LOVE AND FURY

A fictionalized biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering 18th-century feminist and radical thinker who was the mother of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley.

Wollstonecraft died at 38, days after having given birth to Mary, her second daughter, and Silva frames the novel as the dying woman's recounting of her life story to her infant. Her reprobate father made her childhood a misery, she remembers, but, already rebellious and brilliant, she had a knack for drawing others to her. John Arden, father of her friend Jane, recognized Wollstonecraft’s intelligence and tutored her until Jane began to find Wollstonecraft too unconventional (and needy) to continue their friendship—also a pattern in Wollstonecraft’s life despite her intellectual emphasis on independence and feminine self-reliance in her writings. At 18, Wollstonecraft began a romantic friendship with tubercular artist Fanny Blood, but Fanny married for financial security and died in childbirth. After a brief career as a governess in Ireland, Wollstonecraft began a writing career in London supported by flamboyant publisher Joseph Johnson, who introduced her to the likes of William Blake, Thomas Paine, and her future husband, radical philosopher William Godwin, whom she initially disliked. Instead, she fell madly if semiplatonically in love with married painter Henry Fuseli, until he dumped her at his wife’s insistence. In Paris to observe the French Revolution, she began a passionate affair with American adventurer Gilbert Imlay, a cad not unlike her father. He fathered her first daughter, Fanny, then broke her heart. Finally Wollstonecraft and Godwin reconnected as soul mates. While Silva works hard to fit in all the details of Wollstonecraft’s life with accuracy, the most moving moments belong to her fictitious midwife, kindly Mrs. Blenkinsop. Her intermittent narration of Wollstonecraft’s last weeks is meant to provide a workingwoman’s adoring view of Wollstonecraft and her domestic life with Godwin but also reveals the midwife’s private grief and spiritual growth.

Silva’s strong visual language enhances an otherwise matter-of-fact retelling of Wollstonecraft’s brief, eventful life.