Mary: A Fiction is a novel by 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. It tells the
tragic story of a female's successive romantic friendships with a woman and a man. Inspired by
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's idea that geniuses teach themselves Wollstonecraft chose a rational
self-taught heroine Mary as the protagonist. Helping to redefine genius a word which at the
end of the 18th century was only beginning to take on its modern meaning of exceptional or
brilliant Wollstonecraft describes Mary as independent and capable of defining femininity and
marriage for herself. According to Wollstonecraft it is Mary's strong original opinions and
her resistance to conventional wisdom that mark her as a genius. Making her heroine a genius
allowed Wollstonecraft to criticize marriage as well as she felt geniuses were enchained
rather than enriched by marriage. Through this heroine Wollstonecraft also critiques
18th-century sensibility and its effects on women. Mary rewrites the traditional romance plot
through its reimagination of gender relations and female sexuality.
