Come join our book group for a discussion of "Love and Fury" by Samantha Silva. Loved the book? Hated the book? Couldn't finish it? Come join us anyway! Newcomers are always welcome!
The lives of trailblazing English proto-feminist writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, overlapped by only 11 days as Wollstonecraft tragically died from postpartum infection in 1797. Silva imagines Wollstonecraft, weakened from childbirth, telling, at her midwife's suggestion, her life story to her baby over the course of those precious few days. Wollstonecraft's passionate declaration of selfhood carries readers on a wide-ranging, deep journey as she eloquently voices the circumstances shaping her views—being raised in a large family in which her father abused her mother, growing infuriated by gender inequality—as well as her strong attachments to other independent thinkers and her struggles to escape societal constraints. Wollstonecraft ends up doubting that equality is possible in marriages of men and women. Related with superb detail regarding late-eighteenth-century locales and intellectual pursuits, Silva's portrait of the revolutionary Wollstonecraft generates an absorbing tale of courage, sorrow, and the dance between independence and intimacy that delivers a sense of triumphant catharsis
This is hybrid meeting, we will be meeting in person, but there is an option to join us virtually if you would like. Email mccref@slcolibrary.org for information.
