Vulgar History - Mary Shelley： The Goth Teen Who Wrote Frankenstein

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00:00:30.000 Ready to take your investing knowledge to pro-level? This is Fidelity Connects,

00:00:34.540 your daily edge in the markets. Get deep insights on real-time market topics that

00:00:39.000 may impact your investment portfolio. Listen to Fidelity Connects on Spotify today and

00:00:43.440 power your next move tomorrow. Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, 0.51

00:00:58.280 a feminist women's history comedy podcast. This is a Halloween super special, and I am Anne Foster.

00:01:05.560 When I was thinking of people to talk about for these Halloween episodes, again, you know, it's

00:01:11.720 a shame I've already done Elizabeth Bathory, but I feel like that's a good one to re-listen to

00:01:17.160 if you haven't in a while, because the whole Lady Dracula angle, I mean, spoiler, she wasn't 1.00

00:01:22.780 actually that but she has that reputation last week we looked at a an alleged witch elizabeth

00:01:29.040 woodville and this week we are looking at mary shelley who wrote the famous genre inventing

00:01:38.860 horror slash science fiction book frankenstein and if that wasn't enough reason to make this

00:01:45.420 a halloween special the fact that she was literally like the original goth queen she

00:01:51.360 was hanging out in old graveyards going on dates with her boyfriend and we'll get into that like

00:02:00.220 at her mother's gravesite she was goth queen but as we are gonna learn in this episode she's also

00:02:06.980 the mom friend of her group she was surrounded by chaotic people like the most chaotic people

00:02:17.060 she could have been surrounded by growing up where she was at that time like that includes both her

00:02:22.060 parents and her stepmother and she was just sort of like is the eye of the storm a pertinent

00:02:29.500 metaphor that's what i keep thinking of it's like everyone around her was the storm and she was in

00:02:34.600 the middle of it just being like making sure everybody you know had dinner and drank water

00:02:40.280 and like got naps when they needed to so she's the goth queen mom friend and that's who we're

00:02:45.880 looking at today. So my major source for this episode is a biography that came out in 2018

00:02:55.040 called In Search of Mary Shelley by Fiona Sampson. It's such an interesting and unusual biography

00:03:02.720 because Fiona Sampson is a poet mostly. And she writes this biography, which is again called

00:03:10.300 in search of Mary Shelley. She's trying to find where Mary is in the existent records of her life

00:03:17.300 because a lot of times the people around her would sort of subsume her. So anyway, it's a very

00:03:22.080 interesting and unconventional biography. Super recommend. Link in the show notes in search of

00:03:27.960 Mary Shelley by Fiona Sampson. I also looked at Wikipedia because Mary Shelley is famous enough

00:03:34.180 to have some, like an actual entry there. Always a treat for me on this podcast. So Mary Shelley

00:03:41.280 was born. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was her name at birth in Somerstown, London in 1797.

00:03:51.020 Her father was a philosopher, novelist, and journalist named William Godwin. And her mother

00:03:56.340 was Mary Wollstonecraft, which here we go. I really can't talk about Mary Shelley without

00:04:02.880 talking about Mary Wollstonecraft because this really helped shape a lot about what Mary Shelley

00:04:07.760 got up to. So Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's

00:04:12.400 rights. She is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers. She wrote many sorts of 0.99

00:04:18.880 things, but is best known for her 1792 work, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, in which she 0.87

00:04:25.580 argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack 1.00

00:04:31.020 education. A shocking thing to say in 1792. Tragically still shocking in 2021. Mary Wollstonecraft

00:04:39.020 suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order

00:04:43.780 founded on reason. Maybe that will happen one day, who knows. Mary Wollstonecraft, not just a notable

00:04:50.340 feminist writer, but also personal life scandalousness. She pursued a relationship with 1.00

00:04:56.880 a married writer, Henry Fuseli, Fuseli, and even suggested a co-living arrangement with him and

00:05:02.900 his wife. His wife was like, no thanks. And he dumped her to escape the humiliation. She fled

00:05:08.580 to France where the French revolution was underway because she was a fan of revolution.

00:05:14.640 And I just, as a, as a choice, I mean, I have so much respect for the choice of like, she,

00:05:20.260 she threw herself at this man. He was like, no thanks. And she's like, okay, I'm just going to

00:05:24.380 go from England to France and the revolution. Cause that is how embarrassing what just happened

00:05:30.240 was. Like I can relate. So, and she was in France and it was cool being in the revolution. She

00:05:35.540 had stuff there, but then when the revolutionaries took over, all foreigners were suddenly forbidden

00:05:42.620 to leave France. She tried to leave France because a lot of her friends she'd made there were being

00:05:48.240 executed but she was stuck there but you know silver lining she fell in love with an american

00:05:54.820 named henry imlay with whom she had a daughter named fanny imlay left her because he didn't

00:06:01.840 like how maternal and domestic she became when she had a child like he thought she was going to

00:06:06.260 be this like tits out what she was but he thought she was going to just be this sort of like 0.95

00:06:11.860 unconventional um scandalous person and she probably thought she was going to be too but 0.98

00:06:18.120 she had a daughter and she's like, guess what I want? Domestic life. So he left her because he 1.00

00:06:22.680 didn't want that. But Mary Wollstonecraft, just like, oh, she needs just like friends. She needs

00:06:29.500 a little sex in the city gang brunch to just be like, look at your choices. So she followed him 1.00

00:06:36.420 back to London. I guess France let her leave. He rejected her again. And she attempted suicide in

00:06:45.180 her depression. She did not complete suicide, kept writing and became close to Henry Godwin,

00:06:53.580 who she knew before and thought of sort of like a brother, but then I guess they fell for each

00:06:58.100 other. She became pregnant and then they got married. So their child would be legitimate

00:07:04.740 because that would be good for the child's life in the society in which they lived.

00:07:11.060 And that child was Mary Shelley, who is not Mary Shelley yet. She's Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. So it's that thing where women in English history name their daughters after themselves, which again, I've said this numerous times in this podcast, bring that back. I love, I love a mother naming her daughter the same thing as her.

00:07:30.560 but tragically, Mary Wollstonecraft died shortly after Mary was born. She died of that sort of

00:07:39.020 infection you get where the doctor didn't wash his hands before dealing with her after birth, 0.95

00:07:45.060 et cetera. So tragically preventable had doctors at this point believed in handwashing,

00:07:51.600 which they did not. A friend of mine who is a gynecologist told me they used to like go from

00:07:56.720 dealing with like corpses to like shoving hands up in vaginal areas, delivering babies. And women 1.00

00:08:03.580 died a lot of the time of infections. And they were like, can't be my fault. So it sucks because

00:08:08.400 she was this amazing revolutionary person, this iconoclast. And then she died in this awful way. 0.97

00:08:14.280 And we know a lot about her dying because her husband, William Godwin, wrote a whole sort of

00:08:19.400 tribute to her explaining the minutiae of how she died in childbirth and all the scandalous

00:08:24.980 details of her life one i'm just going to mention this this is like on par with mary toft level

00:08:30.660 distressing medical information so trigger warning this this whole episode trigger warning

00:08:36.900 suicide sorry i already mentioned it once and trigger warning birth awful things and trigger

00:08:45.960 warning Lord Byron and trigger warning a lot of babies dying. So just know that. So a thing that

00:08:58.220 happened that we know about because William Godwin wrote about it is that Mary was given to a wet

00:09:03.300 nurse for breastfeeding. And Mary Wollstonecraft was just like slowly dying. And the doctor was 0.95

00:09:08.980 like let's just keep her constantly drunk and i'm not sure and the biography i read about her by

00:09:16.100 fiona samson it's also not sure if that was just to sort of like make her not be suffering so much

00:09:21.380 because she was drunk all the time or if it was trying to be like maybe this will like clean her

00:09:25.440 system somehow so she was just drunk on wine all the time she had just given birth and so her 0.99

00:09:30.280 breasts were full of breast milk and so puppies came to suckle at her lactating breasts which 1.00

00:09:36.340 is just Mary Toft level nightmarish, this dying woman. So William Godwin saw all this happen to

