Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

“From a stranger she could indeed receive the maternal aliment, Maria was grieved at the thought—but who could watch her with a mother’s tenderness, a mother’s self-denial?”

Maria laments her separation from her infant daughter and fears what might happen to her baby without a mother to care for her. It sets the stage for the important theme of Motherhood and the Bond Between Mothers and Daughters. The quotation distinguishes between physical nurturing, acknowledging that a baby can be breastfed by a woman who is not her mother, and emotional nurturing. It implies that only mothers can truly provide adequate emotional nurturing, setting the stage for future plot events where the absence of a mother proves damaging to a developing child.

“The woman was no fool, that is, she was superior to her class; nor had misery quite petrified the life’s blood of humanity”

This quotation occurs when Jemima is first introduced into the narrative. It reveals Maria’s judgment and focus on distinctions between social classes; because Jemima is not educated, and comes from a working-class background, Maria assumes that she will be both unsympathetic and unintelligent. Contrary to this assumption, Maria can immediately tell that Jemima is smart and has the potential to be kind. This quotation sets the stage for the deep and enduring relationship that will arise between the two women, despite their very different social backgrounds. It also reveals that, while Wollstonecraft’s representation of Jemima is sympathetic and nuanced, Jemima is presented as an exception rather than the norm for working-class characters.

“They might perhaps instruct her daughter, and shield her from the misery, the tyranny, her mother knew not how to avoid.”

Here, Maria establishes her motivation for writing down a history of her life up until the point where she was imprisoned in the asylum. Structurally, the decision to write the narrative is important, because this is how the reader subsequently learns Maria’s backstory. This quotation thus helps to build narrative momentum and suspense. It also shows Maria’s devotion to her daughter and desire to protect her: Maria does not want her daughter to ever make the same mistakes that she has. At a metafictional level, Maria’s narrative is addressed not just to her daughter, but to all women who can benefit from learning about her mistakes.

“[She] began to reflect, as an excuse to herself, on the little objects which attract attention when there is nothing to divert the mind; and how difficult it was for women to avoid growing romantic, who have no active duties or pursuits.”

As Maria begins to become more and more curious about her fellow inmate, Henry Darnford, the narrator makes it clear that Maria is liable to become romantically interested in Darnford because she has nothing else to do. While Maria is literally imprisoned in an asylum, this reflection applies more broadly to women, especially upper-class women, during Wollstonecraft’s time. Because they were not expected or encouraged to pursue careers or intellectual interests, Wollstonecraft believed that women had nothing else to do other than focus on romance. This single-mindedness could make women very vulnerable to being deceived and tricked, as Maria’s plotline later reveals.

“I will not disgust you with a recital of the vices of my youth.”

This quotation occurs as Darnford narrates the story of his life to Maria. Even though he is romantically interested in Maria, Darnford is frank about having been involved with sex workers and mistresses and has often not treated women with respect. This foreshadows the eventual revelation that Darnford will be unfaithful and discard Maria, which seems to have been consistent in most of the endings that Wollstonecraft considered. The quotation shows that Darnford, like virtually all of the male characters presented in the novel, is self-interested and unreliable. It also presents evidence of Maria’s naivety and inability to rely on reason rather than her emotions; even though she has already been deceived and disappointed by one unworthy man, she quickly overlooks Darnford’s admission of his faults.

“A despondent gloom had long obscured Maria’s horizon — now the sun broke forth, the rainbow appeared, and every prospect was fair.”

Metaphorical language is used here to describe the change in Maria’s mood and outlook as she begins to pursue a romantic relationship with Darnford. Their relationship is compared to the sun breaking through clouds, rainbows, and fine weather coming after storms. The metaphors show how drastically this relationship improves Maria’s outlook but also hint at the fickle and unreliable nature of romantic love. Weather tends to be transient, and sunshine can revert to storms; Maria does not realize that the joy she finds with Darnford is doomed to be short-lived.

“Now I look back, I cannot help attributing the greater part of my misery, to the misfortune of having 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.”

Jemima says this as she reflects on her past and explains one factor that has led to her unhappy life. Jemima’s mother died when she was a baby, and Jemima believes that this lack of a caring role model doomed her to grow up lonely and vulnerable. The quotation develops the novel’s exploration of the important bond between mothers and daughters; it also reflects why Maria is so distressed to be separated from her baby. Jemima’s narrative shows that Maria’s fears about what might happen if her daughter has to grow up without a mother are not unfounded or exaggerated. This is also an example of biographical irony, since only a few months after drafting this novel, Wollstonecraft would die and leave an infant daughter behind.

“To be cut off from human converse, now I had been taught to relish it, was to wander a ghost among the living.”

