Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

Jemima’s retrospective narrative of her life before coming to work at the asylum deepens the structural complexity of the novel and furthers the device of a frame narrative; the plot set in the asylum is the main narrative, which is inset with shorter narratives by Darnford, Jemima, and Maria that reveal the histories of their previous lives. Darnford’s narrative, as the shortest and the first to be included, hints that despite his traditional role as a romantic hero, he is actually subordinate in significance to Jemima. Jemima’s narrative is significantly longer and prepares readers for Maria’s own lengthy, retrospective narrative.

Previous hints about Jemima’s character have already established that she has been shaped by difficult and traumatic experiences. Jemima is born to working-class parents with few financial resources, and she is also born illegitimate. Both factors set her on a more challenging path and juxtapose with Maria’s birth into a prosperous, albeit unhappy, family. The death of Jemima’s mother is presented as a foundational trauma and highlights the theme of Motherhood and the Bond Between Mothers and Daughters in the novel. Interestingly, Wollstonecraft’s own daughter, Mary Godwin Shelley, would grow up motherless as well. In Mary Shelley’s most famous novel, Frankenstein, the Creature laments how a lack of parental modeling is what leads him to become cruel and violent.

Jemima refers to herself as “an egg dropped on the sand; a pauper by nature, hunted from family to family, who belonged to nobody” (82); this imagery, particularly of an egg, reveals that Jemima’s lack of connection to a nurturing and maternal presence causes her to feel like an outcast. Maria has been haunted by the fears of what might befall her daughter if the two of them are never reunited, and Jemima’s narrative provides grim confirmation that a young girl growing up without a mother is left extremely vulnerable. After hearing the narrative, Maria reflects that “thinking of Jemima’s peculiar 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” (92). This quotation reveals that Jemima’s narrative is political as well as personal: Maria is not simply moved by empathy but called to reflect on injustice and oppression and think about the shared experience of different individuals.

The lack of a well-defined family unit creates a mood reminiscent of fairy tales in Jemima’s narrative, as she describes being rejected by a cruel stepmother, and denied the love she so desperately craves. However, in many narratives, a young female character would remain virtuous and suffer patiently no matter what she encountered. Here, Wollstonecraft enacts her stated project of depicting more complex female characters instead of the traditional heroines who are “born immaculate […] and act like goddesses of wisdom” (57). She does not shy away from the reality that Jemima becomes selfish, reckless, and willing to do whatever is necessary to take care of herself. While many people would deplore Jemima as coarse and criminal, Wollstonecraft connects her behavior to the context in which she had to learn to survive, with Jemima pointing out that, “I stole now, from absolute necessity […] I was the filching cat, the ravenous dog” (82), showing how degraded and dehumanized she became by comparing herself to animals.

Wollstonecraft is also unflinching in acknowledging the realities of women’s lives, especially working-class women, and that those lives regularly include experiences of rape, abortion, and sex work. These representations, especially the sympathetic light in which Wollstonecraft casts them, would have been radical at the time the novel was written. Despite her difficult past, Jemima never loses her capacity to become a better person, highlighting the novel’s ultimately hopeful perspective on human nature. She is stimulated by exposure to cultivated and intellectual influences during her time as an erudite man’s mistress, reflecting the theme of the Value of Education and Intellectual Pursuits. Jemima recollects that “I now began to read, to beguile the tediousness of my solitude, and to gratify an inquisitive, active mind” (86), and her enthusiasm parallels Maria’s previous eagerness to take solace in reading and writing during her imprisonment. This experience, shared by two very different female characters, strengthens Wollstonecraft’s advocacy for the benefits women reap from education and being encouraged to use and expand their minds.

This experience of engaging intellectually with a community of stimulating companions reveals part of why Jemima may have been so willing to help Darnford and Maria, and why she has bonded with them. Even when Jemima acts in cruel ways, she also feels remorse and guilt. The episode in which she encourages a man to discard his pregnant mistress, leading the other woman to eventually die by suicide, provides a keen insight into how patriarchal systems pit women against one another. Jemima points out, “consider, dear madam, I was famishing, wonder not that I became a wolf!” (89), using the metaphor of a ruthless predator to show how merciless she was in working towards her own desperate interests. As a pregnant and vulnerable working-class woman, Jemima’s rival is in the same situation as her mother once was, and as Jemima herself has been in the past. Nonetheless, Jemima’s lack of agency and options leave her no room to show pity to this other woman, even though she is subsequently haunted by her tragic death. Jemima explains that “I thought of my own state, and wondered how I could be such a monster!” (89), further revealing her sense that, by this point, she had lost touch with her very humanity.

Jemima’s narrative increases the intimacy and bond between her and Maria, leading Jemima to finally agree to find out what has happened to Maria’s infant daughter. The news that the infant has died reveals another example of the cruel consequences of separating mother and child and reflects the theme of Motherhood and the Bond Between Mothers and Daughters. The death also creates an opening for Maria’s retrospective narrative to be inserted into the text. While Jemima told her story orally, reflecting a less educated and lower-class perspective, Maria is presented as an author figure who has had the time to craft and construct her written narrative. Darnford’s eagerness to finally learn his beloved’s history mirrors the reader’s desire to finally learn how Maria has ended up in the asylum. By positioning Maria’s narrative after Jemima’s narrative, Wollstonecraft has already established various kinds of female suffering and prepares for the juxtaposition between women from different classes.

The initial part of Maria’s narrative reveals how an unhappy home life leaves a young woman vulnerable, regardless of her social class. Even though Maria comes from a much wealthier home than Jemima, she experiences similar unhappiness due to being emotionally neglected. Maria explains that girls “too frequently waste their health and spirits attending a dying parent” (102), and this critique of how daughters are suppressed within their families of origin reflects the novel’s broader project of exposing and criticizing patriarchal systems that render women subordinate. Maria’s unhappy home life directly contributes to her making a hasty marriage; by showing that marriage is Maria’s only way to achieve independence and get away from her family home, Wollstonecraft develops her argument about the need for female education, independence, and autonomy. If Maria had been able to find a job and live independently, she would not have been required to trade one unhappy life (with her family of origin) for another one (with her dissolute husband).

George’s name subtly reinforces how Wollstonecraft links patriarchal domination to political tyranny: King George III reigned from 1760 to 1820 and occupied the English throne during both the American and French Revolutions. The name of Maria’s husband thus connects him to tyrannical and absolutist systems of monarchial power and foreshadows how he will expect complete dominance over his wife.

The scene in which George gives Maria a guinea coin creates further foreshadowing. This moment is a key turning point in their romantic relationship, in that it confirms Maria’s romantic delusions about George and encourages her to idealize him as a virtuous and gallant man. Maria reflects that this act “invested my hero with more than mortal beauty” (102); her word choice of “hero” shows that her susceptibility to romance narratives led her to idealize and exaggerate his suitability as a partner. Wollstonecraft’s use of retrospective narration, in which Maria recounts this story looking back, heightens this discrepancy between Maria’s perspective as an innocent and idealized young girl, and her much more pragmatic and even cynical perspective as a more mature woman. This moment is also symbolic: The guinea was a coin minted between 1663 and 1814 in Great Britain, and its name references a region of Western Africa. Much of the gold used in these coins was mined in Africa, and their circulation was connected to both imperialist mining projects and the slave trade. Thus, when George “buys” Maria’s affections with his guinea, he enacts a kind of domination and even a symbolic enslavement of her. Furthering the theme of The False and Deceptive Nature of Romantic Love, this moment shows that when Maria gave her heart to George, she effectively entrapped herself.