The first few times I read Mary Wollstonecraft I was disturbed by her use of the word “feminine” to disparage ideas and behaviors. She calls bad writing “feminine.” She urges women to get a “masculine” education so they can be more manly. What does she mean? If I step back from our ideas about gender and place myself (as best I can) in 1790, I get it. These are not just Mary’s terms. This is how the world she lives in regards masculinity (strong, bold, virtuous) and femininity (weak, timid, and vulnerable). Mary’s angry because middle class women have been relegated to the margins of the world — margins that are traditionally designated “feminine.” So, courtship, dress, romances, romance novels, appearance — these are “feminine” concerns/ female territory. Nonsense, Mary declares. The “masculine” world of politics, art, and religion should also be the province of women.

By their very nature, flirtations seem a trivial matter. But now that I am on the trail of Mary Wollstonecraft, it has occurred to me that her dalliance with Henry Fuseli was preparing her for the next very serious steps she was about to take. By spending time alone with Henry, she broke with the convention of her times. By talking about sex with Henry, she broke another rule. Finally, by acknowledging her passionate feelings for him, a married man, she stepped outside the pale. So, this relationship was not just about love etc for MW, it was about learning to venture outside the boundaries of ordinary life — breaking rules.

The update from my book is that currently Mary Wollstonecraft is having long talks with Henry Fuseli, the painter. He is married and eighteen years older than she is, but he is the sexiest person she has ever met. He paints erotically charged paintings and holds forth on the importance of Freedom from constraints. Mary can feel herself changing, loosening up, and drawing close to Henri, but she is frustrated because Fuseli has a wife. Meanwhile, the French Revolution is heating up across the Channel. The Bastille falls. The King and Queen fly to the Tuileries. It’s funny. I’ve taught the French Revolution countless times and now all I can remember is shouting at my students that they Must remember the Tennis Court Oath. Now, all I can remember is my own shouting, not the Tennis Court Oath.

“I am become a reviewer,” Mary Wollstonecraft declares in 1789, the year before she launches herself into celebrity-dom with her essay, “A Vindication of the Rights of Men.” Yes, men. She vindicated men before she vindicated women. Today, as I wrote about how her confidence grew with every book review she wrote, I realized that yet again there is a strange confluence between my characters and my own life. I have a stack of books to review just like MW and lately I’ve realized that no book review is ever just a book review. Always, we are making some kind of generalized statement about art, our world, ourselves, or books in general, even if we don’t realize it.

I did not realize that Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her first controversial passages, using the mask of a male author. She “translated” a book from the German and stuck in her own ideas.The German author never complained and MW felt no guilt. Imagine “translating” like that today. Also, she changed the name of the little girl in the story to Mary. All of MW’s heroines are named Mary (or Maria). Why does she do this? On the one hand, she wants the protection of a mask, on the other she wants to proclaim her link to her characters. It is complicated to write about complicated people.

As I watched Elyssa read, I realized that we were witnessing one of those transformations that can happen with really great art. Edward Hopper made the white houses in Gloucester seem like more than just houses, and Elyssa has made Dogtown into “Dogtown.” Now that she has it seems obvious and even inevitable, but at first, years ago, when she told me about her idea, I wondered how she could make a story out of this little patch of land on Cape Ann. Now I wonder why I didn’t get it right away. Dogtown seems an obvious book and the better question is why no one else thought of it. But this is the genius of invention, I guess. By lifting something out of the ordinary world and getting it on the page, you create something discrete and strange and different that feels like it must have always been there, waiting for someone to peel back the skin and discover it. Even the characters in the book, Shep Abbot, Isabelle Natti, Lee and Robert Natti — people I’ve known for years — now appear to me as “characters.” It is a gift to see the world this way. I feel re-inspired to make Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley into The Marys. I don’t want people to overlook them anymore. I want people to notice them, think about them as a famous mother and daughter, and wonder about them, the way I do, the way I am doing with Dogtown right now.

