10. Mary reflects: “I seek a poetics of change. For women and men. That joins sense with sensibility. But a sensibility governed by reason” (p. 182). Later in the novel, Mrs. Blenkinsop remarks on “the way [Mary] turns feeling into thinking and thinking into feeling” (p. 201). What do sense and sensibility mean in the context of this novel? How are they related to feeling and thinking, in particular?

11. Mary tells Henry Fuseli: “I don’t want women to have power over men, but power, at last, over themselves” (p. 185). What does power mean to her? Discuss instances in the novel where she has power over her life, and when she doesn’t.

12. The first words Mary writes in crafting A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, arguably her most famous work, are: “A wild wish has just flown from my heart to my head, and I will not stifle it, though it may excite a horselaugh. I do earnestly wish to see the distinction of sex confounded in society” (p. 185). What do you think she means by that? How does it shape her approach to life and relationships?

13. Mary reflects: “Where Fuseli was the tinder and spark, Imlay was my raging fire” (p. 217). How do her relationships with these two men influence her views on love, sex, and marriage? How are they similar and different? How does Mary’s marriage to William Godwin model a different kind of partnership?

14. Mrs. Blenkinsop describes everything she witnesses between Mary’s childbirth and death as “all this—sad and glorious beautiful” (p. 264). What do you think she means? Is Mrs. Blenkinsop changed by her experience with Mary? If so, how?

15. In the last line of the novel, Mary tells her daughter, “Sorrow, my sweet girl, will bring you to your knees, time and again, but so will beauty, so too love, enough to rise again, to try again, to live as all beings wish to live: free” (p. 271). What does freedom mean to Mary, and how does her understanding evolve over the course of her life? Do you think Mary herself lives freely?

Praise for Love and Fury

PRAISE FOR

LOVE AND FURY

A Best Novel of Summer (The New York Times Book Review)

“Silva succeeds in making Wollstonecraft a vibrant and forceful personality, full of both love and fury.… [She] is not overshadowed by historical forces, but is instead herself a force of nature—and history.”

—The Washington Post

“Magical … A love letter to life itself. Love and Fury is a beautifully written call to all of us to fill our own brief time with as much love, wisdom, suffering, and, most important, beauty as possible.”

—Ms.

“Stirring … Purely imagined … Moving.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“A thought-provoking, beautifully written story of mothers and daughters.”

—BuzzFeed

“A heartbreaking novel of compassion and grace, as well as an elegy to one of the world’s most influential thinkers.”

—BookPage