SOURCE: Hust, Karen. “In Suspect Terrain: Mary Wollstonecraft Confronts Mother Nature in Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.” Women's Studies 25 (1996): 483-505.

In the following essay, Hust examines Mary Wollstonecraft's perception of nature in her travel writings about Scandinavia's rugged and rocky coasts.

The landscape [or representation of a natural scene] is not so much a paradise to long for … as it is a mirror that reflects our own cultural image. We now view landscape photographs, both past and present, much like the shadows on the walls of Plato's cave. They are artifacts of what we think we know about the land, and how we have come to know it—the language of an individual's experience in his or her time, and at their best a form of commentary.

Mark Klett, 72-3

Over two hundred years ago, in June of 1795, Mary Wollstonecraft and her...