Written by Sara Landaverde
There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand. – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Frankenstein is one of the most famous novels ever written and most people are familiar with the overall gist of the story: scientist creates monster and monster runs amok. However, while many people may be familiar with the novel itself, far fewer people know that the author was a teenage girl!
This month and the following few months, a new movie by the name of Mary Shelley is set to debut. This film tells of the life, events, controversies, and scandals that led Mary Shelley to write her famous novel, Frankenstein.
So, before heading out to see this fictionalised biopic, here are some historical tidbits about Mary Shelley that may be helpful to remember!
Mary Godwin Shelley was the child of two radical philosophers and she spent her childhood surrounded by individuals devoted to politics, philosophy and literature.
Mary’s mother, Mary Wallstonecraft, was a prominent feminist philosopher and educator. She spent much of her time advocating for women’s rights, and is best known for her work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she argues that women only appear to be naturally inferior to men because of their lack of education. Mary’s father, William Godwin, was a journalist, novelist, and philosopher. He was ridiculed by some for his marriage to feminist, Mary Wallstonecraft. However, because of his success as a writer, he was well-known within radical political circles in London.
Mary Shelley never received a traditional education.
For most of her childhood, Mary was educated and tutored by her father. He taught her about a broad range of subjects that were rarely included in any educational curriculum for young girls, and her father expressed hope that she would be raised as a philosopher.
Mary Shelley ran away with a married man when she was 16 years old.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was a political acquaintance of William Godwin who had been ostracised from his wife and his wealthy family. Against the wishes of her father, Percy and Mary began seeing each other when she was 16 and he was 22. They announced their love and ran away through France to Switzerland with Mary becoming pregnant during their travels. Eventually, they would marry less than a month after the suicide of Percy’s wife, Harriet.
Frankenstein was the result of a ghost story competition.
In 1816, while visiting Lord Byron and other friends in Switzerland, Lord Byron proposed a contest in which each of the guests would write a ghost story. The idea of Frankenstein came to her after a sleepless night when her imagination ran wild. She began writing, and initially believed the piece to end as a short story. However, with Percy’s encouragement, she continued to work and expand her writing into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus.
Frankenstein was originally published anonymously.
In 1817, Mary completed the novel and it was published in early 1818. Since it was published anonymously, most readers believed that Percy Shelley was the author.
The true authorship of Frankenstein has been debated.
Due to the close relationship between Mary and Percy, there was collaboration between the two in writing Frankenstein. There are noted differences in several of the published editions; however, Mary maintained that work was solely hers, and that the preface to the first edition was his only significant contribution.
Mary Shelley would go on to write and publish a number of novels.
Although she is most well-known for Frankenstein, Mary Shelley also wrote historical novels such as Valperga, Perkin Warbeck, The Last Man, Lodore, and throughout her life and writing career, she strove to embody the feminist model and ideas of her mother.
Frankenstein is often considered the first science-fiction novel.
Although the novel includes many of the characteristics of Gothic fiction and Romantic literature, it also includes scientific ideas and theories related to artificial intelligence, transplantation, and reanimation.
Who knows how true to history this new movie will be? Hopefully it will be entertaining and as historically accurate as possible. So, if you venture out to see this movie, maybe keeping these factual tidbits in mind will help make your experience even more enjoyable!
