A Tale of Gothic Horror

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A Tale of Gothic Horror

• The Life and Time of Mary Wollenstonecraft
  Shelley

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Mary Shelley
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A Truly Gothic Tale

• The story of how the book came to be written by
  Mary Shelley is almost as mysterious and
  convoluted as the story Frankenstein itself
  tells. It too is a story of beauty and terror,
  ambition and disappointment, intellectual
  reaching and fear of knowledge, love and hate.

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The Early Years

• Mary is named after her mother, Mary
  Wollenstonecraft Godwin.  Both of her parents are
  well-known radical philosophers and writers. Ten
  days after Mary is born, her mother dies.

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• Mary lives with her father and half-sister,
  Fanny.  
• From the youngest age, she is encouraged to
  emulate her mother, study her writings, and
  converse with the writers who were among the
  celebrities of their day.
• Aware of her heritage, Mary had an ongoing
  interest in writing.
• She said,"It is not singular that, as the
  daughter of two persons of distinguished literary
  celebrity, I should very early in life have
  thought of writing.

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When Mary is four, her father remarries.  The new
Mrs. Godwin is something of the stereotypical
"wicked stepmother." Perhaps in defense of her
chaotic family life, Mary spends a sheltered
childhood, reading and studying in her father's
vast library.  One of her favorite haunts is the
yard of St. Pancras Church, where she likes to
sit and read at her mother's grave.
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Uh Oh!

• At fifteen, Mary meets Percy, an author and a
  follower of her father's political philosophy. 
  He is already married.

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More Uh Oh!

• The next year, in June, they are introduced again
  and fall wildly in love.  Mary and Percy meet
  secretly in the cemetery at her mother's grave. 
  That July, when she is sixteen, they run away to
  France.  She is disowned by her father. She
  continues to study literature and philosophy,
  with Percy as her teacher.

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Her 1st Sadness

• During the next year, Mary has a premature baby
  girl, Clara, who dies at four weeks old.  She is
  haunted by dreams about her dead baby, dreams of
  bringing it back to life.  

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When Frank is Thought of

• When she is eighteen, Mary and Percy vacation at
  the Villa Diodati in Switzerland.  The weather is
  unusually stormy.  Mary, Percy, and their friends
  entertain themselves by telling ghost stories. 
  They challenge each other to write even better,
  more frightening tales.  Mary starts a story
  based on her dream . . . .

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2nd Sadness, 3rd Sadness, 4th Bittersweet Ending

• Mary's half-sister commits suicide. 
• Percy's wife commits suicide.
• Mary and Percy marry.  

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Get er Done!

• At nineteen, Mary finishes writing her ghost
  story.  " My husband . . . was, from the first,
  very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of
  my parentage, and enroll myself on the page of
  fame. He was forever inciting me to obtain
  literary reputation . . .
• Just before she turns twenty, Mary Shelley
  publishes Frankenstein.

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Where does fact end and fiction begin?

• For the author of Frankenstein, her life has
  become legend.
• Legend has it that, several years later, while
  vacationing in Italy, Percy decides to experience
  the power and beauty of nature by taking a boat
  out in a raging storm. He doesn't know how to
  swim. The boat wrecks. Percy's body washes up on
  shore. (Another Sadness)

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• Lord Byron, Percy's grieving friend, builds a
  funeral pyre on the beach. After setting it
  alight, Byron swims out to sea to watch the smoke
  and spirit of his friend ascend to the heavens.
• Distraught, Mary reaches into the ashes and pulls
  out Percy's heart. She buries it separately in a
  Roman cemetery under a tombstone that reads, "Cor
  Cordium!" meaning "Heart of Hearts!"

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The Truth

• In truth, Mary and Percy had a tempestuous
  marriage. He drowned on vacation in Italy while
  on a boat trip with a friend, sailing between
  several small islands. His body washed ashore
  days after he was known to be missing. His body
  was identified only by the copy of Keats' poetry
  found in his pocket.

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More Truth

• Several weeks later, Percy was exhumed and placed
  on a funeral pyre built by Byron on the beach.
  Because he was preserved in lime, his body burned
  quickly with a fierce, bright flame. Mary was too
  overcome with grief to attend.

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• In the days before photography, it was not
  unusual for friends and family to choose
  non-decomposing body parts, like bone or hair, of
  the dearly departed as mementos. Byron had wanted
  Percy's skull, but that disintegrated in the
  fire.
• Another friend, Thornton Hunt burned his hand
  when he grabbed what he believed was Percy's
  heart. Sometime later, after a heated argument
  with Mary, it appears that Hunt gave the heart to
  her. It was found after her death, wrapped in
  silk in her writing desk, where Mary had kept it
  for 30 years

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So I Ask You

• Can the maker also be the monster?
• Can a monster also be a maker?