Mary Wollstonecraft novel Mary A Fiction— Genre, Gender & Feminism— 18th Century Literature ANALYSIS

hello and welcome to close reading classic literature with me dr octavia cox today i'm going to be talking about the absolutely fabulous mary wollstonecraft often thought of as the mother of feminism i'm going to be analyzing and close reading her early novella as we would call it published in 1788 and i'm going to draw on her feminist tract a very important text in the history of feminism a vindication of the rights of woman which was published in 1792 so four years after the text that i'm going to be primarily focusing on but in mary of fiction many of the feminist seeds that we see later in a vindication of the rights of woman are sewn so i think it's helpful to draw on the later text to help illuminate the earlier one in particular i'm going to be examining the preface to marry a fiction as walter craft calls it the advertisement i'm going to focus on genre so how wollstonecraft describes the genre that she uses and why it matters that she describes it in the way that she does that she calls it mary a fiction i'm then going to move on to look at the figure of the heroine and how heroines were expected to be and how they were represented in the 18th century so i want to see how woltencraft sets her own heroine mary against and in contrast to expected norms in the late 18th century and i'm then going to close read the short preface throughout i'm going to keep in mind how this relates to ideas of gender and what we might call proto-feminism proto because there are some aspects of watercraft's work that feminists nowadays from the 1970s onwards might see as somewhat problematic i don't really have time to go into those today but suffice to say that we can generally call worstercraft a proto-feminist remember if you like my channel do please subscribe it means that you'll see my new weekly videos when they're uploaded and let me know if you like the video by hitting the thumbs up i'm going to start by reading through the whole of mary wollstonecraft's advertisement in delineating the heroine of this fiction the author attempts to develop a character different from those generally portrayed this woman is neither a clarissa a lady g nor a sophie it would be vain to mention the various modifications of these models as it would to remark how widely artists wander from nature when they copy the originals of great masters they catch the gross parts but the subtle spirit evaporates and not having the just ties affectation disgusts when grace was expected to charm those compositions only have power to delight and carry us willing captives where the soul of the author is exhibited and animates the hidden springs lost in a pleasing enthusiasm they live in the scenes they represent and do not measure their steps in a beaten track solicitors to gather expected flowers and bind them in a wreath according to the prescribed rules of art these chosen few wish to speak for themselves and not to be an echo even of the sweetest sounds or the reflector of the most sublime beams the paradise they ramble in must be of their own creating or the prospect soon grows insipid and not varied by vivifying principle fades and dies in an artless tale without episodes the mind of a woman who has thinking powers is displayed the female organs have been thought too weak for this arduous employment and experience seems to justify the assertion without arguing physically about possibilities in a fiction such a being may be allowed to exist whose grandeur is derived from the operations of its own faculties not subjugated to opinion but drawn by the individual from the original source i'm going to start by considering genre so genre is the kind or the type or the classification of a text in this case i'm going to be thinking about the classification the genre of the text that wallstrom craft writes and how she delineates which category she thinks it falls under so as we can see from the title page the text is called is titled mary a fiction and that subtitle a fiction was odd and unusual in the late 18th century that wasn't a familiar title so you won't have really encountered it elsewhere because it was not often used wollstonecraft is doing something odd and unusual she doesn't for example call it a novel we are perfectly happy today to refer to mary as a novel neither does she call it a history and these two terms novel and history would have been far more expected at the time of publication so why doesn't worldcraft use these classifications and now i want to think about the term novel and i'm going to do this by looking at wollstonecraft's vindication of the rights of woman this is from chapter 4 subtitled observations on the state of degradation to which woman is reduced by various causes and many novels in the 18th century were written as if they were for women only although of course men did read them too but this is what warsaw craft says novels music poetry and gallantry all tend to make women the creatures of sensation and their character is thus formed during the time they are acquiring accomplishments so basically their teenage years the only improvement they are excited by their station in society to acquire this overstretched sensibility naturally relaxes the other powers of the mind and prevents intellect from attaining that sovereignty which it ought to attain to render a rational creature useful to others and content with its own station for the exercise of the understanding as life advances is the only method pointed out by nature to calm the passions novels encourage sensation and this over stretched sensibility acquired by sensation relaxes the powers of the mind prevents intellect from attaining sovereignty so the argument here is that intellect should rule over sensation and sensibility it should be sovereign so novels inhibit readers primarily women from being rational creatures novels do not exercise the understanding but exercise the passions and warston craft wants to write something which exercises the understanding essentially the argument here is that novels promote the passions over reason this is an example of a self-proclaimed novel this is eliza