Mary Shelley - Feminist icon

by Sian Campbell

Feminist icons: Nowadays, Frankenstein author Mary would be considered quite the feminist. In the early 1900s her behaviour was incendiary. A gipsy travelling Europe in a carriage, a pro-queer activist - find out more.

Dear Mary Shelley,

You are every girl writer's inspiration! You paved the way for women to be taken seriously as sci-fi goddesses and gave us Frankenstein - one of the coolest books around. Which, by the way, in turn gave us one of the coolest movies around: Young Frankenstein. Honestly, who doesn't love that movie (and Gene Wilder)? You weren't afraid of what anyone thought, you did your own thing, and you kicked butt doing it. We love you, Mary.

Love, Mookychick xxx

Mary Shelley quotes

"A slavish bondage to parents cramps every faculty of the mind."

"Elegance is inferior to virtue."

"I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves."

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of voice, but out of chaos."

"My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free."

Mary Shelly best known for

Writing the classic book Frankenstein - which almost everyone still seems to think was written by a guy! Poor Mary.

Mary Shelly least known for

Her other books. Mary was a bit of a one-hit wonder, unfortunately, although her other works are becoming increasingly well-regarded.

Mooky factor

Mary Shelley never let anything get in her way - she was born into a time when women weren't always educated, and ended up writing one of the most famous books of all time at the tender age of 21. She fell in love with a married man, started sneaking around with him at her dead mother's grave, and eventually ran away with him to Paris. She helped lesbian friends flee the country, roamed around Europe in a carriage like a gypsy, and her husband's fortunately no-longer beating heart was found amongst her possessions after her death. Talk about rock and roll! Of course, we're not condoning cheating, smuggling or storing away parts of your loved one's anatomy. Still, it's indisputable: Mary was a little bit of a badass!

Feminist factor

Nowadays, Mary would be considered quite the feminist. In the early 1900s her behaviour was incendiary. Her mother was a feminist author, Mary was an unmarried mother, she was a queer activist helping lesbians flee the social cruelties of Britain - and women simply didn't write horror novels. A true mold-breaker.

A short history of Mary Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was born in England in 1797, and let's put that into perspective for you. In 1797, Napoleon was busy invading places and the very first New Year's Eve party was held thanks to the invention of confetti and party hats. Yep, Mary Shelley has been around as long as confetti. Weird to think about, right?

Mary had pretty kick-ass parents. Her mum was a writer, as well as a feminist and philosopher. Definitely a fellow Mookychick. (Check the links below if you want to find out more about Mary's mum.) Her dad was a writer as well - guess it runs in the family? Unfortunately, Mary's mother died right after Mary was born.

Mary, being a girl, didn't attend school apart from six months at a boarding school, but luckily her father believed his daughters should have an education and decided to teach them himself, providing them with a tutor and governess and taking them on interesting "field trips" to the libraries and historical sites himself. In fact, Mary had a far superior education to most girls at the time.

When Mary was sixteen, she fell in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley, a philosopher and poet estranged from his family. His family disagreed with his desire to use the family money to help the disadvantaged. This was possibly how Mary met Percy - he had tried to help her father out of debt but was ultimately unable to get the money from his family, breaking his promise to Mary's father and making him furious. Mary and Percy took to clandestine meetings in the dead of night at Mary's mother's tombstone. Of course her father disapproved - Mary's boyfriend was not only married, but he'd broken his promise to help Mary's father out of debt. Mary's radical writer parents had shared the same ideals as Percy, and believed that marriage was a repressive and outdated institution, so Mary was confused and hurt when her dad didn't like Percy, and the couple decided to run away to Paris. Um, leaving Percy's wife behind, obviously. (His pregnant wife. Ouch.)

So Mary and Percy travelled around Europe in a carriage, reading Mary's dead mother's books and starting their own, even keeping a joint journal. They decided to head home when they ran out of cash, and now-pregnant Mary was surprised to find her father unwilling to have anything to do with her. Well, duh, Mary. You kind of ran off to France with a married man who your father hated to begin with, and came home knocked up!

Mary and Percy were just as in love as ever, (even though they believed in free love and both allegedly played around with other people) but eventually the honeymoon period was over - Percy's wife gave birth to a baby boy, to Percy's delight, and their own daughter died after being born two months early. Poor Mary suffered from terrible depression and started having visions of her baby girl. In the coming years, though, she had more children - a boy named William, followed by another daughter named Clara - and she started studying physics and the supernatural, and began writing what would become her greatest work, Frankenstein.

The book was published anonymously at first, and got great reviews - before everyone found out that it was written by Mary. When they found out that it was written by a woman, suddenly the book wasn't worth anyone's time - until society evolved at least. Now it's considered a classic and is studied in schools and in literature programs at universities all over the world.

Then, within two months to the day of each other, Mary's sister and Percy's wife both killed themselves. Percy and Mary tried to get custody of Percy's other children and decided to get married. Mary's dad was relieved that her relationship was finally legitimate and he decided to attend her wedding and repair their relationship. Shortly after, Mary and Percy headed off to Italy and began living a sort of gypsy bohemian lifestyle again, never settling in one place and devoting their time to writing. In less than a year both of her children died and Mary became incredibly depressed once more. Even though the birth of her fourth and last child, Percy Florence, finally lifted her out of her dark spell, she grieved deeply for her children for the rest of her life.

After Mary's husband died, she came back to England and began taking her writing even more seriously to provide for their son, although her work ethic didn't stop her from getting into adventures - such as helping smuggle her lesbian friends out of the country so they could live as man and wife in France, overcoming smallpox, rejecting the advances of other men, and being blackmailed. Eventually Mary died from a brain tumor at the age of fifty-three. When her son opened her desk one year after she died, he found locks of Mary's dead children's hair, the journal she had shared with her husband as well as one of his poems, a page of which was wrapped around some of his ashes and the remains of his heart.

Mary Shelley links

Frankenstein on wikipedia

Mary Wollstonecraft - Mary Shelley's mother and one of the first feminist writers

Buy Young Frankenstein [DVD] [1975] on Amazon

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