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California State University, Northridge HARY SHELLEY's Vie1t>J of HAN AS SEEN in FRANKENSTEIN and the LAST HAN a Thesis Submi

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California State University, Northridge HARY SHELLEY's Vie1t>J of HAN AS SEEN in FRANKENSTEIN and the LAST HAN a Thesis Submi ' ' California State University, Northridge HARY SHELLEY'S VIE1t>J OF HAN AS SEEN IN \\ FRANKENSTEIN AND THE LAST HAN A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English by Nona Hale Received: Approved: June, 1977 ,, ' TABLE OF CONTENTS Page I. A SHORT BIOGRAPHY . 1 II. THE TWO NOVELS 9 III. CONCLUSIONS . • 2 7 NOTES • • • 3 2 A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY • 34 ii I. A SHORT BIOGRAPHY On 30 August 1797, a daughter was born to Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, who had married only five months previously. Though believing that marriage was a stifling institution and that love should be free, Mary Wollstonecraft had seen the effects of her liberal views on her first child, Fanny Imlay, and she now wished to spare her second. Many of her perceptions of freedom had been formed while she lived in Newington Green among the leading dissenters of her day, to whom "free" meant "guided by one's own will." (To be guided by another's will was servitude.) These concepts had appeared in her Vindication of the Rights of Men {1790). Two years later she had written A Vindication of the Rights of Homen in which she insists that rights have no sexual basis: "what they say of man I extend to mankind." She believed that inequality is the cause of the world's evils. "Cruelty, depravity, irresponsibility toward children and all help­ less persons--these'wrongs' are to be fought by elimi­ nating institutionalized inequality and by educating the mind and heart of both meri and women, of all classes. The right she is most concerned to vindicate, then, is the right to become a rational, responsible, independent adult." 1 Although she married Godwin, she never lived in his house except for the twelve days of this confinement 1 2 which ended in her death. Godwin, a crusty bachelor, found himself the widowed parent of two little girls. Mr. Nicholson, a neighbor who was an amateur phrenologist a~d physiognomist, examined Mary when she was three weeks old and found signs of intelligence and good memory although there were also indications that the babe lacked persistence. Even at such an early age it is clear that much was expected of Mary. 2 William Godwin had found fame as a radical social philosopher with the publication in 1793 of An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Justice. "Truth, moral truth, it was supposed, had here taken up its abode; and these were the oracles of thought," wrote William Hazlitt about this book's effect. 3 Godwin differed from a reformer like Thomas Paine by submitting that democracy is not the solu­ tion to the injustices of the feudal-mercantile system. This is because he did not feel that the evils of society were due only to political suppression but also to eco­ nomic inequality. Even if kings, priests, courts, and criminal laws were changed so that the political rights of people were protected, the unequal distribution of property would lead to envy, dissatisfaction and revolt, Godwin wrote. In 1801 Godwin married a widow, Mary Jane Clair­ mont, who had two children, Charles and Jane (later 3 Claire). A son, William, was born to them in 1802. This confusion of children was Mary's early family. Because she adored her father and he seemed to see in her the reincarnation o~ his first wife, she appears to have suppressed her natural warm nature in order to seem the dispassionate intellectual he approved of. She and her stepmother were not compatible. This may be the reason that she spent parts of 1812 and 1814 in Scotland with the Baxter family. They were a conventional, middle class household and she enjoyed her visits with them. It was in Scotland, she says 1n the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, that her "airy flights of . imagination, were born and fostered." During the summer of 1814 Shelley was a frequent visitor to Godwin. They shared many views: the innate goodness of man, the unifying force of love, the progres­ sion of society toward good. When Mary returned from Scotland, she met Shelley at her father's house. Partly to elude her stepmother's tongue and partly out of longing for her own mother whose memory she had romanticized, Mary began to visit her mother's grave. There she would sit and read her beloved books, all those written by her mother and many others from Godwin's library. Fascinated by this beautiful daughter of his mentor, Shelley began to follow her to St. Pancras' churchyard. They talked 4 of Mary Wollstonecraft and Shelley