Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman

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 mind. She had
been stunned by an unexpected blow; yet life, however joyless, was not to be
indolently resigned, or misery endured without exertion, and proudly termed
patience. She had hitherto meditated only to point the dart of anguish, and
suppressed the heart heavings of indignant nature merely by the force of
contempt. Now she endeavoured to brace her mind to fortitude, and to ask
herself what was to be her employment in her dreary cell? Was it not to effect
her escape, to fly to the succour of her child, and to baffle the selfish schemes of
her tyrant—her husband?
These thoughts roused her sleeping spirit, and the self-possession returned,
that seemed to have abandoned her in the infernal solitude into which she had
been precipitated. The first emotions of overwhelming impatience began to
subside, and resentment gave place to tenderness, and more tranquil meditation;
though anger once more stopt the calm current of reflection when she attempted
to move her manacled arms. But this was an outrage that could only excite
momentary feelings of scorn, which evaporated in a faint smile; for Maria was
far from thinking a personal insult the most difficult to endure with
magnanimous indifference.
She approached the small grated window of her chamber, and for a
considerable time only regarded the blue expanse; though it commanded a view
of a desolate garden, and of part of a huge pile of buildings, that, after having
been suffered, for half a century, to fall to decay, had undergone some clumsy
repairs, merely to render it habitable. The ivy had been torn off the turrets, and
the stones not wanted to patch up the breaches of time, and exclude the warring
elements, left in heaps in the disordered court. Maria contemplated this scene she
knew not how long; or rather gazed on the walls, and pondered on her situation.
To the master of this most horrid of prisons, she had, soon after her entrance,
raved of injustice, in accents that would have justified his treatment, had not a
malignant smile, when she appealed to his judgment, with a dreadful conviction
stifled her remonstrating complaints. By force, or openly, what could be done?
But surely some expedient might occur to an active mind, without any other
employment, and possessed of sufficient resolution to put the risk of life into the
balance with the chance of freedom.
A woman entered in the midst of these reflections, with a firm, deliberate step,
strongly marked features, and large black eyes, which she fixed steadily on
Maria’s, as if she designed to intimidate her, saying at the same time “You had

better sit down and eat your dinner, than look at the clouds.”
“I have no appetite,” replied Maria, who had previously determined to speak
mildly; “why then should I eat?”
“But, in spite of that, you must and shall eat something. I have had many
ladies under my care, who have resolved to starve themselves; but, soon or late,
they gave up their intent, as they recovered their senses.”
“Do you really think me mad?” asked Maria, meeting the searching glance of
her eye.
“Not just now. But what does that prove?—Only that you must be the more
carefully watched, for appearing at times so reasonable. You have not touched a
morsel since you entered the house.”—Maria sighed intelligibly.—“Could any
thing but madness produce such a disgust for food?”
“Yes, grief; you would not ask the question if you knew what it was.” The
attendant shook her head; and a ghastly smile of desperate fortitude served as a
forcible reply, and made Maria pause, before she added—“Yet I will take some
refreshment: I mean not to die.—No; I will preserve my senses; and convince
even you, sooner than you are aware of, that my intellects have never been
disturbed, though the exertion of them may have been suspended by some
infernal drug.”
Doubt gathered still thicker on the brow of her guard, as she attempted to
convict her of mistake.
“Have patience!” exclaimed Maria, with a solemnity that inspired awe. “My
God! how have I been schooled into the practice!” A suffocation of voice
betrayed the agonizing emotions she was labouring to keep down; and
conquering a qualm of disgust, she calmly endeavoured to eat enough to prove
her docility, perpetually turning to the suspicious female, whose observation she
courted, while she was making the bed and adjusting the room.
“Come to me often,” said Maria, with a tone of persuasion, in consequence of
a vague plan that she had hastily adopted, when, after surveying this woman’s
form and features, she felt convinced that she had an understanding above the
common standard, “and believe me mad, till you are obliged to acknowledge the
contrary.” The woman was no fool, that is, she was superior to her class; nor had
misery quite petrified the life’s-blood of humanity, to which reflections on our
own misfortunes only give a more orderly course. The manner, rather than the
expostulations, of Maria made a slight suspicion dart into her mind with
corresponding sympathy, which various other avocations, and the habit of
banishing compunction, prevented her, for the present, from examining more
minutely.
But when she was told that no person, excepting the physician appointed by

