| Mary Shelley,
born August
30, 1797, was a prominent, though often overlooked, literary figure
during the Romantic Era of English Literature. She was the only child of
Mary
Wollstonecraft, the famous feminist, and William
Godwin, a philosopher and novelist. She was also the wife of the poet
Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary's parents
were shapers of the Romantic sensibility and the revolutionary ideas of
the left wing. Mary, Shelley, Byron,
and Keats
were principle figures in Romanticism's second generation. Whereas the
poets died young in the 1820's, Mary lived through the Romantic era into
the Victorian.
Mary was
born during the eighth year of the French Revolution. "She entered the
world like the heroine of a Gothic tale: conceived in a secret amour, her
birth heralded by storms and portents, attended by tragic drama, and known
to thousands through Godwin's memoirs. Percy
Shelley would elevate the event to mythic status in his Dedication
to The Revolt of Islam" .( from pg. 21 of Romance and Reality
by Emily Sunstein.) From infancy, Mary was treated as a unique individual
with remarkable parents. High expectations were placed on her potential
and she was treated as if she were born beneath a lucky star. Godwin was
convinced that babies are born with a potential waiting to be developed.
From an early age she was surrounded by famous philosophers, writers, and
poets: Coleridge
made his first visit when Mary was two years old. Charles Lamb was also
a frequent visitor.
A peculiar
sort of Gothicism was part of Mary's earliest existence. Most every day
she would go for a walk with her father to the St. Pancras churchyard where
her mother was buried. Godwin taught Mary to read and spell her name by
having her trace her mother's inscription on the stone.
At the age
of sixteen Mary ran away to live with the twenty-one year old Percy Shelley,
the unhappily married radical heir to a wealthy baronetcy. To Mary, Shelley
personified the genius and dedication to human betterment that she had
admired her entire life. Although she was cast out of society, even by
her father, this inspirational liaison produced her masterpiece,
Frankenstein.
She conceived
of Frankenstein during one of the most famous
house parties in literary history when staying at Lake Geneva in Switzerland
with Byron and Shelley. Interestingly enough, she was only nineteen at
the time. She wrote the novel while being overwhelmed by a series of calamities
in her life. The worst of these were the suicides of her half-sister, Fanny
Imlay, and Shelly's wife, Harriet.
After the
suicides, Mary and Shelley, reluctantly married. Fierce public hostility
toward the couple drove them to Italy. Initially, they were happy in Italy,
but their two young children died there. Mary never fully recovered from
this trauma. (Their first child had died shortly after birth early in their
relationship.) Nevertheless, Shelley empowered Mary to live as she most
desired: to enjoy intellectual and artistic growth, love, and freedom.
When Mary
was only twenty-four Percy drowned, leaving her penniless with a two year
old son.
For her
remaining twenty-nine years she engaged in a struggle with the societal
disapproval of her relationship with Shelley. Poverty forced her to live
in England which she despised because of the morality and social system.
She was shunned by conventional circles and worked as a professional writer
to support her father and her son. Her circle, however, included literary
and theatrical figures, artists, and politicians.
She eventually
came to more traditional views of women's dependence and differences, like
her mother before her. This not a reflection of her courage and integrity
but derived from socialization and the conventions placed on her by society.
Mary became
an invalid at the age of forty-eight. She died in 1851 of a brain tumor
with poetic timing. The Great Exhibition, which was a showcase of technological
progress, was opened. This was the same scientific technology that she
had warned against in her most famous book, Frankenstein. |
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