Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman
been thrown into the world without the grand support of life—a mother’s
affection. I had no one to love me; or to make me respected, to enable
me to acquire respect. I was an egg dropped on the sand; a pauper by
nature, hunted from family to family, who belonged to nobody—and nobody
cared for me. I was despised from my birth, and denied the chance of
obtaining a footing for myself in society. Yes; I had not even the
chance of being considered as a fellow-creature—yet all the people with
whom I lived, brutalized as they were by the low cunning of trade, and
the despicable shifts of poverty, were not without bowels, though they
never yearned for me. I was, in fact, born a slave, and chained by
infamy to slavery during the whole of existence, without having any
companions to alleviate it by sympathy, or teach me how to rise above
it by their example. But, to resume the thread of my tale—
“At sixteen, I suddenly grew tall, and something like comeliness
appeared on a Sunday, when I had time to wash my face, and put on clean
clothes. My master had once or twice caught hold of me in the passage;
but I instinctively avoided his disgusting caresses. One day however,
when the family were at a methodist meeting, he contrived to be alone
in the house with me, and by blows—yes; blows and menaces, compelled me
to submit to his ferocious desire; and, to avoid my mistress’s fury, I
was obliged in future to comply, and skulk to my loft at his command,
in spite of increasing loathing.
“The anguish which was now pent up in my bosom, seemed to open a new
world to me: I began to extend my thoughts beyond myself, and grieve
for human misery, till I discovered, with horror—ah! what horror!—that
I was with child. I know not why I felt a mixed sensation of despair
and tenderness, excepting that, ever called a bastard, a bastard
appeared to me an object of the greatest compassion in creation.
“I communicated this dreadful circumstance to my master, who was almost
equally alarmed at the intelligence; for he feared his wife, and public
censure at the meeting. After some weeks of deliberation had elapsed, I
in continual fear that my altered shape would be noticed, my master
gave me a medicine in a phial, which he desired me to take, telling me,
without any circumlocution, for what purpose it was designed. I burst
into tears, I thought it was killing myself—yet was such a self as I
worth preserving? He cursed me for a fool, and left me to my own
reflections. I could not resolve to take this infernal potion; but I
wrapped it up in an old gown, and hid it in a corner of my box.
“Nobody yet suspected me, because they had been accustomed to view me
as a creature of another species. But the threatening storm at last
broke over my devoted head—never shall I forget it! One Sunday evening
when I was left, as usual, to take care of the house, my master came
home intoxicated, and I became the prey of his brutal appetite. His
extreme intoxication made him forget his customary caution, and my
mistress entered and found us in a situation that could not have been
more hateful to her than me. Her husband was ‘pot-valiant,’ he feared
her not at the moment, nor had he then much reason, for she instantly
turned the whole force of her anger another way. She tore off my cap,
scratched, kicked, and buffetted me, till she had exhausted her
strength, declaring, as she rested her arm, ‘that I had wheedled her
husband from her.—But, could any thing better be expected from a
wretch, whom she had taken into her house out of pure charity?’ What a
torrent of abuse rushed out? till, almost breathless, she concluded
with saying, ‘that I was born a strumpet; it ran in my blood, and
nothing good could come to those who harboured me.’
“My situation was, of course, discovered, and she declared that I
should not stay another night under the same roof with an honest
family. I was therefore pushed out of doors, and my trumpery thrown
after me, when it had been contemptuously examined in the passage, lest
I should have stolen any thing.
“Behold me then in the street, utterly destitute! Whither could I creep
for shelter? To my father’s roof I had no claim, when not pursued by
shame—now I shrunk back as from death, from my mother’s cruel
reproaches, my father’s execrations. I could not endure to hear him
curse the day I was born, though life had been a curse to me. Of death
I thought, but with a confused emotion of terror, as I stood leaning my
head on a post, and starting at every footstep, lest it should be my
mistress coming to tear my heart out. One of the boys of the shop
passing by, heard my tale, and immediately repaired to his master, to
give him a description of my situation; and he touched the right
key—the scandal it would give rise to, if I were left to repeat my tale
to every enquirer. This plea came home to his reason, who had been
sobered by his wife’s rage, the fury of which fell on him when I was
out of her reach, and he sent the boy to me with half-a-guinea,
desiring him to conduct me to a house, where beggars, and other
wretches, the refuse of society, nightly lodged.
“This night was spent in a state of stupefaction, or desperation. I
detested mankind, and abhorred myself.
“In the morning I ventured out, to throw myself in my master’s way, at
his usual hour of going abroad. I approached him, he ‘damned me for a
b——, declared I had disturbed the peace of the family, and that he had
sworn to his wife, never to take any more notice of me.’ He left me;
but, instantly returning, he told me that he should speak to his
friend, a parish-officer, to get a nurse for the brat I laid to him;
and advised me, if I wished to keep out of the house of correction, not
to make free with his name.
