“The Stranger at Home”: Dissent, Prejudice, and Mary: A Fiction

This essay explores Wollstonecraft's experimental first novel, Mary: A Fiction (1788) in the context of Dissenting preoccupation with prejudice. It shows how Wollstonecraft shared the Dissenters' analysis that prejudice was the source of political and social oppression, and how she extended that insight into her account of the situation of women. She shared with Dissent a belief in education and in print culture as tools to combat prejudice, but her experimental textual strategies differ significantly from, for instance, that of Dissenter Anna Laetitia Barbauld, in her "Address to the Opposers of the Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts" (1790). Where Barbauld replicates in print the rhetorical strategies of public and political discourse, Wollstonecraft, in key moments in Mary, draws on the model, from Edward Young, of authentic, persuasive enthusiasm, to "steal into the soul" of her readers. Early in her writing career, she can thus be seen seeking to turn affective transport to political effect, and experimenting with the resources and registers of print culture to combat prejudice, and enact dissent.