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
Recommended Citation
Reed, Amanda, "Mary Wollstonecraft and the maternal body in The wrongs of woman, or Maria" (2017). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 1259.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/graduate_theses/1259