00:09:43.720 this woman who he loved and wrote about it. And then unfortunately, he published it. Well,

00:09:49.220 not unfortunately, he published it. But unfortunately, when he published it,

00:09:52.640 this kind of wrecked Mary Wollstonecraft's reputation for a long time, because he talked

00:09:57.160 about how she had lovers and things. And so Mary's dad, not really great with predicting

00:10:04.200 the consequences of his actions. This left William Godwin alone, a widower to raise newborn baby

00:10:12.440 Mary, as well as Fanny, remember her, Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter from the French

00:10:16.820 Revolution. So he published the book about a year after she had died, kind of wrecked Mary

00:10:23.780 Wollstonecraft's reputation, but Mary, I'm just going to call her Mary Shelley. Like she's Mary

00:10:28.100 Godwin for now, but there's other people's name changes in this and it'll get confusing. So Mary

00:10:32.980 Shelley, the little baby who would become Mary Shelley, she would grow up reading these memoirs

00:10:38.100 of her mother's death and also all the books her mother wrote, which included a lot of travelogues

00:10:43.400 and diaries and personal things. And William made sure to bring up Mary to cherish her mother's

00:10:47.680 memory. There was a gigantic portrait of her hanging in the middle of their room as well.

00:10:52.620 So there was like a family graveyard as well. Mary, I believe, learned how to write, how to

00:10:57.720 read and write by tracing the letters on her mother's grave, which is like, well, how many

00:11:02.000 letters were there. Well, her mother's last name was Wollstonecraft. So all of the letters.

00:11:06.780 Mary's earliest years seem happy. Her father, you know what? And I respect this of him,

00:11:14.040 William Godwin. He's just like, I can't do this by myself. So he turned to female family friends

00:11:18.540 to help him out with what seemed to be an unusually hands-on parenting approach for this era.

00:11:25.620 when mary was four he got married to the girl next door who was a single mother named mary

00:11:34.140 jane claremont mary jane claremont is an interesting person as well which there's i

00:11:40.580 need to stay on track but just know that she is there's a lot of people in this episode i'm going

00:11:44.580 to want to talk about but i'm going to try and stay focused on mary shelley she is our goth queen

00:11:49.940 mom friend, heroine. But just know that her stepmother, Mary Jane Claremont, was

00:11:55.940 quite a character. Mary Jane Claremont had a daughter named Jane, who was eight months

00:12:02.540 younger than Mary and also son Charles, who was five. Who were their fathers? Who knows?

00:12:08.460 But she had these two children. And it seems like Mary Jane Claremont just kind of like saw,

00:12:14.040 potentially moved into a house next door to William Godwin with the intent of marrying so

00:12:19.160 that they could both help each other out and that she could sort of elevate herself in society

00:12:22.760 so they got married mary and fanny got two new siblings so now it's three girls and one boy

00:12:29.020 and eventually mary jane and william godwin had a son who was named william also just to keep

00:12:35.720 everything confusing so so what's that jane mary fanny name mary fanny three girls two boys is

00:12:45.040 just a whole house full of people, this little Brady Bunch situation. Yeah, so in Descending

00:12:51.000 Order, the children in this blended family are Fanny, Mary, Jane, Charles, and then baby William.

00:12:57.320 Seemingly, Mary Jane preferred her children to Mary Shelley and Fanny in a sort of Cinderella

00:13:03.180 scenario where she was looking for her children more than she was her stepdaughters. And perhaps

00:13:09.160 this is part of why Mary Shelley chose to become bookish and precocious and clever as people still

00:13:16.880 do now and have for a long time as a way to just deal with a constant chaos of their personal life

00:13:22.920 and not knowing how else to have control over anything. So she became very precocious, very

00:13:29.940 bookish, very clever. Her father would like bring her out at dinner parties of intellectuals and

00:13:34.220 stuff. And he loved that about her. He loved that she was his clever girl. And so this was also her

00:13:39.940 way to get her father to love her. We're going to see this psychological issue throughout her life

00:13:46.200 story. She received little formal education, like not school school, but her father tutored her on

00:13:52.800 a variety of subjects. He often took the children on educational outings, little field trips, and

00:13:58.960 they had access to his library and to the many intellectuals who visited him, including the

00:14:03.460 former vice president of the united states aaron burr from hamilton um mary although again she

00:14:10.280 didn't go to school school she received an unusually advanced education for a girl of the

00:14:14.760 time she had a governess a daily tutor and read many of her father's children's books on roman

00:14:19.800 and greek history by the time she was 15 her father described her as singularly bold somewhat

00:14:26.160 imperious and active of mind her desire of knowledge is great and her perseverance and

00:14:31.680 everything she undertakes almost invincible. And if you're wondering, but like, but what does she

00:14:36.440 look like? She had pale skin and light sort of red gold hair that as she got older turned more 0.94

00:14:43.320 like brown, which I think is suiting with her goth persona that she would develop later on.

00:14:49.480 She gives me feelings of Lady Jane Grey a little bit, just sort of being a bit of a like know-it-all

00:14:55.900 style teenage girl. Mary also had health problems, which were potentially caused and or exacerbated

00:15:03.740 by the stressful home situation of a stepmother who hated her. Again, the Cinderella scenario. 0.99

00:15:09.920 She was sent away to boarding school for six months because again, if it was because of her

00:15:14.800 health in her early teens, she developed what might be like an eczema sort of skin condition

00:15:20.320 on one arm and hand. It might have also been psoriasis. Like it got so bad that she was at

00:15:26.760 times unable to use her arm or her hand and wore a sling. So like, I'm sure at this time they were

00:15:33.420 like, is this leprosy? So she went off to school and her skin cleared up, which sort of suggests

00:15:39.100 that potentially a psychological causation of this issue, but also it could just be that they

00:15:45.700 were living in like a place with a lot of pollutants, London in the early 1800s. They

00:15:51.820 were like above a printing shop. I think they're above like her father's printing shop. So

00:15:55.020 potentially just allergens. Anyway, her skin cleared up and she came home and then her skin

00:15:59.760 got bad again. And so she persuaded her father to send her for fresh air, not a boarding school,

00:16:03.940 but to stay with family friends in the Scottish countryside, which is what she did. And she went

00:16:10.140 to the Scottish countryside twice. She did two sort of extended stays there. And in between those

00:16:16.200 two extended stays, so by this time, she's 16 years old. And in this era, she met the radical

00:16:25.040 poet philosopher slash fuck boy, Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was married already, and also the 0.97

00:16:32.620 father of a young child. But Percy idolized Mary's father's radical beliefs, which had alienated him

00:16:40.720 from his wealthy aristocratic family. They wanted him to be, you know, a lord or whatever. And he

00:16:46.140 wanted to donate large amounts of the family's money to help the disadvantaged, which is like

00:16:51.080 a cool thing to do. He also was not into monogamy or the conventions of society like Mary's parents.

00:16:59.440 but because he had sort of alienated his rich family, he had difficulty gaining access to the

00:17:04.460 money until he inherited his estate. Like his family wouldn't give him money until they died

00:17:09.080 because they didn't want him to waste it on projects of quote, political justice.

00:17:14.500 So he had met Mary's dad because that was like his hero. He loved William Godwin's writing. He

00:17:20.360 loved his like radical style. And so he sort of promised like, I will, he had lots of debts,

00:17:27.080 sorry, William Godwin had a lot of debts. And Percy Shelley was like, I could pay off your

00:17:31.560 debts. But then eventually it became obvious that he could not because he didn't have any money

00:17:35.680 himself, even though his family was rich. And on top of that, Mary and Percy began meeting each

00:17:41.560 other secretly at her mother's grave in the churchyard of St. Pancras Old Church. And they

00:17:47.160 fell in love like two little goths that they were. Mary's stepsister Jane, remember her eight months 1.00

00:17:54.020 younger so mary had like light hair light skin jane was like of a darker haired thing anyway jane 1.00

00:18:01.100 bffs helped facilitate these meetings so she would pass the letters back and forth she would also

00:18:05.820 quote unquote chaperone which whatever that means on june 26 1814 mary shelley and percy shelley

00:18:14.180 again not yet married declared their love for one another as percy announced he could not hide his

00:18:19.860 ardent passion, leading her in a sublime and rapturous moment to say she felt the same.

