I shall be a thousand different Marys and, in such manner, shall find the one I wish to be...'
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu longs for adventure, freedom and love, believing that only by truly living can she ever escape the stalking crow of Death...
An aristocratic woman in 18th century England is expected to act in certain ways. But Mary has never let society's expectations stifle her: she writes celebrated poetry and articles advocating for equality, as well as endless, often scandalous, letters to her many powerful friends.
However, Mary wants more from the world. Using her charm and connections, she engineers a job offer for her husband as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Travelling to Constantinople, Mary finally discovers the autonomous life she dreams of. And when she observes Turkish women 'engrafting' children against smallpox, she resolves to bring the miracle cure back to England.
Despite this, Mary's reputation becomes increasingly tainted. Her inability to abide by the rules, her outspoken opinions on women's rights, and her search for love and desire at all costs gains her powerful enemies. While Mary tries to ensure her name will live on by arranging the publication of her diaries after her death, her own daughter works against her, afraid of what they might contain...
An illuminating and beautiful novel, A Woman of Opinion gives a voice to the tragically unremembered yet extraordinary life of pioneering poet and feminist, Mary Wortley Montagu.
Sean Lusk follows his outstanding debut, The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesely, with a fictionalised biography of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the inspiration behind the character of Aunt Frances in his first book. Mary is barely remembered and yet her life and accomplishments were astonishing; at a time when we have reassessed how so many public figures of the past are perceived, this enthralling retelling of her life brings a genuinely noteworthy, remarkable figure to our attention.
Mary's diaries were sadly burnt by her daughter, however, many of her letters and poems survive and form the basis for the first-person narrative, which mostly follows Mary's perspective. There are also chapters told from her beloved sister, Frances's point-of-view, which gives us another insight into the sheer force of Mary's personality. She observes early in the book,
'That Mary is hungry for everything – for love, for sorrow, for adventure – is something I always understood. Yet she also has a taste for conflict.'
Sean Lusk elegantly portrays every nuance of this multifaceted woman throughout his book and his evidently exhaustive research ensures this is a rich, utterly captivating character portrait.
The prologue introduces us to the ten-year-old Mary Pierrepont, who is already aware that being ignored is due more to her being a female than to her age. It quickly becomes apparent that this early awareness drove her to rail against societal expectations throughout her life. Highly educated and fiercely independent, she defied her father's wishes by eloping with Edward Wortley Montagu. However, the excitement of their clandestine affair and secret nuptials soon passed and within two years, she was disheartened by his unyielding stubbornness. She notes that she first knew him through his sister, and her best friend, Annie; Sean Lusk poignantly conveys the intimate closeness of the friendship and the tragedy of her premature death from measles within a few lines, and it's at this point we first become aware that she personified Death as a relentless pursuer of love. Having lost her mother, grandmother and friend at a young age, the fear that stalks her, preventing her from truly expressing her love for her children is one of the most heartbreaking aspects of the book.
After her infant son almost died of scarletina, she tragically lost her brother to smallpox and then barely survived the illness herself and was left badly scarred. Her resilience is a feature throughout this account but perhaps never more so than here. Desperate for adventure and to escape the stultifying sanctimoniousness of London, she was able to manipulate her friendship with Robert Walpole to secure the position of His Majesty's ambassador to Constantinople. This heralds arguably the most fascinating section of A Woman of Opinion. Their protracted journey to Constantinople, followed by their time in Turkey is compellingly told; Sean Lusk has such a transportative way with words and brings each of her encounters vividly to life – from their stay in Vienna where by adopting the latest fashions and earning the approval of the most powerful women there, she was able to advise Edward on how best to negotiate for peace between Austria and Turkey, to her reckless courage in dressing as a man to visit the Hagia Sophia.
However, it was also in Constantinople that Mary noticed that unlike in Europe, the people there didn't bear the tell-tale scars of smallpox. Her interest in the process of engraftment – inoculation – and fervent belief in the practice perhaps defines her overlooked place in history more than any other. While most people can tell you that Edward Jenner was responsible for creating the smallpox vaccine, how many realise that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu imported inoculation against the disease from Turkey or that her daughter, Mary was the first person ever recorded as being inoculated against the disease in Britain? It is both inspiring and infuriating to learn how she battled the medical profession and that despite her claims being vindicated following tests run on prisoners in Newgate prison, her role in the story of vaccination has largely been forgotten.
If this was her greatest achievement, the rest of her life was no less eventful. Sean Lusk does a wonderful job of depicting the dichotomy between her spirited outspokenness and her more introspective side, which saw her desperate to feel truly loved and to fall passionately for the much younger Francesco Algarotti. Although A Woman of Opinion obviously positions Mary as the most riveting character, the secondary figures are also superbly rendered, with the fragility of Fanny, the feud which developed between Mary and a waspish Alexander Pope and the complex dynamics of her relationship with the duplicitous, Count Palazzi being just a few notable examples. Sean Lusk explains that he invented some characters for the sake of the story, including Mary's maid, Nell, who represents the close and often complicated relationships she had with a number of her servants. Aside from Mary, she was my favourite character in the novel and I would love to read a book about the life created for her here.
The politics, rivalries and beliefs of the time are woven into the plot superbly and I loved the extra little touches, such as the brief inclusion of Peter the Wild Boy. By the very nature of its extraordinary subject, A Woman of Opinion was always going to be riveting but Sean Lusk also captures the authentic tone of the period effortlessly and it's easy to believe that Mary guided his hand throughout. Truly exceptional, a book to savour – I loved it!
A Woman of Opinion is published by Doubleday; purchasing links can be found here.
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