Caitlin Brug
English 327
Dr. Coronado
12 March 2016
A Cry for Justice
Women in early American culture discussed issues such as religion, or observing their surroundings in the new world, but there is one thing that they never seem to talk about: themselves. There is one voice, however, from this time period that speaks on behalf of abused and disgruntled women everywhere. Mary Wollstonecraft, best known for her work “A Vindication for the Rights of Women”, is also the author of another less famous, but just as important text: The Wrongs of Woman. Most of the women writers from this era are focused on God and spirituality, so this piece stands out because it is one of the only texts of this time period that questions a woman’s place in society and points out discrepancies between the treatment of men and women. This text displays like none other how they were viewed, how they were treated, and how they felt about it. She tackles issues such as women being considered “hysterical” and argues against the idea that women had no sexual desires. Although Wollstonecraft is an English writer, the settling of America was relatively new, so any observations about the way women were treated would hold true both to England and America. The Wrongs of Woman is a crucial addition to understanding early American culture; through this book, Wollstonecraft deconstructs the errors of a patriarchal society that claimed women had no sexual desires and were inferior to men.
Wollstonecraft lived from 1759-1797 and within her short life, she produced some of the most profound, radical feminist work of her time. She was born in London and her impressive resume includes establishing a school with her sister, working as a governess, translating and advising for Joseph Johnson, and writing, setting her apart as an educated woman willing to create controversy. She is most well-known for her women’s rights activism, proven most famously for her work “A Vindication for the Rights of Woman”. Her passion for feminism stemmed from experiences in her own life; her inspiration for writing the Wrongs of Woman was witnessing her father berate and abuse her mother. History Guide.Org describes her mother as “bullied into a state of wearied servitude” (historyguide.org). This depiction of her beaten down mother reflects in the character of Maria in the Wrongs of Woman. Wollstonecraft was also abandoned by her husband, Gilbert Imlay, and shortly afterwards attempted to kill herself. Thankfully, she was unsuccessful and went on to marry William Godwin, and the two had a child named Mary. Although she recovered from her traumatic situation, Wollstonecraft used both her own experience and what she observed from women around her to construct The Wrongs of Woman, creating an accurate portrayal of abusive relationships and neglect of the female sex. Although she never finished The Wrongs of Woman due to her death in 1797, her novel was published posthumously by her husband, ensuring that her cry for equality between the sexes would ring on for years to come.
The Wrongs of Woman follows the story of Maria, a woman imprisoned to an insane asylum by her husband, who has also taken their child away from her. Maria herself is aware of the ramifications for simply being a woman. She woefully thinks about her child often, not just because she is separated from her baby, but because the child is female. The text states, “Still, she mourned for her child, lamented she was a daughter, and anticipated the aggravated ills of life that her sex rendered almost inevitable, even while dreading she was no more” (Wollstonecraft 76). Maria’s sadness for her child surpasses the misery that she feels for herself; she is afraid that there is no future for her daughter because she is female. This ascertation is based on her own life experiences, which have proven to Maria that being a woman limits opportunities and opens doors to oppression. Wollstonecraft speaks through Maria to the outside world, pointing out injustices in their society while keeping her work within the realm of realistic fiction. She often has Maria interject her own ruminations and thoughts about the treatment of women through a sort of thinking-out-loud scenario. For example, Maria states, “Was not the world a vast prison, and women born slaves?” (Wollstonecraft 79). Maria notes that women do not come into a position of helplessness by their own cause, rather, they are born into it without much choice in the matter. Patricia Cove agrees with the idea that Wollstonecraft portrays her feminist objective through Maria, stating “Wollstonecraft uses [her] female protagonists to negotiate the relationship between sensibility and reason for women who are continually defined by their female biology and supposed excessive emotionalism” (Cove 677). According to Cove, Wollstonecraft gives a voice to female characters who were previously defined only by their bodies and stereotypes. She emphasizes idea that women can be intelligent and discerning and still be, well, women, going against the ideas of her time that women were completely inferior to men. By making these stark observations about the way that the world works Maria, a fictional character sends a strong message about what is actually happening to women.
However, Wollstonecraft does not stop at stark observations. Through the character of Jemimah, Wollstonecraft gives specific examples of, as the title suggests, the wrongs done to women. It turns out that Maria is not the only character in this novel who has been wronged by a domineering society that takes advantage of women: her caretaker at the asylum, Jemimah, has been hurt as well. Chapter five discusses the wrongs that Jemimah has faced in her life, Jemimah briefly covers her father’s abuse of her mother (102), her father’s abuse of her (103), her rape (106), and subsequent self-given abortion (109). Through these scenes, Wollstonecraft proves that it is one thing to discuss the wrongs of women, but displaying them through horrifying imagery truly gets her point across. People can ignore a woman claiming that she has been abused, but to hear her story and feel her emotional distress makes Jemimah’s story so important and powerful. Wollstonecraft carefully uncovered true stories of abused women by visiting asylums, so her stories were not completely made-up, but based on the wrongs that many women actually faced. Although The Wrongs of Woman is a fictional novel, it is a well-researched, realistic text grounded in truth. Jemimah’s story is so disturbing because it occurs frequently women in Wollstonecraft’s time period, proving Wollstonecraft capable of making a powerful statement through a piece of fiction.
