Mary: A Fiction
Mary: A Fiction is the only complete
Inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea that geniuses teach themselves,[3] Wollstonecraft chose a rational, self-taught heroine, Mary, as the protagonist. Helping to redefine genius, a word which at the end of the 18th century was only beginning to take on its modern meaning of exceptional or brilliant, Wollstonecraft describes Mary as independent and capable of defining femininity and marriage for herself.[4] According to Wollstonecraft, it is Mary's "strong, original opinions" and her resistance to "conventional wisdom" that mark her as a genius. Making her heroine a genius allowed Wollstonecraft to criticize marriage as well, as she felt geniuses were "enchained" rather than enriched by marriage.[4]
Through this heroine Wollstonecraft also critiques 18th-century sensibility and its effects on women. Mary rewrites the traditional romance plot through its reimagination of gender relations and female sexuality. Yet, because Wollstonecraft employs the genre of sentimentalism to critique sentimentalism itself, her "fiction", as she labels it, sometimes reflects the same flaws of sentimentalism that she is attempting to expose.
Wollstonecraft later repudiated Mary, writing that it was laughable.[5] Scholars have argued that, despite its faults, the novel's representation of an energetic, unconventional, opinionated, rational, female genius (the first of its kind in English literature) within a new kind of romance is an important development in the history of the novel because it helped shape an emerging feminist discourse.
Plot summary
Mary begins with a description of the conventional and loveless marriage between the heroine's mother and father. Eliza, Mary's mother, is obsessed with novels, rarely considers anyone but herself, and favours Mary's brother. She neglects her daughter, who educates herself using only books and the natural world. Ignored by her family, Mary devotes much of her time to charity. When her brother suddenly dies, leaving Mary heir to the family's fortune, her mother finally takes an interest in her; she is taught "accomplishments", such as dancing, that will attract suitors. However, Mary's mother soon sickens and requests on her deathbed that Mary wed Charles, a wealthy man she has never met. Stunned and unable to refuse, Mary agrees. Immediately after the ceremony, Charles departs for the Continent.
To escape a family who does not share her values, Mary befriends Ann, a local girl who educates her further. Mary becomes quite attached to Ann, who is in the grip of an unrequited love and does not reciprocate Mary's feelings. Ann's family falls into poverty and is on the brink of losing their home, but Mary is able to repay their debts after her marriage to Charles gives her limited control over her money.
Ann becomes consumptive and Mary travels with her to Lisbon in hopes of nursing her back to health. There they are introduced to Henry, who is also trying to regain his health. Ann dies and Mary is grief-stricken. Henry and Mary fall in love but are forced to return to England separately. Mary, depressed by her marriage to Charles and bereft of both Ann and Henry, remains unsettled, until she hears that Henry's consumption has worsened. She rushes to his side and cares for him until he dies.
At the end of the novel, Charles returns from Europe; he and Mary establish something of a life together, but Mary is unhealthy and can barely stand to be in the same room with her husband; the last few lines of the novel imply that she will die young.
Biographical and literary influences
Wollstonecraft wrote Mary at the town of
Wollstonecraft's epigrammatic allusion to Rousseau's
Themes
As Wollstonecraft scholar Virginia Sapiro points out in her description of Mary, the novel anticipates many of the themes that would come to dominate Wollstonecraft's later writings, such as her concern with the "slavery of marriage" and the absence of any respectable occupations for women.[15] From the beginning of her career, Wollstonecraft was concerned with how sensibility affected women as well as the perception of women in society. All of her works address these topics from one vantage point or another. Connected to this is her analysis of the legitimate and illegitimate foundations for relationships between men and women. Wollstonecraft's oeuvre is filled with continual reassessments of the definition of femininity and masculinity and the role that sensibility should fill in those definitions. In order to explore these ideas, Wollstonecraft continually turns to herself as an example (all of her works are highly autobiographical, particularly her two novels and the Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796)). As one of Wollstonecraft's first attempts to explore these questions, Mary is at times awkward and it occasionally falls short of what Gary Kelly calls the "Revolutionary feminism" of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1798).[16]
Sensibility and the sentimental heroine
If my readers would excuse the sportiveness of fancy, and give me credit for genius, I would go on and tell them such tales as would force sweet tears of sensibility to flow in copious showers down beautiful cheeks, to the discomposure of rouge, &c. &c. Nay, I would make it so interesting, that the fair peruser should beg the hair-dresser to settle the curls himself, and not interrupt her.[19]
Mary, however, is depicted as authentic rather than artificial, detesting fashionable life rather than yearning after it. Mary's charitable works, for example, are not a passing fad: they are a heartfelt reaction to social injustice. Even though she is older and intellectual instead of young and pretty, Mary asserts her right to sexual desire rather than sublimating it.[20]