00:18:26.180 Remember, of course, she's 16, he's 21, and also married and the father of a young child.

00:18:31.360 On either that day or the next, Mary and Shelley had sex for the first time, which was her first

00:18:37.920 time having sex with anyone. And allegedly this happened in the churchyard. Some people think on

00:18:44.860 her mother's grave and i feel like that sounds possible so mary was attracted to percy shelley

00:18:51.860 she loved his wild intellectual unearthly looks and she would call him the elf because he was

00:18:57.900 sort of like fragile and sort of effeminate percy seems to have been attracted to mary's

00:19:05.040 intellect which was like her main like she wielded that but she was also very pretty but

00:19:10.640 he was also attracted to who her parents were and the fact that like she was a child of william godwin

00:19:14.700 and Mary Wollstonecraft, he was just like, yes, please. So they fell in love with each other.

00:19:21.040 Mary assumed her father would approve because that was in line with his stated Phyllis,

00:19:24.680 like his published concept of free love. Her parents had both been into free love.

00:19:30.720 They only got married for like legal reasons. But in fact, he was not, he did not approve of this

00:19:36.720 match of the guy who had like pretended he was going to fund him and that didn't,

00:19:41.020 who was married and his own teenage daughter. So it's sort of the thing of like, William Godwin

00:19:48.520 believed in free love and things, but not when it comes to literally his own teenage daughter,

00:19:53.260 who he loved so much because she was like the smart one. So with the help of Jane,

00:19:59.460 Mary and Percy ran off together to France. Jane also came along at around this same time,

00:20:05.180 like at around the same time they ran off to France. Mary's childhood writings were all

00:20:10.060 destroyed. So we don't know if Mary did that herself to just be like, I'm making a new chapter

00:20:14.480 in my life, like burning the journals like people still do today. Or if William did that because he

00:20:19.620 was like mad at her. But that's why we have to sort of piece together what were her early years

00:20:24.360 life because all for juvenilia is gone. Even she had a box of treasured papers, including letters

00:20:32.600 exchanged with her father while she was at school and in Scotland. But when they were in France,

00:20:38.000 she left this box in a Paris hotel room and it was never found. Although stay tuned for more about

00:20:43.360 that. So this is the squad. We've got Mary, we've got Percy, we've got her stepsister, Jane.

00:20:51.740 Jane's mother, Mary Jane, chased after them to try and force Jane to return home for the sake 0.98

00:20:57.680 of her reputation. But Jane did not. But also again, like the stepmother, it's just like, 0.99

00:21:03.580 fuck mary whatever but like jane has to come home anyway if you didn't already think that this trip 0.95

00:21:09.800 sounds like it probably wouldn't go well like in fact it didn't go well three bankrupt people 0.98

00:21:15.160 mary also got horrible seasickness and she had that her whole life she liked to be in places

00:21:20.740 but she was not a good traveler also she was 16 and pregnant none of them knew what they were

00:21:28.460 doing and they ran out of money so they traveled to paris and they had intended to go to switzerland

00:21:32.760 but they couldn't afford to get there except for by walking there so they ended up hired a donkey

00:21:39.200 walking there with a donkey which is like big nativity vibes with the whole teenage person

00:21:45.340 named mary who is also pregnant but as they traveled they read works by mary's mom who had

00:21:51.420 written about being in france and stuff they kept uh mary and percy kept a joint journal like a

00:21:56.320 travelogue, continued their own writing as well. Jane was not a gifted writer, but wanted to be.

00:22:04.100 She also just really wanted to be involved with everything. So for instance, at night,

00:22:09.300 sometimes she would ask to sleep in their bed with them. I don't think in a sexual way,

00:22:13.300 but just because she didn't like being left out of stuff. Anyway, eventually lack of money forced 1.00

00:22:18.100 them to turn back and go to England. So penniless. They returned to England. Mary was again surprised

00:22:24.760 by her father her father was still mad at her where she's like but i'm living the ideals of

00:22:29.360 you and my mom he in fact refused to have anything to do with her and i think this must have been

00:22:33.520 very confusing for her because in her way she was the ultimate like obedient good child and so she

00:22:42.200 was living the way that she would have thought her mother would have wanted her to the way that

00:22:47.480 she thought based on his writings her father would have wanted her to so she's not like rebelling at

00:22:51.380 all. She's doing kind of what was expected of her. And the fact her beloved father wasn't into it

00:22:57.580 must have been like very confusing for her. So Mary was 16, pregnant, not married. Percy was

00:23:04.640 married, not to her. And he had convinced her in the way that people still do that his other

00:23:11.060 partner was this horrible person. So it's not like he's cheating on her. His wife, whose name

00:23:16.020 was Harriet. Mary just understood like, oh, you know, like Harriet in this one instance,

00:23:22.080 like it's okay. I'm having the affair with Percy because Harriet actually is terrible.

00:23:25.400 And also free love is cool. In her later years, Mary would empathize more with Harriet and feel

00:23:32.040 very badly for how she acted at this time. But again, she's 16. And then the squad, again,

00:23:38.040 Mary, Percy, and Jane moved together into a flat together to avoid creditors. There's something

00:23:44.780 about like people who have bed credit like on sunday could do whatever they wanted and they

00:23:49.760 couldn't be arrested something like that so percy would spend six of every seven days away and with

00:23:56.780 his wife harriet um but then could only see mary one day a week during his like get out of credit

00:24:01.660 free day so mary was very upset by this um missed him very much um he also spent a lot of time with

00:24:08.860 jane which she was jealous of but i guess mary not having a good time of her pregnancy like she

00:24:13.860 wasn't able to go for walks percy and jane almost definitely were lovers as well but percy's whole

00:24:20.960 thing was free love so it's not like he was cheating on anyone because like he was pretty

00:24:26.800 upfront about like here's my deal here's what's going on percy's wife harriet gave birth to a

00:24:32.920 child shortly before mary did which is just kind of like the timing of it is very jerry springer

00:24:40.480 show-esque. Because of the free love situation, Percy wanted Mary to sleep with other people too.

00:24:47.720 And Mary wanted to want that, but she did not want that. Kind of like her mom. She thought she

00:24:54.120 believed in the whole free love situation, but actually she really liked monogamous domestic

00:24:59.380 life, much to her surprise. So Percy had a friend called Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who became a friend

00:25:06.760 and a confidant to Mary. And Percy was like, Mary, why don't you sleep with him? And Mary was like,

00:25:11.680 like, she didn't say no right away because she really wanted to believe in free love. But in

00:25:17.200 practice, she only loved Percy Shelley and seems to have ventured no further than flirting with

00:25:21.420 hog, particularly because she was pregnant at this time. She gave birth prematurely to a girl

00:25:27.360 who she named Clara, but the baby was two months premature, which is like still risky even now.

00:25:31.600 And back then, I mean, incubators didn't exist. So Clara died after one month. This obviously

00:25:40.600 made Mary super depressed. She was haunted by visions of the baby. And then she became pregnant

00:25:47.600 again three months later because she was a fertile teenager. And she gave birth to a second child,

00:25:55.120 a boy who she called William, which is the third William in the story. So named after her dad,

00:25:59.620 I guess. He was nicknamed Will Mouse. And we're going to call him that just to not confuse

00:26:04.700 with her half-brother, William, or her father, also William. So meanwhile, famous dirtbag Lord

00:26:13.280 Byron was in London. He wasn't in London very much because he was so scandalous. He'd been

00:26:18.080 kind of like kicked out of London or something like that. Jane schmoozed her way, even though

00:26:25.020 he was like not really interested in her, but she was just like, but what about having sex with me? 0.91

00:26:29.460 and she just sort of like kept on it until he did. And then she fell for him. And I think it's

00:26:33.720 the sort of thing, there's going to be a lot of armchair psychology in this episode, but I think

00:26:38.840 it's like, she saw Mary was with this famous writer. So she was like, what if I'm also with

00:26:42.140 a famous writer? But he left and she, Jane was pregnant and she decided to chase him down to

00:26:50.180 try and convince him to be with her and to have, to be his mistress. She wrote to him a lot and he

00:26:55.380 was like, please go away. And so she was like, but what if, do you want to meet my friend Percy

00:27:00.520 Shelley? He's like a writer. I think you two would get along. And Lord Byron was like, I guess.

