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"Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries--beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement. Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists--mostly women, mostly queer--whose public contributions have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson. Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman--and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement."--Dust jacket.… (more)
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Her subjects range from women who are now largely unknown, like Margaret Fuller and Harriet Hosmer, to household names like Emily Dickinson and Rachel Carson. Popova lets each woman's story speak for itself, but she also is primarily interested in how each woman dealt with chronic health issues and how they negotiated love and relationships, which were often found outside of what was seen as acceptable at the time they lived. Margaret Fuller's life was the most revelatory for me; I'd never heard of her, despite her having been famous in her time and a woman who was able to forge an independent path for herself. Rachel Carson's story was also particularly well-told.
I'd recommend this book for anyone who likes an author to explore side trails and ask questions as they arise, or for anyone interested in the lives of women, early feminism, women in science and in how people negotiated love lives that were not traditional and heterosexual in the nineteenth century. I felt early on that this book was too episodic, but Popova had a plan and I'm glad I stuck with it. It's a book that gets more fascinating as it goes.