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    Mary
    Mary
    Mary
    Ebook102 pages56 minutes

    Mary

    By Mary Wollstonecraft

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    About this ebook

    According to Wikipedia: "Mary: A Fiction is the only complete novel by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. It tells the tragic story of a heroine's successive "romantic friendships" with a woman and a man. Composed while Wollstonecraft was a governess in Ireland, the novel was published in 1788 shortly after her summary dismissal and her momentous decision to embark on a writing career, a precarious and disreputable profession for women in 18th-century Britain.Inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea that geniuses are self-taughtgenius (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. 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: geniuses were "enchained" rather than enriched by marriage. Through this heroine Wollstonecraft also critiques 18th-century sensibilityMary 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. However, 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."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeltzer Books
    Release dateMar 1, 2018
    ISBN9781455357062
    Mary
    Author

    Mary Wollstonecraft

    Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) was an English writer, philosopher, and feminist. Born in London, Wollstonecraft was raised in a financially unstable family. As a young woman, she became friends with Jane Arden, an intellectual and socialite, and Fanny Blood, a talented illustrator and passionate educator. After several years on her own, Wollstonecraft returned home in 1780 to care for her dying mother, after which she moved in with the Blood family and began planning live independently with Fanny. Their plan proved financially impossible, however, and Fanny soon married and moved to Portugal, where, in 1785, she died from complications of pregnancy. This inspired Wollstonecraft’s first novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788), launching her career as one of eighteenth-century England’s leading literary voices. In 1790, in response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Wollstonecraft wrote Vindication of the Rights of Men, a political pamphlet defending the cause of the French Revolution, advocating for republicanism, and illustrating the ideals of England’s emerging middle class. Following the success of her pamphlet, Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a groundbreaking work of political philosophy and an early feminist text that argues for the education of women as well as for the need to recognize them as rational, independent beings. The same year, Wollstonecraft travelled to France, where she lived for a year while moving in Girondist circles and observing the changes enacted by the newly established National Assembly. In 1793, she was forced to leave France as the Jacobins rose to power, executing many of Wollstonecraft’s friends and colleagues and expelling foreigners from the country. In 1797, she married the novelist and anarchist philosopher William Godwin, with whom she bore her daughter Mary, who would eventually write the novel Frankenstein (1818). Several days afterward, however, Wollstonecraft died at the age of 38 from septicemia, leaving a legacy as a pioneering feminist and unparalleled figure in English literature.

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      Book preview

      Mary - Mary Wollstonecraft

      MARY, A FICTION BY MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

      Published by Seltzer Books

      established in 1974, now offering over 14,000 books

      feedback welcome: seltzer@seltzerbooks.com  

      Books by the Shelley Clan -- Percy Bysshe Shelley, his wife Mary Shelley, her father William Godwin, and her mother Mary Wollstonecraft -- available from Seltzer Books

      Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley

      Defense of Poetry and Other Essays by Shelley

      Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

      The Last Man by Mary Shelley

      Caleb Williams by Godwin

      Thoughts on Man by Godwin

      Italian Letters by Godwin

      A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Wollstonecraft

      Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of Women by Godwin

      Maria or the Wrongs of Women by Wollstonecraft

      Mary by Wollstonecraft

      L'exercice des plus sublimes vertus eleve et nourrit le genie.

       ROUSSEAU.

      London,

      Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church-Yard.

      MDCCLXXXVIII

      ADVERTISEMENT.

      CHAP. I.

      CHAP. II.

      CHAP. III.

      CHAP. IV.

      CHAP. V.

      CHAP. VI.

      CHAP. VII.

      CHAP. VIII.

      CHAP. IX.

      CHAP. X.

      CHAP. XI.

      CHAP. XII.

      CHAP. XIII.

      CHAP. XIV.

      CHAP. XV.

      CHAP. XVI.

      CHAP. XVII.

      CHAP. XVIII.

      CHAP. XIX.

      CHAP. XX.

      CHAP. XXI.

      CHAP. XXII.

      CHAP. XXIII.

      CHAP. XXIV.

      CHAP. XXV.

      CHAP. XXVI.

      CHAP. XXVII.

      CHAP. XXVIII.

      CHAP. XXIX.

      CHAP. XXX.

      CHAP. XXXI.

      ADVERTISEMENT.

      In delineating the Heroine of this Fiction, the Author attempts to develop a character different from those generally portrayed. This woman is neither a Clarissa, a Lady G----, nor a[A] Sophie.--It would be vain to mention the various modifications of these models, as it would to remark, how widely artists wander from nature, when they copy the originals of great masters. They catch the gross parts; but the subtile spirit evaporates; and not having the just ties, affectation disgusts, when grace was expected to charm.