00:27:05.480 So she got Mary and Percy to come along. They were sort of her excuse for visiting him where

00:27:10.540 he was in Geneva. So Mary and Percy, baby wheel mouse and Jane all went to Geneva because

00:27:17.520 Jane refused to take no for an answer. Kind of like Mary Wollstonecraft, frankly.

00:27:24.100 Mary Shelley would later write,

00:27:25.820 It proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.

00:27:32.580 Why was this?

00:27:34.380 So, major weather situation going on.

00:27:38.200 So this is 1816.

00:27:39.840 One year before, Mount Tambora, in what is now Indonesia, erupted a volcano,

00:27:46.400 and it filled the Earth's upper atmosphere with volcanic ash, blocking up the sun and creating a volcanic winter.

00:27:51.780 i'm quoting all this from fiona samson's book because she describes it well so across the

00:27:58.500 world average temperatures are one degree centigrade lower than usual and the anomaly

00:28:03.080 is significantly greater in western europe a region coincidentally already experiencing food

00:28:07.600 shortages caused by the napoleonic wars and the british corn laws this volcanic eruption is a

00:28:13.480 volcanic event on a scale unequaled since the hatepe eruption in the year 180 and killed thousands

00:28:20.080 in its own region, again in modern-day Indonesia. It was also the latest in a cluster of major

00:28:24.840 eruptions across the world, which since 1812 already released large amounts of dust into

00:28:29.500 the atmosphere. So when Tambora erupts, its effects are even more dramatic. Brown snow

00:28:34.360 fell in Hungary and red snow in Italy. Sunsets are more colorful than they'd been before.

00:28:41.280 And also this comes on top of what's known as the Little Ice Age, which is how the European

00:28:46.940 climate had been cooling since the 14th century. Within this general cooling, there have also

00:28:52.080 been cold temperatures caused by the Dalton minimum, which is a time of exceptionally low

00:28:58.220 solar activity from 1810 to 1823 that further depresses average earth temperatures by one

00:29:03.280 degree centigrade. Even today, May 1816 holds the records for the lowest sunspot activity ever

00:29:10.720 recorded. So this means during the summer that the squad spent in Geneva, there are frosts in

00:29:17.100 August, crops have failed, and there's ice in the Swiss lakes. Roughly 200,000 people will die

00:29:23.000 across Europe alone from these conditions. Famine has caused rioting in Switzerland,

00:29:27.660 where conditions are among the worst on the continent and the government declared a national

00:29:31.220 emergency. 130 days of rain between April and September caused Lake Geneva to flood the city.

00:29:36.660 and into this we have the world's unluckiest travelers just like chilling out for the summer

00:29:42.400 and this is of course where the famous thing happens which is they're sitting inside because

00:29:47.940 it's cold and rainy and volcanic ash outside and just like the awkwardness of like jane being there

00:29:54.380 wanting to get with byron byron not wanting to be with her but her being pregnant mary's got a baby

00:30:00.280 like anyway so they're all hanging out around the fire um they amuse themselves by sharing german

00:30:07.400 ghost stories like reading them out loud and then byron proposed that they each should write a ghost

00:30:12.060 story mary couldn't think of one right off the top of her head because like postpartum has a baby

00:30:17.180 loss going on but during one evening in june their philosophical discussions turned to the nature of

00:30:24.660 the principle of life unable to sleep that night she became possessed by her imagination as she

00:30:29.880 beheld the grim terrors of her waking dream her ghost story so she started writing her entry in

00:30:35.700 the ghost writing story contest which she would expand into her first novel frankenstein or the

00:30:42.600 modern prometheus she later described that summer in switzerland as the moment when i first stepped

00:30:47.780 out from childhood into life bear in mind she was at this point 18 years old and the mother of a

00:30:53.100 young infant and she's just like i'm just gonna like casually like invent a genre of fiction and

00:31:00.400 write one of the greatest novels of all time like while surrounded by her chaotic friends and then

00:31:07.740 the squad minus byron because byron is just like bye and they returned to england and they went to

00:31:15.480 bath mostly so that jane could hide her out of woodlock pregnancy slash baby bear in mind that

00:31:21.740 Jane is also like 18, 19 years old as well. Mary and Percy is still not married. And in fact,

00:31:27.280 Percy is still married to Harriet. So they're just like two teenage sisters and one of their

00:31:33.420 married lover hiding out in Bath. So Mary is just like, again, you know, quickly realizing

00:31:40.500 Jane and Percy are not ones to be counted on. So she's the one who's kind of figured,

00:31:44.420 let's find an apartment to live in. Let's like, how do we get groceries? Although Percy had

00:31:49.660 enforced this sort of, I think it was happening by this point, this especially ill-conceived

00:31:55.740 vegetarian diet on them. Like he was like, we shouldn't eat meat, but they didn't eat like

00:31:59.880 other protein substitutes. They just ate vegetables all the time, which would contribute to Mary's

00:32:05.680 overall ill health, one would assume. And now for a quick advertising break. 1.00

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00:32:57.640 The war is over and both sides lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered

00:33:05.440 like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the

00:33:12.620 darkness chooses someone else tonight but in the shadow dark the darkness always wins this is old

00:33:20.040 school adventuring at its most cruel your torch ticks down in real time and when that flame dies

00:33:26.240 something else rises to finish the job this is a brutal rules light nightmare with a story that

00:33:31.940 emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make this is what it felt like to

00:33:37.140 play RPGs in the 80s, and man, it is so good to be back.

00:33:40.920 Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the shadow dark

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00:33:48.240 with the podcast version dropping the next day.

00:33:51.620 See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark.

00:33:58.940 Welcome to the realms of peril and glory.

00:34:04.240 Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,

00:34:07.920 the paranormal mysteries of liminal London,

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00:34:25.200 Search realms of peril and glory to find out more.

00:34:31.760 And we're back.

00:34:33.380 anyway so while they were in bath mary received alarming letters from her from fanny remember her

00:34:38.420 older sister one of which seems so serious that percy rushed off to find her without success

00:34:43.560 and then on the morning of october 10th this is all like frankenstein she started writing in june

00:34:49.560 and now it's october that same year um her sister fanny was found dead in a room in an inn along

00:34:56.760 with a suicide note and a bottle of laudanum which is what is it it's absinthe mixed with opium

00:35:03.380 no what is it wait it's an alcoholic solution containing morphine prepared from opium

00:35:09.360 um used as a narcotic painkiller anyway so she had died by suicide her sister fanny

00:35:19.440 who like again i gave the trigger warning there's going to be a lot of death and a lot of suicide

00:35:25.440 in the story because so that was october 10th fanny was found dead and then two months later

00:35:31.520 on december 10th percy shelley's wife harriet also died by suicide she was discovered she

00:35:37.120 drowned herself in the serpentine a lake in hyde park in london so that's a lot of things going on

00:35:46.200 harriet's family so percy shelley was trying to take advantage of at this time i believe english

00:35:53.280 law was that the father would take custody of children in the instance of the mother's death.

00:35:59.680 So Percy was like, well, I'm going to take two children with Harriet. I think

00:36:03.020 Mary was like, yes, this is fine. I'm cool with a blended family. Let's do it. So Percy Shelley

00:36:09.120 wanted to get them, but Harriet's family was like, that's not going to happen because you are 0.99

00:36:13.600 clearly a useless person. Percy's lawyers advised him that if he, Percy, got married again, 0.98

00:36:20.080 that would improve his case to get custody of the children and so he and mary who is pregnant again

00:36:25.660 she is effectively constantly pregnant and or grieving for like the next 10 years of her life

00:36:31.900 she's pregnant again they got married to help him try and get custody of his other kids

00:36:37.020 and then one month later jane gave birth to a daughter she named alba which is so alba

00:36:44.340 is similar to what the squad had called Lord Byron, whose first letters of Lord and Byron

00:36:51.420 are LB. So they called him LB. And so she called his daughter Elba, which I guess was like, look,

00:36:56.820 I named the daughter after our inside joke. Please let me be your mistress or whatever.

