Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and the Modern Prometheus

Mary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin); 

(30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851)

* Sun Uranus Mars conjunct in Virgo, Saturn in Cancer conjunct Ascendant, Sag Moon*

 Mary was the daughter of two social reformers ahead of their time. She was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). 

Her father, William Godwin, was a celebrated political philosopher and historian who had briefly been a Calvinist minister. 
A cold, remote man, he had little time for anything but his philosophical endeavors.

Her mother was the philosopher and feminist 
Mary Wollstonecraft who 
sadly died from fever 
only 11 days after Mary's birth.

  Her father was left to care for Shelley and her 
 older half-sister Fanny.

 

 

He father later married Mary Jane Clairmont,

  who proved to be a cruel, shallow woman who neglected 
Fanny and Mary 

in favor of her own children.

 Mary (who was so lively 
that her father had nicknamed her Mercury)
 was frequently whipped for impertinence; rebellion came naturally to the headstrong Mary, and she refused to be subdued. 
Though the girls were given lessons in domesticity (cooking, cleaning, and other wifely duties) Mary could not pretend interest in such pursuits: she would simply take up a book and 
let the dinner burn. (Sag moon)

 Her father was the most important person in her life, 

 and his favor meant everything to her. 
(Saturn in Cancer, conjunct ascendant).
She excelled in her lessons and could hold her own in adult conversation often with the great minds of her time from a remarkably early age.

 Around the age of eight, she began reading the writings of her mother. By the time she was ten,
 she had memorized every word.

From an early age, Mary was encouraged by her father to write letters and she took an early liking to writing. She was also encouraged to embrace her father's sociopolitical liberal views and theories and was mostly informally educated, at home.

 

While she didn't have a formal education,

 she did make great use of her father's extensive library.
 Shelley could often be found reading, sometimes 
by her mother's grave. 

She also liked to daydream, escaping from her often challenging

 home life into her imagination.

 Mary spent hours at her mother's grave, 

reading or eating meals when 

the atmosphere at home was particularly bad.

 She was later sent to stay with William Baxter, 
a known radical, and his family in Scotland. (lucky)

At the age of fifteen, she was described by her father as 

"singularly bold,

 somewhat imperious, and active of mind. (Virgo Sun, Sag Moon)

 Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes

 almost invincible."

  Living with the Baxters was the happiest time that 

Mary had known. 

When she returned to London a year later, 
she had grown into a woman.
 She became closer to her father than ever before, and the two engaged in constant philosophical debate.
 This served, predictably, to augment 
her stepmother's ill will.

The poet Percy Shelley (one of the greatest lyric poets of the English Romantic age and a writer of delicate beauty) was a devoted follower and friend of William Godwin's, and began spending a great deal of time 
in the Godwin home. 

(August 4, 1792
 *Sun, Venus, Uranus in Leo opposing Pluto in Leo (irresistibly charming and kinetic), Pisces Moon (a dreamy romantic innocent), Saturn conjunct Taurus Ascendant.
Mars, Jupiter, Neptune stellium in late degrees of Libra*

 Although he was married, his presence made an immediate impression on Mary, 

who began to read poetry at his inducement. 
Shelley's genuine admiration 

for the works of Mary's mother

 earned him her trust she invited him to accompany her

 on her visits to her mother's grave, 

and the two became

 inseparable. 

 

Their intellectual kinship was passionately felt by both of them,

 and they rapidly fell in love

 (she was 17 and he was married). 

Godwin was furious at this development, and immediately barred the poet from his home. 

The couple, however, refused to be separated and began a clandestine correspondence. 

With the help of Mary's stepsister, they were able to elope.

Setting up housekeeping in London was expensive, 

and money was very tight for the newly married pair. 

Relations between them were somewhat strained: 

Shelley's first wife Harriet belatedly bore him a son, and his good friend Thomas Hogg became enamored of Mary, and Percy seemed to want Mary Shelley to have an affair with his friend.

 Percy was constantly leaving home, escaping from creditors and also at the time Harriet gave birth
 to their son.

 To make matters worse, Mary became pregnant;

 the child, a daughter, died shortly after birth. 

Mary fell into an acute depression.

Having conceived a dislike for London
 (perhaps as a result of their misfortunes), 

the couple began traveling: in the English countryside,
 in France, and elsewhere. 

Mary was writing profusely.

They left to Geneva with Mary's step sister Claire Clairmont in 1816, to spend the summer with Lord Byron, 
Claire's affair at the time. The bad weather confined them to the house and they spend much of their time 
talking about galvanism and reading ghost stories
 which prompted her to write the first sketch
 of what was to become her most famous novel 
Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus.

