Married silence: coverture and vocie in mary wollstonecraft’s maria and jane austen’s persuasion

This thesis explores the relationship between the marital common law of coverture and the expression of women’s audible and rhetorical voices. This law, which contributed to the silencing of women in both public and private spaces, is portrayed in the novels of Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen. Taking two different approaches in discussing marriage, these authors focus on wives’ lack of voice and power. Wollstonecraft’s Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman illustrates the wrongs women suffer at the hands of tyrannical husbands, while Austen’s Persuasion focuses on the importance of women’s voices, emphasizing the rights women enjoy because of weak or absent husbands. Wollstonecraft fails to present a sustainable environment where her heroine can exercise autonomy outside of patriarchal power or permission and Austen’s production of marriages in which husbands are dependent upon their wives suggests that freedom in marriage only comes with weak husbands. Ultimately, neither author is able to present a realistic, applicable representation of marriage where women have equal power and voice, illuminating just how complex the issue was, and still is, for women.