00:37:01.500 Not going to work. And then Percy Shelley was found morally unfit to assume custody of his

00:37:08.460 children. And so they were placed with a family of a clergyman. And then Mary Shelley gave birth

00:37:12.800 to her third child, a daughter she named also Clara, which was the name of her first daughter

00:37:19.400 who died after a month. So just like children being born, people dying, drama happening. In

00:37:24.740 the midst of this, Mary Shelley, aged now, what, 19, is like writing Frankenstein, one of the

00:37:31.100 greatest novels of all time. Let's see. So she finished Frankenstein, which was published

00:37:36.200 anonymously. Reviewers and readers assume that Percy Shelley was the author because the book

00:37:42.000 was published he wrote a preface to it and the book was dedicated to william godwin who was

00:37:46.660 mary's dad but also percy's hero but he was still percy still in debt because his family wouldn't

00:37:52.880 give him money and he was useless with money uh they were also they had ill health again i think

00:38:00.180 based on the vegetables only diet and they were also worried that because of the they were worried

00:38:06.320 that they would lose custody of their children too not just like William and Clara so basically

00:38:12.180 they're like let's go to Italy and Jane was like and me too and at this point if you're like why

00:38:20.080 because you've probably heard of Jane named changed her name from Jane Claremont to Claire

00:38:26.540 Claremont which frankly was who she was meant to be if you had the option to be Claire Claremont

00:38:34.380 who wouldn't take that option so jane changed her name first to clara which is weird because 0.67

00:38:38.740 that was the name of mary's first dead daughter and also second daughter but then she changed it

00:38:43.100 to claire and everyone's like okay jane just like sorry claire jane claire just really wanted to be

00:38:50.840 the main character in the story and she very actively was not but did she become the main

00:38:58.060 character of my heart as I was researching this. Yes, she did. Like Claire Claremont is a heroine

00:39:05.840 to me now. Anyway, she's changed her name. Now she's Claire. He used to be Jane. Now she's Claire.

00:39:11.060 She has her daughter, Alba. And then she's like, Hey, you guys are going to Italy. Can I come along

00:39:15.200 so I can like give my daughter Alba to Lord Byron because, um, he is rich and I want him to raise

00:39:22.560 her instead of me, a 19 year old. So they, or they left cloudy, polluted England to go to

00:39:29.280 the warmer climates of Southern Europe. But unfortunately at this time, the warm climates

00:39:35.180 of Southern Europe were the breeding grounds for diseases like typhoid and dysentery, as well as

00:39:39.720 cholera. And again, these three people have bad luck in traveling, but also just like, don't plan

00:39:45.780 ahead very well, but also how much planning could you do? There's not photos, guides. So they

00:39:52.460 headed south on like continental europe during the first cholera pandemic like of all time i don't

00:39:58.400 know i just wrote the first cholera pandemic typhoid dysentery cholera all particularly

00:40:03.860 dangerous for foreign-born children like will mouse and baby clara and alba who lacked immunity

00:40:09.480 to local infections and have not acquired useful antibodies from their mothers i think we all know

00:40:14.840 about this by now so these were all novel diseases to these poor little children but they're off to

00:40:21.520 italy so one of their first tasks was handing baby alba over to lord byron where claire i'm sure

00:40:28.100 tried to like be like but i could be your mistress now and he's like never talk to me again he agreed

00:40:33.100 to raise alba as long as claire had nothing more to do with her or him and he also insisted on

00:40:39.220 changing alba's name to allegra so minus one baby the shelley's plus claire plus two babies then

00:40:48.360 embarked on a roving existence, never settling in any one place for long and devoting their time to

00:40:52.940 reading, learning, sightseeing, and socializing, and also in acquiring communicable diseases.

00:40:59.520 So baby Clara was fragile and ill. I think she had dysentery, but Clara was like, but I miss my

00:41:08.300 daughter Allegra. Can we just like go visit her and also Byron? And so they went back to visit him

00:41:15.000 in Venice again, but the stress of this extra trip was too much and baby Clara died of dysentery

00:41:21.440 age one. One year later, Willmouse died of malaria age three and a half. So this Italian

00:41:29.620 era was one of intense intellectual and creative activity for Mary and Percy as they both wrote a 0.73

00:41:36.300 lot and Claire just made a lot of chaos, mostly, which I stan. Mary was often physically ill,

00:41:43.240 again, like eating only vegetables prone to depression, obviously, I mean, both the ongoing

00:41:50.660 postpartum situation and like the death of three, three children in the course of as many years.

00:41:59.860 She also had to cope with the fact that Percy was actively sleeping with Claire and also with

00:42:05.040 other women because of free love. And she wanted to believe in free love. And Mary just like could

00:42:10.900 not that she was not that woman. She's not that girl. And then, as though life is not dramatic

00:42:17.180 enough, in 1820, Mary and Percy were plagued by accusations and threats from two of their former

00:42:23.640 servants, Paolo and Elise Foggi, who had been their servants, and then they were fired. So these two

00:42:32.380 revealed that while in Naples, Percy had registered a child named Elena Adelaide Shelley, and he had

00:42:39.700 registered her as the child of him and Mary. But the Fugees said, but Mary is not the mother. We

00:42:46.280 think the mother is Claire Claremont. So did Percy and Claire have a secret baby? Did Percy and Mary

00:42:53.720 adopt a baby? Like Mary clearly did not have a baby named Elena. Mary was, so the accusations

00:43:02.260 and threats, I guess, were like, we're going to say that he had a baby with your sister and

00:43:05.980 everyone will say that's gross. And Mary's like, Nope, Claire was not pregnant. I would have

00:43:09.400 noticed. I noticed things, but maybe Claire was pregnant, but they're hiding it. Anyway, 0.99

00:43:15.540 we don't know who or where, who was Elena Adelaide Shelley? Where did she come from?

00:43:21.080 Why did Percy register her? Um, whoever she was, uh, they left her in Naples and Elena Adelaide

00:43:28.940 Shelley died one year later. So that was a whole thing that happened. But based on the overall lack

00:43:38.000 of concern with birth control, I would not be surprised if Percy and Claire had a baby. Although

00:43:44.480 I don't know if Claire would have like left the baby. Anyway, so after leaving Naples, they went

00:43:50.260 to Rome. While in Rome, Mary began writing another novel, Valerius, the reanimated Roman,

00:43:57.920 which is frankly an excellent title. But again, William died and she stopped writing because

00:44:05.820 obviously she was sad. She was also pregnant. So because she was also, she was always grieving

00:44:12.680 and or pregnant, like I said. So five months after Will Mouse died, Mary had another baby

00:44:20.860 who's, she named Percy Florence. So Percy after his dad, Florence after the city they're in.

