The Victim of Prejudice - Softcover

Hays, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0921149379 ISBN 13: 9780921149378

Publisher: Broadview Pr, 1995

Synopsis

Mary Hays was an outspoken Radical intellectual in the turbulent decade of the 1790's. She argued vehemently for the need to recognise the moral and rational qualities of women, the necessity of a better system of education for girls, and the importance of giving women without fortunes a career without 'servitude in prostitution.'

The Victim of Prejudice—Hays' second novel, first published in 1799—is a powerful indictment of man-made institutions such as the courts and legislative systems which favour persons of wealth and rank. In the novel the metaphor of women's confinement becomes real as the heroine's worst nightmares, her horrors and sense of helplessness become a physical reality.

The Victim of Prejudice is of great interest for its strong feminist content, and it is both powerful and moving as a literary work; this edition makes this important late eighteenth-century text again available to a wide readership.

About this title

Review:

"Mary Hays' passionate tale of a girl who is raped but refuses to marry her seducer offers a powerful alternative to Victorian constructions of the 'fallen woman'. This early feminist novel, here judiciously edited by Eleanor Ty, should be read by anyone interested in the literary history of the sexualized female, in women's studies, or in British Romantic Literature." - Anne K. Mellor, UCLA

Appendices of the new edition include excerpts from Wollstonecraft, Rousseau, Edward Moore, contemporary reviews, Hays' essays and letters.

From the Publisher:

The Broadview Editions series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, lesser-known literature. Newly type-set and produced on high-quality paper in trade paperback format, the Broadview Editions series is a delight to handle as well as read.

Each volume includes a full introduction, chronology, bibliography, and explanatory notes along with a variety of documents from the period, giving readers a rich sense of the world from which the work emerged.

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadview Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0921149379
• ISBN 13: 9780921149378
• Binding: Paperback
• Editor: Ty Eleanor Rose