Self-Determination And Individualism In Jemima's Novel

Jemima’s narrative is a painful succession of insults, beginning with maternal rejection and death, followed by paternal neglect and physical abuse, and ending with pregnancy as a result from rape. Her story is especially interesting and yet also the most terrible part of the story. The hardships she has to endure at times might sound like a listing of all the wrongs a woman can encounter in her life, yet it is easier to sympathize with Jemima than with Maria, whose falling for Darnford deems her to be just as sentimental as before and bound to make the same mistakes again and again. In the same way that Maria overcomes her confinement in the madhouse, the reader learns that Jemima’s self-determination and individualism have sustained her through …show more content…
Maria longs for her lost child throughout the novel: “her infant’s image was continually floating on [her] sight […] she mourned for her child, lamented she was a daughter, and anticipated the aggravated ills of life that her sex rendered almost inevitable, even while dreading she was no more” (Wollstonecraft, 1798: 61). After trying to ease her “scattered thoughts” (Wollstonecraft, 1798: 61) by reading, Maria turns to writing long letter-memoirs to her absent daughter. This is the moment where motherhood becomes the means to pass down this new inheritance of female education to future generations. As a result, maternity becomes a meaningful point, becoming the way for women to prepare their daughters for the challenges they will face and warn them by their example of the legal and social injustices they could become victims of. Maria explains to her daughter that: “the tenderness of a father who knew the world, might be great; but could it equal that of a mother […] to break all restraint to provide you happiness […] dear girl, you may gather the instruction, the counsel, which is meant to exercise than influence your mind” (Wollstonecraft, 1798: