Mary Wollstonecraft Books

"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.

The story of 'Mary' is all about moods.
Being badly treated by her husband, Mary flees in the arms of her friend Ann. After Ann's death, Mary meets another friend, Henry, who also dies. In a new confrontation with her husband, Mary longs for Heaven, 'a world where there is neither marrying, nor giving in marriage.'

The overall sentiment in this book is 'pity mistaken for love'.
Although Mary promises herself to 'do anything rather than be a slave', her attitude to life is resignation: 'I cannot argue against instincts.' 'Happiness was not to be founded on earth, for life is a dream, a frightful one.'

Against the sorry state of the majority of the English population (hunger, want of education, poverty, misery and dirt) or the hypocrisy of religion ('Many prayers may fall from the lips without purifying the heart'), her only reaction is melancholy: 'I have been wounded by ingratitude.'
There is also an undertone of fear of sexuality and pregnancies: 'love leads to madness.'

Mary is a victim of life. She doesn't live. She is lived.

This story is certainly not one of the highlights of English literature. Its plot is poor and it doesn't have the biting aggression of Mary Wollstonecraft's other story 'Maria'.
But it is still a worth-while read.

Having been fortunate enough to study under Dr Botting when at university, I am in a position to have heard many of the theories espoused in this book as tutorial topics. Here, of course, there is a variety, but nevertheless the substance is all reasonably similar: that the treaties of Gothic apply to aspects of both the cultural and social infrastructure without consideration to either restraint or boundary, beyond a notation of where the parameters are breached.

Dr Botting's major difficulty is his insistence on writing in the nude. It became a regular talking point, for while I was at Lancaster he would sit starkers in his (glass fronted) office, writing furiously, reading furiously or smoking furiously, or all three, and he would often pass many hours in this fashion, and one would only ever hear a sound from him when some stray ember of ash found its way downwards, with the result that a catatonic cry of "yaroo! my knadgers!" could be heard all across Lancaster's picturesque campus.

It is indeed a compliment to his sturdy Northern built that Dr Botting's nudity did not make him a laughing stock. Indeed, I know of several people who were in no little way intimidated by his, erm, intellectual presence, and did not feel that they could endure his presence for an entire class.

Of course, there is more to Frankenstein that Fred Botting's nudity, although many have confused the two. It is a much observed factor of Mary Shelley's writing that the juxtaposition of humanity and ignorance, or inhumanity and great learning, offer explanations of the outside world.

Personally, I found this a worthy addition to the case book series, which began with a series of essays on Shakespearean plays. Frankenstein may not be the funniest text of the Romantic period, but it does attract the hairest professors.

I had to read this book for summer reading. The rough storyline is that Frankenstein has created life from dead body parts. In horror, he rejects the creature, and the creation vows revenge on Frankenstein. Considering the idea of the book, it sounds interesting. The writing, however, was extremely boring. It took me a few chapters to get into the book, and then once I was a little intrigued, I would be bored all over again. Mary Shelley seems to write on endlessly about things that are insignificant to the plot, complicating basic understanding. On top of that, things that I thought would be important, such as Frankenstein's wedding, were summed up in about 2 sentences. The emphasis in her book seemed to be off-center, and thus it was very hard to pay attention. The book itself is very short, I believe only 200 pages or so, but it felt like it was much longer. I pity you if you are forced to read this for school (which many are), and I do not recommend this book for leisure reading--there are many other, much better written "classics" out there.

This book starts out intriguing. The main character is riddled with grief over a horrible thing she did years ago and now she's in her mid 30's and dying of old age (...?) and she decides to bear her soul to a priest. So, sprinkled among long descriptions on how to make soup and harvest plumbs among other menial household tasks my imagination has always been satisfied to skip over, we have a basic plot surrounding two unmarried pregnant girls. Honestly, although I did not expect the twist to be what it was, it just didn't add up to anything in my mind worth telling a story about. At the end of the book, after our first main character gets this big secret off her chest, she feels better and goes back to doing housework.
Basically, the writing was dry, the plot was empty, the characters unappealing. I was compelled to find out what the big secret was and after that, the only thing that kept me reading was the fact that I only had three pages left to go. Waste of time book. Bad.

It was very boring and i hated i

Well, I am normally an avid fan of the paranormal and I really thought that this book would be an exciting read. I was wrong. The only good thing about this book is the cool cover picture and the fact that it includes a reprint of the original Frankenstein story by Mary Shelly. Otherwise, this book was a phenomenal waste of money. I didnt even read it, I paged through it and nothing stirred an interest.