“I hurried back to my hole, and, rage giving place to despair, sought
for the potion that was to procure abortion, and swallowed it, with a
wish that it might destroy me, at the same time that it stopped the
sensations of new-born life, which I felt with indescribable emotion.
My head turned round, my heart grew sick, and in the horrors of
approaching dissolution, mental anguish was swallowed up. The effect of
the medicine was violent, and I was confined to my bed several days;
but, youth and a strong constitution prevailing, I once more crawled
out, to ask myself the cruel question, ‘Whither I should go?’ I had but
two shillings left in my pocket, the rest had been expended, by a poor
woman who slept in the same room, to pay for my lodging, and purchase
the necessaries of which she partook.
“With this wretch I went into the neighbouring streets to beg, and my
disconsolate appearance drew a few pence from the idle, enabling me
still to command a bed; till, recovering from my illness, and taught to
put on my rags to the best advantage, I was accosted from different
motives, and yielded to the desire of the brutes I met, with the same
detestation that I had felt for my still more brutal master. I have
since read in novels of the blandishments of seduction, but I had not
even the pleasure of being enticed into vice.
“I shall not,” interrupted Jemima, “lead your imagination into all the
scenes of wretchedness and depravity, which I was condemned to view; or
mark the different stages of my debasing misery. Fate dragged me
through the very kennels of society: I was still a slave, a bastard, a
common property. Become familiar with vice, for I wish to conceal
nothing from you, I picked the pockets of the drunkards who abused me;
and proved by my conduct, that I deserved the epithets, with which they
loaded me at moments when distrust ought to cease.
“Detesting my nightly occupation, though valuing, if I may so use the
word, my independence, which only consisted in choosing the street in
which I should wander, or the roof, when I had money, in which I should
hide my head, I was some time before I could prevail on myself to
accept of a place in a house of ill fame, to which a girl, with whom I
had accidentally conversed in the street, had recommended me. I had
been hunted almost into a fever, by the watchmen of the quarter of the
town I frequented; one, whom I had unwittingly offended, giving the
word to the whole pack. You can scarcely conceive the tyranny exercised
by these wretches: considering themselves as the instruments of the
very laws they violate, the pretext which steels their conscience,
hardens their heart. Not content with receiving from us, outlaws of
society (let other women talk of favours) a brutal gratification
gratuitously as a privilege of office, they extort a tithe of
prostitution, and harrass with threats the poor creatures whose
occupation affords not the means to silence the growl of avarice. To
escape from this persecution, I once more entered into servitude.
“A life of comparative regularity restored my health; and—do not
start—my manners were improved, in a situation where vice sought to
render itself alluring, and taste was cultivated to fashion the person,
if not to refine the mind. Besides, the common civility of speech,
contrasted with the gross vulgarity to which I had been accustomed, was
something like the polish of civilization. I was not shut out from all
intercourse of humanity. Still I was galled by the yoke of service, and
my mistress often flying into violent fits of passion, made me dread a
sudden dismission, which I understood was always the case. I was
therefore prevailed on, though I felt a horror of men, to accept the
offer of a gentleman, rather in the decline of years, to keep his
house, pleasantly situated in a little village near Hampstead.
“He was a man of great talents, and of brilliant wit; but, a worn-out
votary of voluptuousness, his desires became fastidious in proportion
as they grew weak, and the native tenderness of his heart was
undermined by a vitiated imagination. A thoughtless career of
libertinism and social enjoyment, had injured his health to such a
degree, that, whatever pleasure his conversation afforded me (and my
esteem was ensured by proofs of the generous humanity of his
disposition), the being his mistress was purchasing it at a very dear
rate. With such a keen perception of the delicacies of sentiment, with
an imagination invigorated by the exercise of genius, how could he sink
into the grossness of sensuality!
“But, to pass over a subject which I recollect with pain, I must remark
to you, as an answer to your often-repeated question, ‘Why my
sentiments and language were superior to my station?’ that I now began
to read, to beguile the tediousness of solitude, and to gratify an
inquisitive, active mind. I had often, in my childhood, followed a
ballad-singer, to hear the sequel of a dismal story, though sure of
being severely punished for delaying to return with whatever I was sent
to purchase. I could just spell and put a sentence together, and I
listened to the various arguments, though often mingled with obscenity,
which occurred at the table where I was allowed to preside: for a
literary friend or two frequently came home with my master, to dine and
pass the night. Having lost the privileged respect of my sex, my
presence, instead of restraining, perhaps gave the reins to their
tongues; still I had the advantage of hearing discussions, from which,
in the common course of life, women are excluded.
“You may easily imagine, that it was only by degrees that I could
comprehend some of the subjects they investigated, or acquire from
their reasoning what might be termed a moral sense. But my fondness of
reading increasing, and my master occasionally shutting himself up in
this retreat, for weeks together, to write, I had many opportunities of
improvement. At first, considering money (I was right!” exclaimed
Jemima, altering her tone of voice) “as the only means, after my loss