Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Mary: A Fiction
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love eighteenth century fiction, feeling-filled stories and the roots of feminist writing, with friendship, marriage and a woman's search for independence at their heart.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
Mary: A Fiction is a short novel by Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1788. She wrote it while working as a governess in Ireland, before she became known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The book follows a young Englishwoman who has feeling, intelligence and money, and who finds that none of these gives her control over her own life.
Wollstonecraft says in her preface that she wants to show the mind of a woman with thinking powers, unlike the helpless heroines of the popular novels of her day. Mary is not rescued by a suitor, and she does not win her happiness by being agreeable. She looks for love and meaning in friendship, in reading, in nature and in charity. You get a story about a woman's inner life, and a quiet argument about how girls were raised and married off. The first key point is Mary's childhood, where her ideas about love and duty begin.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A neglected girl learns to feel deeplyFree
- 2Friendship with Ann becomes her first great love
- 3A marriage arranged without her consent
- 4A voyage to Lisbon and a new companion
- 5What the story is really about
- 6How the book is told and how to read it
Punkt 1 von 6
A neglected girl learns to feel deeply
The novel opens with Mary's family. Her father is a violent and careless man who spends his money on his own pleasures. Her mother is an invalid by habit, a woman of fashion who has read too many sentimental novels and takes more interest in her lapdogs than in her children.
The mother has eyes for one child only, Mary's elder brother, who will inherit the family property. Mary is left to herself. She has no teacher in love, so she learns to feel on her own, and she learns it from books, from the countryside and from the poor families around her home.
This lonely childhood gives her a warm heart and a strong mind. It also gives her a hunger for affection that no one at home will feed. She seeks a person she can love without reserve.
Wollstonecraft sets this up carefully. The reader sees that the wish for a real attachment is not a weakness but a natural need. It becomes the engine of the whole book, and it is also what leaves Mary open to pain later on.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
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Questions about Mary: A Fiction
What is Mary: A Fiction about?
It follows Mary, a neglected daughter who is married off young to a man she barely knows. She finds love in her friendship with Ann and later in a bond with Henry, and the book questions how women are raised and married.
When was Mary: A Fiction written?
Wollstonecraft published it in 1788, when she was working as a governess in Ireland. It was her first novel and came before her famous Vindication of the Rights of Woman by several years.
Is Mary: A Fiction autobiographical?
Scholars see traces of Wollstonecraft's own life in it, especially her neglect at home and her close friendship with Fanny Blood. The story and its heroine are still fiction, not a record of her life.
Is Mary: A Fiction a feminist novel?
Readers often call it an early feminist novel because its heroine thinks, feels and acts for herself, and because it criticises arranged marriage and the poor education of girls. It comes before the word feminist existed.
Is Mary: A Fiction hard to read?
The language is plain by eighteenth century standards.