque and potentially supernatural horrors. The asylum and madness are both Gothic literature tropes that were widely used at the time, and the asylum novel became a subgenre of its own in the Victorian era, such as Charles Maturin’s 1820 novel Melmoth the Wanderer. The historical context of English asylums in the late 18th century complicates this trope to a degree, as Enlightenment-era thinkers advocated for humanitarian reform in asylums, believing in care rather than punishment for those detained there. Nonetheless, conditions remained inhumane for centuries and asylums functioned more like prisons than hospitals. For this reason, this guide uses the word “asylum” as written in the source text, rather than alluding to a more contemporary psychiatric facility that serves a different purpose. Wollstonecraft’s use of the asylum also extends beyond trope because historically, asylums and accusations of mental illness have been used to control women who don’t conform to patriarchal expectations. For example, diagnoses of “hysteria” were used to marginalize women through the mid-20th century, and same-sex attraction was classified as a mental illness in the US until 1973.

Wollstonecraft quickly inverts the conventional Gothic novel plot, in which the heroine is typically a virginal young woman, who is eventually liberated by a hero and love interest. Here, Maria is already a wife and a mother, and her husband is the one who is persecuting her. Wollstonecraft reveals this shocking plot detail when she writes of “the selfish schemes of her tyrant—her husband” (62). The word “tyrant” is particularly loaded in the context when Wollstonecraft was writing. In 1797, the French Revolution was raging, and the American Revolutionary war had concluded relatively recently, in 1783. These geopolitical events spurred many philosophers and intellectuals to criticize systems of government in which a monarch (and sometimes wealthy aristocrats) wielded control with little input from the individuals he governed. For example, Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence used the word “tyranny” to criticize King George III’s management of the American colonies and justify the need for revolution. Wollstonecraft extends this philosophical argument to the notion of marriage, implying that the extensive and unequal power a husband wielded against his wife was comparable to a sovereign oppressing his subjects.

Jemima, an important secondary character in the novel, introduces the theme of solidarity between women of different classes into the novel. In her Preface, Wollstonecraft explicitly refers to a goal of considering “the wrongs of different classes of women, equally oppressive, though […] necessarily various” (59) and the significant role that Jemima plays in the plot, as well as the attention to her experiences, reflects an unusual level of consideration and care for a working-class character. The tone is somewhat condescending when Maria observes that Jemima “was no fool, that is, she was superior to her class” (63); however, Wollstonecraft astutely connects Jemima’s suspicious self-interest to the cruelty she has endured, explaining that Jemima “despised and preyed on the society by which she had been oppressed, and loved not her fellow-creatures, because she had never been beloved” (66). Many of the ideas about individual rights and freedoms espoused by Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and other political philosophers rested on the assumption that individuals are inherently good, or have the potential to be good if they are given the right education and opportunities. By suggesting that Jemima’s inherently kind nature has been corrupted by suffering and mistreatment, Wollstonecraft introduces these arguments into her novel and also foreshadows how Jemima will evolve as a character.

Even when Jemima is unsure of how far she is willing to go to help Maria, she is willing to provide Maria with books and writing materials. These items reveal Wollstonecraft’s investment in the idea of women’s education and introduce the theme of the Value of Education and Intellectual Pursuits. Maria’s enthusiasm for reading and writing shows that she has benefited from the education she has received, and even in the oppressive confinement of the asylum, her ability to write and think enhances her sense of agency and empowerment. Wollstonecraft describes how Maria “seemed to be sailing on the vast ocean of life, without seeing any land-mark to indicate the progress of time; to find employment was then to find variety, the animating principle of nature” (65). By using the metaphor of Maria adrift listlessly in a sea of monotony, Wollstonecraft captures both the experience of imprisonment and hints at the boredom and lack of purpose that plagued many upper-class women who lacked any meaningful way to fill their time. While Jemima’s life is undoubtedly harder, she possesses significant amounts of agency: She earns her own money and can move freely through the asylum, metaphorically revealing how work and intellectual pursuits can provide meaning, freedom, and purpose.

However, Maria’s reading also makes her vulnerable. While she is supposedly engaging in intellectual pursuits, Maria becomes intrigued by the idea of an intelligent man of cultivated taste residing in the asylum. This curiosity is especially notable given that she has been imprisoned and separated from her child at the behest of a man; unlike Jemima, who seems to have become shrewd (if suspicious) due to her past experiences, Maria seems all too quick to show a naïve hopefulness about the possibility of a romantic hero. As she reads the marginalia, “fancy, treacherous fancy, began to sketch a character, congenial with her own” (68). This chastisement of Maria’s tendency to pursue romantic hopes introduces the theme of The False and Deceptive Nature of Romantic Love. Maria acknowledges that thinking about this man is a distraction from her ostensible purpose of escape: “could he aid me to escape, who is himself more closely watched?” (69).

Maria’s reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1761 novel, Julie, or the New Heloise primes her to be susceptible to romantic fantasies since Rousseau’s wildly popular sentimental novel focuses on a tragic love affair between two individuals in a village in the French Alps. By showing Maria reading this novel as she falls deeper and deeper into fantasies about Darnford, Wollstonecraft provides another angle of feminist critique. When women like Maria are exposed primarily to love stories, populated with idealized male characters, they lose their ability to be discerning about the men they actually meet, and tend to make poor decisions with potentially catastrophic consequences. Although this aspect of her backstory has not yet been revealed, Maria has already been duped once by a deceptive man, and yet she is depicted falling in love again with a man she has not even glimpsed: “she found however that she could think of nothing else” (71). Wollstonecraft’s novel functions as a fictional corrective to these other works of literature, showing the destructive consequences of romantic love rather than idealizing it.

When Darnford and Maria begin to interact, his handsome and gallant nature distracts Maria from several details that foreshadow his eventual treacherous behavior. Darnford openly admits that as a youth, “I was taught to love by a creature I am ashamed to mention; and the other women with whom I afterwards became intimate, were of a class of which you can have no knowledge” (74) and later refers to “woman, lovely woman! —they charm everywhere” (75). In these comments, Darnford unabashedly positions himself as a womanizer who prizes conquests primarily as sexual objects, yet Maria believes he can love her truly and remain faithful. His inconstancy in his political and national alliances also hints at difficulty remaining faithful; Darnford explains that “my political sentiments now underwent a total change” (75), which establishes him as an inconsistent and unreliable character.

Wollstonecraft uses an unusual plot structure to build suspense. The novel opens in the middle of the action, with Maria experiencing the crisis of imprisonment. However, the details of what happened between her and her husband to lead to this imprisonment have yet to be revealed. As the romantic plotline between Maria and Darnford grows, Wollstonecraft chooses to interrupt that narrative at the end of Chapter 4 and insert a lengthy narrative by Jemima about her own history. Ostensibly, Jemima is moved to share her story because of the emotional vulnerability that spills forth as Darnford and Maria pledge their love: “Jemima […] was so softened by the air of confidence, which breathed around her” (79). This decision might hint that as a woman, even Jemima is susceptible to some of the sentimentality to which Maria succumbs. However, structurally, Wollstonecraft’s choice prevents the reader from getting swept up in those same sentiments and introduces a strong juxtaposition. A traditional romantic climax, in which hero and heroine declare their mutual love, is interrupted by a narrative that alludes to much darker subjects.