 Both of Wollstonecraft 's novels also critique the discourse of sensibility , a moral philosophy and aesthetic that had become popular at the end of the eighteenth century . Mary is itself a novel of sensibility and Wollstonecraft attempts to use the tropes of that genre to undermine sentimentalism itself , a philosophy she believed was damaging to women because it encouraged them to rely overmuch on their emotions . In The Wrongs of Woman the heroine 's indulgence on romantic fantasies fostered by novels themselves is depicted as particularly detrimental . 
