57 pages • 1 hour read
Mary WollstonecraftMaria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1798A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Rousseau’s Novel (Symbol)
During the pivotal time in which she begins to be fascinated by Darnford, Maria is reading the 1761 novel Julie, or the New Heloise by the French writer and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This choice of text is a significant symbolic choice. Rousseau’s novel was extremely successful; it featured a sentimental plot in which a young woman falls in love with her tutor, even though the two of them are doomed to never be together. Rousseau’s title and plot allude to the famous medieval lovers, Heloise (or Eloise) and Abelard, who likewise pursued an illicit love affair that ended in tragedy and separation. Rousseau’s novel is an epistolary novel (recounted through letters), which functions as a further allusion to Eloise and Abelard, some of whose letters have survived, and provides a thematic connection, as Maria and Darnford get to know one another by initially writing notes back and forth.
Rousseau’s novel symbolizes how cultural norms and expectations shape individual behavior, and how gendered constructions of romance and femininity left women vulnerable to making poor choices and relying on emotion rather than reason. In Rousseau’s novel, the heroine is governed by sentiment and passion, and many subsequent works of literature likewise explored themes of sentiment and sensibility (deep emotions). Because of this context, Maria is easily moved by her emotions, sensitive, and prone to flights of fancy; these characteristics make her susceptible to falling in love with the wrong men and then suffering deeply when her romantic fantasies are proven false. Through the symbolism of Rousseau’s novel, Wollstonecraft hints that these tendencies are not a reflection of Maria's (or any other woman’s) innate character, but rather, they are shaped by the cultural and social context in which they shape their lives. Maria’s consumption of a sentimental novel as she naively falls in love with a man who will turn out to be disappointing implicitly asks readers to question if she might have made different choices if she had a wider range of role models and narratives available to her.
The Asylum
The foreboding asylum where Maria and Darnford are both imprisoned is an important setting in the novel and also establishes a gloomy, oppressive, and even terrifying mood. The asylum and madness are both Gothic literature tropes that relied both on a misunderstanding and fear of mental illness as well as the inhumane and violent conditions in real asylums. In some ways, the text reinforces the trope; Maria consistently assesses others as rational or irrational without knowing anything about them, insisting that people she likes must be there by mistake and reacting with horror when someone acts erratically. In other ways, Wollstonecraft presents the asylum as a simple fact of the time: They functioned as prisons rather than hospitals, and women were often sent there for behaving outside of prescribed gender roles.
The asylum is vividly described in Maria’s recollections of first arriving there when she recounts seeing a “gloomy pile […] half in ruins [with] mouldering steps” (135). In addition to its atmospheric purpose, the asylum symbolizes the gendered oppression experienced by women and women’s complicity in their own subjugation within the patriarchy. The asylum physically constrains Maria, but she has been symbolically imprisoned long before due to her unhappy marriage and the lack of opportunities for a woman to lead an independent life. The stone walls and barred gates symbolize the barriers and restrictions she has already encountered. Moreover, the asylum, as a place where individuals deteriorate due to isolation, reflects how an individual’s own thoughts and beliefs can become a source of oppression. While Maria challenges many of the social constraints faced by women, she furthers her own subjugation by pursuing delusions of romantic love and sentimentality, rather than freedom. Although Maria remains trapped in the asylum for a long time, she and Jemima are able to virtually walk out once they decide to escape. This symbolism shows that oppression is partially a state of mind; once women like Maria and Jemima decide to disregard social conventions and expectations, they can largely reclaim freedom, even if it does come with a cost.
Excessive Consumption of Alcohol (motif)
George Venables and several other minor male characters are repeatedly shown engaging in the excessive consumption of alcohol, creating a motif in the novel in which male characters drink to excess. This motif undermines any authority or virtue these characters might possess, and also reveals that they are unworthy of possessing power over other people (especially their wives) since they cannot even be relied on to display self-control and rationality. Beginning early in their marriage, George regularly and openly drinks to excess, provoking Maria’s disdain and disgust. Other characters, such as the shopkeeper with whom Maria lodges after she flees from George, suffer at the hands of men who also drink to excess. This motif subtly undermines the widespread contemporary argument that men deserved access to greater power and authority since they were primarily rational, while women were considered primarily emotional and therefore not to be trusted. By showing men regularly becoming intoxicated, Wollstonecraft challenges assumptions about male authority and highlights their fallibility. This motif also provides a parallel to Wollstonecraft’s critique of feminine sentimentality, revealing her mistrust of anything that robs individuals of their ability to think rationally and critically.
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