by Mary Shelley
Wollstonecraft and Godwin met again in January 1796, through writer friends. This time, he took a different view of her. He read her Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, published in late 1795, and he was charmed. Later he wrote, “If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.”21 Although their relationship started slowly—she afraid that she had once again let herself become dependent on a man, he that he was incapable of love—it was to become deeply passionate. “For six and thirty hours,” he wrote her, “I could think of nothing else [but you]. I longed inexpressibly to hold you in my arms.”22 Both Wollstonecraft and Godwin publicly vilified the idea of marriage—Godwin described every married man as odiously selfish, treating his wife as a possession—but when Wollstonecraft became pregnant, in order to provide their child the legitimacy that Fanny Imlay lacked, they married. As noted above, five months after the wedding, Mary died of puerperal fever, contracted giving birth to her second child, Godwin’s first, their daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Wollstonecraft survived for only ten days after Mary’s birth.
Godwin, then at the height of his reputation and happiness, was plunged into a period of despair and dissatisfaction from which he never emerged. His state of mind was further compromised by the public’s reaction to Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was to have the effect, apparently entirely unanticipated by its author, of soiling Wollstonecraft’s reputation for nearly a century. It was not until the rise of the New Woman in the late nineteenth century that Wollstonecraft’s life and work came to be celebrated as foundation stones of feminist philosophy and writing.
Left not only with Mary but with his late wife’s other daughter, Fanny, Godwin declared himself “totally unfitted to educate” the two girls and embarked on a course of child-rearing that was informed by his philosophy but had little practical basis. He was an undemonstrative father, emotionally distant by choice, though later Mary admitted, “I could justly say that he was my God … I remember many childish instances of the excess of attachment I bore him.”23 Certainly the relationship between Victor and the monster is colored by Shelley’s own feelings about her father. He had hoped for a son by his wife, having chosen the name William, and perhaps out of disappointment, he gave Mary a “masculine” education, exposing her to a broad range of intellectual stimulation and a wide program of reading.24 This thinking is reflected in the differences between the education of Victor and Elizabeth in the Frankenstein household. In contrast, however, the Godwin household was a focal point for a diverse group of English writers and intellectuals, and there is an oft-told anecdote of an evening in 1806 when the nine-year-old Mary hid behind a sofa to listen to Samuel Taylor Coleridge read aloud his Rime of the Ancient Mariner,25 a work whose themes run throughout Frankenstein.
After four years of struggling to succeed as a single parent, Godwin married his neighbor Mary Jane Vial Clairmont, who already had two children of her own, Charles (1795–1850) and Clara Mary Jane (1798–1879). The latter, eight months younger than Mary, first called Jane but later Claire or Clare, would have a significant role in Mary’s early life. Mary had no love for her stepmother, writing, in a letter dated September 26, 1817, “As to Mrs. Godwin, something very analogous to disgust arises whenever I mention her.”26 Whatever her deficiencies as a parent, however, Mary Jane was the kind of woman Godwin needed. He described her later as having “great strength and activity of mind.” Like many an author, Godwin had struggled to earn money and was frequently in financial straits. Now, with Mary Jane’s active partnership, they undertook to publish children’s primers on biblical and classical history and such works as Godwin’s friends Mary and Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare.27 However, their business, the Juvenile Library, would end in financial disaster, leaving Godwin in constant need of funds. Mary’s relationship with Mary Jane and the distance she was to put between herself and her father would later come to shape Frankenstein, again reflected in the strained “parental” relationship between Victor and the monster.
Portrait of Claire Clairmont, by Amelia Curran (1819).
Godwin assessed Mary in 1812, in a letter to an unknown correspondent, when Mary was almost fifteen, describing her as “considerably superior in capacity to the [daughter] her mother [Mary Wollstonecraft] had before [that is, Fanny]. Mary . . . is singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible. My own daughter is, I believe, very pretty.”
