This is another work that calls us to analyze what we value, whether that is with art, careers, family, or our own life goals in general. I liked this piece a lot better than her first part of the novel, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," because for me, Maria was much easier and more interesting to read. Wollstonecraft brings a fresh take to her theories as she gives a real life example of the "wrongs of women." In this second volume, the life of the main character Maria is filled with sadness, despair, and poverty due to her gender. She, as well as all the women around her is treated poorly and brutally by husbands, fathers, masters, and all other males in her life. This is also true of her good friend in the story Jemima.
This novella, in my opinion, was also probably much more interesting to write. As an English major, and thus obsessive reader and writer, I am constantly analyzing the words and works from the perspective of narrator and writer. For me, as for Wollstonecraft, it was much more interesting to prove her points beneath the surface, through the thoughts and actions of her characters than through the explicit criticisms of the treatise of Volume I. This is why I enjoyed Maria so much better than the Rights of Women. Wollstonecraft seemed to address the "wrongs of women" with satirical irony, in proving how these wrongs are the circumstantial fault of the wrongs of the men in their lives. And I love irony.
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