Mary's erotic relationships with both Ann and Henry challenge traditional conceptions of the marriage plot. Most of Mary's positive attributes, such as her rationality, her ability to reject convention, and her sexuality, would have been read in the 18th century as masculine traits. Eliza, Ann, and Henry embody the feminine weakness and passivity, often associated with sentimentality, that Wollstonecraft was criticizing. Although the novel critiques sentimentality, the text appears, in the end, to be unable to resist those very conventions as Mary begins to pine for Henry. Furthermore, the book does not present an alternative way of life for women—it offers only death. Yet, at the same time, the last few lines of the novel hold out the promise of a better world "where there is neither marrying, nor giving in marriage" (emphasis Wollstonecraft's).[21]
As literary scholar Diane Long Hoeveler has demonstrated, Mary is not only a sentimental novel, but, with its emphasis on death, hyperbolic emotion, and persecution, also a
Genre: "A Fiction"
Wollstonecraft's subtitle—A Fiction—explicitly rejects a number of popular 18th-century genres, such as the longer "history" or novel (Mary is substantially shorter than Richardson's Clarissa, for example).[25] In the advertisement, she defends writing a reality-based "fiction" about a female genius:
Without arguing physically about possibilities—in a fiction, such a being may be allowed to exist; whose grandeur is drawn from the operations of its own faculties, not subjugated to opinion; but drawn by the individual from the original source. (emphasis Wollstonecraft's)[26]
Through her choice of the subtitle "fiction", Wollstonecraft implies that other genres, such as the novel, restrict the plots available for women; she therefore attempts to invent a new genre, one that offers choice and self-confidence to female characters.[25]
Love and friendship
One of the key differences between Wollstonecraft's novels and her philosophical treatises, as
Mary's relationship with Ann challenges the definition of friendship; as Johnson explains, it "is no ordinary friendship". Mary looks to Ann, in Wollstonecraft's words, "to experience the pleasure of being beloved".
The ladies . . . began to administer some common–place comfort, as, that it was our duty to submit to the will of Heaven, and the like trite consolations, which Mary did not answer; but waving her hand, with an air of impatience, she exclaimed, "I cannot live without her! — I have no other friend; if I lose her, what a desart [sic] will the world be to me." "No other friend," re–echoed they, "have you not a husband?"
Mary shrunk back, and was alternately pale and red. A delicate sense of propriety prevented her from replying; and recalled her bewildered reason.[32]
Johnson cautions against labelling Mary and Ann's relationship
After Ann's death, Mary replaces her with Henry; as Johnson writes, "this tale of forbidden and unnarratable passionate friendship becomes a tale of forbidden but narratable adulterous love".[36] Like Ann, Henry is a feminine counterpart to Mary's masculine persona. Mary's relationship with Henry is both erotic and paternal:
[S]he thought of him till she began to chide herself for defrauding the dead, and, determining to grieve for Ann, she dwelt on Henry's misfortune and ill health . . . she thought with rapture that there was one person in the world who had an affection for her, and that person she admired — had a friendship for. He had called her his dear girl . . . My child! His child, what an association of ideas! If I had a father, such a father! — She could not dwell on the thoughts, the wishes which obtruded themselves. Her mind was unhinged, and passion unperceived filled her whole soul.[37]
In Johnson's interpretation, Mary does not replace Ann with a masculine lover as one might expect in a sentimental novel but rather with a "feminine", yet still acceptably male, lover.[38]
Genius and the autobiographical self
In describing her heroine, Wollstonecraft drew on the emerging 18th-century conception of the genius, a word that was slowly changing meaning from "a peculiar, distinctive, or identifying character or spirit" to "extraordinary intellectual power especially as manifested in creative activity".[39] She offered readers the first representation of a female genius. The masculinity, particularly the "energy and decisiveness", that characterizes Mary is therefore portrayed positively and contrasted with the "passivity and sickliness" of the feminized Ann and Henry. According to Wollstonecraft, it is Mary's "strong, original opinions" and her resistance to "conventional wisdom" that mark her as a genius. Making her heroine a genius allowed Wollstonecraft to criticize marriage as well, as she felt geniuses were "enchained" rather than enriched by marriage.[4]
Strength of mind, by which Wollstonecraft meant "the degree to which [the mind] can independently reach its own conclusions" (emphasis in original), is central to her idea of the female genius.[40] Merely imitating others is not enough, even if one imitates the "correct" actions and thoughts. Reason, for Wollstonecraft, is what controls the emotions; without reason, she contends, people would fail to understand their own feelings. Moreover, reason allows for the distinction between a useful sensibility and a harmful sensualism. She writes: "sensibility is indeed the foundation of all our happiness; but these raptures are unknown to the depraved sensualist, who is only moved by what strikes his gross senses."[41] Useful sensibility allows Mary to embark upon charity projects. Yet, this highly attuned sensibility separates the classes along emotional lines: only the middle-class Mary is able to understand what the poor around her require.[42]
Wollstonecraft modelled Mary after herself, even to the point of giving the heroine her own name.