00:44:26.580 i just want to like remind you by now that she's still only 22 like she has written one of the

00:44:32.460 greatest novels of all time she has had four children three of whom have died in infancy

00:44:39.820 like she's between you know she's 16 years old just kind of being like can i go to scotland

00:44:44.960 for the summer and now just like where her life has landed her is quite extreme two years pass

00:44:50.200 and then mary pregnant you know evergreen always so the squad claire still always there um and

00:44:59.820 there's two new squad members who are edward and jane williams who are also people who are super

00:45:04.160 into free love and they're like common law married but not married married jane williams

00:45:09.240 is percy's lover as well mary is just kind of like long-suffering like i understand

00:45:14.000 what Harriet lived with now. And they went to a place called Villa Magni at the sea's edge near

00:45:22.940 the hamlet of San Torenzo in the Bay of Lerici. And while they were there, the squad learns that

00:45:29.540 Claire's daughter, Allegra, who had been taken in by kind nuns who loved her, because Byron was not

00:45:35.620 going to like raise a baby, had died of typhus. So just like yet more child death. So they're in

00:45:42.220 this cool place, but everyone's not doing well for a multitude of grief related reasons. Mary

00:45:50.220 was especially unhappy in the Villa Magni, which was remote and which was cramped. She came to

00:45:56.600 regard it as a dungeon. It was like her, her husband, her husband's like two lovers. Like

00:46:01.460 she had a miscarriage, um, and lost so much blood that she nearly died. But because the Villa was so

00:46:08.420 isolated had they waited for a doctor she might have bled out and died so percy sat her in a bath

00:46:15.440 of ice to staunch the bleeding and the doctor later said actually saved her life so good job 0.97

00:46:21.580 percy so he saved her life but he was still fucking around because he's just like oh mary 0.96

00:46:27.480 you're no fun with your like depression and you're like reasonable reactions to life's events and 0.92

00:46:33.700 you're like wanting to be domestic with me, which to be fair, like Percy had never presented himself

00:46:40.520 as someone to be domestic with. Mary just like her mother discovered too late that she kind of

00:46:47.840 wanted that more traditional life. Anyway, so then Percy and Edward got a new boat. They were

00:46:54.380 really excited about it. They called it the Don Juan and they went sailing down the coast and

00:47:00.160 they stayed there for a week and then they set out on their return trip but they never arrived

00:47:06.920 so mary and her friend jane williams there's a lot of janes in the story as well so like another

00:47:13.500 again it's like useful claire changed her name to claire so mary and jane rushed desperately

00:47:19.780 um in the fading hope that their husbands are still alive to see if they just like washed up

00:47:24.120 somewhere or whatever but 10 days after the storm three bodies washed up on the coast oh the third

00:47:28.660 body was their boat boy, Charles Vivian. Anyway, the three bodies washed up. It was Percy. It was

00:47:34.000 Edward. It was Charles Vivian. Percy Shelley was cremated, but for some goth reason, his heart

00:47:41.100 refused to burn. Doctors these days theorize perhaps that his heart might have calcified due

00:47:47.780 to an earlier boat with tuberculosis. I think it's just goth as fuck. So Percy's friend Lee Hunt 1.00

00:47:54.640 originally claimed the heart because he was there for the funeral cremation and felt he had a right

00:48:00.220 to keep it. Who are you, Lee Hunt? Like, eventually Mary got the heart and she kept it in her drawer

00:48:06.340 because she is our goth queen mom friend. So, oh, here's who Lee Hunt is. So after Percy died,

00:48:15.520 Mary stayed living with Lee Hunt and his family in Genoa. She visited with Byron because

00:48:21.340 she got along with Byron. Um, Claire was not around, presumably. Um, she transcribed Byron's

00:48:28.500 poems. She resolved that now that she was a single mom, she was going to make a job of being

00:48:34.700 a writer, but her financial situation was precarious. You know, it is still now for

00:48:39.760 writers, but then for writers and cause you know, printing press still a newish invention. Um, her

00:48:48.180 being a woman, people not being cool with a woman writer. The fact that she's like, I'm just going to 1.00

00:48:52.160 be a writer. That'll be my career. Again, probably inspired by her mom and dad. But meanwhile,

00:48:58.660 her co-widow, Jane, the widow of Edward, who also died in the shipwreck and who had been

00:49:03.880 sleeping with Percy, she went back to England and she kind of like danced all around just being like,

00:49:10.220 hi, it's me, Jane. And I am the true love of Percy Shelley's life. Mary is his just like cold,

00:49:16.740 distant widow but like she's not even sad really and that's because mary was at this point she

00:49:22.380 dealt with so much death and just like awfulness in her life like she was stoic in the face of

00:49:27.120 tragedy but jane was like that's because mary never loved him only i loved him and it was

00:49:32.220 really a lot like how mary had been against harriet in the first place but jane still pretended

00:49:38.700 to be friends with mary wrote her letters being like could you stay in italy i think it's good

00:49:42.780 for you if you stay in italy so that jane could like continue to slander her all over london and

00:49:47.900 then jane won the heart of thomas jefferson hogg do you remember him he was the guy who had been

00:49:53.140 who percy wanted mary to sleep with before and he was like mary's good friend so anyway they

00:49:59.980 eventually got married so it's kind of seems like thomas jefferson hogg just kind of liked

00:50:04.940 to be in love with whoever percy was in love with and not really the person at all so just like 1.00

00:50:10.060 fuck that guy. Mary eventually returned to England in 1823. So Percy's dad, Sir Timothy 0.99

00:50:17.720 Shelley, she was kind of hoping, Hey, you're rich and things. Can you like support me and

00:50:23.920 your grandson, Percy Florence? But Sir Timothy was like, only if I, only if Percy Florence is

00:50:29.820 handed over to an appointed guardian, Mary's like, no, I'm staying with my son. Like I love him so

00:50:35.520 much. And so she managed to convince Sir Timothy to give her a limited annual allowance, but he

00:50:41.960 refused to meet her in person ever and dealt with her only through lawyers because he was, 0.99

00:50:48.140 he sucked. And I guess because the whole like scandal of it all or whatever, Mary Shelley was 0.97

00:50:53.700 like, fine, I got the money. I don't need to like have face-to-face time. She worked, um,

00:50:58.220 she edited Percy's poems and other literary endeavors because she loved Percy and she

00:51:05.980 wanted people to see his work and for him to be a famous poet. And she actually was very successful

00:51:10.980 with that with her collections of his poems. Sir Timothy was like, okay, but if you write any sort

00:51:15.880 of biography of him, I will cut off your allowance. So Mary Shelley wasn't really able to like write

00:51:21.940 an ode to him like her father had done for her mother she was not doing well financially she

00:51:29.320 had this allowance she had some money from writing but she was basically living in poverty

00:51:33.220 i think her dad liked her again though she got to hang out with her dad and some of his like

00:51:38.060 smart philosopher friends and things but there's still lots of people who still disapproved of her

00:51:43.600 relationship with percy bish Shelley because the whole him being married when they got together

00:51:48.680 situation um mary moved to kentish town in north london to be near jane williams who she did not

00:51:55.560 realize had been bad-mouthing her own england for two years actively mary was working on her novel

00:52:01.320 the last man at this time and oh this is a section i call mary shelley ally so one of mary's actual

00:52:09.820 friends not a jerk like jane was isabel robinson and isabel robinson actually is the one who

00:52:15.300 eventually told her, like Jane has been spreading lies about you saying like you never loved Percy, 0.91

00:52:20.340 that like Percy loved her and stuff. Isabel Robinson was also an unmarried mother.

00:52:26.320 Mary helped Isabel elope to France as the wife of the writer Mary Diana Dodds. So I don't know

00:52:34.360 much about Mary Diana Dodds, but I do know that she cross-dressed as Walter Schulte Douglas. 0.94

00:52:40.640 So Mary Shelley, an ally to this queer couple, Mary helped them obtain false passports. 0.99

00:52:48.220 And then when they were in Paris, she went to visit them in Paris because they're all 0.57

00:52:51.120 pals and Mary Shelley ally.

00:52:53.760 When she was in Paris, Mary got smallpox because like, what has this woman not been through?

00:52:59.200 But she recovered.

00:53:01.100 During the period 1827 to 1840, Mary Shelley stayed busy as an editor and a writer.

