Mary Wollstonecraft was a trail blazer in life and literature. She is most famous for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Her legacy is marked by the passionate belief that women should receive a full academic education, just like men. She also opposed social and economic double standards. Her work influenced an era and opened a realm for women writers to join the literary conversation. At thirty-eight, a pregnant Mary Wollstonecraft (1759- 1797) married William Godwin (1956-1836), also an accomplished writer. She died shortly after their daughter, Mary’s namesake, was born.
At the age of sixteen, Mary Godwin (1797-1851) fell in love with her father’s protégé. Five years her senior, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) had recently been expelled from Oxford and was already married to Harriet Westbrook. When Mary became pregnant, they ran away together, much to the outrage of both fathers. Percy and Mary married three years later, after Percy’s wife committed suicide, her despair not attributed to Percy’s desertion.
In the meantime, Percy cajoled Mary, because of her lineage, to pursue her literary destiny. But Mary contented herself with reading and learning from Percy’s great intellect. In 1816, they went to Switzerland to spend time with Lord Byron (1788-1824). Since the rainy summer kept them indoors, they entertained themselves by reading ghost stories. Gathered around the fireplace one stormy evening, Lord Byron challenged everyone to write a ghost story.
Byron and Dr. Polidori (another guest), perhaps too entrenched in their own respective genres, soon gave up. But Mary continued: “I busied myself to think of a story, – a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror – one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beating of the heart…. I felt that blank incapability of invention which is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations. Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative.”
I have felt shades of that misery and I’ve taught ways to mitigate it, on a much smaller scale, of course. Even in AP Lit, we were not writing novels. Nonetheless, many students have likely been a little bit mortified to have to reply in the negative when asked if they had completed their homework. This foible was not always attributable to writer’s block, I might add. And we don’t all have the additional weighty burden of high expectations, like Mary, with quite accomplished parents, a poet husband, and regular associations with many literary types. But she was determined to find that thrilling horror story.
Listening quietly one evening to discourse between Percy and Lord Byron, Mary’s vivid imagination was titillated by talk of what people attributed to Darwin, the idea of creating artificial life. Mary explains her sleeplessness that night: “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, saw signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.”
Mary’s reflection progressed to the young, obsessed scientist, whose “success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps, but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold thehorrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains [around the bed], and looking on him with yellow watery, but speculative eyes.”
The intensity of her vision terrified Mary so much that her previous ghost story attempts fell limp and useless. At just eighteen, she developed her vision into a chilling story about a scientist who forced life into a lifeless being. The story was loved by all, especially Percy. He pushed her to write more, which became the Gothic horror/ Science-fiction novel, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, published anonymously when she was twenty.
For the second edition, published now in her name, Mary was asked to write a forward, primarily explaining how someone so young could conjure up such a startlingly gruesome tale. All her commentary shared here comes from that forward. I want you to hear her words, to feel the beauty and terror of her writing. In closing, Mary wrote: “And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart.”
The child she refers to is, of course, the book. But Mary also felt affection for the monster. She wrote him with compassionate pity, imbuing him with a capacity for love and an insanely desperate loneliness. Mary laid blame for the monster’s violent rage on his irresponsible creator (who abandoned him) and others who spurned him, suggesting that science must never get ahead of humanity— a concern much alive today.
Her acknowledgement to Percy is interesting: “I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world.” Did Mary refuse his help or did he not offer? Her story was, after all, different from Percy’s usual topics. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) would become known as one of the most important English Romantic poets. He influenced Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats. Lucky us, he also inspired his wife, the mother of four of his children.
Most moms hope their children surpass their own accomplishments and, indeed, Mary Shelley’s fame did outshine her mother’s. Her first of many novels is still famous. I like to think that Wollstonecraft’s influential feminist legacy helped pave the way for her daughter to join that coveted literary conversation, truly a gift beyond the grave.
Mark Twain once said, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Although nothing could be much stranger than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, you still might want to read about Mary’s tumultuous life, which offers no accolades to Percy for husbandly devotion. Which you read first is up to you. But no matter what, let’s not lose sight of classic literature.
I have felt shades of that misery and I’ve taught ways to mitigate it, on a much smaller scale, of course. Even in AP Lit, we were not writing novels. Nonetheless, many students have likely been a little bit mortified to have to reply in the negative when asked if they had completed their homework. This foible was not always attributable to writer’s block, I might add. And we don’t all have the additional weighty burden of high expectations, like Mary, with highly accomplished parents, a poet husband, and regular associations with many literary types. But she was determined to find that thrilling horror story.
Listening quietly one evening to discourse between Percy and Lord Byron, Mary’s vivid imagination was titillated by talk of what people attributed to Darwin, the idea of creating artificial life. Mary explains her sleeplessness that night: “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, saw signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.”
Mary’s reflection progressed to the young, obsessed scientist, whose “success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps, but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains [around the bed], and looking on him with yellow watery, but speculative eyes.”
The intensity of her vision terrified Mary so much that her previous ghost story attempts fell limp and useless. At just eighteen, she developed her vision into a chilling story about a scientist who forced life into a lifeless being. The story was loved by all, especially Percy. He pushed her to write more, which became the Gothic horror/Science-fiction novel, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, published anonymously when she was twenty.
For the second edition, Mary was asked to write a forward, primarily explaining how someone so young could conjure up such a startlingly gruesome tale. All her commentary shared here comes from that forward. I want you to hear her words, to feel the beauty and terror of her writing. In closing, Mary wrote: “And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart.”
