I had no idea that Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) was the daughter of

[Flaxbee]

Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Women). No freaking idea. Did you?

Talk about brilliant writers -- sometimes it does seem to be in the genes.

Anyway. Discovered it last night, and thought it was cool.

That is all.

:hi:

[Frank Cannon]

1. Well, since her name was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley...

it figures, but I didn't know who Mary Wollstonecraft was until you told me.

[Flaxbee]

2. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley

:D

I'd read Mary Wollstonecraft for a few college humanities and polisci classes, I've never read Frankenstein, oddly enough. I did know, though had forgotten, that Mary Shelley ran away with Percy Bysshe Shelley (duh, hence her name) and had four children with him (only one of whom lived).

[nytemare]

17. Percy Shelley wrote one of my favorite poems.

Music, When Soft Voices Die
by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory -
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.


Short, simple, and beautiful.

[sasquatch]

3. Yes I did, I learned about it last quarter

[MorningGlow]

4. Yes--just finished reading a great book about it

Death and the Maidens--all about the Wollestonecraft girls--Mary and her half-sister Fanny who committed suicide, and their stepsister. Good stuff--I recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/Death-Maidens-Wollstonecraft-Shelley-circle/dp/1582433399/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212348901&sr=1-1

[Flaxbee]

5. thank you! I'll take a look at it ---

I'm reading "Women Write: A Mosaic of Women's Voices in Fiction, Poetry, Memoir and Essay" right now, and have come across several authors I'd like to know more about (one of them is Lady Mary Wortley Montagu - her letters are a riot). I'll add the book you recommend to my list! :hi:

[femmocrat]

6. Thank you! I will look for it!

Another good book about Mary Wollstonecraft is Vindication by Frances Sherwood (Penguin Books, 1993). It is a novel based on her life, but still interesting and informative.

[Shakespeare]

7. Well, yeah.

English major and all that. :hi:

[WinkyDink]

8. As a former Brit lit teacher, yes, I did! But everybody knows some stuff others don't!

[Kutjara]

9. But did you know it's pronounced...

"wulstencraft"? I love bonkers British pronounciations.

Here's two more: Cholmondeley and Featherstonehaugh.

Answers below.





































































"Chumley" and "Fanshaw," of course.

[Flaxbee]

14. lol! The first one - Chumley - I can kind of see, but Fanshaw?

How they hell do they get Fanshaw from Featherstonehaugh?

[Kutjara]

15. That's a very good question.

A few years ago, there was a comedy singing act that went by the name "The Cholmondeley Featherstonehaughs". Even weirder, an episode of the old TV show "Nanny & the Professor" was entitled "Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh."

[khashka]

10. Known it for years

Mostly she went by her dad's name Godwin. I don't think she forgave her mom for not marrying her dad. But her mom was one of the first feminists.

And Frankenstein isn't really a horror novel, it's about bad parenting.

Khash.

[pitohui]

11. uh yeah, like that's the first thing everyone is taught about her, duh?

i assume this is a level? since most people do not read frankenstein, they only know of it thru the movies and thus know mary shelley really only thru her assoc. w. her mom, her hubby, and various movie producers...she was 19 when she wrote this or so i was told

[mzteris]

12. The Modern Prometheus

is the rest of the title of Frankenstein. . .

and Frankenstein isn't the name of the "monster" - it's the name of the man who created "the monster".


she wrote it at a weekend house party where everyone there had to write a "scary story" (or something like that.)

[Orrex]

16. Another neat tidbit

The word "monster" at that time (and even today, though less commonly) was used to refer to a badly deformed baby, so the title can be transliterated as "Dr. Frankenstein's Horribly Deformed Offspring."

Today "monster" has become a generic designator for dreadful creatures, so this poignant aspect of the title is easily overlooked.


Also, did she write it in a weekend, or simply come up with it in a weekend? That's a minor quibble, but you've got me wondering.


Either way, she kicked off the modern era of science fiction, so more power to her!

[Goblinmonger]

20. She did not write it in a weekend.

She wrote a draft of the concept. I believe she was 18 at the time. She was at the lake with her husband to be and Lord Byron (wouldn't you love to be with that threesome) and they were reading "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and other things and decided to have a contest to see which of the three could tell the best horror story. Mary's story was the basis for Frankenstein.

[undeterred]

13. I didn't know that!

Frankenstein is an awesome (literary) creation.

[RainDog]

18. My ugrad thesis was about Mary Wollstonecraft

She was an amazing woman in her time.

She traveled to France and wrote about the terror as it occurred during the French Revolution (Wordsworth was in France too, working on The Prelude... "Bliss was it that dawn to be alive, to be young was surely heaven."

Wollstonecraft translated books for Joseph Johnson, a radical publisher who also published the first (not self-published) William Blake works.

Wollstonecraft wrote a book about her travels (also "alone") in Scandanavia. It appears she was also helping to smuggle precious metals from the French Revolutionaries to sell to raise money... once Louis was deposed (before he was guillotined) all the other royal families on the continent declared war on France.

She helped both her sister and her best friend escape abusive marriages - they started a school for girls to survive. Wollstonecraft also protected her mother from her abusive father, as well.

Her novel, Maria, (pronounced Moriah) isn't that great, but it does go into the dilemmas that females face to this day -- w/o financial independence, women deform themselves to survive in male-owned society.

One of the quotes that I halfway remember from her writing - not even sure at this moment which book - Maria or her book on the French Rev... but she said (paraphrase) we need to get away from the myth of Prometheus (and other religious superstitions) that keep us from seeing the world in another way.

Wm Godwin wrote a good novel, Caleb Williams. Godwin was an anarchist-y kinda guy.

Mary Shelley met Percy when he visited her father - he was a famous political/educational philosopher. They courted by meeting in secret at Mary Wollstonecraft's grave.

By the time Mary Shelley was an adult, there was a big backlash in England against the English radicals who supported the French and American revolutions. Wollstonecraft was the object of ridicule from all the moralists of the day.

Anyway, Wollstonecraft died because her doctor didn't wash his hands when he delivered Mary Godwin Shelley. What a waste - she was amazing. Oh, and Wollstonecraft and Godwin did get married when she found out she was preggers. It was a big embarrassment b/c it was against their big ideas at the time.

[Deep13]

19. Yeah, I knew.

At the beginning of the Boris Karloff Frankenstein, it credits "Mrs. Percy Shelley." That always irked me.

Mary Sr. was killed by her doctor in childbirth. As was often the case, the doctor's limited and somewhat erroneous medical knowledge caused him to do the wrong thing. I can't remember who Mary Sr.'s husband was. I do know he was a vocal proponent of women's rights in his own right as well as a critic of religion.

As a side note, I have often envisioned Shelley and Byron seated in the withdrawing room with horrified expressions while Mary Jr. cheerfully recites one of the most horric tales ever told. I recently reread Frankenstein and it again scared the shit out of me.