Mary Wollstonecraft - Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft

The Complete Works of

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

(1759-1797)

Contents

Delphi Classics 2016

Version 1

The Complete Works of

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

By Delphi Classics, 2016

Complete Works of Mary Wollstonecraft

First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by Delphi Classics.

Delphi Classics, 2016.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78656 045 2

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Mary Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London. She was the second of seven children of Edward John Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Dixon.

The only complete novel by Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary was written while she was working as a governess in Ireland. It was published in 1788 shortly after her summary dismissal and her decision to embark on a writing career, a precarious and disreputable profession for women in eighteenth century Britain. Inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseaus idea that geniuses are self-taught, Wollstonecraft presents Mary, a self-taught genius, as the central character of her novel. Helping to redefine genius, Wollstonecraft describes Mary as independent and capable of defining femininity and marriage for herself. It is Marys strong, original opinions and her resistance to conventional wisdom that mark her as a genius. Through this heroine the author critiques marriage, contemporary sensibility and its damaging 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, the novel at times reflects the same flaws of sentimentalism that she attempts to expose.

Wollstonecraft would later repudiate the novel, writing that it was laughable. However, critics have since argued that, despite its faults, the 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 as it helped shape an emerging feminist discourse.

The novel opens with a description of the conventional and loveless marriage between the heroines mother and father. Eliza, Marys mother, is obsessed with novels, rarely considers anyone but herself, and favours Marys brother. She neglects her daughter, who educates herself using only books and the natural world. Neglected by her family, Mary devotes much of her time to charity. When her brother suddenly dies, leaving Mary heir to the familys fortune, her mother finally takes an interest in her. She is taught accomplishments such as dancing to attract suitors. However, Marys mother soon sickens and requests on her deathbed that her daughter should 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 that does not share her values, Mary befriends Ann, a local girl, who educates her still further. Mary becomes attached to Ann, who is in the grip of an unrequited love and does not reciprocate Marys feelings. Anns family falls into poverty and is on the brink of losing their home, but Mary is able to pay off their debts after her marriage to Charles, who allows her limited control over her money.

Jean-Jacques Rousseaus philosophical treatise on education, Emile (1762), was a major literary influence for Wollstonecraft. A few months before starting the novel, she wrote to her sister Everina: I am now reading Rousseaus Emile , and love his paradoxes... however he rambles into that chimerical world in which I have too often wandered... He was a strange inconsistent unhappy clever creature yet he possessed an uncommon portion of sensibility and penetration Rousseau chuses a common capacity to educate and gives as a reason, that a genius will educate itself. When Mary was published, the title page included a quotation from Rousseau: Lexercice des plus sublimes vertus leve et nourrit le gnie (the exercise of the most sublime virtues raises and nourishes genius). Therefore, the novel is generally considered an early example of a bildungsroman , or novel of education.

Published by Joseph Johnson, Mary was moderately successful and sections of the text were included in several collections of sentimental extracts that were popular at the time, such as The Young Gentleman and Ladys Instructor (1809). However, the publisher was still trying to sell copies in the 1790s and consistently listed it in the advertisements for her other works. Mary was not reprinted until the 1970s, when scholars became interested in Wollstonecraft and womens writing more generally.

The first editions title page

Rousseaus Julie, or the New Heloise (1761), from which Wollstonecraft drew the epigraph for Mary

Lexercice des plus sublimes vertus leve et nourrit le gnie. Rousseau.