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The Thunder ChildScience Fiction and Fantasy |
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born August 30, 1797, and is a famous English novelist of the Romantic period. She was married to famous Romantic poet Percy Shelley, though her famous creation, the novel Frankenstein, first published as The Modern Prometheus, would outlast any other work created by either of them. Mary Wollstonecraft was born in Somers Town, a section of London, in 1797. She was the second daughter of a famous feminist whose name she carried. Mary’s father was also an anarchist philosopher, writer, and vocal atheist, William Godwin. Mary Shelley never knew her mother, however, as she died ten days after giving birth to her daughter. Godwin knew he couldn’t raise Mary, or her sister, by himself, and after three years with a nanny, Godwin looked for a second wife and eventually married Mary Jane Clairmont. Unfortunately for Mary Wollstonecraft, she did not get along with her step mother. Clairmont wanted her own daughter to be more successful, better educated, and she did not want young Mary to have the attention of her father. Despite this, Mary received a great education. She never went to school, but was taught to read and write, and was partially educated by her father, who also allowed her free reign of his personal library. She was encouraged to write, and published her first work, “Mounseer Nongtongpaw,” at the age of eleven in Godwin Company’s Juvenile Library. By 1812 Mary had to move to board with William Baxter, her father’s acquaintance because the animosity between the step-mother and step-daughter had grown too much. Baxter lived in Scotland, and the Baxter family was a very tight-knit, loving family that had an impact on her. She would hope for a similar family for the rest of her life. This was also a major time in her development of her writing. That same year she met Percy Shelley during a visit home. Percy visited her father’s house with his first wife, and they became friends. Percy wanted an intellectual life style, and his original wife, Harriet, stopped following the mind when their child was born, so he sought the intellectual companionship of Mary. Percy wanted a revolutionary, a poet, and an intellectual: traits that Mary filled. Mary also found her family was being kept out of poverty by Percy, and that he was all the family would talk about. This eventually led to a romantic relationship and an affair. Her father found out, and forbid it to go on—an irony since he was opposed to marriage and free love until his own daughter was involved. Mary tried to respect her father’s wishes, but Percy threatened suicide if they could not be together, and Mary pursued the relationship. In 1814, Mary and Percy eloped to France, with Mary’s stepsister, Jane Clairmont, going along. After returning, her father refused to see any of them, and he would not speak to Mary for nearly four years. Mary dealt with this by diving into her studies, and by staying with Percy who acted as teacher, mentor, and lover. The two seemed enamored, though not always happy. Percy’s father disapproved of his son abandoning his pregnant wife for a girl many years his junior, and cut off his allowance. Percy was already deeply in debt, and he had to separate from Mary and go on the run. At the same time, Mary realized that Percy was so consumed with the abstract that he was narcissistic and so self-centered that he did not focus at all on how he affected others, just on himself. Percy’s attempt to show his commitment to free love resulted in an attempt to set up what would later be known as a commune, people who would share everything, including sexual partners. Percy tried to make Mary also agree to a sexual relationship with his best friend, Thomas Hogg, while Percy tried to have relationship with Mary’s step-sister, Claire. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Mary’s first child was born premature, Percy was not around and was taking long walks with her step sister and entertaining his friend. When her daughter died, Mary was depressed, but Percy didn’t seem to care and spent even more time with Claire. Later, though, Mary would have another child on January, 24, 1816, whom they named William, after her father. This child was healthy, and well loved by the family. In May of 1816, the family went to Lake Geneva to spend summer near Lord Byron, perhaps the most famous and infamous poet of the time, whose affair with Claire resulted in pregnancy. Percy had a very productive summer, writing some of his finest works. This is also the location of the famous bet between the intellectuals about writing a ghost story. Almost all of them soon abandoned the projects for other work, but Mary stayed on, which was ironic since initially she had no inspiration for a story. She read a report by Luigi Galvani about reanimating frog legs with electricity, and Mary had what she called a waking dream, which was nightmarish, and led to her writing of the famous novel Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus. Before the novel was finished, there were two family suicides that stunned them. Mary’s older sister killed herself, and Percy’s first wife killed herself as well. Shortly after Harriet’s death, Percy and Mary were married in late 1816. In the spring of 1817 Mary finally finished Frankenstein. The next few years were not happy, but resigned, as Shelley could never sit still. Mary’s infant daughter died in Venice, then young Will died in Rome. Eventually she would give birth to one more son, Percy Florence Shelley, who would be her only surviving child. She accepted that Percy would never settle with just one woman, and the life she imagined from the Baxters would never be. Eventually Percy would die in a boat wreck during a storm, living Mary a widow. Despite the problems of later life, Mary stayed devoted to her late husband’s work, editing and annotating all unpublished material and she helped build his reputation as one of the major poets of his time. Mary wrote several more novels in her free time, but none every reached the fame or power of Frankenstein, though The Last Man is also considered a fine novel, and one of the earliest examples of a human apocalypse in the future. On February 1, 1851, Mary Shelley died at the age of 53 from a brain tumor. She left behind one surviving child, and a novel that would never be forgotten from the canon of great literature.
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