Mitzi Myers Criticism of Wollstonecrafts Maria Essay -- Literary Cri

Mitzi Myers literary criticism of Wollstonecrafts MariaIn her article intimately Mary Wollstonecraft Mitzi Myers examines Maria in contrast to her other shits, especially Mary and Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in an move to better understand the author and her purpose in writing. She refers to arguments posed by several critics in order to build her conclusions. She also seeks the insights provided by William Godwins notes about Wollstonecraft. Myers calls her an individualist and innovator in her fiction and aesthetic theory as well as in her polemical tracts, and admits that Wollstonecraft confronts, though she does not solve, the hassle of integrating a rational feminist program with one womans ingrained feminine vision (107). Mitzi Myers acknowledges that it was William Godwins respect for Mary Wollstonecrafts work and his belief that her work of fiction might have given a new impulse to the adroitness of a world had the sketch equaled the conception (107). Myers bel ieves that Wollstonecraft kept her pledge to finish the law of continuation of The Rights of Women as promised in the Advertisement (107). Taken from Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft ed. W. Clark Durant ( l 927), p.111, Myers cites Williams account of Wollstonecrafts prolonged labors (more than twelve months for Maria versus six weeks for the Rights of Woman) . . . Godwin relates, . . . When she had finished what she intended for the first single-valued function of Maria, she felt herself more urgently stimulated to revise and improve . . . than to conduct (107). Just as anti-Jacobin critics promptly attacked the novel as an apologia for a philosophers wanton conduct (l07), Myers feels that many modern biographers treat her attempt at a novel similarly, a... ...oes seem a fair assumption base on what seem to be her goals. Suggesting that we are left with a modify despair and hope, Wollstonecrafts hints for the ending comprise an oddly apposite do-it-yourself turnout for the r eader (113). Myers seems to be suggesting that the story is stronger without an ending from Wollstonecrafts vantage, allowing the reader the option of terminate the story, provides her the advantage of making her statement while avoiding public criticism regarding the lesson, or even failure of achieving the optimum conclusion. For the modern reader, the unfinished story provides a glimpse of the society which produced Wollstonecraft and her feminist ideas, but it also makes for interesting writing assignments and/or discussions. Works CitedMyers, Mitzi. Unfinished Business Wollstonecrafts Maria. The Wordsworth Circle 11 (1980) 107-14.