Percey Bysshe Shelley

 Haunted Summer, a movie telling of the Shelleys, 
Lord Byron and the making of the monster story.

 

Later that year, Mary suffered the loss of her half-sister
 Fanny who committed suicide. 

Another suicide, this time by Percy's wife, 

occurred a short time later.

 Mary and Percy Shelly were finally able to wed in December 1816. She published a travelogue of their escape to Europe,
 History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817), 
while continuing to work on her soon-to-famous monster tale.
 In 1818, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus 
 debuted as a new novel from an anonymous author. 
Many thought that Percy Bysshe Shelley 
had written it since he penned its introduction. 
The book proved to be a huge success. 
That same year,
 the Shelleys moved 
 to Italy.

 And here is Ken Russell's insane take on the Mary Shelley/Frankenstein myth. 

 

The Shelleys, Claire Clairmont and her new baby Alba, 

daughter of Lord Byron,

 moved to a large building on the river Thames.

Here Shelley gave birth to Clara, her third child.

 In the same year, once more afraid of creditors,
 they all left to Italy 
without intention of ever returning. 

After leaving Alba with Lord Byron, 
who agreed to raise her with the condition that 
her mother would have nothing more to do with her, 
the group wandered around Italy, 

socializing, writing, and accumulating friends 
that would often travel 
with them.

 The lightness of their existence came to an end 
with the death 
of Shelley's two children in 1818 and 1819 
which left her devastated and alienated 
from her husband.

While Mary seemed devoted to her husband, 
she did not have the easiest marriage. Their union was riddled with adultery and heartache, including the death of two more of their children. Born in 1819, their son, Percy Florence, was the only child to live to adulthood. Mary's life was rocked by another tragedy in 1822 when her husband Percy Shelley and a friend, 
were out boating on the Gulf of Spezia in Viareggio, Italy. 
Suddenly a storm arose, during which they were run down
 by a larger vessel.
  Their yacht was overturned during the violent storm and 
Shelley died.

 

Made a widow at age 24,

 Mary Shelley worked hard to support herself and her son.

 She wrote, "For eight years I communicated, 
with unlimited freedom, with one whose genius far transcending mine awakened and guided my thoughts.... 
Now I am alone - oh, how alone! 
The stars may behold my tears and the winds drink my sighs;
 but my thoughts are a sealed treasure, 
which I can confide to none. 
O my beloved Shelley!"

She wrote several more novels, including Valperga 
and the science fiction tale The Last Man (1826).
 She also devoted herself to promoting her husband's poetry and preserving his place in literary history.
As well Mary Shelley spent much of her time translating poems by Lord Byron. For several years, Shelley faced some opposition from her late husband's father who had always disapproved 
of his son's bohemian lifestyle.

It was roughly a century after her passing that one of her novels, Mathilde, was finally released in the 1950s. 
Her lasting legacy, however, remains the classic tale of Frankenstein. This struggle between a monster 
and its creator has been an enduring part 
of popular culture.

Mary Shelley's most famous novel, Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus, was released anonymously when she was only 21 years old. Only from its second edition, five years later, was her name to appear as the author. It was initially thought that the author was her husband Percy, as the book was dedicated to William Godwin, his political hero. 
The work came out of a competition 
proposed by Lord Byron in the summer of 1816:
  who could write the best 
horror story. 

The central idea came to Shelly in a dream 
where she saw a student putting together parts of a man's body and working through a big engine to animate it. 
She first wrote a short story but Percy encouraged her to expand it into a novel. The novel had at the center of its plot
 a failed attempt at artificial life, by the scientist Frankenstein, which produced a monster. 

The work is considered to be a mixture of science fiction, 
gothic novel, and having elements from the Romantic movement. 
It was partly inspired by 
the electrical experiments conducted on dead
 and living animals by the Italian physicist Giovanni Aldini. Frankenstein: or The Modern Prometheus is also seen as a warning about the transformations of man 
under the Industrial Revolution. 

In what is the chronological end of the novel's story,
 even if the scene belongs to the beginning of the book; Frankenstein warns about the terrible effects of letting oneself be driven by ambition and losing control over its own possibilities.

No one could have predicted the extent of the book's popularity: it would remain the most widely-read English novel for three decades. Although it was maliciously rumored that Percy Shelley was the book's true author, Mary was catapulted to the forefront of the struggle for recognition then being waged by woman writers.

 Shelley died of brain cancer on February 1, 1851, 
in London, England.

She was buried at St. Peter's Church in Bournemouth, laid to rest alongside her father and mother and with the cremated remains of her late husband's heart.

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