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Introduction

Mary Hays' The Victim of Prejudice, published in 1799, is her second novel. The novel is an assault narrative written in the first person following the young Mary Raymond as her neighbor makes unwanted advances on her, which eventually culminate in kidnapping and assault.

The Victim of Prejudice is an early feminist novel that called for society to recognize the moral and and rational qualities in women, improved education for girls, and allowing impoverished women dignified careers with to support themselves. The goal of the novel was to comment on how English society at the time treated victims of assault and rebut the idea of the "fallen woman" by re framing a woman's virtue as predicated upon a woman's character and choice, not upon her physical virginity.

Plot Summary

The novel opens with the narrator Mary Raymond writing an account of her life from prison with a plea for God's mercy and that the reader acknowledge her position as an innocent victim of misfortune.

The story begins with her childhood. She is an orphan being raised by Mr. Raymond, a tutor, in a country village in the county of Monmouthshire. She leads a happy and healthy childhood doing things like bareback horse riding, tree climbing, wrestling other children, and dancing. Her guardian also provides her the same robust education that he provides to the boys he tutors, which she enjoys and excels at.

When she is eleven, Mr. Raymond is hired by his friend Mr. Pelham to tutor to tutor two boys, William and Edmund. Mary quickly becomes fond of William, and William uses her affections to convince her to steal grapes for him from the garden of the neighbor Sir Peter Osborne. While in the garden she is found and grabbed by Sir Osborne who insists he must kiss her in exchange for the fruit. Mary escapes before he can follow through on the threat, getting injured and disheveled in the process. Mr. Raymond sees her and questions her, and she explains and admits her love for William.

Later, William and Mary are playing in a field when they encounter Sir Osborne and his hunting party chasing a rabbit. Mary protects the rabbit, which angers Sir Osborne and he strikes her with his horse whip then forcibly kisses her, only letting her go when William uses the whip against him.

The Pelham boys and Mary continue their education and close friendship until Mary is seventeen at which Mr. Raymond tells Mary he is sending her away since now she is older must must relinquish her fondness for William and be separated from him because the two could never marry due to the gap in their social positions. He insists that William will become "man of the world" and will not want Mary's "artless affection". Mary is devastated by the idea of separation but but agrees to obey her guardian's wishes.

Mr. Raymond takes her to live with his friend Mr. Neville and his wife Mrs. Neville in their home by the coast. One day she stands by the sea lost in thought and does not notice when the tide rises until she finds herself trapped in the water. She is rescued and when she realizes that Sir Osborne is her rescuer, she is terrified and begs him not to feel entitled to treat her with "insult" and allow her to the Neville home in peace, which he does.

Weeks later, William visits Mary. He declares his love for her and that he would never agree to marry anyone but her. He becomes offended when Mary explains why her guardian separated them.Mary writes a letter to Mr. Raymond stating that she loves William but will renounce him if she deems it the virtuous thing to do.

Mary then receives a letter from Mr. Raymond explaining the story of her mother, whom Mr. Raymond had once proposed marriage to. She declined and fell in love with another man instead, and Mr. Raymond went on a foreign tour. Five years later he saw her, looking haggard, with a ruffian at the scene of a stabbing murder in a tavern of dubious reputation. She and the ruffian were arrested for the murder. From prison she writes Mr. Raymond a letter describing how his rival had, through her inexperience and naivete, had seduced her, leading to her bearing a baby girl. She then, out of desperation, turned to selling her body to support herself and became the accomplice to the murder. She asked Mr. Raymond to care for her daughter, which he accepted. Mary struggles to come to terms with this information. William tries to comfort her but Mary is inconsolable realizing that she could only bring William social disgrace if he married her. He insists he still wants to marry her. He then leaves for London and is eventually sent to the continent by his father.

Soon after, the Nevilles recieve word that the rector that Mr. Neville served as a curate under and who has provided their housing has died, and that the Nevilles must leave their cottage within a week. Sir Osborn has taken possession of the rectory and its properties. The Nevilles move and have lost their source of income, and Mary returns to Mr. Raymond. She feels responsible for the predicament of the Nevilles and asks her guardian to help them. He tells her that the only way he can assist them would be to give them her inheritance, meaning she would have to work to support herself after his death. Mary agrees to these terms.

