Mary Shelley

1
Mary Shelley

• 1797 - 1851

2
Marys Parents

• Mother - Mary Wollstonecraft
• Wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women
• She was a feminist, educator and writer
• Father - William Godwin
• An anarchist
• Raised her after her mother died shortly after
  giving birth

3
Mr. Shelley

• Percy Bysshe Shelley poet
• Married his wife Harriet when he was 19
• Fell in love with Mary when she was 16
• They eloped to France in 1814 when she was 17
  Harriet committed suicide.

4
Ghost Stories

• In 1816, Mary traveled to Lake Geneva with Percy,
  Lord Byron and others
• Forced to stay indoors on one particular evening
  the group of young writers and intellectuals
  decided to have a ghost-story writing contest
• Another guest, Dr. John Polidori, came up with
  The Vampyre, later to become a strong influence
  on Bram Stoker's Dracula

5
Marys Frustration

• Mary had writers block
• That night she had a waking dream where she saw
  "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling
  beside the thing he had put together"
• She started writing -
  in time it
  would be
  published as Frankenstein

6
Tragedy

• Family suicides
• Infant deaths
• The drowning of her husband, Percy

7
This is so Goth

• Frankenstein one of the most famous Gothic
  novels
• Romantic period nature, neoclassicism,
  nationalism, heroism, supernatural
• Gothic - off-shoot of the Romantics
• Dealt with terror and mystery in addition to the
  nature and supernatural elements of Romanticism
• Terror (psychological physical), darkness,
  death, decay, secrets, madness,

8
Horace Walpoles Mansion
9
The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli 1781
10
The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli 1802
11
Front Cover of the 1831 Edition