ABSTRACT
“Like strong powers of nature, external constraint seems to have upon the most dangerous and fatal operation; when pent up and oppressed, the whirlwind and the torrent are not more wild and destructive; they struggle to burst their bounds.” Publication of Memoirs of Emma Courtney signaled the beginning of Mary Hays’s increasing alienation from her natural intellectual allies. The combination of Hays’s personal shyness and intellectual boldness may have confused those already predisposed to dismiss her by making it easy for them to do so. Hays came to general public attention at a time of accelerated and politicized communication and within the context of the government’s enforcement of the “Gagging Acts” of 1795 that proscribed seditious meetings and publications. Hays maintain that Richardson’s idealized heroine Clarissa can never serve as the model for human imitation. There were situational and psychological reasons for Hays’s increasing social discomfort and deepening alienation.