Nevertheless, he must have felt that the family setting was not the right environment for Mary, possibly because of the constant friction with her stepmother. Perhaps arising out of such stress, Mary also displayed a nervous weakness in her arm. Ostensibly for her recuperation, then, on June 7, 1812, Godwin sent her for an extended stay in Dundee, Scotland, with the family of a Scottish friend, William Baxter. The sea air and the warmth of the family, including the presence of the Baxters’ two daughters, Christina and Isabella, proved beneficial, and Mary formed her first real friendship with the latter, who was about four years her senior. In her introduction to the substantially revised 1831 edition of Frankenstein, she describes the banks of the River Tay near Dundee as “the eyry of freedom, and the pleasant region where unheeded I could commune with the creatures of my fancy. I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered.”28
Title page of Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare (1807).
While Mary was “recovering” in Scotland, the Godwin household was repeatedly visited by Percy Shelley and his first wife, Harriet. Percy had been born in West Sussex on August 4, 1792, into a life of luxury, the eldest of six children of Sir Timothy Shelley, a member of Parliament, and Lady Elizabeth Pilfold Shelley. With one brother and four sisters (some much younger than he), his early childhood was spent mostly outdoors, hunting and fishing. He began Eton, even then the most elite school in England, in 1804, and refused to engage in sports or the tradition of “fagging” (acting as a quasi-servant for a senior student), making a reputation as “mad Shelley.” It was here that he first indulged in the intense interest in science that would last his lifetime, his appetite having been whetted even earlier, at Syon House Academy, the boarding school he attended at ages ten and eleven. At University College, Oxford, in 1810, he plunged into writing. His first publication, identifying its author only as “P.B.S.,” was a novel, Zastrozzi, with typical gothic elements of an exaggerated character (what John V. Murphy calls the “hero-villain”)29 whose complex motives find him engaged in intricate actions.
Later in 1810, Percy and his oldest sister, Elizabeth, published a collection of verses entitled Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire. In 1811, Percy’s second novel, St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian, appeared, as well as a pamphlet called “The Necessity of Atheism.” The anti-religious pamphlet landed him in front of the university administration, and when he refused to repudiate its message, he was expelled, less than a year after his matriculation. Sir Timothy intervened, and Percy was offered an opportunity to return to Oxford, but he refused, earning the lifelong enmity of his father.
Shortly after his expulsion from Oxford, the nineteen-year-old Percy met and married his sisters’ sixteen-year-old friend Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a London coffee-house proprietor. Seeking some direction for his career, Percy wrote to William Godwin, whom he idolized, telling Godwin that he wished to become his disciple. Perhaps knowing of Godwin’s financial difficulties, Percy introduced himself somewhat immodestly as “the son of a man of fortune in Sussex” and “heir by entail to an estate of 6,000 £ per an.” It was actually his second letter to Godwin, and this time the latter took the bait, perhaps seeing a lifeline out of the morass of his financial di
fficulties. He responded, seeking details about Shelley’s income. When Godwin learned of the rift between father and son, he counseled reconciliation—and soon began accepting regular financial contributions, in the form of loans, from Percy (who, having exaggerated his father’s support, could truthfully little afford to help the Godwins).30 Percy and Harriet began visiting Godwin, and on November 11, 1812, Percy met Mary for the first time. She was visiting her father on a short trip from Scotland in the company of Christina Baxter. Neither wrote about this first meeting.
Title page of Percy Shelley’s Zastrozzi (1810).