hayward's love in excess or the fatal inquiry a novel published in 1719 and it was very popular novel when it was published so you can tell from the very title as with mary a fiction the title here love in excess that it's going to be ott it's about excess passion and female desire it is not about rational creatures and it really really doesn't pretend to be either it's also interesting i think to note that the genre the term novel is the largest thing on the title page what you're drawn to on the title page is the very fact that it's a novel and because of texts like eliza hayward's love in excess and others before and throughout the 18th century the term novel gathered these slightly scandalous connotations to circumvent the scandalous connotations of the term or the genre novel later 18th century texts often use the term history instead and history implies a certain claim to reality and a certain claim to facts and events as they have actually happened apparently at least and here are two very very popular examples by samuel richardson who was the most popular writer of what we would now call novels in the middle of the 18th century but as you can see richardson does not call them novels he classifies them as histories so we have clarissa or the history of a young lady comprehending the most important concerns of private life and particularly showing the distresses that may attend the misconduct of both parents and children in relation to marriage and also the history of sir charles granderson in a series of letters published from the originals by the editor of pamela and clarissa so these two texts really present themselves as biographies of the central character histories of the life of the central character and history is used in these 18th century novels really for truth claims so clarissa talks about the history of a young lady concerning private life so it's as though this is her real private life that is being narrativized that is being presented to readers similarly in granderson it says that it is published from a series of letters published from the originals the originals existing in real life and then this text being a gathering of those real life letters those apparently real life letters on both it doesn't say written by samuel richardson it says by the editor of pamela and clarissa so richardson presents himself as an editor of real life letters rather than as the inventor of fiction so returning again then to wollstonecraft i want to think about the significance of her categorizing her novella as a fiction why does it matter that wilson craft classifies her text as fiction fiction nowadays is a very familiar literary term we're all familiar with the category of fiction indeed all prose writing really is divided into fiction or non-fiction into that which is made up and that which is apparently not made up and apparently deals in facts but richardson for example in charles granderson really presents the text as non-fiction it claims to be fact based it claims to be factual so the idea that we have that we're very comfortable with of fiction as a literary category had not yet been really fully established and we can see that when we look for example at samuel johnson's dictionary from the mid-18th century so from 1755 this is his definition of fiction so the three definitions are the act of feigning or inventing the thing feigned or invented and the third definition a falsehood a lie none of these three definitions define fiction as a literary genre we can see that things are inching towards the acceptance of fiction within literature through the quotation provided by john dryden so john dryden's quote says fiction is the essence of poetry as well as of painting there is a resemblance in one of human bodies things and actions which are not real and in the other of a true story by a fiction in other words we're moving towards the idea although it's not yet defined as such but we're moving towards the idea that literature can be both fictional and truthful there is a peculiar conceit then in wollstonecraft's title wollstonecraft's mary a fiction subconsciously draws attention to itself in johnson's words as a faint an invention a falsehood a lie why does wollstonecraft do that well all will become clear at the end of the advertisement and i think it's worth noting here that it's particularly ironic because mary wollstonecraft titles this text mary that there are in fact many autobiographical elements within this text and it's drawn from her actual real-life experiences despite the fact that she calls it a fiction and that's unlike a heroine like clarissa who is an entirely idealized image of womanhood constructed in the mind of samuel richardson which brings me on to the depiction of the heroine how does wollstonecraft set her own heroine apart from other typical 18th century heroines walter craft draws attention to mary as a heroine of fiction in the very opening of the text so this is the opening line of chapter one mary the heroine of this fiction so it's not just in the advertisement that the fictionality of the heroine mary is explicitly drawn to the attention of readers it's in the very opening line of the text itself the main body of the text and it's in the very opening line of the advertisement too you cannot escape that mary wollstonecraft is drawing attention to the fictionality of her heroine in delineating the heroine of this fiction the author attempts to develop a character different from those generally portrayed you'll notice also that mary woltencraft refers to herself as an author unlike richardson who had referred to himself as an editor this woman is neither a clarissa a lady grandison so that's harriet byron who's the heroine of mr charles granderson nor a sophie and that refers to jean-jacques rousseau so that's wilson craft's own footnote there so i'm now going to move on very quickly to look at what wollstonecraft would later write about rousseau's sophie in a vindication of the rights of women and incidentally walter craft does talk too about richardson's clarissa in a vindication of the rights of women if you're interested in going and having a look at that for yourselves but this is what she says