The novel continues after Jemimah’s story with Maria’s own life tale, and although she has experienced just as many injustices as Jemimah, the part of Maria’s story that Wollstonecraft seems to dwell on is the aspect of hysteria. Maria, of course is imprisoned in the asylum because her husband believes her to be insane. But the story proves to be more complicated than that: Maria’s husband shows himself to be an adulterous, spiteful gambler who cares little for Maria or their marriage, so she decides to leave him, and that is how he decides she is insane. She states that she is “hunted like a criminal from place to place, though I contracted no debts, and demanded no maintenance- yet as the laws of sanction such proceeding, and make women the property of their husbands” (Wollstonecraft 196). Her husband chases her down because he believes that she belongs to him, and any indication that she does not want to be with him is proof of insanity. She is like a “criminal” because she does not want to be a wife or mother, making her fall outside the roles given to women. Thus, she is not insane because she is out of her mind or acts irrationally, but because he said so. She clearly proves that she is not crazy, which is reinforced by Cove when she states, “These acts of writing and public speech allow her to develop her faculty of reason through discourse, asserting her difference from the mad and consolidating her political identity based in the rational radicalism she has cultivated” (Cove 681). Although Maria is considered mad by the male characters in the story, she refutes that belief through her writing and storytelling. She makes it clear that she is not crazy, but merely a wronged woman: a representation of so many other women in society oppressed by their husbands with no way out.
Maria continues by pointing out the discrepancies between men and women when they wish to leave their spouse behind. She states: “The situation of a woman separated from her husband, is undoubtedly very different from that of a man who has left his wife. He, with lordly dignity, has shaken off a clog...is thought sufficient to secure his reputation from taint… A woman , on the contrary, resigning what is termed her natural protector (Though he never was so, but in name) is despised and shunned” (Wollstonecraft 157). She claims that no matter the situation, women will always be blamed for divorce or separation, while men are praised. This leaves no choice for women with abusive husbands; she can either stay with the husband that she hates, or be hated for leaving her husband/provider. The man, on the other hand, is free to do as he pleases; according to Wollstonecraft, marriage only matters from the man’s point of view, leaving women to comply to their husband’s every need. Wollstonecraft does not just describe Maria’s situation through her story, but other women, such as Maria’s landlady as well, whose husband is a drunk who beats her, even when she is pregnant (170-171). By using multiple women as examples, Wollstonecraft displays that this sort of treatment of women is common and accepted, using fictional women to portray the typical abuse that many members of the female sex face on a daily basis.
Wollstonecraft’s problems with society’s view of women is not just with how women are treated, but with what they can and cannot do as well. She uses a court scene to depict how different women and men’s sexuality were viewed, as well. Men are free to have sex with whomever they pleased with little to no ramifications, while women who had free reign over their sex lives are viewed as whores. Women could face punishment for leaving their cheating husbands, as Maria attempts to, but only the husband’s opinion matters in a courtroom. Maria states to a judge that she should be able to leave her neglectful husband, and he replies that it was “fallacy of letting women plead their feelings, as an excuse for the violation of the marriage vow” (Wollstonecraft 198). This judge completely disregards Maria’s opinion that her husband was terrible to her, and solely focuses on the fact that she broke their marriage by leaving. He does not give her a chance to explain herself, but cares only that she left her husband. By stating that the court of law itself was sexist, Wollstonecraft proves that the way women were treated was unfair; men used the excuse of “marriage” to do whatever they want, while women were slaves to their husbands demands, getting written off as crazy when they refused to comply. Thus, women were not allowed free will, and Wollstonecraft’s novel worked to change that.
This text is absolutely crucial to understanding the role of women in eighteenth century America. There are little to no documents written about the freedom of women’s sexuality and rights, so Wollstonecraft’s work is a voice for oppressed women in both Britain and America. She challenges the way society views women; as maternal figures and nothing more. It is a widespread belief that women who do not love their husbands or want children have something mentally wrong with them. Wollstonecraft argues this viewpoint through the perspective of battered women made to look crazy by the men they are married to, thus displaying the power of men and husbands in a male dominated society. Women, such as her character of Maria, are viewed as sexless vessels for the purpose of having children and she proposes that women may want to have sex simply because they enjoy it, something that the general society surrounding her would have frowned upon. Through her novel, she expresses her belief that the notion that women of no sexual appetite or desires is utterly ridiculous, making The Wrongs of Woman an important milestone for women’s sexual rights. In her era, the idea that women were equivalent to men was a radical notion, so Wollstonecraft’s works stand out as a revolution for women’s rights in the 1700s. The Wrongs of Woman is an important depiction of cultural norms and viewpoints in early American culture, giving a voice to oppressed and ignored women and pointing out injustice between the treatment of the sexes.
Works Cited
Cove Patricia “'The Walls of Her Prison': Madness, Gender, and Discursive Agency in Eliza
Fenwick's Secrecy and Mary Wollstonecraft's The Wrongs of Woman.” European
Romantic Review 23.6 (2012): 671-687. Web.
Kries, Steven. Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History: Mary Wollstonecraft,
1759-1797. The History Guide, 13 Apr. 2012. Web. 21 Mar. 2016.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. The Wrongs of Woman. London: Oxford University Press. 1976. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment