| Chapter 1: | The Early Years |
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An altercation with Miss Mary a year after Maria’s arrival at the school, intensified by constant frictions with her classmates,7 resulted in that she was severely punished with the silent treatment. Nobody was allowed to speak to her, and she was barred from attending lessons until she apologised to the people she had offended, which she refused to do for several months. As punishment she had to stay all day in a small room doing nothing and even without her schoolbooks. Fortunately for her, in that room were kept Miss Bright’s favourite books, like Pope’s translation of Homer, Dryden’s version of Virgil,8 and all of Shakespeare’s plays.
The type of heroine Maria begins to shape at this stage deviates from the accepted ideal of the woman as devoted wife and mother. Although she does not articulate this state of affairs, at that time, there was no other option for women in society but marriage and child bearing—it was a given. By her superior attitude towards all those women lacking intellectual abilities, she implies that these are the possession of only a chosen few. To emphasise this point, Maria Graham introduces an antagonist to her heroine, yet one who enjoys only a brief textual existence. Of her schoolfellows at Miss Bright’s school she says that