Later, Mary recieves an offer of marriage from a neighboring farmer. She declines, not wanting to marry anyone but William. Mr. Raymond tells her she is being foolish in turning down future security for a man who is being exposed to corruptions of the world. Mary becomes perturbed by the idea that William has likely been unfaithful to her while on his travels.

Mr. Raymond dies, leaving Mary only a letter of introduction for a position assisting in managing the home of a friend and his wife in London. After mourning her guardian she prepares to leave, but two days before she departs Mr. Osborne approaches her, beginning to offer his protection to her now that she is alone. Mary stops him and tells him to leave. She also receives a letter from William announcing that become engaged to another woman, which emotionally devastates her.

Mary travels to London and arrives at her destination, only to find the job offer was a ruse when Osborne enters her room that night. He says he had to trick her to get her to come due to her naivete and affections for William and again offers her protection and control of the house. Mary declines, and Osborne has her locked away in a back-chamber of the house.

Mary eventually convinces takes the key from the maid attending on her and begins to escape until she gets caught on the stairway by a drunken Osborne and he assaults her. After it is over, she demands on being let go. He tells her that her reputation will be ruined and she now has no prospects in society, while she maintains that she had nothing wrong and her virtue cannot be stolen from her in this manner. Osborn, angry, relents and tells her to leave.

Mary, feeling ill from her ordeal, immediately encounters William. He notices her haggard condition and she explains what has happened. He brings her to a nearby hotel to recover for three weeks while she suffers flashbacks of the assault and recalls the fate of her mother. When she has regained herself, William suggests that she become his mistress and allow him to provide for her. She refuses, saying "it is virtue only that I love better than William Pelham". He calls her her destiny "severe" and gives her a ten-pound note.

The next morning she writes him a note and finds an apartment to live in. She meets with the landlady, who ask if she has lived anywhere else in London. Mary recounts again what has happened since her arrival in the city, and the landlady offers the service of her husband in seeking legal redress, but warns that her case would be difficult to prove in court. While living in this apartment, Mary takes on credit for clothing and other immediate necessities, having left her belongings behind at Osborne's. The landlady contacts Mr. Pelham for verification of Mary's story. Mr. Pelham accuses Mary of attempting to seduce William, and she gets evicted from the apartment.

On her own and in debt, Mary works for a while drawing plants at a print shop. One day, her employer make an advance on her while she works, citing Osborne and William Pelham. Mary runs away from the shop and realizes that the story of her time at Osborne's has gotten out and her reputation is indeed altered. She fails to get any more artistic work and turns her attention to attempting to get domestic work. She nearly obtains a paid companionship position with a young lady about to travel, then gets rejected at the last moment.

Unable to work and in debt, Mary is arrested and taken to be detained in the house of a sheriff's officer. When she says that there is no one to give her bail, the officer tells her there is someone willing to bail her out. She is terrified to discover it is Osborne and declares she would rather go to prison. He claims love for her and regret for his actions, saying that he will give her a future and affluence, an offer she vehemently refuses and he leaves her to the processes of the law.

She is taken to prison and is visited Mr. Raymond's servant James, who had in the past acted in opposition to Osborne. He offers to take on her debt and work it off, but she turns down his offer. When he asks she tells him what has happened to her and James is outraged, becoming the only one to affirm Mary's innocence. He secures her freedom reveals that he has started a small from on land rented from Sir Osborne. She moves beck into her childhood home and works keeping records for James' farm.

Six months later, Mary is in the village after getting a loan from the bank for the farm, she encounters Osborne and his hunting party again while she is caring for an injured child, and he prevents her from stumbling in shock. His companions get water for her and they leave. Osborne sends her letters, which she ignores.

James dies, leaving Mary yet again alone, and Osborne again approaches her. He offers his condolences for her loss and offers her marriage, which she once again refuses, telling him to leave her to her fate. He tells her the next morning he will be leaving take a months-long voyage to the western islands and hopes by his return she will reconsider.

