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Wollstonecraft, based on her writings on the subject, seems to have gone through a process to solidify her opinion of sensibility.

With the Romantic writers’ emphasis on sensibility in their appreciation of nature and the human condition, Wollstonecraft’s clarification of the characteristic as being the virtue from which art, sympathy, and happiness originate gives great insight into the mindset of the writers of the time. In these excerpts from Mary, A Fiction and Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman, Wollstonecraft presents her defense of sensibility, not as a self-indulgent, overemotional feminine trait, but rather as the very foundation of human virtue.

Mary Wollstonecraft, however, took a very different approach to the topic. Sensibility, which is defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms as “a kind of sensitivity or responsiveness that is both aesthetic and moral, showing a capacity to feel both for others’ sorrows and for beauty,” carried with it a societal stigma, as many people of the time saw it as an overdramatic, self-indulgent trait that was evidence of the inferiority of women to men. The topic of sensibility was a highly important and polemic one during the Romantic era.