her family, was to be permitted to see the lady at the end of the gallery, she
opened her keen eyes still wider, and uttered a—“hem!” before she enquired
—“Why?” She was briefly told, in reply, that the malady was hereditary, and the
fits not occurring but at very long and irregular intervals, she must be carefully
watched; for the length of these lucid periods only rendered her more
mischievous, when any vexation or caprice brought on the paroxysm of phrensy.
Had her master trusted her, it is probable that neither pity nor curiosity would
have made her swerve from the straight line of her interest; for she had suffered
too much in her intercourse with mankind, not to determine to look for support,
rather to humouring their passions, than courting their approbation by the
integrity of her conduct. A deadly blight had met her at the very threshold of
existence; and the wretchedness of her mother seemed a heavy weight fastened
on her innocent neck, to drag her down to perdition. She could not heroically
determine to succour an unfortunate; but, offended at the bare supposition that
she could be deceived with the same ease as a common servant, she no longer
curbed her curiosity; and, though she never seriously fathomed her own
intentions, she would sit, every moment she could steal from observation,
listening to the tale, which Maria was eager to relate with all the persuasive
eloquence of grief.
It is so cheering to see a human face, even if little of the divinity of virtue
beam in it, that Maria anxiously expected the return of the attendant, as of a
gleam of light to break the gloom of idleness. Indulged sorrow, she perceived,
must blunt or sharpen the faculties to the two opposite extremes; producing
stupidity, the moping melancholy of indolence; or the restless activity of a
disturbed imagination. She sunk into one state, after being fatigued by the other:
till the want of occupation became even more painful than the actual pressure or
apprehension of sorrow; and the confinement that froze her into a nook of
existence, with an unvaried prospect before her, the most insupportable of evils.
The lamp of life seemed to be spending itself to chase the vapours of a dungeon
which no art could dissipate.—And to what purpose did she rally all her energy?
—Was not the world a vast prison, and women born slaves?
Though she failed immediately to rouse a lively sense of injustice in the mind
of her guard, because it had been sophisticated into misanthropy, she touched her
heart. Jemima (she had only a claim to a Christian name, which had not procured
her any Christian privileges) could patiently hear of Maria’s confinement on
false pretences; she had felt the crushing hand of power, hardened by the
exercise of injustice, and ceased to wonder at the perversions of the
understanding, which systematize oppression; but, when told that her child, only
four months old, had been torn from her, even while she was discharging the

tenderest maternal office, the woman awoke in a bosom long estranged from
feminine emotions, and Jemima determined to alleviate all in her power, without
hazarding the loss of her place, the sufferings of a wretched mother, apparently
injured, and certainly unhappy. A sense of right seems to result from the simplest
act of reason, and to preside over the faculties of the mind, like the master-sense
of feeling, to rectify the rest; but (for the comparison may be carried still farther)
how often is the exquisite sensibility of both weakened or destroyed by the
vulgar occupations, and ignoble pleasures of life?
The preserving her situation was, indeed, an important object to Jemima, who
had been hunted from hole to hole, as if she had been a beast of prey, or infected
with a moral plague. The wages she received, the greater part of which she
hoarded, as her only chance for independence, were much more considerable
than she could reckon on obtaining any where else, were it possible that she, an
outcast from society, could be permitted to earn a subsistence in a reputable
family. Hearing Maria perpetually complain of listlessness, and the not being
able to beguile grief by resuming her customary pursuits, she was easily
prevailed on, by compassion, and that involuntary respect for abilities, which
those who possess them can never eradicate, to bring her some books and
implements for writing. Maria’s conversation had amused and interested her, and
the natural consequence was a desire, scarcely observed by herself, of obtaining
the esteem of a person she admired. The remembrance of better days was
rendered more lively; and the sentiments then acquired appearing less romantic
than they had for a long period, a spark of hope roused her mind to new activity.
How grateful was her attention to Maria! Oppressed by a dead weight of
existence, or preyed on by the gnawing worm of discontent, with what eagerness
did she endeavour to shorten the long days, which left no traces behind! She
seemed to be sailing on the vast ocean of life, without seeing any land-mark to
indicate the progress of time; to find employment was then to find variety, the
animating principle of nature.