Reception
Although Wollstonecraft initially felt proud of Mary, a decade after its publication she no longer believed that the work aptly demonstrated her talents as an author; she wrote to Everina in 1797: "as for my Mary, I consider it as a crude production, and do not very willingly put it in the way of people whose good opinion, as a writer, I wish for; but you may have it to make up the sum of laughter".[43] Wollstonecraft's husband, William Godwin, disagreed, however, in his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman:
This little work, if Mary had never produced any thing else, would serve, with persons of true taste and sensibility, to establish the eminence of her genius. The story is nothing. He that looks into the book only for incident, will probably lay it down with disgust. But the feelings are of the truest and most exquisite class; every circumstance is adorned with that species of imagination, which enlists itself under the banners of delicacy and sentiment.[44]
Most scholars agree with Wollstonecraft's assessment of her writing. Nevertheless, they still believe that the novel is important because it attempts to depict a liberated and reasoning female genius. As feminist scholar Mitzi Myers argues, "in her focus on the subjective vision and internal life of her heroine, in her reliance on emotional nuance rather than plot, Wollstonecraft both transforms the traditions of late eighteenth-century sentimental fiction for feminist purposes and anticipates twentieth-century trends in the novel of feminine consciousness."[45] Mary helped initiate a tradition that would blossom in novels such as Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) and Villette (1853).[46]
Published by Joseph Johnson, Mary itself was moderately successful, and sections of it were included in several collections of sentimental extracts that were popular at the time, such as The Young Gentleman and Lady's Instructor (1809).[47] However, Johnson was still trying to sell copies of it in the 1790s and consistently listed it in the advertisements for her other works. It was not reprinted until the 1970s, when scholars became interested in Wollstonecraft and women's writing more generally.[48]
See also
Notes
- ^ Wollstonecraft, Mary (Kelly), 20.
- ^ Wardle, 110.
- ^ Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 41–42; Sapiro, 14; Hoeveler, 33; Todd, A Revolutionary Life, 111.
- ^ a b c Elfenbein, 236–38.
- ^ Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 48.
- ^ Godwin, 50.
- ^ Taylor, 261, n. 57; Todd, A Revolutionary Life, 68; 111–13; Sapiro, 14–15; Hoeveler, 32; Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 40–41; Wardle, 62; 345, n. 19.
- ^ Letter 55: To Everina Wollstonecraft, Dublin, March 24th 1787. The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Janet Todd. New York: Penguin Books (2003), 114–115.
- ^ Qtd. in Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 41–42; see also Sapiro, 14; Hoeveler, 33; Todd, A Revolutionary Life, 111.
- ^ Kelly, "Introduction" to Mary, ix; see also Anne K. Mellor, "The Rights of Woman and the women writers of Wollstonecraft's day" in The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft.
- ^ Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 42.
- ^ Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 42; see also Wollstonecraft, Mary (Kelly), 1.
- ^ Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 50.
- ^ Mellor, 156.
- ^ Sapiro, 14–15.
- ^ Sapiro, 63–72; Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 1–3.
- ^ a b Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 49.
- ^ Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 50.
- ^ Wollstonecraft, Mary (Kelly), 3.
- ^ a b Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 44.
- ^ Wollstonecraft, Mary (Kelly), 68; Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 57–58; Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 44–45.
- ^ Hoeveler, 31.
- ^ Hoeveler, 33.
- ^ Hoeveler, 35.
- ^ a b Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 49; Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 42.
- ^ Wollstonecraft, Mary (Kelly), 1.
- ^ Kaplan, 35.
- ^ Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 48; for a deeper discussion of this idea, see Tauchert's "Escaping Discussion".