confided his unhappi­ ness caused by his wife's neglect and lack of sympathy. Shelley idealized Mary: not only was she the daughter of two of his idols, but she seemed to possess everything he thought the ideal woman should have--beauty, imagination and intelligence, love of poetry, and sympathy with his aspirations. No wonder they found themselves plunged in­ to intense feelings. Hhen Godwin became aware of the situation, he was the outraged father. Mary was only sixteen; Shelley was married to Harriet Westbrook and the father of two children. In July, the lovers eloped to France and Switzerland, Claire accompanying them. Mary felt no compunction in eloping, for they were, after all, only living out the philosophic views of her father. Love was what bound two people together, not the insti­ tution of marriage. When love was absent, the ties were broken. Marriage vows were not compelling and marriage ceremonies were not necessary. Although Shelley agreed with Godwin that marriage was an evil social institution, he did not advocate promiscuous sex. A sexual relation­ ship was proper only if it was the outgrowth of a spiri­ tual relationship. B~cause he and Harriet no longer shared such a relationship, he was able to leave her with no feelings of wrongdoing. He even invited Harriet to join them as the sister of his soul. "Shelley never gave 5 up his belief that people ought to live naturally and rationally together, but he did come to recognize the 4 great practical difficulties. involved. " After two months the lovers returned to England. In February of 1815 a daughter was born to them, only to die within two weeks. A son, William, was born in Jan- uary of 1816. That summer they again traveled to Switzer- land where Mary began writing Frankenstein. After they returned to England in the fall, Harriet was found drowned. In December they were married, mainly in hopes of obtaining custody of Shelley's two children by Harriet, but also to legitimize their child and to placate their families. Another daughter was born before they left for Italy in 1818. Life was tumultuous for Mary. Before she was twenty she had given birth to three children. Before she /; was twenty-two she had lost them all. Add to this Harriet's suicide, Fanny's suicide, the loss of Shelley's children to the court, the death of the daughter of Byron and Claire plus the constant hounding by Godwin and creditors for money, the ostracism from Shelley's family, the lack of funds because of Shelley's generous spirit and one wonders that Mary was able to write. Shelley had little doubt that she had an extraordinary gift and intellect, and it was probably due to his support that 6 ~ ' during this period she wrote History of~ Six Weeks' Tour, Frankenstein, Valperga, and a novella, Mathilda. Her only child to reach adulthood, Percy Florence, was born in November of 1819. She had a miscarriage in June of 1822, but her greatest tragedy occurred in July of that year: Shelley was drowned while sailing off the coast of Italy. An impoverished widow at twenty-four, Mary felt that she had but two obligations: the furthering of Shelley's reputation and the caring for her only child. After a year with the Leigh Hunt family in Italy, she returned to England, hoping that Sir Timothy, Shelley's father, would feel obligated to support his grandson. But he would do so only if Mary relinquished custody. She refused, and Sir Timothy compromised by giving Percy Florence a hundred pounds a year. Mary provided for her­ self, her son and her debt-ridden father by publishing Valperga (1823) and The Last Man (1826). In 1824 the publication of Shelley's Posthumous Poems and the notes Mary had written for the book so angered Sir Timothy (who wanted nothing more than that the world should forget his errant son) that he stopped the small allowance. When Harriet's son died in 1826 and Percy became heir to the estate, Sir Timothy relented and gave him an allowance of three hundred pounds a year. Mary developed a life in London and a circle of 7 friends, but she clung to Shelley's memory and never re­ married. Replying to a proposal from Edward Trelawny she wrote, "Never, neither you nor anybody else. Mary Shelley shall be writte~ on my tomb . II She continued to support herself by writing and seemed almost morbid in her widowhood. Two novels were published, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837), and she wrote notes to an edition of Shelley's poems, Poetical Works_ (1839) . She also wrote five volumes of biography for Lardner's ~abinet Cyclo­ pedia. Her last work, Rambles in Germany and ~taly, is an account of two trips she took with her son and two of h~s friends. The final years of her life were free of poverty. At the death of Sir Timothy, who lived to age ninety-one, Percy succeeded to the title.
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