Young Mary Shelley: Struggling with Death while Bringing Life to Frankenstein

This is an inspirational story of a young woman who had not one day of formal education, received no support or encouragement from her parents, lived at a time repressive to women (even Jane Austen did not put her name on Sense and Sensibility or Pride and Prejudice in fear they would not be accepted or get published). Nevertheless, by age fifteen Mary has begun collecting ideas and keeping notes for her first novel. She is partly motivated to be a writer by the fact her mother wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (the first book on the liberation of women in the English language) and then, five years later, died giving birth to Mary—causing Mary to feel responsible for her mother’s death and to strive to give continuation to her mother’s life by becoming a writer and advocate for women’s rights.

Mary sneaks into her father’s study at night and does the best she can to educate herself. At age sixteen, two men propose marriage, but she declines. These experiences are a turning point in her young life. For the first time, Mary feels like a woman and has a sense of her power. She knows she is not fully mature, but also that she is no longer a child.

The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley is attracted to the flirtatious sixteen-year-old and falls in love. She soon realizes that she is in love with him. Although married, he and Mary decide to run away to Switzerland. When the couple returns to England, Mary is barred from communicating with anyone in her family and is ostracized by polite society. Yet, now she is part of a group of poets, novelists, playwrights, and journalists.

At age seventeen, Mary continues working on her novel, Frankenstein. She and Percy Shelley are forced to flee to Italy to avoid indictment for being radicals. When she returns to England, she finishes Frankenstein (at age eighteen) and uses her popularity to lecture on women’s rights and the education of girls. Frankenstein becomes an international best-seller and is made into numerous stage plays in England and France during Mary’s lifetime.