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A review by pixieauthoress
Mary: A Fiction by Mary Wollstonecraft
2.0
Read for EN4363: Romantic Writing and Women.
Technically, the edition I own is a Penguin 3-in-1, but I realised that I'd rather have my reviews of Mary, Maria and Matilda separate, and that using that edition on GoodReads would skew my reading statistics for the year.
I'm unsure as to whether Mary is a novella or a short-story. It only takes up 53 pages in my edition, but it's an incredibly small font. And given how tedious this book felt after a while, it might as well have been a full-length novel!
Honestly, I really appreciate Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but I think that's definitely her best display of her writing skills. Although there are a few insightful moments in Mary, the only other compliments I can bestow this novel is that Wollstonecraft occasionally inserts some interesting descriptions of scenery and probably did a good job of depicting how difficult it was to be an independent women towards the end of the 18th century. Other than that, it seems to be a melodramatic novel about a woman who experienced far too much illness, death and heartbreak. Mary seemed to be a good product of her time, but this contradicted Wollstonecraft's comments in the Advertisement at the start of the novel, which explained that Mary was an unusual woman of "thinking powers". There were a few throwaway comments about Mary's reading and powers of reason, but honestly? The emotions and irrationality that she displayed seemed far more fitting with the women Wollstonecraft describes in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. It almost feels like Wollstonecraft didn't entirely know what she set out to write about in this much earlier work.
All in all, I'm sure this will make for some interesting conversations in class, but I can't say I can recommend this book--whether you're looking for an early classic novel or a feminist tract. If you are interested in Wollstonecraft, look to her non-fiction instead. 2*
Technically, the edition I own is a Penguin 3-in-1, but I realised that I'd rather have my reviews of Mary, Maria and Matilda separate, and that using that edition on GoodReads would skew my reading statistics for the year.
I'm unsure as to whether Mary is a novella or a short-story. It only takes up 53 pages in my edition, but it's an incredibly small font. And given how tedious this book felt after a while, it might as well have been a full-length novel!
Honestly, I really appreciate Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but I think that's definitely her best display of her writing skills. Although there are a few insightful moments in Mary, the only other compliments I can bestow this novel is that Wollstonecraft occasionally inserts some interesting descriptions of scenery and probably did a good job of depicting how difficult it was to be an independent women towards the end of the 18th century. Other than that, it seems to be a melodramatic novel about a woman who experienced far too much illness, death and heartbreak. Mary seemed to be a good product of her time, but this contradicted Wollstonecraft's comments in the Advertisement at the start of the novel, which explained that Mary was an unusual woman of "thinking powers". There were a few throwaway comments about Mary's reading and powers of reason, but honestly? The emotions and irrationality that she displayed seemed far more fitting with the women Wollstonecraft describes in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. It almost feels like Wollstonecraft didn't entirely know what she set out to write about in this much earlier work.
All in all, I'm sure this will make for some interesting conversations in class, but I can't say I can recommend this book--whether you're looking for an early classic novel or a feminist tract. If you are interested in Wollstonecraft, look to her non-fiction instead. 2*