Perhaps the most striking thing about the two novellas collected here is the gap that exists between them. Mary was published in 1788, The Wrongs of Woman in 1798 – a ten-year lacuna in which everything changed for their author. When Mary came out, Mary Wollstonecraft was completely unknown, a struggling writer living alone and with almost no experience of close relationships outside her own family. By the time Wrongs of Woman was published, she had become a famous polemicist and social reformer...

“What virtuous woman thought of her feelings?—It was her duty to love and obey the man chosen by her parents and relations, who were qualified by their experience to judge better for her, than she could for herself.” Important? Yes. Enjoyable? Partially, but there is a reason Mary Wollstonecraft is better known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman than for these novels. MaryThis felt very young (written at 18 while she was a governess), but with some sweet romantic bits.She draws a clear

"Why was I not born a man, or why was I born at all?" As much as I love Mary Wollstonecraft as a person, and as much as I revere A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, I really did not enjoy studying her fiction. Both of the texts in this collection essentially ran the same: same plot, same themes, same despair on the part of all womankind. They were both a bit melodramatic and a little too lamenting for my tastes. For modern feminism's sake, I wish I could be more sympathetic, but I unfortuna

"The Wrongs of Woman" is not a good novel. But it's an amazing novel in many ways. It's Wollstonecraft's attempt to incorporate the ideas from the "Vindication" into novel form. The prose are histrionic and overzealous, though I think that is probably intentional for the sake of irony. The novel itself is incomplete, but includes outlines for the remainder, some of which seem to conflict. Overall an extremely fun, and short read.

Having read Vindication I was rather excited to have found this on the shelves of my local library, particularly since I hadn't realised that she had written non-fiction works on the subject of women's rights. Each of the two stories included reflect Wollstonecraft's views that treatment of the time was far below what it should be and that this has negative influences and effects not just on the women themselves but all those around them, men and women alike. But they also show that women did an...

A fascinating look at a political and philosophal thinker's fiction; also, an interesting look at Mary Wollstonecraft's authorial maturation between her early and late work. Mary: A Fiction is a little clumsy and highly reflective of the contemporary literary tradition, but valuable in comparison to ideas expressed in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The later, unfinished novel, The Wrongs of Woman is also interesting to read as a "sequel" to Rights of Woman but also a more sophisticated wo...

Mary Wollstonecraft's work put a basis for feminism. Like I said in my review for A Vindication of the Rights of Womanhe's one of the first feminist philosophers and as such, she's inspiring. However, the reason why the book I just mentioned is her most well known book is quite obvious after reading this.I found it good at some times and rather tedious at others. This book has two stories: Mary is a novel that even the author didn't consider as very good a few years after its publication. While

I had already read the Wrongs of Women (Which I loved and gave 5 stars to) so this review is just for the short story Mary. I thought this was a lovely tragic story about a very lonely woman adrift in her time. The problem with it though was a problem I have with a lot of 18th century English literature in that it felt very disconnected. While the author would often write about what Mary was thinking and her dreams there felt like there was a huge layer between reading the story and what was act...

I had the sense that Wollstonecraft was really struggling with writer’s block for this one. After her wonderful inflammatory polemics (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is especially brilliant) she turned to the ‘sentimental novel’ to popularize her social critiques. Sadly, it doesn’t work.It’s important to note this is an unfinished manuscript – and it shows. Narratives are literally broken off mid-sentence and the whole thing is very disjointed, making for a hard read. Wollstonecraft can cl...

I haven’t read anything by Mary Wollstonecraft before. She is famous for her the Vindication of the Rights of Women which was published in 1792. These are two of her short stories about 2 different women.The first one Mary: A Fiction is a story about a girl who didn’t find love in her childhood and seeks to find some in the world during her later years. She searches for humanity and goodness around her but only finds it in nature. The people always disappoint her. She sees death over and over ag...

Mary Wollstonecraft is renowned for her contribution to promoting the rights of women, but not as well known for her works of fiction, and for good reason. For two good reasons, in fact. Firstly both of the works in this collection were left unfinished. Mary has a beginning, middle and end, but seems short, and ends abruptly. The Wrongs of Women was left unfinished at the time of Wollstonecraft’s death.The second reason is that Wollstonecraft was not an especially great writer. Both books are on...

One of my clients gave this to me as a "going away present" because I am abandoning him. He also told me, when I said I was leaving, that he "wasn't surprised," because "most people get tired of working with the poor and want to go do something more lucrative and interesting."When I asked him what had made me think this was a good thing to give me, he said, "because you women always want to read some kind of woman book, about WOMEN!" Then he gave me a twenty minute lecture about Mary Shelley, an...

"Why was I not born a man, or why was I born at all?"This quote from the end of the first volume or "Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman" seemed a good one for summing up the book. We are introduced to the eponymous character as she finds herself in a lunatic asylum, having been thrown in there by her corrupt husband. Her story is revealed to us through the memoir she has written her daughter (who has been taken away from her and subsequently dies). Through the telling of her own story and that of th...

Mary and The Wrongs of Woman are two short stories, with the latter being unfinished. They both revolve around the rights of women during the 18th century and how biased the world is against them. The first story Mary is quite simple and details Mary's woes. She is forced into marriage and has to deal with a large amount of grief and uncertainty. Mary explores many topics but at times is boring and drags.However, once you start reading The Wrongs of Woman (which was written around 10 years after...

Sweet, propaganda in novel form and one of the earliest feminist books around. The sad life of the title character gives Woolstonecraft a chance to visit the ills and repression women faced in society in the 1800s and I love the polemics. A lot of people ignorantly state that good novels shouldn't have political agendas, but fail to see that not having a point of view is also taking a side. I would like to see more writers doing what Wollstonecraft did so long ago and start writing social prote

I should probably start this review with a confession. I only read "Maria, or the Wrongs of Women" in this volume. I will probably return to read "Mary," but at the present time I was mostly interested in the second novel in this volume (mainly because who doesn't love a good story about a heroine trapped in a madhouse?)This novel, though a couple hundred years old now, really pulled at my heartstrings. Maria is the product of a bad marriage and a nearly as bad upbringing. Her mother hates her b...

The first story is Mary: A Fiction and it is about the life of a girl who wishes for someone to love her or show her some kind of affection. It's a depressing story but great nonetheless. The second story is a fragment due to Mary Wollstonecraft's untimely death. It is Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman and boy, is it ever the wrongs of women done by both men and women. It is the story of a woman named Maria who gets thrown into an insane asylum by her libertine husband who is just interested in

As an early feminist writer, I thought Wollstencraft was rather clever framing her feminist viewpoints within a "gothic" story. If the assertions that gothic novels were mainly women's reading in that time period is true, then she did a good thing by making sure women would read the important things she had to say about their treatment in the story. It's a little rough going at first, but once you begin reading beneath the surface and understand the background to it, it is easier to digest. Woll...

This is a very important, protofeminist novel that acts as a fictional extension of Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft exposes the social and legal institutions that prevented women from agency in the Romantic period.

Very worth it the read. The Wrongs of Woman is immensely better than Mary. Her writing seems undeveloped and sentimental in Mary. She seems better developed, more thought-out, and much more focused on broad issues not personal issues.