W. GODWIN.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THE WRONGS OF WOMAN, like the wrongs of the oppressed part of
mankind, may be deemed necessary by their oppressors: but surely
there are a few, who will dare to advance before the improvement
of the age, and grant that my sketches are not the abortion of a
distempered fancy, or the strong delineations of a wounded heart.

     In writing this novel, I have rather endeavoured to pourtray
passions than manners.

     In many instances I could have made the incidents more dramatic,
would I have sacrificed my main object, the desire of exhibiting
the misery and oppression, peculiar to women, that arise out of
the partial laws and customs of society.

     In the invention of the story, this view restrained my fancy;
and the history ought rather to be considered, as of woman, than
of an individual.

     The sentiments I have embodied.

     In many works of this species, the hero is allowed to be
mortal, and to become wise and virtuous as well as happy, by a
train of events and circumstances.  The heroines, on the contrary,
are to be born immaculate, and to act like goddesses of wisdom,
just come forth highly finished Minervas from the head of Jove.

     [The following is an extract of a letter from the author to
a friend, to whom she communicated her manuscript.]

     For my part, I cannot suppose any situation more distressing,
than for a woman of sensibility, with an improving mind, to be
bound to such a man as I have described for life; obliged to renounce
all the humanizing affections, and to avoid cultivating her taste,
lest her perception of grace and refinement of sentiment, should
sharpen to agony the pangs of disappointment.  Love, in which the
imagination mingles its bewitching colouring, must be fostered by
delicacy.  I should despise, or rather call her an ordinary woman,
who could endure such a husband as I have sketched.

     These appear to me (matrimonial despotism of heart and conduct)
to be the peculiar Wrongs of Woman, because they degrade the mind.
What are termed great misfortunes, may more forcibly impress the
mind of common readers; they have more of what may justly be termed
stage-effect; but it is the delineation of finer sensations, which,
in my opinion, constitutes the merit of our best novels.  This is
what I have in view; and to show the wrongs of different classes
of women, equally oppressive, though, from the difference of
education, necessarily various.

CHAPTER 1

ABODES OF HORROR have frequently been described, and castles, filled
with spectres and chimeras, conjured up by the magic spell of genius
to harrow the soul, and absorb the wondering mind.  But, formed of
such stuff as dreams are made of, what were they to the mansion of
despair, in one corner of which Maria sat, endeavouring to recall
her scattered thoughts!

     Surprise, astonishment, that bordered on distraction, seemed
to have suspended her faculties, till, waking by degrees to a keen
sense of anguish, a whirlwind of rage and indignation roused her
torpid pulse.  One recollection with frightful velocity following
another, threatened to fire her brain, and make her a fit companion
for the terrific inhabitants, whose groans and shrieks were no
unsubstantial sounds of whistling winds, or startled birds, modulated
by a romantic fancy, which amuse while they affright; but such
tones of misery as carry a dreadful certainty directly to the heart.
What effect must they then have produced on one, true to the touch
of sympathy, and tortured by maternal apprehension!

     Her infant's image was continually floating on Maria's sight,
and the first smile of intelligence remembered, as none but a
mother, an unhappy mother, can conceive.  She heard her half speaking
half cooing, and felt the little twinkling fingers on her burning
bosom--a bosom bursting with the nutriment for which this cherished
child might now be pining in vain.  From a stranger she could indeed
receive the maternal aliment, Maria was grieved at the thought--
but who would watch her with a mother's tenderness, a mother's
self-denial?

     The retreating shadows of former sorrows rushed back in a
gloomy train, and seemed to be pictured on the walls of her prison,
magnified by the state of mind in which they were viewed--Still
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.  To think that
she was blotted out of existence was agony, when the imagination
had been long employed to expand her faculties; yet to suppose her
turned adrift on an unknown sea, was scarcely less afflicting.

     After being two days the prey of impetuous, varying emotions,
Maria began to reflect more calmly on her present situation,
for she had actually been rendered incapable of sober reflection,
by the discovery of the act of atrocity of which she was the victim.
She could not have imagined, that, in all the fermentation of
civilized depravity, a similar plot could have entered a human