Mary

Mary: A Fiction is the first and only complete novel written by the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. It tells the tragic story of a heroine's successive romantic friendships with a woman and a man. Composed while Wollstonecraft was a governess in Ireland the novel was published in 1788 shortly after her summary dismissal and her momentous decision to embark on a writing career a precarious and disreputable profession for women in eighteenth-century Britain.Inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea that geniuses are self-taught Wollstonecraft chose a rational self-taught heroine Mary as the central character of her novel. Helping to redefine genius (a word which at the end of the eighteenth century was only beginning to take on its modern meaning of exceptional or brilliant) Wollstonecraft describes Mary as independent and capable of defining femininity and marriage for herself. It is Mary's strong original opinions and her resistance to conventional wisdom that mark her as a genius. Making her heroine a genius allowed Wollstonecraft to criticize marriage as well: geniuses were enchained rather than enriched by marriage.