Mary is again arrested for the debt she incurred for the farm, which she had forgotten about. Unable to pay it, she is placed in county jail. Her creditor refuse to excuse the debt, expecting Osborne to pay it for her upon his return. She spends four months in in prison before she declares she can write no more.

The novel concludes two years into her incarceration. The Nevilles come to her prison and announce her freedom. They take her to their home, promising to help her repair her reputation, but she struggles with her health. After a year, Mr. Neville becomes ill and dies. Not long afterwards, Mrs. Neville becomes ill as well and Mary attends her deathbead. Mrs. Neville requests that her body be buried with her husband and laments that Mary will not survive her friends by long, as the injustice Mary has suffered has had too ill an effect on her health. Mrs. Neville dies and Mary is left completely alone.

Characters

Mary Raymond

A young, strong spirited woman. She was orphaned and raised by Mr. Raymond, a tutor. She received a robust education as a child and becomes fond of her guardian's pupil William. She constantly rebuffs Sir Peter Osborne.

Mr. Raymond

A tutor who once loved Mary Raymond’s mother. He raises Mary Raymond at her mother’s request and tutors William and Edmund Pelham.

William Pelham

The son of Mr. Pelham, sent to be tutored by Mr. Raymond. He loves Mary Raymond but accepts an arranged marriage. He is described as becoming “a man of the world” after completing his education. He also cares for Mary after her ordeal and offers to make her his mistress.

Edmund Pelham

The sickly brother of William.

Sir Peter Osborne

The aristocratic neighbor of Mr. Raymond who spends his time drinking and hunting. When Mary is fifteen he begins making advances on her, he eventually kidnaps and assaults Mary. He also attempts to pressure Mary into marrying him on multiple occasions afterwards.

Mary

Mary Raymond’s mother. She rejected Mr. Raymond’s proposal and falls in love with another man. She is seduced by her lover, causing her to turn to a tavern of ill repute out of desperation. She becomes convicted as an accomplice to murder and is sentenced to execution, leaving her daughter to Mr. Raymond’s care.

Mr. Neville

A cheerful curate and friend of Mr. Raymond with who hosts Mary during her late teens. He is also the one to get Mary out of debtor’s prison and takes her in.

Mrs. Neville

The devoted wife of Mr. Neville. She is youthful and sociable but serious and thoughtful. She cares for Mary in her illness after her release from debtor’s prison.

James

A former servant of Mr. Raymond who prevents Mary from going to prison when she is arrested the first time and begins a farm on land rented from Mr. Osborne.

Historical Context

The Victim of Prejudice comments on how victims of assault were treated at the time of its publication. If a woman was a victim of assault, a woman was considered to be tainted and a moral failure through the loss of her virginity alone, regardless of the coercion. She would become an outcast as others would want to keep her perceived moral corruption away from their families. A woman who lost her virginity either willingly or unwillingly might be reduced to prostitution out of desperation. There were, however, ways for such women to regain social grace and people willing to assist them. One such option was the Magdalen Asylum which provided shelter for repentant prostitutes and helped them regain decent positions in society.

The Victim of Prejudice was written and published during the Enlightenment Period. Topics of tyranny and social error became a part of fictional literature with publication of William Godwin’s novel Caleb Williams in 1794, only five years before the publication of The Victim of Prejudice. Mary Hays was in correspondence with William Godwin and his wife Mary Wolstoncraft, and all three of them wrote works critiquing the social and political system of England of the time.

Mary Hays’ work was also a counter to the counter-revolutionary philosopher Edmund Burke. Burke became prominent because of British anxieties due to the French Revolution. He upheld the established British hierarchy, believing that utilitarian equality based on the rule of the majority could only lead to popular tyranny. He and the rest of the counter-revolutionaries believed in a just, “natural hierarchy” to uphold constitutional authority and equality and natural law, while Mary Hays believed that the sources of British power structures were arbitrary, not natural, and were thus something to be reconciled with natural law and constitutional authority, not the upholder of them.