00:53:07.200 she wrote several things but i want to especially note she wrote a novel called the fortunes of

00:53:12.140 perkin warbeck perkin warbeck is a person who in real life has a great name and he lived in the

00:53:20.100 war of the roses era and so he was a guy who you remember the princess in the tower scenario where

00:53:25.740 elizabeth woodville's sons were like trapped in the tower and then richard was like i don't know

00:53:29.800 what happened to them i guess they're just gone or whatever so i don't know 20 years later a guy

00:53:35.860 showed up and he's like, my name is Perkin Warbeck, but AKA I'm actually one of the princess

00:53:39.360 in the tower and I should be the king and stuff. Mary Shelley wrote about it. I feel like she was

00:53:44.980 part of our tits out brigade, like in the scandalous history stories, writing a little 0.92

00:53:49.920 book about it. Um, she also kept championing Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication, 0.60

00:53:57.260 quoting it in her writing, just like really making him a star, but also sort of whitewashing

00:54:02.320 his life story so that people wouldn't think less of him for his like free love ideals and stuff

00:54:09.440 um she was sick like i think she was just had illness a lot not just smallpox but remember

00:54:14.820 like the eczema slash psoriasis slash leprosy starting in 1839 she suffered from horrible

00:54:21.380 headaches and bouts of paralysis which sometimes prevented her from reading and writing but her

00:54:26.380 main thing she worried about was the welfare of her son percy florence who guess what survived

00:54:31.680 into adulthood, thank God. She honored her husband, her late husband's wish that his son

00:54:37.180 attend public school and had him educated at Harrow. Sir Timothy helped pay for that to avoid

00:54:43.420 boarding fees because she was, again, not rich. She moved to Harrow on the hill herself so Percy

00:54:48.680 could attend just as a day student. Percy Florence was devoted to his mother, good for him,

00:54:54.520 and after he left university, he came to live with her. So this is the part how Mary got her

00:54:59.840 groove back. Mary was courted by an American actor-poet called John Howard Payne, but she

00:55:06.620 refused him after he attempted to define the relationship. Also, while she was in France with

00:55:11.260 her queer friends and having smallpox, a poet and dramatist called Prosper Mary May announced that

00:55:17.340 he was in love with her, but she rejected him. We're just friends, Prosper Mary May, she said,

00:55:22.580 I imagine. She fell for Aubrey Beauclerk, who was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat.

00:55:29.840 they seem to have had an affair. And Mary was like, I think I found the one you guys like she's

00:55:34.500 writing in her diary. She thought he was going to propose to her. But instead he proposed to a

00:55:38.640 19 year old heiress, presumably for many reasons. Mary was super upset about this. 1.00

00:55:45.940 And then she either got the flu or just like super depressed, like she fell ill with sadness.

00:55:52.720 but after six years his the 19 year old who i guess then became a 25 year old drowned by accident

00:56:02.080 in a pond which to me sounds very suspicious but i read a lot of mystery novels so mary was like oh

00:56:07.480 my god he's available again so she thought maybe he proposed to her now but he didn't and she's

00:56:13.880 like well i'll just go on italy on holiday to italy with percy florence and when i come back

00:56:18.340 maybe he'll propose to me. But when she gets back, he's already married another woman 20 years

00:56:23.040 younger than Mary. So not meant to be. Mary recorded her trips with Percy Florence and

00:56:28.420 more travel memoirs. She was just like, like people today. She's just like the hustle economy,

00:56:33.380 like everything she did, she turned into a memoir. So she could always have more books. 0.53

00:56:37.160 She's like writing novels. She goes on a trip. But after the trip, she turns a trip into a book.

00:56:41.240 Like everything is just like, because she has a literary spirit, but also needs money.

00:56:47.020 so um sir timothy shelley finally died and then mary and percy florence got to be financially

00:56:54.920 independent for the first time ever which is good because at this time mary found herself the

00:57:00.860 target of three separate blackmailers first in 1845 an italian political exile called gateschi

00:57:08.660 who she had met in paris threatened to publish letters she had sent him i guess allegedly sexy

00:57:13.880 letters a friend of percy florence bribed a police chief into seizing the papers including

00:57:19.880 the letters which were then destroyed so she outsmarted that first blackmailer um shortly

00:57:26.320 afterwards mary shelley herself bought some letters that she and percy had written okay so

00:57:32.240 a man called g byron was posing as the illegitimate son of lord byron and he said i've got some sexy

00:57:40.380 letters that he wrote with Percy and I'm going to like publish them or whatever. And Mary had

00:57:44.960 worked so hard to like make Percy's reputation better. So she bought the letters from him,

00:57:48.900 but they were probably all fake. Or maybe there was no letters. I'm not sure. And then also in

00:57:53.960 1845, Percy's cousin, Thomas Medwin claimed to have written a damaging biography of Percy Shelley.

00:58:01.040 He said he would suppress it in return for 250 pounds. Mary refused. And I guess he was probably

00:58:06.980 lying the thing about the person who had the letters though that could have been remember way

00:58:11.620 back she lost the box of letters in the hotel in paris like she wasn't famous then but if someone

00:58:18.480 found it so i think she knew like it could have been letters and then her son percy florence

00:58:23.040 married yet another jane jane gibson singen you see how i pronounce that that's what british people

00:58:30.620 say St. John. So Jane Gibson St. John married Percy Florence, and Mary lived with them both,

00:58:37.080 and I think they're all cool. Like they lived in the Shelley family ancestral home. They had money,

00:58:42.040 they all got along, things were good, except for Mary had illnesses. In 1851, she was aged 53.

00:58:49.480 She becomes gravely ill and falls into a coma, and she dies of what seems to have been a brain tumor.

00:58:56.900 So Mary Shelley had asked to be buried with her parents, but her son and daughter-in-law

00:59:02.080 decided that the graveyard at St. Pancras, the one where Mary had like gone on all the

00:59:05.740 walks with Percy, where she had maybe lost her virginity to him, where she learned how

00:59:09.400 to read, Percy Florence and Jane were like, this place is dreadful.

00:59:13.400 So instead, we're going to bury her at St. Peter's Church in Bournemouth near their home.

00:59:18.320 On the first anniversary of Mary Shelley's death, her son and daughter-in-law opened

00:59:23.440 her desk, or she had a box desk. I don't know, a desk that is also a box. Inside, they found

00:59:30.180 locks of her dead children's hair, a notebook she had shared with Percy Shelley, and a copy of his

00:59:35.440 poem Adonaius with one page folded around a silk parcel containing some of his ashes, and his heart 0.99

00:59:42.300 literally goth as fuck. She just kept his heart with her in her desk all the time. Her grave was 0.99

00:59:48.460 reopened and the heart was buried with her. So in her own lifetime, Mary Shelley was taken

00:59:55.420 seriously as a writer. The reviewers often missed her writing's political edge. So her book was

01:00:00.320 first published anonymously, but then later it was published with her own name, which is,

01:00:05.800 there's a movie version, I think it's called Mary Shelley, and it stars Elle Fanning. And I like it

01:00:11.000 a lot. She's, it's just, I love Elle Fanning in a historical movie. She's just like slouching around,

01:00:16.520 like super pale and gaunt, just looking like goth queen. There's a nice moment where it shows 0.97

01:00:22.320 how her father helped to have the book be published under her name. So this is like similar

01:00:28.340 era to Jane Austen, for instance. Jane Austen's books were all just published by, quote, a lady.

01:00:34.420 So the fact that Mary Shelley had books published by her name was pretty major. So she was a writer

01:00:39.920 during what must have seemed like the dawning of a new age of gender relations. However, 0.96

01:00:45.140 Queen Victoria became queen in 1837 and would bring with her long reign a newly conservative 0.99

01:00:49.760 era of gender relations. So again, from the biography by Fiona Sampson, it's a really good

01:00:59.360 biography. Mary's literary life could be seen as the last stuttering of the revolutionary spark

01:01:04.620 that her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, ignited. Other English women writers of the 19th century

01:01:10.080 like the Bronte sisters would publish using male pen names and Evans would publish as George

01:01:14.580 Elliot. Like this could have been a moment where more women write under their own names, but

01:01:18.500 instead that is not what happened. Directly after her death and for a long time, Mary was mostly

01:01:24.940 remembered as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley because she had worked so hard to make him

01:01:28.800 really famous to the detriment of her own acclaim. But although the author Frankenstein, like

01:01:33.820 Frankenstein was very popular, has always been very popular, always in print. Um, it was turned

01:01:39.080 into plays right away because copyright was not a thing then or something. Anyway, she went to go

01:01:45.960 see some of the plays. She's like, how cool. Someone made a play of my book. Too bad I didn't

01:01:49.840 get money for it. So she was kind of like, Mary Shelley, isn't this cute? She wrote Frankenstein

01:01:55.560 and was married to Percy Buscelli, who is a wonderful, famous person. But in 1989, it took

01:02:02.840 until 1989 that the first full-length scholarly biography of Mary Shelley was published, which was

01:02:07.360 by Emily Sunstein. It's called Mary Shelley, Romance and Reality. And part of the reason,

01:02:13.480 so Mary had sort of tried to make Percy more palatable after he died. And then her son,

01:02:20.160 Percy Shelley, and Jane also tried to sort of whitewash her memory by censoring biographical

01:02:26.420 documents. And so this helped contribute to the perception that Mary Shelley was a more

01:02:30.760 conventional and less reformist figure than she actually was. She was actually quite radical.

