In 1787, Mary Wollstonecraft is fired from her position as governess of three young women on the charge of being overly progressive; the incident is a microcosm of her uphill struggle to affect “an end to women’s blind obedience.” She returns to London to pursue her ambition to become a writer, and with the encouragement of publisher Joseph Johnson, she establishes a reputation as a radical reformer, especially with her Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792. However, despite her own efforts to control her passions, she becomes infatuated with the married artist Henry Fuseli. He indiscreetly boasts of her attachment to him, an embarrassment that threatens to ruin her good reputation. Obsessed with the ongoing revolution in France, she exiles herself to Paris, a tinderbox of political violence, and risks being imprisoned, as all foreigners are seen as potential spies. In this gripping “work of fiction told in chronological order” focusing on Wollstonecraft’s “late-blooming love affairs,” the legendary feminist is torn between the need to flee an increasingly unsafe Paris and her attachment to Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American adventurer and fellow writer. This account of Wollstonecraft’s life deftly manages to be both literarily inventive and faithful to the facts of her life. A fiercely independent woman dedicated to the liberty of women everywhere, Wollstonecraft in these pages struggles to reconcile her ideal of “rational love” with the consuming carnal desires she experiences. Mastro also thoughtfully depicts her intellectual crisis regarding the French Revolution; initially, she was enthusiastically in favor of it and pilloried Edmund Burke’s famous critique. But later, as the Revolution devolved into violence and tyranny, she came to wonder if he was actually right. The author’s prose authentically captures the dialogue of the time and powerfully evokes the contradictions that make Wollstonecraft’s legacy so richly complex.
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English (US) ·