Prompt 2/27 – Frankenstein at 200

While first reading the Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, I felt a sense of detachment from the main character. I questioned why she placed so much emphasis on the sublime and nature. I realized that she was channeling her emotions through nature and that is how I can stay connected to Mary. In a way, by writing about her emotions so indirectly, it protects her vulnerability. And, through this kind of writing style, she can stay connected to her lover, Imlay.

By reading the introduction I was able to gain a little more information about her life with Imlay, with whom she wrote these letters to, compared to how she started her book. Her letters gave me very little interest of being pulled in to a plot because there was none. I felt as if she was all over the place with what she was talking about, for example whenever she would get into a topic of nature and what she saw she would go very deep into her thoughts and imagination and I was not able to get there with her. I kept in mind the idea behind her letters and was able to highlight many times that she came across her exploration between self and nature/society.

My experience reading “Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark” by Mary Wollstonecraft has been enjoyable thus far and is a form of writing that I have not experienced prior to this reading. The writing is enjoyable, but difficult in a sense in which you aren’t being told the entire story of the events that are taking place in the letters and are left with a task of having to piece together information to get a sense of the events that are taking place. This task of piecing together bits of information are also told by the observations that Wollstonecraft makes and are told blatantly which leaves the reader on a quest to understand the events that are taking place around the information being presented.

It felt like I was reading someone’s diary. There was no discernable plot or character development because I don’t think what was she was writing was premeditated or pondered on. She was expressing herself and I found it very interesting to see how people see the world and think in the 18th century. Besides for that, it was a lot of description of Scandinavia as well as the descriptions of her travel arrangments – horses, ships, sailors, etc.; which I found the most fascinating. I enjoyed how she describes all the perils of travel especially by boat and what people had to go through just to travel. I feel like if you don’t read it as a story but rather try to see and understand what she is thinking and seeing, you can enter an 18th-century world where you are also traveling through Scandinavia, which for me, was the most engaging part of the reading.

Before I started reading Wollstonecraft’s letters, I read the introduction and did some background research. This cleared up most of the confusion that many of us had when reading the first letter, which did not provide much background information at all. I viewed these letters more like a journal of her experiences in Scandinavia, where she logged interesting parts of her travels.

I like the format of these letters because it makes the book feel like an adventure and that I’m experiencing this new land with Wollstonecraft. Her descriptions of the surroundings are detailed and create clear images in my head. It’s interesting to read an account of what life was like in Scandinavia over 200 years ago, especially from Wollstonecraft’s perspective.

My experience of reading “Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark was shaped by the introduction and the advertisement that I had read before reading the actual letters. Because I knew that Mary Wollstonecraft was known to be a feminist and was a writer during or around the time of the French Revolution, I looked for feminist and social class themes in the novel. I also perceived these letters as love letters because the introduction of the book included a quote by William Godwin that stated something along the lines of these letters making a man fall in love with a woman. I don’t think that I was bias when reading the letters, I was just paying more attention to themes of social class, feminism and romance. It was hard for me to gauge these letters as neutral from my start of reading them however, I did see the common themes throughout each letter and country that Mary Wollstonecraft observed.

During the time I read the story of the “Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark”, sometimes I get confused about the changes of the scenes. It tend to jump a scene into another scene without any transformation and any privious thought about it. The writer mention whatever things she saw and put them into the letter randomly in each letter without logical organization.

I was immediately confused by the start of the book. I didn’t know what the process of leaving a ship to get onto land involved, so I wasn’t quite sure what she was describing. I was able to discern that this was not a work of fiction almost immediately. I found myself paying close attention to her descriptions of the towns she stayed in, the local festivities and her political critique and tuning out during her descriptions of the landscape as she journeyed from place to place.

My experience in reading the letters was that it was informative to the reader. Wollstonecraft was addressing to a broad audience and therefore her writing style was very different than the general writing style. She was jumping from point to point to address the reader. Most importantly her writing was missing the plot which in my case, didn’t interest me in further reading the letters. Maybe because I am more attracted towards the stories which have plots and characters. It is for sure that though her writing style was unique, she was able to send a thesis to the reader.

My experience of reading of Wollstonecraft’s travels in the European countries reminded me of my own recent travels. Her new perception and vastly different opinions about the political and physical landscape from one country to the other is still relevant today. She writes beautifully “Nature is the nurse of sentiment, the true source of taste; yet what misery, as well as rapture” influences readers to think about the sublime aspect about a certain setting as well as it’s dangers. Wollstonecraft’s letters are written in complete autobiographical form and can best relate to women who were traveling at that time period. It is as if she was writing a modern post descriptively on “Reddit.”

Reading Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark” was very confusing and disorienting. It was confusing and disorienting because the reader wasn’t given any background information as to why Mary was writing these letters. What really threw me off was that the story didn’t have a plot and there is a lot that the reader isn’t told. I this this is because of the way the book/story is written and because it’s not a book and it wasn’t meant to be – It’s a collection of letters. This format made me feel as if I was reading someone’s diary. I feel like this format doesn’t give the reader a chance to get to know the character.

My overall experience of reading these letters were great. I have enjoyed reading them as I like to read people’s personal story. It shows me the sympathy I have for those individuals that were in the story. It tells us the feeling, the emotion of each individual character. It also brought a message to all of us as an audience. In the beginning, however, it was hard to get the main theme of these letter but as i was keep reading I got the thought of the overall message she wants the reader to engaged in.

The environment that Mary Wollstonecraft was born in was very disturbing. She had to see her mother getting beaten up by the father and many more disturbing situations Mary had to go through. It was pretty harsh for her when her mother died, she left home to go away from everyone and do the studies. She later on finds out that fanny had very less to live which was heartbroken but she didn’t give up and helped her until she died. Overall she had a very hard live and when she got married she died during the birth of her daughter.

Having lived in a Scandinavian country before(Denmark) specifically, the letters evoked an overwhelming feeling of nostalgia. The beauty with which she described the landscape and environment took me back to that world and I found myself trying to juxtapose my experiences in 21st century to hers in the 18th century. But i was a teenager, not having relationship problems and not burden with a quest to discover silver. I was about backpacking and trying to have loads of fun. Where as her letters even though didn’t really have a plot was about a woman writing about topics ranging from sociological reflections on Scandinavia and its peoples to philosophical questions regarding identity.

When reading these letters, I initially found them difficult to follow due to a lack of background information that could direct my understanding. However, as I went on, certain underlying ideas became more and more evident despite them being hidden in the text. For one, on the surface it initially seemed as if the letters were not directed to me and that I was intruding on a personal letter meant for someone else. However, as I kept reading I felt as if the underlying message was intentionally inputed for me to notice as if she were writing out into the open with the intention of me reading it.

I was very confused when I was reading the first chapter, and i didn’t realize the book is about the author’s experience through her travel until the second chapter. I think the plot is a bit dull, even though it doesn’t really have the plot. Regarding the time she writes it, what is very fascinating is the way or format she uses in this book. it’s not common for women or even male to travel like her during that time period.

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