Mary returned to Dundee for another eighteen months. Percy, by now disappointed that his young bride Harriet was not the intellectual companion he sought, and chafing from the influence her sister Eliza exerted over her, urged both to return to their home and began to spend his time in the company of a circle of London intellectuals that included Godwin. On March 20, 1814, Mary ended her sojourn in Scotland and sailed for London and her father’s Skinner Street home, arriving on March 30. On May 5,31 she met Percy again at Skinner Street, at a dinner at which Godwin and Percy discussed mainly financial matters. Ironically, the romance that developed between Percy and Mary was in part fueled by Percy’s financial difficulties, for during these few months, he was dodging bailiffs, staying at an obscure inn, and dining with the Godwins to avoid being seen in public.32
Like Harriet when she met Percy, Mary was just sixteen. She felt a range of emotions for the twenty-one-year-old, including, perhaps, gratitude for his largesse: He had become, in her eyes, vitally important to the support of her family. His marriage to Harriet, who was by now pregnant, was clearly a source of not small unhappiness. Percy suggested (but may not have genuinely believed) that Harriet had a lover, one Captain Ryan, and that Ryan was the father of the child she was carrying. In May 1814, he begged Harriet to give up her “remorseless” scorn and offer him pity.33
The distraction from such matters afforded by integration into the Godwin household, and the companionship and intellectual stimulation that Shelley found there, influenced him profoundly, setting a new course for his life. Mary was sympathetic to his espoused ideals, which, despite his aristocratic ancestry, closely matched her own and her father’s. A friendship bloomed, and he often sought her out at her mother’s gravesite, to which she and her half-sister Jane retreated to escape the household, particularly Mary Jane. By July 1814, on the occasion of his presentation to her of a copy of Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem, with Notes, his first book of published poetry,34 she wrote on the flyleaf, “This book is sacred to me and as no other creature shall ever look into it I may write in it what I please—yet what shall I write—that I love the author beyond all powers of expression and that I am parted from him dearest & only love—by that love we have promised to each other although I may not be yours I can never be anothers. But I am thine exclusively thine.”35 Percy reciprocated, declaring his love for her. Mary—scandalously, but in keeping with her and Percy’s expressed views about marriage—proposed a physical menage à trois, with Harriet as their “sister,” which Harriet declined. She urged Godwin to keep them apart, probably imparting the fact of her pregnancy, and Godwin appealed to Mary. In agony, Mary equivocated. Percy likely told her that Harriet was pregnant by another man and in any event urged her to follow the principles of her mother. “He declared unless she joined him as Partner of his Life—he would destroy himself,” Jane later recalled.36 Mary assented, declaring herself persuaded by “love, youth, fear and fearlessness.”37 On July 28, Mary and Percy left for the Continent, aided and joined by Jane, now calling herself Claire.38
St. Pancras churchyard, where Mary Wollstonecraft is buried, by Alexander Hogg (1784).
Mary Jane followed them to Paris. She cared little for Percy or Mary but was anxious to convince Claire to return home. Claire refused, and during the months of July and August, the young trio traveled—a journey recorded in History of a Six Weeks’ Tour Through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland, published as a collaboration between Percy and Mary in 1817. As will be seen, Mary drew heavily on the records of this trip in creating the scenes of Frankenstein. However, despite its fruitfulness as a source for many scenes in Frankenstein, the trip was miserable. They were friendless, and they had no money. Godwin was furious with both of them,39 and Mary found Claire’s presence almost intolerable. Years later, Mary would write, “Now, I would not go to Paradise with her for a companion—she poisoned my life when young. … But years ago my idea of Heaven was a world without Claire—of course these feelings are altered—but she still has the faculty of making me more uncomfortable than any human being.”40 When they returned to England at the end of the summer, Mary was pregnant. The child’s father was Percy Shelley.
Title page of Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin, History of a Six Weeks’ Tour Through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817).