My son is experiencing some of his first teacherly injustice. I know there are weak teachers and that part of school is learning to deal with them. But still, it is hard to witness one’s earnest, hard working twelve year old run into grown ups who say mean things, or who don’t praise projects that took hours to complete. I remember the bad teachers I had in 7th and 8th grade –Mrs. H.’s clogs and kneesocks, Mr. T.’s sweat stains under his armpits. These individuals were my social studies teachers and as I write this I realize that social studies is what I do for a living. Literary nonfiction about history and culture. How much more social studies is that? Mrs. H. gave my invented continent, Terra Bella, a C or something lower — clearly, I have blocked the memory of this grade. She felt the weather system was not right. Mr. T. said I did not write my term paper on St. Theresa of Siena by myself. Did my mother help me? But the worst thing was that I knew they did not like me. I could smell it on them — the dislike. They did not smile when I spoke. When I raised my hand, they ignored me. Teacherly dislike was a new experience for this veteran teacher’s pet and it never really happened again. My high school teachers redeemed school by loving me and loving their subjects. As for me, I have taught since I was twenty two years old and not once have I had a student who I disliked on this weird visceral level. I’ve struggled with some, failed to reach others, but never had the chemical dislike those teachers had for me. And as a few teachers seem to have for my son.

Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe) is actually not my favorite. We had to read him in our 18th century prose class. Or at least we were supposed to read him, but since he did not write about the love problems of adolescent females — my collegiate experience in a nutshell — I wasn’t that interested in him. But now that I am older, I appreciate his cynicism:
“Wherever God erects a house of prayer
the Devil always builds a chapel there;
And ‘t will be found, upon examination,
the latter has the largest congregation.”
— Defoe’s The True-Born Englishman, 1701

Maybe this is just holiday sullenness on my part, but I have met more devilish congregants than I would like and, for that matter, I suppose I am one myself.

were aggressively frumpy for good strong political reasons. Here is one of my favorite MW passages. One of her little girl characters complains, “In this dress I am bound like a prisoner. Sometimes my hair tickles me, my feathers and flowers keep my head stiff, my stays hurt me, and when I begin to play, my flounces, flowers, or frock, catch every tree. Nay, the boys tread on my train on purpose to see me look silly.”
Of course, this lament is MW’s lament. It’s mine, too. Not that the boys tread on my train. But sometimes it feels like they do, at least metaphorically.

I am cooking a roast. Well, I am not cooking it yet, but I am waiting to put it in the oven with some degree of anxiety. It was expensive and I don’t want to ruin it. In fact, it was so expensive that I had to tell the check out lady that I could Not buy many of the things rolling toward her after she rang in the roast. The nice woman behind me offered to pay for my cast offs, which I found embarrassing (I must look indigent), yet gratifying (There are actually kind people in the world). We have invited my son’s teachers over for Hannukah and I wanted to make them something special. Hence, the roast. I will be eating eggplant and cookies. A fine diet, if you ask me. If I were my writer friend Dawn, I would probably have had to slaughter this roast first — although I have only heard about Dawn’s goats. I don’t think she has cattle. My uncle and aunt had cattle on their ranch in Wyoming and when we visited them in the summers, they would butcher one especially for us. That was all well and good, except they named their cows after us. So, we would dine on Charlotte or Emily, my mother’s name — a disturbing phenomenon for city dwellers like ourselves. I also remember having to drink Charlotte’s milk after she had strayed into the onion patch (and before her slaughter, obviously). Maybe this is why I still don’t drink milk. I also don’t like butter. In kindergarten a woman came in to demonstrate butter churning — a long, boring process as far as I was concerned. When she was finally done, she stuck globs of butter on popsicle sticks for us to taste. I said, “No thank you,” as my mother had taught me to say, but despite my good manners I had to stay in from recess (and watch my best friend play with other girls) until I agreed to taste that butter. I still remember the globby sensation. And the smell.
It is hard to write books during the holiday season. Not one word on Mary W today. Just butter.