Personal truma in Mary Wollstonecraft's Marry: A ficion

Abstract

This research attempts to see the personal trauma of Mary Wollstonecraft captured in her masterpiece writing Mary: a Fiction. Mary Wollstonecraft, born as British citizens, the famous and renowned leading feminist writer, has used her fictional writings as means of therapy to manage her trauma. The writings, which have a goal to lessen the pain of trauma, do not only document the trauma of Mary Wollstonecraft but also document the trauma of women of her society. The documentation of personal trauma and literary writings in parallel to collective trauma has helped Mary Wollstonecraft to figure out the female suppression, social interference of her society towards females. The relocation of trauma in sociocultural contexts of her whole life time justifies the traumatic experience of women of contemporary society in many cases is imposed one. Her desire to locate her trauma in particular and trauma of her sex in general in sociocultural contexts of British society, during the 18th century helps her readers to understand the western society and its components as the primary sources for any woman to be traumatized. The continuous imposition and regulation of male’s ideology without considering the women in the society compels women to pass through various constructed events of trauma. Domestic violence, betrayal, miscalculation of emotion of women and mistrust in attachments are the result of indifference of the contemporary English Society towards women which construct a way for women to be traumatized. Mary Wollstonecraft, who becomes the victim of patriarchal society and whose voice is continuously silenced using the social laws and social institutions, takes the help of writing to narrate, preserve, and manage her experience of traumas. Making Mary and Maria her mouthpiece in Mary: a Fiction, Mary Wollstonecraft transmutes her personal trauma in Mary: a Fiction by making an appeal to make a bond among the victims of trauma to lessen the pain of trauma and to reform the society where they are living in.