Jemima explains why she felt particularly sad and isolated after the time in which she lived as a well-educated man’s mistress. While she wasn’t romantically attracted to this man, Jemima did very much enjoy the learning and intellectual conversations she engaged in with him and his friends. After his death, she finds it almost intolerable to live without a community and uses a metaphor comparing herself to a ghost. This metaphor reveals that Jemima felt truly alive when she was using her mind and connecting with like-minded individuals. This reveals Wollstonecraft’s vision of a good and useful life.

“Thinking of Jemima’s particular fate and her own, she was led to consider the oppressed state of woman, and to lament that she had given birth to a daughter.”

Hearing about Jemima’s suffering gives Maria a heightened sense of female solidarity and leads her to believe that most women have something in common. This realization is distressing to Maria and leads her to worry even more about her daughter. The quotation reflects Wollstonecraft’s interest in showing women as interconnected and sharing common experiences; however, given that Jemima suffers much more dangerous and physically strenuous experiences than Maria, it is somewhat arrogant that Maria immediately sees their experiences as comparable.

“My fancy had found a basis to erect its model of perfection on; and quickly went to work, with all the happy credulity of youth, to consider that heart as devoted to virtue, which had only obeyed a virtuous impulse.”

Maria reflects sadly on the circumstances that led to her agreeing to marry George Venables. Within her retrospective narrative, Maria can now see clearly that she was naïve and foolish to fall for George. The quotation implies that she is now wiser, but it is also ironic because, by the time readers encounter this narrative of Maria’s past, they have seen her hurriedly fall in love with Darnford, who is also a man she knows very little about and chooses to assume is heroic and worthy of her love.

“There was something of delicacy in my husband’s bridal attentions; but now his tainted breath, pimpled face, and blood-shot eyes, were not more repugnant to my senses, than his gross manners, and loveless familiarity to my taste.”

Maria describes the disgust she came to feel toward George as their marriage continued to deteriorate. Maria is honest about these feelings of disgust, even though this frank description of bodies and sexuality would have been unexpected for a woman at this time. The distaste towards George is important because Maria will later justify her relationship with Darnford on the basis that she has the right to be with a man she is actually attracted to.

“I am far from thinking that a woman, once married, ought to consider the engagement as indissoluble (especially if there be no children to reward her for sacrificing her feelings) in case her husband merits neither love, nor esteem.”

Maria’s uncle speaks this quotation as he explains his belief that women should not be trapped in marriages without any recourse; in making this statement, he expresses a fairly radical and controversial belief for the time. Wollstonecraft strategically has a male character espouse this argument so that it might be more persuasive. The statement is still quite conservative, in that Maria’s uncle specifies that women should only be able to leave their husbands if their husbands are mistreating them, and focuses on women without children as the individuals who should be able to leave their marriages.

“I call on you, Sir, to witness […] that as solemnly as I took his name, I now abjure it,’ I pulled off my ring and put it on the table.”

Maria finally reaches her breaking point and declares her marriage with George to be over. Maria performs a symbolic ceremony of divorce that inverts a traditional wedding ceremony: She insists on someone witnessing her renounce her husband (rather than vow to be with him), and she removes the ring that was used to bind them together during the wedding ceremony. This moment is powerful because it shows Maria’s belief in her own agency and rights as an individual. Even though she cannot legally leave her husband or reject his authority, she can symbolically do so. The formality also echoes declarations of revolution and independence, in which subjects took it upon themselves to reject the authority of rulers, rather than waiting to be given the legal right to do so.

“Had she remained with her husband, practising [sic] insincerity, and neglecting her child to manage an intrigue, she would still have been visited and respected.”

This quotation reveals a pointed critique of the way that adultery was often tacitly condoned, especially within the upper classes. Maria becomes a social outcast for leaving her husband and living openly with another man, yet it was not uncommon for married women to engage in affairs without negatively impacting their social status. Wollstonecraft decries this social hypocrisy and implies that Maria is behaving better than many women because she is living with honesty and integrity.

“Are not […] the despots for ever stigmatized who, in the wantonness of power, commanded even the most atrocious criminals to be chained to dead bodies? Though surely those laws are much more inhuman, which forge adamantine fetters to bind minds together, that never can mingle in social communion!”

Maria passionately explains why she should be free to separate from her detested husband. She uses the grotesque image of a punishment in which criminals are tied to dead bodies to describe what it feels like to be inexorably bound to a man whom she hates. The language of “criminals,” “chained” and “fetters” all invoke the imagery of imprisonment to describe how trapped and helpless Maria felt in her unhappy marriage. This imagery is also striking because it precedes Maria’s actual experience of imprisonment within the asylum and implies that she was in a psychological prison long before she found herself in a physical one.