Born on February 22, 1815, the infant, a girl, survived for two weeks only. In the days and weeks, if not years, after, Mary’s thoughts returned repeatedly to the child, whom she had nursed. “[’T]is hard, indeed, for a mother to lose a child,” she wrote in her journal three days after her daughter’s death. On March 13, she wrote, “Stay at home, net,41 and think of my little dead baby. This is foolish, I suppose; yet, whenever I am left alone to my thoughts, and do not read to divert them, they always come back to the same point—that I was a mother, and am so no longer.” On March 19, she recorded: “Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived. Awake and find no baby. I think about the little thing all day. Not in good spirits.” She mentions another dream of the baby on the twentieth, but never again recorded anything, except as echoes in her fiction, about the child.42
The couple spent the rest of 1815 reading and dodging Percy’s relentless creditors. In August 1815, they moved to Bishopsgate, Windsor, and on January 24, 1816, a son, William, was born. Godwin continued to shun the couple, and Mary despaired that the relationship could be healed. She made trips to London to see her half-sister Fanny, who had to come outside of the Skinner Street house to talk with her, reinforcing her view that her breach with her father was permanent. She was anxious, too, about Percy’s health. They began to plan another trip to the Continent for the summer of 1816, with Claire and their close friend T. Jefferson Hogg.43
In March 1816, Claire contrived to introduce herself to the notorious celebrity-poet Lord Byron. Using the pretext of seeking his advice on a theatrical career and, when that failed, on her writing, she obtained an interview with him and apparently sang for him. Byron had been importuned by scores of women, many under false names, and he was not particularly interested. By April 9, she wrote him another note, abandoning all pretense and offering to simply show him that she could “love gently and with affection.” She suggested a date, and he acceded. At the same time, she told Mary that Byron was anxious to meet her. Claire arranged a brief meeting in London that left Mary impressed. Claire reported to Byron that Mary had remarked to her, “How mild he is! How gentle! How different from what I expected.”44 Claire had her own agenda as well: In short order, the seventeen-year-old, “prancing” at Byron, became impregnated by him.45 Though he showed no further interest in Claire, she urged that later that spring, Percy and Mary accompany her to Lake Geneva, along whose shores Byron was beginning a not entirely voluntary expatriate residence, to effect a reunion with him, in hopes that he would welcome a relationship with her and support their child when born at year’s end. In May, leaving Hogg behind, Percy, Mary, and Claire departed for Switzerland, accompanied by William.
Monument of Mary and Percy Shelley, engraving by George J. Stodard (1853) from a monument by Henry Weekes.
Gordon, Lord Byron, was, except for heads of state, perhaps the most famous person of the age, and many today see him as the first celebrity “rock star.” He was idolized by young and old and in some ways can be seen to inform
the ideals of both Robert Walton, the narrator of Frankenstein, and Victor Frankenstein himself. Byron had achieved immense fame with publication of the shockingly self-revelatory first two cantos of his epic poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1812. Born in 1788 to Captain “Mad Jack” Byron and the former Catherine Gordon (his father’s second wife), he inherited his title at the age of ten. In intermittent bursts from 1805 to 1807 he attended Cambridge. There he experienced what he later described as a violently passionate relationship with a fellow student, John Edleston, who sang in the Trinity College choir and whose untimely death was said to have later inspired Byron’s Thyrza elegies. The relationship continued a pattern of similar earlier infatuations that eventually gave rise in Byron to what one of his biographers has called “a consciousness of sexual differences” that he felt made living in England “untenable.”46 On his subsequent grand tour, Byron visited the Mediterranean, partly, it is said, in search of further such experiences. This trip initiated his infatuation with the Levant, evident throughout his writing. It was on his return from the Mediterranean that he began to publish his poetry, achieving overnight notoriety that placed him simultaneously as a celebrant of and an exile in London society.
Portrait of George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, by Richard Westall (1813).
Despite this celebrity and the romantic attentions of women and men, however, Byron was strictly disciplined and kept writing, producing such works as The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos (both published in 1813), and Parisina and The Siege of Corinth (1816). He dallied with Lady Caroline Lamb47 (who famously called him “mad, bad and dangerous to know”), among other lovers, until, pressed by debt, he thought to follow his father’s example of marrying wealthy women and began looking for a partner. He had not yet succeeded when, in 1813, he reunited with his half-sister, Augusta Leigh (the product of his father’s first marriage), whom he had first met when he was thirteen. They had not seen each other for several years but had kept up a correspondence. The letters laid the groundwork for a deeper affection than they had ever enjoyed face-to-face, and their relationship quickly gave rise to rumors of incest.48 Indeed, Augusta’s daughter Medora, born in 1814, was suspected to have been Byron’s child. Byron next wooed Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke, the only child of Sir Ralph Milbanke.49 Byron described Annabella in his journal, after she had rejected his first proposal of marriage: “a very superior woman, and very little spoiled; which is strange in an heiress, a girl of twenty, a peeress that is to be in her own right, an only child, and a savante, who has always had her own way. She is a poetess, a mathematician, a metaphysician; yet, withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension.” Byron’s fortunes darkened further following her refusal of his proposal, as his debt mounted and the rumors of his relationship with Augusta gained prominence. He pursued Annabella again. Improbably, this time he was successful, and in January 1815 they married.