Maria; Or, The Wrongs of WomanMary WollstonecraftOmniClassics · Literature
Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman
Mary WollstonecraftA woman's confinement exposes the power of marriage and reputation to turn domestic authority into imprisonment.
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About the book
Maria has been placed in an asylum through her husband's actions, separated from her child and deprived of control over the story others tell about her. Her developing relationship with the attendant Jemima opens the narrative to another woman's experience of exploitation and social exclusion. An attachment to a fellow inmate, Darnford, further complicates questions of trust, desire, and the possibility of independence. Maria's account addressed to her daughter makes private recollection part of an argument about the conditions governing women's lives. Wollstonecraft connects suffering across differences of class without treating every woman's circumstances as identical. The work survives unfinished, and this edition presents its fragmentary state. Its force lies in the situations and competing claims it establishes, rather than in a completed resolution of Maria's predicament.
- Marriage and power
- Women's autonomy
- Class and vulnerability
Why read it
For a concentrated exploration of how legal and domestic dependence shape women's capacity to act and to be believed.
Unfinished novel · English text based on the 1798 edition