Critique of the cult sensibility in Wollstonecraft's Maria or the wrongs of women

Abstract

This research explores how Mary Wollstonecraft’s novel Maria or the Wrongs of Woman undercuts the excessive sensibility that was most often associated with women in the then historical period of the late eighteenth century through the projection of reasonable selfhood. Maria and Jemima are the female characters who are never guided by emotion and passion rather by the reason they have, even in the situation of oppression and suppression. Wollstonecraft’s depiction of reasonable characters by assimilating the Kantian uses of reason critiques the writing pattern prevalent during the movement of sensibility as well as romanticism on the backdrop of which the novel was written. Thus, Wollstonecraft rewrites the new female’s history of the late eighteenth century by interrogating upon the power structure in constructing the official history of the particular era.