Liberating Mary

491px-Marywollstonecraft.jpg
Mary Wollstonecraft, by John Opie, circa 1797

A wonderful essay by Bob Lamm about his crusade to get the famous portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft back on the walls at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

An important figure, certainly, in the history of feminism, education for women and equal rights (her major work is A Vindication of the Rights of Woman), she also was a journalist, writing on all the major social topics of the day, and was present in Paris during the fiery heights/depths of the French Revolution. She was there when Louis XIV was guillotined. The story of her time in France is enough to make anyone’s blood run cold, and she died at a very young age, she wasn’t even 40, just 10 days after giving birth to her daughter (you know. Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein).

Vindication: A Novel, by Frances Sherwood, is a historical novel, based on the life of Mary Wollstonecraft, and I am surprised it is not more well-known. With beautiful writing, and visceral details, it gives you a real sense of the woman, her times, the wars and revolutions she witnessed, social upheaval, politics, her loves (failed and otherwise), and her sometimes irascible personality. She was a fighter. Her reputation has not been solid for centuries. She is either reviled and ignored, or praised and celebrated, depending on the moment. There is a reason her portrait was stuck in the basement, and not up on the wall with the rest of her famous family, in the National Portrait Gallery.

Her life, and the events thereof, were so scandalous at times, so off the charts interesting, that IT often has taken center stage, instead of her writing, and her philosophies. And that’s a shame. Because that’s what she was: one of the great philosophers of the Enlightenment, deserving her rightful place in that pantheon.

If you haven’t read Vindication: A Novel, by Frances Sherwood, I highly recommend it, but Mary Wollstonecraft’s books should be read as well. Her history of the French Revolution has something that Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution: A History (Modern Library Classics) does not: immediacy. She was there. It is a good companion piece to Edmund Burke’s magnificent Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford World’s Classics) – my thoughts on that work here (Mary Wollstonecraft had a long-standing feud with Burke, and many of her books were replies to his works).

So Bob Lamm has done all of us a great service, by pushing the powers-that-be at the National Portrait Gallery, to unearth the famous portrait from the basement, so that all can enjoy it. She has a place in history too. Let her stand on her own with the rest of them. It is what she would expect and demand.

Go read Lamm’s piece. Wonderful stuff. Congratulations, Mr. Lamm, and thank you!

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2 Responses to Liberating Mary

  1. george says:

    Three books in one post.

    Darn you!

  2. red says:

    hahahahahaha!!!

    Not to mention Rebecca West’s giant TOME which should arrive any day now!

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