about rousseau the character of sophie comes from russo's emil or on education which was first published in french in 1762 published very quickly thereafter in english and went through many many editions in the later half of the 18th century as a really really popular text and this is what wollstonecraft says and this is in chapter five animate versions so that means sort of criticisms on some of the writers who have rendered women objects of pity ordering on contempt i shall begin with russo and give a sketch of the character of women in his own words interspersing comments and reflections sophia says russo should be as perfect a woman as emilius is a man and to render her so it is necessary to examine the character which nature has given to the sex one of rousseau's central arguments is to do with the natural character of women and if you want to create a perfect woman then you have to draw on those natural characteristics you have to push those natural characteristics to their most perfect extreme and then you will have a perfect woman he then proceeds to prove it's a bit of sarcasm i think there in the word proof he then begins to prove that women ought to be weak and passive because she has less bodily strength than man and from hence infers that she was formed to please and to be subject to him and that it is her duty to render herself agreeable to her master this being the grand end of her existence but wollstonecraft's heroine is not a sophie explicitly not a sophie she is not weak and passive she knows her own mind and she is not formed to please men mary indeed is disgusted by her husband and does not try really to please her husband at all so neither mary the heroine and this is also important neither does the narrative voice consider it to be mary's duty to render herself agreeable to her master or even indeed that her husband is her master he's not really presented as her master either and it's important that the narrative voice as well as the heroine are both on board with that position because often in conservative novels of the late 18th century early 19th century you'd have a contrast between the heroine and the narrative voice so the heroine might go against the status quo but the narrative voice throughout the novel kind of chips away at the heroine and presents the heroine as being silly or a fool or unwise for going against the typical status quo but in mary a fiction the narrative voice and mary the heroine are aligned in their outlook and that's fundamental crucial to understanding the text itself mary woltoncraft would later write in a vindication of the rights of women that i wish to see women neither heroines nor brutes but reasonable creatures so women should be neither heroines that is they shouldn't have a kind of false education or affectation and neither should they be brutes neither should they have no education or be mere animals and you'll remember that a meal subtitled on education it's a text about how sophie ought to be educated in order to make her the perfect woman but wollstonecraft doesn't want a heroine or a brute so a falsely educated woman or a non-educated woman she wants reasonable creatures women educated with reason wolton craft then intends to portray a new kind of heroine one who is a reasonable creature in delineating the heroine of this fiction the author attempts to develop a character different from those generally portrayed i'm now going to apply this to the whole of the rest of the preface of the advertisement it would be vain to mention the various modifications of these models as it would to remark how widely artists wander from nature when they copy the originals of great masters other writers when writing women copy the models of a clarissa or a sophie so they wander from nature such heroines are in fact unnatural despite the claims to truth they catch the gross parts but the subtle spirit evaporates so the obvious parts they gross parts of a woman the outline of a woman is captured but not the natural inner workings or the subtle spirits as walter craft calls it and not having the just ties affectation disgusts when grace was expected to charm so such heroines are not just representations of women and because readers have no just ties no connection with them they disgust rather than charm we're told that apparently these heroines ought to charm us but they don't for wolvestercraft instead their affectation disgusts her they are mere affectation rather than depicting a just or a true kind of grace those compositions only have power to delight sensation and carry us willing captives where the soul of the author is exhibited and animates the hidden springs lost in a pleasing enthusiasm again the idea of sensation lost that you that such readers lose themselves in their enthusiasms they're misguided they live in the scenes they represent and do not measure their steps in a beaten track solicitors to gather expected flowers and bind them in a wreath according to the prescribed rules of art so delight and pleasing enthusiasm they're focusing on their sensations so much so that they become willing captives such novels novels like clarissa keep women enslaved to sensation they become lost in enthusiasm readers don't see how prescribed such novels are and they don't see in fact how conditioning these novels are they do not measure their steps in a beaten track solicitors together expected flowers according to the prescribed rules of art so they get carried away in their sensations and what they don't see is that they're being conditioned to follow certain tracks to follow the steps of the beaten path that is what those compositions do these compositions however wollstonecraft separates off from those compositions these chosen few wish to speak for themselves and not be an echo even of the sweetest sounds or the reflector of the most sublime beams wall stream crafts women heroines want to speak for themselves they don't follow the prescribed rules of art and the expectations of a heroine they are not a mere echo repeating back what has already been said and we'll note that in mythology ekko falls in love with narcissus the paradise they ramble in must be of their own creating and you can