ABSTRACT
Mary Hays was initiated into an energetic, closely knit, progressive culture, inhabited by vivid characters, one that was physically closer than Robinson’s “nunnery” in Cambridge. Hays also corresponded during this time with George Dyer, a young man with the kind of checkered early origins that appealed to Robinson. Hays attended sermons at New College and read tutors’ publications, some of which included actual lectures and curricula. She read Priestley’s tome The History and Present State of Electricity. In Letters and Essays Hays expressed a buoyant faith in the divine design in human affairs. “Her experience may have demonstrated the relative unimportance in a progressive marriage of good looks, a telling matter for Hays. Hays describe in detail a “small gothic hermitage” near a waterfall on Theron’s property, which draws Melville to reflection and melancholy. Hays weave together multiple strands of meaning: Cecilia is counter-heroine to prevailing expectations for women’s fiction.
