Vindication of the Rights of Woman and The Wrongs of Woman, A, or Maria - 07 edition

Summary: From Longman's Cultural Editions series, Wollstonecraft, edited by Anne K. Mellor and Noelle Chao, for the first time pairs Wollstonecraft's feminist tract, the first in English letters, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, with her unfinished novel, The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria.

By putting tract and novel together, this text presents a far richer and more complex discussion of Wollstonecraft's political and literary opinions. A wealth of cultural conte ...show morexts bearing on the ''wrongs'' of woman (their social and political oppression) in the 18th century and on the development of the Gothic and realist novel further clarify these two texts.

Handsomely produced and affordably priced, the Longman Cultural Editions series presents classic works in provocative and illuminating contexts-cultural, critical, and literary. Each Cultural Edition consists of the complete text of an important literary work, reliably edited, headed by an inviting introduction, and supplemented by helpful annotations; a table of dates to track its composition, publication, and public reception in relation to biographical, cultural and historical events; and a guide for further inquiry and study.
Features

• Longman Cultural Editions are available for sale individually or a single volume can be packaged FREE with The Longman Anthology of British Literature.
• This volume is the first to combine Wollstonecraft's The Rights of Woman with her Wrongs of Woman. Her last novel provides a grim assessment of the possibility of realizing the utopian feminist program Wollstonecraft advocated in Vindication of the Rights of Woman. By giving numerous examples of the social oppression of women from all classes, The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria, mounts a powerful indictment of eighteenth-century gender roles. It also analyses the role that autobiographical writing as such can play in the liberation of women.
• The Contexts sections place Wollstonecraft's feminist tracts in dialogue with the radical, moderate and conservative discourses of her day concerning the political, economic and moral roles and responsibilities of women. They also draw on the novels to which Wollstonecraft refers in The Wrongs of Woman, to document Wollstonecraft's indebtedness to and criticisms of Rousseau, Burney, Godwin and the Gothic novel.
• Unlike earlier paperback editions of The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria, this edition offers copious annotations, headnotes, relevant context selections, and reviews of Wollstonecraft's posthumous publication.