Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Unfinished work / posthumous fragment
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~46,500 words · 221 passages
Unfinished, posthumously published novel: Godwin’s preface, bracketed interpolations and editorial notes have distinct responsibility. Completeness of the digital reproduction is a separate question.
- William Godwin — editor, editorial preface, bracketed interpolations, notes, editorial conclusion
Cite this work
- APAMary Wollstonecraft. (n.d.). Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman [Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman]. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mary-wollstonecraft/maria-or-the-wrongs-of-woman
- MLAMary Wollstonecraft. Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman [Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mary-wollstonecraft/maria-or-the-wrongs-of-woman.
- ChicagoMary Wollstonecraft. Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman [Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman]. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/mary-wollstonecraft/maria-or-the-wrongs-of-woman.
Reference to the reproduced edition. SigPhi is the digital reproduction, not the publisher. Year, publisher and translator are included when recorded; “n.d.” means the year is unknown. Responsibility for an introduction or note depends on the passage cited.
What it is about
Unfinished, posthumously published novel: Godwin’s preface, bracketed interpolations and editorial notes have distinct responsibility. Completeness of the digital reproduction is a separate question.
Context and history
Posthumous unfinished novel, after the edition of 1798. William Godwin’s editorial preface, bracketed additions, notes and conclusion are distinct from Wollstonecraft’s authorial preface and narrative. Unwritten chapters are not an ingestion omission.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
In many instances I could have made the incidents more dramatic, would I have sacrificed my main object, the desire of exhibiting the misery and oppression, peculiar to women, that arise out of the partial laws and customs of society. In the invention of the story, this view restrained my fancy; and the history ought rather to be considered, as of woman, than of an individual. The sentiments I have embodied. In many works of this species, the hero is allowed to be mortal, and to become wise and virtuous as well as happy, by a train of events and circumstances. The heroines, on the contrary, are to be born immaculate, and to act like goddesses of wisdom, just come forth highly finished Minervas from the head of Jove. [The following is an extract of a letter from the author to a friend, to whom she communicated her manuscript.] For my part, I cannot suppose any situation more distressing, than for a woman of sensibility, with an improving mind, to be bound to such a man as I have described for life; obliged to renounce all the humanizing affections, and to avoid cultivating her taste, lest her perception of grace and refinement of sentiment, should sharpen to agony the pangs of disappointment. Love, in which the imagination mingles its bewitching colouring, must be fostered by delicacy. I should despise, or rather call her an ordinary woman, who could endure such a husband as I have sketched. …