      Those compositions only have power to delight, and carry us willing captives, where the soul of the author is exhibited, and animates the hidden springs. Lost in a pleasing enthusiasm, they live in the scenes they represent; and do not measure their steps in a beaten track, solicitous to gather expected flowers, and bind them in a wreath, according to the prescribed rules of art.

      These chosen few, wish to speak for themselves, and not to be an echo--even of the sweetest sounds--or the reflector of the most sublime beams. The[B] paradise they ramble in, must be of their own creating--or the prospect soon grows insipid, and not varied by a vivifying principle, fades and dies.

      In an artless tale, without episodes, the mind of a woman, who has thinking powers is displayed. The female organs have been thought too weak for this arduous employment; and experience seems to justify the assertion. Without arguing physically about _possibilities_--in a fiction, such a being may be allowed to exist; whose grandeur is derived from the operations of its own faculties, not subjugated to opinion; but drawn by the individual from the original source.

      FOOTNOTES:

      [Footnote A: Rousseau.]

      [Footnote B: I here give the Reviewers an opportunity of being very witty about the Paradise of Fools, &c.]

      CHAP. I.

       Mary, the heroine of this fiction, was the daughter of Edward, who married Eliza, a gentle, fashionable girl, with a kind of indolence in her temper, which might be termed negative good-nature: her virtues, indeed, were all of that stamp. She carefully attended to the _shews_ of things, and her opinions, I should have said prejudices, were such as the generality approved of. She was educated with the expectation of a large fortune, of course became a mere machine: the homage of her attendants made a great part of her puerile amusements, and she never imagined there were any relative duties for her to fulfil: notions of her own consequence, by these means, were interwoven in her mind, and the years of youth spent in acquiring a few superficial accomplishments, without having any taste for them. When she was first introduced into the polite circle, she danced with an officer, whom she faintly wished to be united to; but her father soon after recommending another in a more distinguished rank of life, she readily submitted to his will, and promised to love, honour, and obey, (a vicious fool,) as in duty bound.

      While they resided in London, they lived in the usual fashionable style, and seldom saw each other; nor were they much more sociable when they wooed rural felicity for more than half the year, in a delightful country, where Nature, with lavish hand, had scattered beauties around; for the master, with brute, unconscious gaze, passed them by unobserved, and sought amusement in country sports. He hunted in the morning, and after eating an immoderate dinner, generally fell asleep: this seasonable rest enabled him to digest the cumbrous load; he would then visit some of his pretty tenants; and when he compared their ruddy glow of health with his wife's countenance, which even rouge could not enliven, it is not necessary to say which a _gourmand_ would give the preference to. Their vulgar dance of spirits were infinitely more agreeable to his fancy than her sickly, die-away languor. Her voice was but the shadow of a sound, and she had, to complete her delicacy, so relaxed her nerves, that she became a mere nothing.

      Many such noughts are there in the female world! yet she had a good opinion of her own merit,--truly, she said long prayers,--and sometimes read her Week's Preparation: she dreaded that horrid place vulgarly called _hell_, the regions below; but whether her's was a mounting spirit, I cannot pretend to determine; or what sort of a planet would have been proper for her, when she left her _material_ part in this world, let metaphysicians settle; I have nothing to say to her unclothed spirit.

      As she was sometimes obliged to be alone, or only with her French waiting-maid, she sent to the metropolis for all the new publications, and while she was dressing her hair, and she could turn her eyes from the glass, she ran over those most delightful substitutes for bodily dissipation, novels. I say bodily, or the animal soul, for a rational one can find no employment in polite circles. The glare of lights, the studied inelegancies of dress, and the compliments offered up at the shrine of false beauty, are all equally addressed to the senses.

      When she could not any longer indulge the caprices of fancy one way, she tried another. The Platonic Marriage, Eliza Warwick, and some other interesting tales were perused with eagerness. Nothing could be more natural than the developement of the passions, nor more striking than the views of the human heart. What delicate struggles! and uncommonly pretty turns of thought! The picture that was found on a bramble-bush, the new sensitive-plant, or tree, which caught the swain by the upper-garment, and presented to his ravished eyes a portrait.--Fatal image!--It planted a thorn in a till then insensible heart, and sent a new kind of a knight-errant into the world. But even this was nothing to the catastrophe,

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