|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: brutal master. I have since read in novels of the blandishments
of seduction, but I had not even the pleasure of being enticed
into vice.
"I shall not," interrupted Jemima, "lead your imagination into
all the scenes of wretchedness and depravity, which I was condemned
to view; or mark the different stages of my debasing misery. Fate
dragged me through the very kennels of society: I was still a slave,
a bastard, a common property. Become familiar with vice, for I wish
to conceal nothing from you, I picked the pockets of the drunkards
who abused me; and proved by my conduct, that I deserved the
epithets, with which they loaded me at moments when distrust
|