The eighteenth-century ‘female philosopher’ against gender models: Mary Hays and her fictional heroines

Abstract

The present dissertation aims at exploring the rebellious female self at the end of the eighteenth century through the life and works of the English Jacobin writer Mary Hays. Like her mentor and friend Mary Wollstonecraft, Hays refused to fit the imposed female model and vindicated her right to knowledge and romantic desire. In her two fictional works, Memoirs of Emma Courtney and The Victim of Prejudice, she describes the Bildung of the ‘female philosopher’ emphasising both the rational and the sentimental aspect. Aware of their position in the social order, the two female protagonists act according to their principles and attempt at challenging societal norms that confine women in the domestic sphere. Despite the uncommon education, devotion to virtue, and rational mind, Emma Courtney and Mary Raymond struggle with gender models and the subsequent lack of possibilities because of their sex. Their imposed condition of dependence provokes catastrophic material and emotional consequences in the heroines’ lives and exacerbates their sense of helplessness. Through her fictional production, Hays demonstrates that the new model of rational and sensitive femininity requires also a larger change in the social discourse.