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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: infamy, and deserted her when she stood in greatest need of support,
deigned not to smooth with kindness the road to ruin. Thus degraded,
was she let loose on the world; and virtue, never nurtured by
affection, assumed the stern aspect of selfish independence.
This general view of her life, Maria gathered from her
exclamations and dry remarks. Jemima indeed displayed a strange
mixture of interest and suspicion; for she would listen to her with
earnestness, and then suddenly interrupt the conversation, as if
afraid of resigning, by giving way to her sympathy, her dear-bought
knowledge of the world.
Maria alluded to the possibility of an escape, and mentioned
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