01:02:36.440 and just kind of the way that she behaved after percy shelley died like the way that she avoided

01:02:41.520 public controversy the way that she just kind of kept to herself added to the impression that she

01:02:46.760 was just like a quiet little mousy little wifey person and then also some other people like thomas

01:02:53.680 jefferson hogg and other admirers of percy shelley also downplayed mary shelley's radicalism

01:02:58.860 and kind of what she was like in general but here now we all know the truth

01:03:06.460 and that's mary shelley so time to give her a score now this is where it's interesting and

01:03:12.620 i've been thinking about this honestly all week knowing i was going to be recording this

01:03:15.660 scandalousness for mary shelley because of who her parents were and the way she was raised like 0.56

01:03:20.840 the way that she behaved was not scandalous because this was how she was raised to behave

01:03:27.460 like she wasn't bucking. Well, she was bucking conventional society, but she kind of thought

01:03:31.620 she was being good. You know, she wasn't like, I'm going to run away with my boyfriend and be

01:03:37.840 a cool rebel. She was like, I'm going to run away with the man I love. And like, as a statement of

01:03:43.100 the philosophical concept of free love, as advocated by both of my parents, both noted

01:03:48.160 academics, like everyone saw it as a scandalous thing, but to her, it wasn't. And the way that

01:03:54.460 she lived her life like she was in contrast to for instance Claire Claremont like she's the goth

01:04:02.140 queen mom friend like she was surrounded by all these outsized chaotic characters but Mary was

01:04:07.780 like the responsible one so I feel like this might be controversial but I'm gonna give her 0.93

01:04:15.340 I was gonna give her a five I'm gonna give her a six for scandaliciousness because even though

01:04:20.380 her intent was not scandalous. Like it was taken as such by society, but it's not like this. I

01:04:27.980 wouldn't say more than a six. Like she was actually very responsible in the context in which who she

01:04:33.020 was surrounded by. Scheminess is like, this is also challenging. Like, do you consider her writing

01:04:39.160 scheming? Like, do you consider the fact that she like schemed ways to get money? Like, I think she

01:04:45.840 was i think that's how we'd have to because she wasn't again claire claremont scheminess much

01:04:52.300 higher level mary shelley though like like she was very um i don't know you know she's like a

01:04:59.160 radical revolutionary and stuff but she wasn't like scheming i don't think i think she was

01:05:03.700 but like she was like i'm gonna write a book i'm gonna publish it under a pseudonym then i'm gonna

01:05:08.040 like get sir timothy to like pay us some money like and we gave her six for scheminess as well

01:05:16.240 like it's not she wasn't scheming to like murder people or whatever but she was like she had a plan

01:05:21.440 and she executed it and i respect that significance i have no problem with a 10 that is like her

01:05:30.000 significance to like she invented horror novels in the english language like that is like frankenstein

01:05:37.580 is a cultural thing that like everybody knows still to this day. Like how many of Percy Shelley's

01:05:44.820 does anyone know? You know, like she's significance is major. And also the fact that she was like a

01:05:50.140 woman writing, like very significant. I would say, I think she would say I'm significant because I

01:05:55.820 made people care about Percy Shelley. And I'd be like, I love you, but no one cares about Percy

01:05:59.660 Shelly. The sexism bonus is. So this is kind of like how much, how did sexism get in her way

01:06:07.960 of achieving her goals and dreams? And I think she achieved her goals and dreams. I think what 0.97

01:06:12.820 got in her way was kind of society looking down on her and the fact that she had had these children 0.73

01:06:21.940 out of wedlock, which I guess is sexism really like it's the patriarchy was making it hard for

01:06:26.580 her to be a woman writer, making it hard for her to, to get money for anything because she was so 0.99

01:06:32.580 shunned from society, but that's more like society than it is like sexism. I'm going to say just

01:06:37.900 because like she was publishing books and she had to hide her name in the first place, seven,

01:06:43.980 seven for sexism, which is a 29, a 29 for Mary Shelley. I think that's great. You know who else

01:06:51.920 has a 29. Elizabeth Bathory. So maybe it was just a cool score for somebody who is a Halloween

01:06:59.280 super special subject. 29. I feel good about it. So other people are 29. Lady Catherine Gray has

01:07:05.420 a 29. Elizabeth Bathory is a 29. Lady Jane Gray, 29.5. And didn't I say that Mary Shelley kind

01:07:11.860 of reminded me of Lady Jane Gray a little bit. So that's Mary Shelley. It's a whole, it's a journey

01:07:18.560 i came out of like i'd read about her before but i like really dug into it this time and i came out

01:07:25.280 of this like really super respecting her but also just being like really interested in claire claremont

01:07:30.220 to the point that i feel like i'm gonna do a claire claremont full episode because she's just like

01:07:34.960 chaos incarnate and i love the fact that she's just like fucking up everybody's lives constantly 1.00

01:07:42.160 and she lived the longest out of anyone from the squad claire claremont um so this is vulgar history 0.82

01:07:49.960 my name is am foster here's some little reminders so especially because i was talking so much about

01:07:56.240 the biography in search of mary shelley though i'll have a link to that in the show notes but

01:08:00.100 i super recommend it it's a great book um and you can find that and other books that i recommend

01:08:04.660 that i have recommended on this podcast at my little bookshop page which is bookshop.org

01:08:10.280 slash shop slash vulgar history. I've also got inspired by Mary Shelley, some new merch in the

01:08:17.140 merch store. I've got t-shirts and a fanny pack that say goth queen mom friend. Cause I feel like

01:08:25.120 what's more mom friend than having a fanny pack. You know, you keep all your stuff in there just

01:08:29.500 to keep your friends, Claire Claremont, Percy, Lord Byron. You're just like, Ooh, do you need

01:08:35.020 some Advil. Ooh, do you need a tampon? Like anyway, goth queen mom friend is there. Um,

01:08:41.860 there's also one that call it that I is just called witch out, which is like tits out, 0.98

01:08:46.420 but it's witch out. I don't know. I thought it was cute. Anyway. So the store is at vulgarhistory.store 0.97

01:08:51.940 vulgarhistory.store. Remember you can use code tits out for free us shipping or tits out 10 for

01:08:58.660 10% off your order. If you want to support this podcast, you can do so or slash me. I have a

01:09:06.400 Patreon page, which is patreon.com slash Anne Foster writer. And that's where you get early

01:09:11.540 access to episodes of vulgar history. And then you also get to vote in polls to help me decide

01:09:15.960 who to talk about. Like next week's subject is going to be someone who the Patreons chose for

01:09:21.080 me. And then also in the Patreon, I do monthly mini episodes called So This Asshole, where I

01:09:26.400 talk about gross men from history, which also the Patreons helped me often choose who to talk 0.85

01:09:31.560 about. And after all of this, I feel like Lord Byron and or Percy Shelley could get a cute

01:09:36.640 little episode there. Anyway, patreon.com slash Anne Foster writer. I super appreciate everyone

01:09:41.620 who supports me there. And if you want to support me without spending money, you can go on to Apple

01:09:47.560 podcasts or wherever you are, except for Spotify, because you can't leave reviews on Spotify.

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Vulgar History - October 20, 2021

Mary Shelley： The Goth Teen Who Wrote Frankenstein

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