“Sometimes a wild cat, a roaring bull, or hideous assassin, whom I vainly attempted to fly; at others he was a demon, hurrying me to the brink of a precipice, plunging me into dark waves, or horrid gulfs”

Maria uses imagery and figurative language to describe her fears about George tracking her down after she fled from him. By comparing George to predatory animals, murderers, and demons, this quotation makes it clear just how much Maria fears him, and also that she sees him as someone who could effectively take her life away from her. While it is unlikely that George would kill Maria, being forced to go back to living with him would be like death to her. This imagery also vividly shows Maria’s psychological torment, and how she lives in fear even after she has achieved some sort of freedom by running away from her husband.

“The spring was melting into summer, and you, my little companion began to smile --- that smile made hope bud out afresh, assuring me the world was not a desert.”

This quotation uses pathetic fallacy and metaphor to convey Maria’s increasing joy and hopefulness after her baby is born. Pathetic fallacy is the attribution of human characteristics to nonhuman things, like nature. The progression of the seasons implies warmth, growth, and hopefulness, while the use of metaphors compares Maria’s hope and the baby’s development to plants blossoming in a previously barren landscape. This seemingly happy moment also functions as an example of dramatic irony since readers know that Maria is soon going to be separated from her baby.

“How could a creature in a female form see me caress thee, and steal thee from my arms! I must stop, stop to repress a mother’s anguish; lest, in bitterness of soul, I imprecate the wrath of heaven on this tiger.”

In this quotation, Maria expresses her shock and horror that a woman could have participated in George’s cruel plot to kidnap her baby. Maria presumes that a woman would be able to relate to a mother’s bond with her baby; she calls this other woman a tiger, implying that she is more animal than human, and also something predatory and cruel rather than nurturing. Given that Maria has developed a sense of female solidarity based on hearing Jemima’s story and reflecting on the experiences of other women, she feels especially betrayed by this act. This quotation reveals that women can perpetuate injustice, as well as suffer from it, particularly when they choose to collude with patriarchy rather than resist it.

“The fastidious and cold-hearted critic may perhaps feel himself repelled by the incoherent form in which they are presented.”

Here, Godwin breaks in to explain and rationalize why he has included fragmentary portions of the text that Wollstonecraft did not complete or commit to. He acknowledges that some people may not like or agree with the incomplete state of the text, but his references to these critics as “fastidious” and “cold-hearted” reveals that Godwin does not sympathize with these perspectives. In general, Godwin rejects the viewpoints of individuals who are too rigid, either about fictional structure, political beliefs, or representations of behavior. By including this comment, Godwin preemptively defends himself and his late wife against some of the criticisms he anticipates they will encounter.

“I have no child to go to, and liberty has lost its sweets.”

Jemima shares her plan for her and Maria to finally escape from the asylum; shockingly, Maria is not very interested in leaving. This comment represents a departure for her character, who had previously been insistent on getting out. It also reveals how crushing the loss of her child has been: Now that she knows her baby is dead, Maria doesn’t care whether she stays in the asylum forever or not. This despair and lack of interest in the future foreshadow the possible endings in which Maria likewise loses hope and attempts suicide.

“Jemima insisting on being considered as her house-keeper, and to receive the customary stipend. On no other terms would she remain with her friend.”

Maria leaves the asylum and Jemima agrees to live with her and Darnford on certain conditions. The quotation is ambiguous: it could imply that Jemima does not feel worthy to live with Maria as any sort of equal and reinforces the social divide between the two of them by insisting on living and working as a servant. Conversely, it could also imply that Jemima retains her somewhat shrewd and suspicious nature even now that she has bonded with Maria. In that case, her insistence on working and being paid wages represents her desire to remain independent and continue to invest in her savings.

“Women, when they claim protectorship as mothers, to sign a contract, which renders them dependent on the caprice of the tyrant, whom choice or necessity has appointed to reign over them.”

Maria makes an impassioned plea for why women should be able to leave their husbands during the trial in which George sues Darnford. While her uncle had previously hinted that he primarily accepted childless women being free to leave their marriages, Maria argues that it is mothers who are most deserving of the right to be protected from cruelty and abuse at the hands of their husbands. By evoking women’s role as mothers and their vulnerability, Maria uses conventional, feminine stereotypes to build sympathy for her argument. She also uses politicized language, referencing “tyrants” and “reigning” to compare women to citizens struggling to break free from oppressive political regimes.

“We did not want French principles in public or private life.”

The judge rejects Maria’s argument, and rules in George’s favor, allowing the case to move to a divorce trial on the grounds of adultery. This reveals the risk of a conservative backlash to Maria’s arguments based on individualistic and republican sentiments. The judge is not sympathetic to Maria’s arguments about freedom, and in fact, sees them as dangerous and misaligned with British values. By calling them “French,” the judge positions Maria as a cultural outsider who will not find sympathy from a British audience.