Mary Wollstonecraft: Apostrophe, Prayer, and Voice

Event details

CECS Research Seminar with speaker Professor Mary Fairclough (York)

Mary Wollstonecraft’s use of the rhetorical figure of apostrophe has attracted critical attention, in particular her deployment of apostrophe as part of the rhetorical armoury of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. This paper takes a different approach to apostrophe in Wollstonecraft’s work, reading it as not just a persuasive tool, but rather as an indicator of Wollstonecraft’s sustained commitment to oral speech and its capacity to produce devotional feeling. I argue that moments of apostrophe in Wollstonecraft’s writings are often structured as prayerful direct addresses to God. I trace the connections between the prayers Wollstonecraft composed for her anthology for reading aloud The Female Reader (1789), and her later travel writing and fiction, making the case for the ongoing importance of vocal utterance and devotional appeal in Wollstonecraft’s works.