Editor’s Introduction 15power ful are her stories of women who experienced or averted rape, such
as her protagonists Mary and Maria’s resistance of forced sex in marriage
(marital rape) and Jemima’s suffering of rape by her master. In Maria, the
eponymous heroine describes “personal intimacy without affection” as “the
most painful state” for any woman. See Works, vol. 1, 26, 72, 112, 139.