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Mary: A Fiction

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This article is about one of Mary Wollstonecraft's two novels. I would eventually like to take this article to FAC, so rip it apart now, please! Awadewit | talk 07:51, 19 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Sounds like you've been here before! I would recommend that you organize some of the sections differently. Split the "reception" section at the end to two parts: reception of contemporaries, and reception of modern critics and historians (now you have mixed two paragraphs of each). Also, the organization of the "Themes" heading - the major achievement of your article - seems somewhat aimless. I see questions of meta-genre and internal character relationships jumbled together; you probably want to split those into separate headings also. Finally, the lead section needs some work. It's hard for me to say what, but I didn't see a strong correlation between the "thesis" and the "body", in English-teacher-speak. Shalom Hello 05:19, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you - that is very helpful. I too have been concerned about the section organization. The problem is that all of the themes and scholars' discussions of them overlap so much. Might you suggest some more specifics on this front, because it is a problem I have been struggling with in the article. Awadewit | talk 05:30, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Will also do tweaks to the text directly, listing here things that are debatable, or that I can't trivially do myself. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 16:36, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Lead - You've got a citation for inspiration, Rousseau (at least I hope that's what that references!), but not one for the repudiation/laughable, which made me check to make sure it is there later. It is, but maybe you should either ref both or neither in the lead? In fact, I would repeat the rousseau/autodidact business in the Biographical and literary influences section regardless. Not a big deal if you disagree.
      • Actually, the citation is for the "first female genius in literature" bit. That seemed like it might draw queries. I have added the citation for Rousseau and the laughable bit. It seems like the trend is toward citing the lead (I dislike that trend - some leads look like porcupines). Awadewit | talk 17:05, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • This is what I say in the "Influences" section: She also notes that in Emile, Rousseau "chuses [sic] a common capacity to educate—and gives as a reason, that a genius will educate itself" (emphasis Wollstonecraft's). - Do you think I need to be more explicit? Awadewit | talk 17:05, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Plot - Mary's mother becomes increasingly ill as the opening chapters progress - this is half way through the summary, implying this is also halfway through the book. Either move this earlier in the summary (seems appropriate as the first sentences are about Mary's mother), or remove "the opening chapters" from the phrase.
    • she requests that Mary wed Charles, a wealthy man she has never met. - The first "she" refers to mother, does the second refer to Mary? In other words has mother at least met Charles? It's unclear. I recommend replacing the second "she" with either "Mary" or "her mother" (or even "they have"!).
    • While Mary is quite attached to her, Ann is in the grip of an unrequited love and does not reciprocate Mary's feelings. -- the contrast with the unrequited love implies Mary's feelings are more than platonic. Are they intended to be? If not, I'd change the last word to "close friendship" or something.
      • Actually, I see later it is intentionally unclear. Sigh. I still wish it could be improved somehow, but can't suggest how.
        • I'm not really sure how to make it clearer without inserting a POV into the plot summary (which is hard enough as it is). I found writing about this relationship extremely difficult (note the awkward "partners" in the lead - any ideas there?) Also, Charlotte and Werther are not really "lovers", but I couldn't find another word there either - that really needs to be fixed. Our vocabulary for relationships has become very limited, I'm afraid. Awadewit | talk 17:07, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Last about plot summary - why is everyone dying left and right, and of what? Is it an epidemic?
      • Um, is this a rhetorical question? If it is, I apologize for the condescending explanation to follow. The brother dies of a "fever" (that could be many things in today's parlance); the mother "declines" (probably consumption); Ann and Henry both die of "consumption" (I've made this clearer now). Mary's father dies, too, but I didn't think that was a significant plot point. Death is fairly common in eighteenth-century novels, usually from consumption or smallpox. The diseases themselves were major killers at the time and that tends to be reflected in the literature. The children's literature that I study also contains lots of death (even violent death) - much more than we would now considerable acceptable. It's really all quite fascinating, in a morbid sort of way. :) Awadewit | talk 17:07, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Wollstonecraft's portrayal of Fanny in the novel - would be more clear if you said Ann
    • has been called "condescending"; critics have speculated - needs cite to specific critics who called and speculated
    • Didn't anyone comment that the main character shared the author's first name? Or that her later book would be called Maria?
    • Anglo-Irish seems to refer to people in Ireland, not in Bristol - are you sure that's what you wanted?
      • She wrote it in Bristol, where the family was staying, but the family was "Anglo-Irish" (they had an estate there and everything). I will think about how to make this clearer. Awadewit | talk 17:12, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • the text is not yet as revolutionary as - "yet" bothers me; how about "is not as revolutionary as her later"
    • lesbian, as such constructs did not exist in the eighteenth century - not sure what you mean by "construct" here; surely women who were attracted to women existed.
