Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Student Project: Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Copyright 2007 Scott Mullen.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 1797-1851 |
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Put first, Mary Shelley was a nineteenth-century Romantic writer and thinker most famous for her novel Frankenstein: a Modern Prometheus. What most people do not know about Shelley, however, is that she was a respected intellectual and forward-thinking scholar both of her time and of time since. Although most of her career is somewhat overshadowed by Frankenstein, Shelley was also one of the most recognized theorists in the Romantic Era. For example, her work The Last Man blurs many boundaries between the typical male and female roles, an idea that paralleled many of the ideas of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. She died while still enjoying her Frankenstein success on February 1, 1851. Mary Shelley was born August 30, 1797 to Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Both Wollstonecraft and Godwin were well-respected thinkers of the Romantic era, Wollstonecraft as one of the first proponent of women’s rights and Godwin as a political theorist of revolutionary, progressive ideas. A particularly interesting aspect of the relationship between these two is that both were serious critics of the institution of marriage because it was a violation of the rights of women. However, when Wollstonecraft became pregnant by Godwin (with Mary), the pair wed in order to prevent Mary having to face a childhood of shame. Unfortunately, after an 18 hour labor ordeal, Mary Wollstonecraft became very ill, dying 11 days later of puerperal fever. This event weighed heavily upon Shelley and influenced her later writings as she struggled with feelings of guilt. |
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Motherless, Shelley led a childhood in which her main concern was intellectual thought and learning. The love and care she should have felt from her mother was replaced by the lessons of her father’s circle of friends and colleagues, among which were the Romantic thinkers William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and William Wordsworth. In 1801, William Godwin, who had become the object of Mary’s affection after her mother’s passing, married a second wife with whom Mary Shelley never got along. Never experiencing a healthy relationship with her stepmother, Shelley was sent in 1812 to live in Dundee with friends of her father, where she was happy for the first time. Shelley returned to England in late 1812 where she first encountered Percy Bysshe Shelley, the new young, wealthy protégé of her father. The two immediately hit it off, and in 1814 they fled to France, despite the fact that Percy was married to Harriet Westbrook. France, while still recovering from a wartime defeat, proved a refuge for the young lovers, especially since they faced serious opposition from both sides of their family. Mary lost a child in 1815, and in 1816 the two wed after the suicide of Percy’s wife, Harriet Westbrook. Now approved by their families, the Shelleys settled down and became focused on their writing. Percy Shelley, noted for his poetry, again gained the favor of William Godwin, with whom he had had a falling out at the outset of his illicit relations with Mary. Around this time, the Shelleys became acquainted with another noted Romantic scholar and poet, Lord George Gordon Byron. Byron had actually become involved with a close acquaintance of the Shelleys, Claire Clairmont, and eventually they moved into a villa on Lake Geneva, Switzerland, close to where the Shelleys and Claire Clairmont were living. These Romantic thinkers hosted raucous gatherings of intellectuals and spent the majority of their time together. It was during one such time that Frankenstein took shape. In the midst of a torrential storm in June 1816, Lord Byron proposed that each member of the small gathering create a ghost story. It was this night that Frankenstein was born, the only story of the evening to ever be published. This novel tells the story a man and his creation; but many feel that Mary’s own personal fears and worries are what are really reflected in the story. Victor Frankenstein is a man of science who eventually combines his awareness of both alchemy and modern scientific knowledge into the creation of a life from dead human parts; however, as the creature springs into life, Victor is immediately disgusted and abandons his creature. The rest of the story tells of the travails of the creature, whose sole quest is for love and acceptance, and of Victor, who is determined to destroy his “monster.” Frankenstein is also seen by many as a parallel to some of the events of Mary Shelley’s own life. Her apparent inability to produce a healthy child of her own (only one of her four children survived into adulthood) is reflected in Victor Frankenstein’s disgust at his own failure in creating a human life. Moreover, the creature’s quest for love in some way mirrors the lack that Shelley felt as a motherless child. In addition, like her mother, Shelley’s “monster” strives to bring enlightenment and benefit to mankind, once it has become educated. Mary Wollstonecraft tried to shake the unfair institutions of her period, especially those that perpetuated the unfair treatment of women; in this way the creature desires to show that it is also worthy of love and fair treatment. And it is perhaps from Mary Shelley reading her mother’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman and Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark prior to writing her great work that this integral feature of Frankenstein arrives. - by Scott Mullen |
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