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Transcript

Documentary

Feminism

Influences

Context

Biography

Mary Shelley

International Women's Day

Works

Mary Shelley (née Godwing) (1797-1851) was an English writer, one of the first female writer to ever write novels and the first female to ever write a Science-Fiction book.Her name is linked to her master piece "Frankeinstein".

Biography Mary Shelley was born in London in 1797. She was the daughter of two radical thinkers: William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, who died after her birth. This event shaped her life and when her father later remarried, this caused her great suffering. Since she was a kid she got in contact with the lioterary world: indeed her fathe's house was a meeting point for different poets and philosopers such as Wordsworth and Coleridge. In 1814 Mary met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the two began a relationship even though he was married and had two children, for this reason Godwin strongly opposed their relationship. Eventually the two lovers eloped to France and then Switzerland, but they had to return to England due to financial problems. Because of these actions, Mary was banished by society, even by her own father who refused to speak to her for some time. Later Mary and Percy Shelley returned to Switzerland with Claire, Mary’s stepsister who at the time had a relationship with Lord Byron. This is where she started to write her master-piece. After her husband drowned in 1822 during a storn while sailing near Livorno, she moved to Italy with her son where she kept writing novels. She died in London in 1851.

Mary Shelley's biography Mary Shelley was born in London in 1797. She was the daughter of two radical thinkers: William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, who died after her birth. This event shaped her life and when her father later remarried, this caused her great suffering. Since she was a kid she got in contact with the lioterary world: indeed her fathe's house was a meeting point for different poets and philosopers such as Wordsworth and Coleridge. In 1814 Mary met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the two began a relationship even though he was married and had two children, for this reason Godwin strongly opposed their relationship. Eventually the two lovers eloped to France and then Switzerland, but they had to return to England due to financial problems. Because of these actions, Mary was banished by society, even by her own father who refused to speak to her for some time. Later Mary and Percy Shelley returned to Switzerland with Claire, Mary’s stepsister who at the time had a relationship with Lord Byron. This is where she started to write her master-piece. After her husband drowned in 1822 during a storn while sailing near Livorno, she moved to Italy with her son where she kept writing novels. She died in London in 1851.

Romantic Era Mary Shelley is the first female writer to ever write a science-fiction book and also she's one of the first females to ever write novels. Her poetry is influenced by the Romantic movement of her time.It's an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Enlightenment of the 18th century, and lasted approximately from 1800 to 1850. Romantic poets rebelled against the style of poetry from the eighteenth century which was based around epics, odes, satires, elegies, epistles and songs. The Sublime is considered one of the most important concepts in Romantic poetry. In literature, it refers to use of language and description that excites thoughts and emotions beyond ordinary experience. Although it is often associated with grandeur, the sublime may also refer to the grotesque or other extraordinary experiences that "take us beyond ourselves." The literary concept of the sublime became important in the eighteenth century. It is associated with the 1757 treatise by Edmund Burke, though it has earlier roots. The idea of the sublime was taken up by Immanuel Kant and the Romantic poets including especially William Wordsworth. Belief in the importance of the imagination is a distinctive feature of romantic poets such as John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and P. B. Shelley, unlike the neoclassical poets. Keats said, "I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination- What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth." For Wordsworth and William Blake, as well as Victor Hugo and Alessandro Manzoni, the imagination is a spiritual force, is related to morality, and they believed that literature, especially poetry, could improve the world. The secret of great art, Blake claimed, is the capacity to imagine. Love for nature is another important feature of Romantic poetry, as a source of inspiration. This poetry involves a relationship with external nature and places, and a belief in pantheism. However, the Romantic poets differed in their views about nature. Some other features of this movements are:

  • Medievalism
  • Supernaturalism
  • Hellenism
  • Subjectivity

Mary Shelley's main influences Her master-piece was definetely affected by the Gothic movement, pretty popular during her time. Gothic Novel Definition: genre of novel influenced by the concept of the sublime. Inspired by the medieval architecture, these novels aimed to induce fear in the reader, which seems to reflect that specific historical moment, characterised by increasing disillusion with Enlightenment rationality and by the bloody Revolutions in America and France. Features:

