Solitary Walker: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), novelist, journalist, and philosopher, authored the seminal A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and was a fierce advocate of equal education for girls and boys. Her history of the French Revolution, book reviews, and travel writing on Scandinavia were widely read. She was one of the first English women supporting herself, however precariously, by writing.
Mastro’s fictionalized biography is enhanced by imagined conversations and illustrations of Mary’s presumed inner dialogue, revealing the frequent, fascinating disjunction between theory and practice. For example, after fervent support of the principles of the French Revolution, once in Paris, she is shocked and surprised that the king will actually be guillotined. An ardent proponent of celibacy, she was deeply sensual, allowing herself to be seduced by Gilbert Imlay, American playboy and profiteer, involved in his smuggling operations, and dismayed when he blithely abandons her and their infant daughter.
Yet nothing if not resilient, once lured to Scandinavia to salvage Imlay’s smuggling scheme, Mary parlays the disaster into a lively, successful travel book and social critique. Mastro writes with compassionate tenderness of her happy, tragically short marriage to William Godwin, a fine man fully her equal. Their daughter, the future Mary Shelley, would pen the immortal Frankenstein.
The novel is marred by sometimes awkward asides. Dramatic scenes, for example, might be interrupted by detailed descriptions of women’s dresses. However, short excerpts from Wollstonecraft’s voluminous writings give readers a sense of her voice, careful reasoning, unique vantage on the French Revolution, and 18th-century life in Scandinavia. Mastro’s sympathetic novel may inspire readers to delve into the work of this troubled woman, who was a fierce and fearless defender of women’s equity in every sphere of private and public life.
