Sorority and stigmatized women in Wollstonecraft's 'Wrongs of woman' and Gaskell's 'Ruth'

Abstract

This paper explores sorority and stigmatized women in Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished novel 'Wrongs of Woman' and Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Ruth.' The paper begins with a discussion of women's relationships in literature and the ways in which these representations have been limited by a dominant patriarchal literary tradition. The paper is organized to show the influence Wollstonecraft had on Gaskell's work, with particular regards to the characters' relationships with 'fallen women.' In each text, the women struggle against literary and social plots that threaten to overpower their identities. Wollstonecraft's Jemima is re-worked into Gaskell's Jemima, a woman who challenges and rejects the attitudes that isolate marked women from society as she articulates new ways of seeing the plot of the so-called 'fallen woman.' Wollstonecraft and Gaskell ultimately offer a valorized vision of sorority.