Mary Wollstonecraft and the maternal body in The wrongs of woman, or Maria

Date of Award

2017

Degree Name

M.A. in English

Department

Department of English

Advisor/Chair

Advisor: Rebecca C. Potter

Abstract

In my thesis I argue that Mary Wollstonecraft's The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria is a fictionalized sequel to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in which she presents the maternal body as an abled and functional body. I use Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's Feminist Disability Studies as a framework to examine the ways that Wollstonecraft fought against popular historical perceptions of women, such as Galen's one-sex model, by using her characters, Maria and Jemima, and their relationships with the maternal body.

Keywords

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1759-1797. Wrongs of woman, Human body in literature, Body image in women, Disability studies, Literature, British and Irish Literature, Mary Wollstonecraft, The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria, Maternal body, Disability studies, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Rights Statement

Copyright © 2017, author

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