      • I'm sure they did, too, but the idea of a "lesbian" relationship (or homosexuality, for that matter), did not arise until the nineteenth century. Thinking of oneself as "gay" or "straight" is a fairly modern idea. That is what is meant by "construct"; being gay or straight is not a universal category. It was invented in a certain time and place. See Michel Foucault. The same is true for race, by the way; eighteenth-century conceptions of race are quite different than our own. There are numerous stories of people changing "races", for example; race, for them, like gender and sexuality, was a lot more fluid (women could become men, too). It is not until the dawn of real science that this begins to change (for better or worse, it is not clear). Think of the scientific defenses of slavery, for example; that really drives the development of a racial concept of identity. Anyway, how to make this all clearer? Awadewit | talk 17:54, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • Ehh. I guess "as the classification of relationships as heterosexual or homosexual did not exist" would be easier to understand, but I'm not sure that can be so. I will accept that people didn't classify themselves as gay or straight or bi, but surely they classified relationships as sexual or not, made a distinction between romantic attraction and friendship. Eros, philia and agape were important medieval distinctions - surely that wasn't somehow forgotten in the eighteenth. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 19:05, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • Yes, definitely, those kinds of words were much more significant. But, I'm not sure that the distinction between "sexual" and "non-sexual" was as firm as you are suggesting (even those Greek words aren't that clear on that matter). It is not that firm now. :) Anyway, see what you think of the new wording. Awadewit | talk 20:09, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Drawing on the emerging eighteenth-century conception of "the genius" - ah. Needs a wikilink or something. See, the modern conception of a genius is someone who is extremely intelligent; Sherlock Holmes, Albert Einstein, even Marie Curie. That doesn't seem to be the main characteristic the heroine of this story, which seems to be more of a feminine rebel, but hardly likely to invent or deduct. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 17:27, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I tried to find a wikilink, but the "genius" page doesn't give a history of the concept (I can link there and hope someday the page improves, obviously). The twentieth-century conception of "genius" (what your definition and your examples allude to) is a bit different from the eighteenth-century concept which eventually morphed into that. I'm not really sure what to do about this problem. All of my sources use the word "genius", as does Wollstonecraft, so I thought it was important to preserve. I hoped by explaining it in some detail that readers would realize it meant something different. How should I improve this explanation? Awadewit | talk 17:54, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • I found this: Genius (literature), which starts out very unpromising, but then gets to exactly the right place in the middle. You're talking about the Romantic concept of "genius" as seer or visionary. and I would recommend using those words (seer or visionary) alongside "genius" in a few places, for example in the lead -- depict a female genius (seer or visionary) -- and then go into more detail in this later section -- to depict a female genius. The eighteenth century concept of genius was ... If you have the energy, it would be a great service to the Wikipedia in general, and even useful to this article, if you went into Genius (literature) and pounded on it until it says less about genius loci, the genius of a place, and more about this. Then you could link to it from these places. Maybe break out the two concepts, Genius loci and Genius=visionary into separate sections, and link to the latter section. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:47, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • Actually, that article seems to be mostly by Geogre, who is basically you with a mop and a temper. :-) Given that, please pronounce "pounded on it" as "massaged it gently and lovingly". :-). --AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:51, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
            • I know Geogre. This is a good link - thanks for finding it. I will add it to the article. I think that subheadings would help the article immensely. "Genius" as in "spirit of place" was extremely important to eighteenth-century literature - more important than "genius" as seer or visionary or prodigy. "Genius" could also mean "spirit of a person" or "essence of a person". I would think that there should be subsections on all of these. I will think about what sources I could use to discuss this. (Notice how in the Rousseau quote genius is tied to the sublime as the article mentions.) Awadewit | talk 20:09, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
            • I have already tried to define "genius" in the lead as "rational autodidact." Wollstonecraft's notion of genius seems to be a bit different than the Romantic notion; it is more Enlightenment. Awadewit | talk 20:09, 30 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • The images are interesting, but ... of other subjects! Aren't there any illustrations from an early copy of the book itself? (I couldn't find any on Google, of course, so maybe the answer is no.)
    • While looking, I noticed the novel only has 110 pages.[1] That's pretty short, in fact it would fit under Novella. Not that I'm saying you should use that modern term, but you should mention its length, or rather lack thereof somewhere.
    • I also noticed that half the sources call it "Mary, a Fiction" rather than with the colon.for example

Query: Do we think that this is ready for FAC or do we want to work on it some more? Awadewit | talk 13:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ready. I read it over again, and you seem to have addressed most of my quibbles. (I still can't get over everyone dying left and right, the body count is staggering - out of half a dozen characters mentioned, only one makes it to the end of the plot summary not on his last legs! On that line, Mary somehow went from having a father and mother to becoming an heiress after the brother dying. What about the father? No, don't tell me, consumption...) Nominate, and I'll try to be there for any technical issues. --AnonEMouse (squeak) 23:51, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Reading older literature is so fascinating precisely because of the differences we note from our own expectations (e.g. death is more commonplace - think Hamlet). (When Mary's brother died, she became the recipient of the family's wealth since there were no other sons). I'll put the article up for nomination tonight. Here's to hoping all goes well. Awadewit | talk 23:59, 3 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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