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    Mary: A Fiction
    Mary: A Fiction
    Mary: A Fiction
    Ebook129 pages1 hour

    Mary: A Fiction

    By Mary Wollstonecraft

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateApr 1, 1974
    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

      The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mary, by Mary Wollstonecraft

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

      almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

      re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

      with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: Mary

      A Fiction

      Author: Mary Wollstonecraft

      Release Date: July 24, 2005 [eBook #16357]

      Language: English

      Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

      ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY***

      E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Janet Blenkinship,

      and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

      (http://www.pgdp.net/)

      Transcriber's Note: The author is Mary Wollstonecraft. The Table of Contents was added by the transcriber.

      MARY,

      A

      FICTION.

      L'exercice des plus sublimes vertus éleve et nourrit le génie.—Rousseau.

      LONDON,

      PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD.

      MDCCLXXXVIII.

      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:

      [A] Rousseau.

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

      MARY

      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, and the circumstance on which it hung, the hornet settling on the sleeping lover's face. What a heart-rending accident! She planted, in imitation of those susceptible souls, a rose bush; but there was not a lover to weep in concert with her, when she watered it with her tears.—Alas! Alas!

      If my readers would excuse the sportiveness of fancy, and give me credit for genius, I would go on and tell them such tales as would force the sweet tears of sensibility to flow in copious showers down beautiful cheeks, to the discomposure of rouge, &c. &c. Nay, I would make it so interesting, that the fair peruser should beg the hair-dresser to settle the curls himself, and not interrupt her.

      She had besides another resource, two most beautiful dogs, who shared her bed, and reclined on cushions near her all the day. These she watched with the most assiduous care, and bestowed on them the warmest caresses. This fondness for animals was not that kind of attendrissement which

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