- ^ Wollstonecraft, Mary (Kelly), 8.
- ^ Johnson, "Mary Wollstonecraft's novels", 194.
- ^ Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 54; Todd, A Revolutionary Life, 113; Hoeveler, 35; Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 50.
- ^ Wollstonecraft, Mary (Kelly), 26.
- ^ Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 54–55; for a discussion of Wollstonecraft's sexuality, see Kelly, "Female Philosopher in the Bedroom".
- ^ Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 53.
- ^ Sunstein, 46.
- ^ Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 56; see also Todd, A Revolutionary Life, 114.
- ^ Wollstonecraft, Mary (Kelly), 36.
- ^ Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 56.
- ^ "Genius". Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online. Retrieved 22 August 2007.
- ^ Sapiro, 55.
- ^ Wollstonecraft, Mary (Kelly), 54; see also Sapiro, 60; 64; Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 46–47.
- ^ a b c Kelly, Revolutionary Feminism, 50–51.
- ^ Qtd. in Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 48.
- ^ Godwin, 66.
- ^ Myers, 109; see also Taylor, 36; Johnson, Equivocal Beings, 49; Langbauer, 211.
- ^ Todd, "Introduction", Mary; Maria; Matilda, x.
- ^ Todd, A Revolutionary Life, 112; Hoeveler, 44, n.12.
- ^ Sapiro, 15; Wardle, 78.
Modern reprints
- ISBN 0-8147-9225-1.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. Mary and The Wrongs of Woman. Ed. Gary Kelly. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-283536-X.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. Mary: A Fiction. Ed. Gina Luria. New York: Garland, 1974.
- Wollstonecraft, Mary. Mary; Maria; Matilda. Ed. Janet Todd. New York: New York University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8147-9252-9
Bibliography
- Elfenbein, Andrew. "Mary Wollstonecraft and the sexuality of genius". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-78952-4.
- ISBN 1-55111-259-0.
- Hoeveler, Diane Long. "The Construction of the Female Gothic Posture: Wollstonecraft's Mary and Gothic Feminism". Gothic Studies 6.1 (2004): 30–44.
- ISBN 0-226-40184-7.
- Johnson, Claudia. "Mary Wollstonecraft's novels". The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft. Ed. Claudia Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-78952-4.
- Kaplan, Cora. "Wild Nights: Pleasure/Sexuality/Feminism". Sea Changes: Essays on Culture and Feminism. London: Verso, 1986. ISBN 0-86091-151-9.
- Kelly, Gary. "Female Philosophy in the Bedroom: Mary Wollstonecraft and Female Sexuality". Women's Writing 4 (1997): 143–53.
- Kelly, Gary. Revolutionary Feminism: The Mind and Career of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. ISBN 0-312-12904-1.
- Langbauer, Laurie. "An Early Romance: Motherhood and Women's Writing in Mary Wollstonecraft's Novels". Romanticism and Feminism. Ed. Anne K. Mellor. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. ISBN 0-253-35083-2.
- Maurer, Lisa Shawn. "The Female (As) Reader: Sex, Sensibility, and the Maternal in Wollstonecraft's Fictions". Essays in Literature 19 (1992): 36–54.
- Myers, Mitzi. "Unfinished Business: Wollstonecraft's Maria". Wordsworth Circle 11.2 (1980): 107–114.
- Sapiro, Virginia. A Vindication of Political Virtue: The Political Theory of Mary Wollstonecraft. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ISBN 0-226-73491-9.
- Spacks, Patricia Meyer. "Ev'ry Woman is at Heart a Rake". Eighteenth-Century Studies 8.1 (1974): 27–46.
- Sunstein, Emily. A Different Face: the Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. New York: Harper and Row, 1975. ISBN 0-06-014201-4.
- Tauchert, Ashley. "Escaping Discussion: Liminality and the Female-Embodied Couple in Mary Wollstonecraft's Mary, A Fiction". Romanticism on the Net 18 (May 2000). Retrieved 6 July 2007.
- Taylor, Barbara. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-66144-7.
- ISBN 0-297-84299-4.
- Todd, Janet. Women's Friendship in Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. ISBN 0-231-04562-X.
- Wardle, Ralph M. Mary Wollstonecraft: A Critical Biography. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1951.
External links
- The complete text of Mary at Project Gutenberg
- Mary: A Fiction public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- Mary Wollstonecraft: A 'Speculative and Dissenting Spirit' by Janet Todd at www.bbc.co.uk