The child she refers to is, of course, the book. But Mary also felt affection for the monster. She wrote him with compassionate pity, imbuing him with a capacity for love and an insanely desperate loneliness. Mary laid blame for the monster’s violent rage on his irresponsible creator (who abandoned him) and others who spurned him, suggesting that science must never get ahead of humanity—a concern much alive today.
Her acknowledgement to Percy is interesting: “I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world.” Did Mary refuse his help or did he not offer? Her story was, after all, different from Percy’s usual topics. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) would become known as one of the most important English Romantic poets. He influenced Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats. Lucky us, he also inspired his wife, the mother of four of his children.
Most moms hope their children surpass their own accomplishments and, indeed, Mary Shelley’s fame did outshine her mother’s. Her first of many novels is still read today. I like to think that Wollstonecraft’s influential feminist legacy helped pave the way for her daughter to join that coveted literary conversation, truly a gift beyond the grave.
Mark Twain once said, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Although nothing could be much stranger than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, you still might want to read about Mary’s tumultuous life, which offers no accolades to Percy for husbandly devotion. Which you read first is up to you. But no matter what, let’s not lose sight of classic literature.
Works Cited and Consulted
Works Cited and Consulted
Collazo, Gabriela. “The Evolution of Women’s Literature and Its Forgotten Trailblazers.” Bookstr,
2 Apr. 2024.
Encarta ’95 CD Rom. http://www.maryshelley.nl/maryshelley/relatives.html. Introduction. Mary Shelley,
Frankenstein. http://www.maryshelley.nl/frandenstein/fulltext/.
Kuiper, Kathleen. “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: British Author.” Britannica,
http://www.britannica.com/art/literary-criticism/Neoclassicism-and-its-decline.
“Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Extraordinary Mother and Daughter.” National Archives, UK.
Spark, Muriel. Child of Light: Mary Shelley. Welcome Rain Publishers, 2002.
I have felt shades of that misery and I’ve taught ways to mitigate it, on a much smaller scale, of course. Even in AP Lit, we were not writing novels. Nonetheless, many students have likely been a little bit mortified to have to reply in the negative when asked if they had completed their homework. This foible was not always attributable to writer’s block, I might add. And we don’t all have the additional weighty burden of high expectations, like Mary, with highly accomplished parents, a poet husband, and regular associations with many literary types. But she was determined to find that thrilling horror story.
Listening quietly one evening to discourse between Percy and Lord Byron, Mary’s vivid imagination was titillated by talk of what people attributed to Darwin, the idea of creating artificial life. Mary explains her sleeplessness that night: “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, saw signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.”
Mary’s reflection progressed to the young, obsessed scientist, whose “success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps, but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains [around the bed], and looking on him with yellow watery, but speculative eyes.”
The intensity of her vision terrified Mary so much that her previous ghost story attempts fell limp and useless. At just eighteen, she developed her vision into a chilling story about a scientist who forced life into a lifeless being. The story was loved by all, especially Percy. He pushed her to write more, which became the Gothic horror/Science-fiction novel, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, published anonymously when she was twenty.
For the second edition, Mary was asked to write a forward, primarily explaining how someone so young could conjure up such a startlingly gruesome tale. All her commentary shared here comes from that forward. I want you to hear her words, to feel the beauty and terror of her writing. In closing, Mary wrote: “And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart.”
The child she refers to is, of course, the book. But Mary also felt affection for the monster. She wrote him with compassionate pity, imbuing him with a capacity for love and an insanely desperate loneliness. Mary laid blame for the monster’s violent rage on his irresponsible creator (who abandoned him) and others who spurned him, suggesting that science must never get ahead of humanity—a concern much alive today.
Her acknowledgement to Percy is interesting: “I certainly did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely one train of feeling, to my husband, and yet but for his incitement, it would never have taken the form in which it was presented to the world.” Did Mary refuse his help or did he not offer? Her story was, after all, different from Percy’s usual topics. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) would become known as one of the most important English Romantic poets. He influenced Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats. Lucky us, he also inspired his wife, the mother of four of his children.
Most moms hope their children surpass their own accomplishments and, indeed, Mary Shelley’s fame did outshine her mother’s. Her first of many novels is still read today. I like to think that Wollstonecraft’s influential feminist legacy helped pave the way for her daughter to join that coveted literary conversation, truly a gift beyond the grave.
Mark Twain once said, “Truth is stranger than fiction.” Although nothing could be much stranger than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, you still might want to read about Mary’s tumultuous life, which offers no accolades to Percy for husbandly devotion. Which you read first is up to you. But no matter what, let’s not lose sight of classic literature.
Works Cited and Consulted
Collazo, Gabriela. “The Evolution of Women’s Literature and Its Forgotten Trailblazers.” Bookstr, https://bookstr.com/article/the-evolution-of-womens-literature-and-its-forgotten-trailblazers/ 2 Apr. 2024.
Encarta ’95 CD Rom. http://www.maryshelley.nl/maryshelley/relatives.html. Introduction. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. http://www.maryshelley.nl/frandenstein/fulltext/
Kuiper, Kathleen. “Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: British Author.” Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/art/literary-criticism/Neoclassicism-and-its-decline
“Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Extraordinary Mother and Daughter.” National Archives, UK. https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/mary-wollstonecraft-mary-shelley-extraordinary-mother-daughter/ Spark, Muriel. Child of Light: Mary Shelley. Welcome Rain Publishers, 2002.