see from wollstonecraft's footnote there that she's referring to paradise lost so her footnote says i here give the reviewers an opportunity of being very witty about the paradise of fools etc i think you can tell here wilson craft's tone is rather sarcastic so the paradise of fools refers to paradise lost the epic poem by john milton first published in 1667 and was really very influential and hung over much of the 18th century the paradise of fools is an area of boundlessness so in the poem eden the paradise of god is depicted with a very definite and very strict boundary that there is garden of eden it has a wall it has an edge to it and outside of that is chaos so the paradise of fools alternatively presents a place where there are no boundaries walter craft here of course also is drawing on satan's speech from book one of paradise lost the paradise they ramble in must be of their own creating and the wit that she imagines that reviewers are going to target her for is because satan says famously the mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell a hell of heaven she's preemptively suggesting that reviewers are going to mock her and her position in saying that women must create their own paradise saying that that position is satanic saying that that position is ungodly so for wollstonecraft then paradise for women must be of their own creating and not a mere echo of what others tell them should be paradise otherwise they're just living an insipid half-life and wilson crowd very much presents this as a matter of life and death that's the imagery that she uses apparent a woman's paradise must live otherwise it will die and how does it live by women heroines speaking for themselves in an artless tale without episodes so without episodes means without set pieces without the familiar incidents that often happen in a novel so in an artless tale without those episodes without those set pieces the mind of a woman who has thinking powers is displayed so mary a fiction ironically is an artless tale so you've got the juxtaposition there of fiction and artless tale novels and histories such as clarissa and sophie are more artful they follow the prescribed rules of art i.e they are full of artifice of falsity of lies in johnson's words than wollstonecraft's text is despite wollstonecraft's text being a self-described fiction the female organs have been thought too weak for this arduous employment and experience seems to justify the assertion wollstonecraft really is being sarcastic here the arduous employment of thinking and the experience seems to justify the assertion because women as experienced through typical 18th century novels are willing captives of passion rather than engages of their thinking powers and now in this final sentence we get to the crux of why the text is called a fiction so walton cross says without arguing physically about possibilities in a fiction such a being may be allowed to exist whose grandeur is derived from the operations of its own faculties not subjugated to opinion but drawn by the individual from the original source not subjugated to opinion that is made subordinate to others but instead is reliant on one's own self woolstonecraft here explains why the text is called a fiction because she wants to escape the physicality so in russo's text for example she says in a vindication of the rights of woman that a woman's weakness of body is evidence of their weaker thinking powers and you'll notice that watson craft draws attention explicitly to the female organs and that really highlights the physicality female organs have been thought too weak for this arduous employment not the female mind has been thought too weak for thinking but the female organs the female brain the physical brain of women has been thought too weak for the arduous employment of thinking so what she's doing then is she's bypassing essentially the argument of russo rousseau said that women are physically weaker than men and therefore less capable have less strength in the organ of their brain what woolstonecraft is doing then is by saying this is a fiction she's avoiding having to make an argument about physical possibilities without arguing physically about possibilities in a fiction such a being may be allowed to exist so she's saying okay it's a fiction it's made up it's not true so given all of that i've already said that this really is an impossibility by calling it a fiction wollstonecraft has already escaped potential criticisms of it being unrealistic because she's already positioned it as an invention she's highlights explicitly as you can see there the word possibilities is italicized so she's drawing attention to the word possibilities and she's almost saying okay so i'm imagining this rational creature this heroine this mary who is the heroine of this fiction and we don't have to argue about the possibilities of her being a rational creature because i've already told you that this is a fiction i've already told you that this is a lie so we can bypass having that whole argument i'm going to avoid making that argument because in fiction such a being may be allowed to exist you might argue that she can't exist in the real world but in this imaginary world such a being is allowed to exist and i'm going to depict the life of such a creature such a rational creature thank you so much for listening i really do love rollston crafts texture it's so rich in sarcasm and rich in really interesting fascinating details i do hope you found it illuminating and it's made you think a bit more about how wollstonecraft positions her gender-related and feminist or you might say proto-feminist arguments in counterpoint to dominant 18th century ideas about genre and about the figure of the heroine remember if you like what i do here on my channel do please subscribe and like the video if you found it helpful i'd also really love to know what you think there's so much to say about mary wollstonecraft the fascinating wonderful brilliant writer that is mary wollstonecraft thank you

Channel: Dr Octavia Cox

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Id: zGlVnff6FHo

Length: 32min 6sec (1926 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020