Maria - The Female Caleb Williams
"Maria" is an unfinished novel which Wollstonecraft intended to display the cruelty, injustice, and utter lack of personal freedom of women in the late 18th century. Drawing on sources from Rousseau, to her husband William Godwin's "Political Justice" and "Caleb Williams," to her own "Vindication of the Rights of Woman," Wollstonecraft sets up a scenario in which a woman falls prey to the maddening strictures of law. Although it may not initially appear so, "Maria" is very much in the strain of gothic literature. Wollstonecraft takes pains to illustrate that the gothic need not be enacted in castles or by demons, but can be just as horrifying, if not more so, when 'normal' society proves to be an intractable villain itself.

The novel reads like a philosophical treatise, the main action being life stories told by the primary characters, Maria, her mad-house warden Jemima, and her unlikely lover, Henry Darnford, including their digressive running commentaries. As the novel begins, Maria is in the mad-house, deprived of her infant daughter by her greedy husband, George Venables, whom she despises.

As in Godwin's "Caleb Williams," Wollstonecraft does not scruple to pile severe mental anguish upon clear injustices to drive home her points regarding society's treatment of women. Her most vicious attacks are reserved for the law and surprisingly, for women. The law preserves a basis for treating women as perpetual minors, and unfortunately, women, realizing their powerlessness, too often resign themselves to their lot.

Though fragmentary and incomplete, "Maria" has the same kind of power as "Caleb Williams," and the two should be read together for maximum effect. The force of Wollstonecraft's writing comes from the fact that her observations were just, and that she dared to voice them on behalf of all women.

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