Maria Darnford's Ideal Lover

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After six weeks in the madhouse, Maria fell in love with Henry Darnford, a fellow inmate of the asylum. Just as Maria once sought marriage to escape her father’s domestic oppresion, she looks to Darnford for rescue from the tyranny of her marriage. Without having ever seen him and not even knowing his name, Darnford becomes Maria’s ideal lover, because they share the same opinions on political and society topics. He represents the typical upper-class male of the eighteenth century, sensual and corrupt. Nevertheless, the moment felicity is brief, for Darnford is only transformed temporarily into a romantic hero by Maria’s imagination. Maria creates an idealised man who will share her political sentiments and free her from this prison. At first, …show more content…

Venables fails, Maria continues to struggle to apply reason to her choices. Similarly, in both a physical and spiritual sense, Darnford later proves that he is no saviour for Maria. It is essential for her to protect her right to function as a free human being, an individual capable of decision-making. By suppressing her personal authority and blindly turning her heart over first to her unworthy husband, and second to Darnford, Maria is shown to have neglected her intellect and pursues in her own enslavement. Wollstonecraft believed in the power of reason, but understood that this power had to be refined by education. When Maria was eventually able to escape from the asylum, she found it necessary to re-educate herself. At that point, Maria discovered that Darnford did not live up to her idea of the perfect man: “while she endeavoured […] to eradicate some of the romantic notions, which had taken root in her mind, while in adversity she had brooded over visions of unattainable bliss” (Wollstonecraft, 1798: 141). Wollstonecraft tries to tell the reader that Maria has noticed that her bliss towards Darnford has ended. She thought that he was the perfect man, however, acknowledges that he is just like every other man trying to seduce her in order to take over her body and possessions. Maria’s willingness and ability to re-educate herself proved the power of her mind. By confirming that she will do so, she shows that she has truly changed in …show more content…

She possesses a large amount of symbolic weight in the novel by telling the reader her story. Just like Maria, she is the personification of misery and pain, and suffers abuse and beatings. She is blamed for being an innocent woman whose only fault is “to be born a woman” (Wollstonecraft, 1798: 133) in a society, that views them as sexual objects. Wollstonecraft moved between socio-economic class divisions to articulate conflicts facing all women, establishing a rare connection between them. Together, Maria and Jemima change their hopeless situation by forming a sisterhood, which rehabilitates their emotional trauma. They regain power and actually remain rational while in the institution because they are able to build this emotional bond over their common experiences with tyrannical men. In this hard situation Maria was facing, it was perfect for her to have found another woman who thought like her. They were able to open their minds to each other and notice that they were being oppressed and manipulated by men. The asylum ends up being a more positive experience than their lives had been up to that point because they were able to create a special bond and re-educate themselves from their past traumas in a mutual therapy-type

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