Therapeutic Impact of Narrating Trauma in Mary, a Fiction and Maria or the Wrongs of Woman

Abstract

This research makes a study of Therapeutic Impact of Narrating Trauma in Mary, a Fiction and Maria Or the Wrongs of Woman.Mary Wollstonecraft, a 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 in parallel to collective trauma has helped Mary Wollstonecraft to figure out the evil face of her society towards females. The relocation of trauma in sociocultural contexts of her 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 her time helps her readers to understand the 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 attachmentsare the result of indifference of the contemporary English Society towards women which constructa way for women to be traumatized. Mary Wollstonecraft, who becomes the victim of male’s cruelty and whose voice is continuously silenced using the social laws and social institutions,takes the help of writing to narrate, preserve, and manageher experience of traumas. MakingMary andMaria her mouthpieceinMary, a FictionandMaria Or the Wrongs of Womanrespectively, Mary Wollstonecraft transmutes her personal trauma in Mary, a FictionandMaria Or the Wrongs of Womanby 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.