 Female friendships are central to both of Wollstonecraft 's novels , but it is the friendship between Maria and Jemima , the servant charged with watching over her in the insane asylum , that is the most historically significant . This friendship , based on a sympathetic bond of motherhood , between an upper @-@ class woman and a lower @-@ class woman is one of the first moments in the history of feminist literature that hints at a cross @-@ class argument , that is , that women of different economic positions have the same interests because they are women . 