  • ancient settings, like isolated castles or churches
  • time setting during the night, when there isn’t the light of rational explanation and evil creatures go out and dominate the world
  • use of supernatural beings, like ghosts, witches, etc
  • based on terror and horror, two irrational reactions to uncertainty
  • always the same characters: a young girl, the heroine, a villain, who rapes her and locks her somewhere very remote, and a brave handsome hero who saves the heroine
  • the prose language is easy to read, but the novel is quite long
Mary was also influenced by the ideals of the French Revolution and was interested in science together with her husband, so that by the time she wrote Frankenstein, she was aware of the latest scientific theories and experiments of the day in the fields of chemistry, evolutionism and electricity such Galvani's experiments which she had a nightmare about. She was also affected by Rousseau’s theory of natural man, the monster is in fact a man in a primitive state influenced by civilization. Shelley was also influenced by the myth of Prometheus in fact the mythological hero is a clear example of an overreacher, just like the doctor Frankenstein. Plus, her personal and traumatic experiences such the loss of her mother, 3 children and her husband, definetely pushed her in exploring the themes of grief, loss, complexities of emotions, responsability and the idea of creation. Then we can't help but notice how her parents and husband influenced her work and social/political ideas.

Mary Shelley's literary production She is best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus," which was first published anonymously in 1818. She wrote this novel after a nightmare about Galvani's new experiments with electricity to resuscitate dead frogs. This story is about Victor Frankenstein, a reckless scientist obsessed with the idea of creating life at the point of creating a new being assembling different corps' body parts; though he'll soon regret his choices. In addition to "Frankenstein," Shelley wrote several other novels, including "The Last Man" (1826), a post-apocalyptic science-fiction novel set in the 21st century. This novel is about a global pandemic that eliminates most of humanity. There is only one survivor: Lionel Verneyand, and with this book we can follow his journey trough a desert world. She also wrote and published lot of essays and biographies such as her husband's biography, the noted poet Percy Bysshe Shelley: "The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley" (1827). Some other books by Mary Shelley

  • The Mortal Immortal (1833)
  • Transformation (1831)
  • Matilda (1819)
  • History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817; wrote with her husband)
  • Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823)
  • The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1823)
  • Falkner (1837)
  • The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830)
  • Ladore (1835)

Feminism and personal point of view A woman whose father was a radical philosopher who believed in the equality of the sexes, and whose mother was a pioneering vindicator of women’s rights. How could the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin not be every inch the feminist her parents would have wanted her to be? She certainly believed in the equality of the sexes when it came to sex: when she met first Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1814, at the age of only 16, she acted no demure maiden but was as forthright in declaring her passion as he was – indeed it seems she rather made the running than followed it (his wife later said Mary was “determined to seduce him. She is to blame”). And Mary certainly didn’t let the fact that Shelley had a pregnant wife and a baby daughter get in the way either; as her father boasted (though in a very different context), “her perseverance in everything she undertakes is almost invincible”. Does this make her a feminist? Personally, I think it makes her thoughtless and selfish, as she would have been only too aware that her actions would leave the 19-year-old Harriet Shelley condemned to a miserable future with no prospect of either independence or re-marriage. And yes, Mary was even younger than that at the time, but she had been educated to an acute awareness of the rights of others, so neither ignorance nor youth are an excuse in her particular case. After the elopement, when the money ran out and the lovers were forced to return to London, Mary complained bitterly that her acquaintances shunned her, questioning how those who claimed to share Mary Wollstonecraft’s belief in free love could then ostracise her daughter merely for acting according to the same credo. She had a point, of course, but when it came to free love, did Mary Shelley herself practise what she preached? When Harriet killed herself in 1816, both Mary and her father put enormous pressure on Shelley to regularise the relationship and marry her, and despite Shelley’s ideological objections – and a plea to postpone the ceremony for at least a year out of respect for the dead – the wedding did indeed take place less than a month after Harriet’s body was found. According to Mary’s stepmother (who is admittedly not the most objective of witnesses), Shelley was only finally induced to marry Mary when she threatened to kill herself and the child she was by then carrying. Soon after the wedding, Mary wrote to Lord Byron showing off her new signature as ‘Mary W Shelley’. Her mother, by contrast, had never taken her husband’s name. And yet in other respects Mary Shelley was clearly both a free-thinker and what we would now call a feminist. And of course she was one of a very small number of women who earned their own living at that time, writing being one of the few professions where that was possible. Though even this claim to feminist iconicism is more ambivalent than it seems, since she resented the constant labour this entailed, and may well have chosen to write far less if she had received the more generous allowance from her father-in-law which she was always hoping for. The reason why Mary inspires me so much is because in an age where women were valued for their dowry’s and their fertility, she stood out. She rebelled against conventions, followed her heart and supported herself financially by writing. Not only that, she was a feminist before the word and movement even existed.