Chastity and Virtue

The Victim of Prejudice challenges the 18th century convention of conflating a woman’s moral character, and therefore her with her physical virginity. Hays, though the novel, posits that the consequences of assault on the victim are socially constructed and therefore flexible and can be changed. Mary Hays counters these conventions with the idea that a woman’s virtue does not lie in her physical virginity, as that can be taken from her by force. Rather, it is in her consent or lack thereof as that is more indicative of her will and therefore her moral character. This idea would have been considered radical at the time. This relocation of the source of virtue would consequently safeguard a victim of assault from becoming socially ruined by no fault of her own.

Mary Hays expresses this alternative concept of virtue through the character of Mary Raymond. After experiencing an assault from Osborne,when he lays out how she has lost her virtue and will experience difficulty if she leaves, she responds “My honor, say you, can never be restored to me? … Its lusture, which you have sought to obscure, will break out, in your despight, from the temporary cloud that envelopes it, with undiminished brightness”. She does not feel shame or ruin and refuses to give ground to the prejudices and conventional thoughts of the society around her. She does not act according to the expected role of the “fallen woman”. When she later faces the adversities of a tarnished reputation, she protests “For what crime was I driven from society?”, inviting the reader’s consideration of the justice or lack thereof in Mary’s situation. Hays uses Mary’s story to illustrate what she saw as lacking in the societal approach to women’s chastity and cases of assault. These concepts are what made The Victim of Prejudice a revolutionary novel at the time it was written.

Reason and Independence

Mary Hays used enlightenment ideals of reason and applied them to Mary Raymond, “feminizing” the concept of reason at a time when women were not seen as rational creatures. Mary Raymond has a robust education in languages, sciences, and athletics, something reserved for boys in 18th century England. Mary excels in her educational pursuits, holding her own in her studies alongside the Pelham boys.

Reason also has a chameleon quality, as anything can appear reasonable if it is presented in a proper logical format, leading to contradiction and epistemological confusion. Mary is confused when Mr. Raymond is concerned for her after she is injured by Sir Peter for rescuing a rabbit from his hunting party. She asks him “Have you not taught me, dear father, that, in the cause of right we should contemn bodily harm?”. She is confused by her father figure’s reaction when she was behaving according to what he had taught her. Peter Osborne also attempts to rationalize his own behavior with logic later in the book in an attempt to give it the appearance of reason. Mr. Raymond is also forced to contradict his own rational precepts. He has a “contempt of vulgar prejudices” but he explains and enforces the social prejudices that would prevent Mary from becoming William’s wife.

This portrayal of the female as capable of reason also makes her capable of independence. Mary Hays depicts this female independence as impeded by the “shelter of man”. In an effort to protect Mary Raymond  from sharing the fate of her mother, Mr. Raymond shelters Mary to the extent that she is naive and does not know how to fend for herself. In Hays’ works, a woman’s gratitude and affection towards men consumes energy and attention that could be directed towards “the world” and independence in it.

Biology, Biography, and Politics

Human rights were an emerging idea in the 18th century with Lockean philosophy, and thus were a subject of public discourse. It is this Lockean philosophy of rights stemming from just being human, stemming from the Greek concept of zoe (human life as such), that allows Mary Raymond to declare in her narration “surely, I had a right to exist!”, connecting Hays’ commentary to the greater discourse around human rights. Mary Raymond describes that after the assault she “sought only the bare means of subsistence”. Yet, this is a very minimal inclusion of Enlightenment rights discourse, to the point that it is nearly unrecognizable,considering only the most foundational right to bear life without any of the other Lockean rights that bring life meaning. Every other right is predicated by the right to life, yet due to the prejudices of those around here, Mary meets with great adversity in attempts to eke out her existence. Mary and her mother live in a state somewhere between human and animal. For Mary, life is a mere contingency that she has a right to even teleology appears to have failed.

Intertwined with rights politics was the creation of the biography as a commercial genre. Mary Hays saw the biography as an agent of progress. She believed if one became his own biographer, it would expose to him his own prejudices, and the genre as a whole being a study of the human mind. The Victim of Prejudice is framed as a first-person autobiography with Mary Raymond writing of the events of her misfortune from prison. This biographical style gives a name and voice to everyday women who were victims of assault, humanizing them. The novel invokes the moral imagination and sympathy of the readers as they see the events through her own eyes.