“O wretched and ill-fated mother!”

Motherhood in Mary Hays’s The Victim of Prejudice

Abstract

By the end of the eighteenth century, motherhood had come to be seen as the ultimate source of female identity. The maternal body was invested with different meanings; it was simultaneously glorified and demonised, depending on whether it was submitted to patriarchal control or not. The cult of motherhood constructed women as naturally submissive and nurturing; any unconventional expressions of maternity were branded as monstrous. The re-assessment of the sanctity of motherhood is one of the key features of Mary Hays’s The Victim of Prejudice. The novel challenges prevailing ideas of domesticity as represented in the idealised mother figure. The lack of the cult(ivation) of motherhood, the reassessment of the trope of the monstrous mother, and the creation of a heroine who defiantly refuses to become a wife and ends up mothering a disruptive text, make Hays one of the formidable rebellious Marys.