Mary Shelley’s Biographical Notes
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August 1797, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin) born in London
Daughter of two great intellectual rebels of the 1790s, William Godwin & Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), died of puerperal fever 11 days > Mary (Shelley!) born
Mary (Shelley!) would blame herself for her mother’s death – recite her mother’s books on her mother’s gravesite – yeah…troubling
William Godwin, author of An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) “raises” Mary (Shelley!) & half sister, Fanny Imlay
Godwin & Wollstonecraft (pregnant with Mary Shelley) married despite their ethical opposition to institution of marriage (scandalous!)
Day > Wollstonecraft’s funeral, Godwin sorts through Mary Wollstonecraft's papers & starts working on the story of her life
Godwin writes Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798) – sees biography as loving tribute to Wollstonecraft
Public sees Memoirs as licentious “tell-all,” condemned Wollstonecraft
Tells of attempted suicides – public sees as lack of religious conviction
Tells of Wollstonecraft's infatuation w/ (gothic) painter Henry Fuseli (The Nightmare) – remind me to show the painting to you!
Tells of Wollstonecraft’s affair w/ American (former officer in American Revolutionary Army) Gilbert Imlay, poor Fanny’s father
Next 100 years the feminist cause suffers setback – association of sexual promiscuity w/ advocates for rights of women
Godwin becomes Mary (Shelley!)’s primary caretaker for the first 3 years of her life, adored Mary (Shelley!) – favoritism – poor Fanny!
Tried “progressive” educational methods of Jean-Jacques Rousseau & Mary Wollstonecraft's—so, it’s okay for girls to run wild in nature?
1801 Godwin marries Mary Jane Clairmont – wicked stepmother? Mary (Shelley!) as Cinderella? Mary (Shelley!) can’t stand her
Blended family – Mary Jane Clairmont’s kids: Charles (6), Jane/Claire (4) + Godwin’s kids: poor Fanny and Mary (Shelley!) = a mess
Mary (Shelley!) never receives formal education, has access to Godwin’s library & political, philosophical, scientific, literary conversations
Finest minds of the day hung out in the Godwin house William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Payne, others – yeah
1806: Mary & Jane/Claire hid under sofa to hear Coleridge recite "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" – poem haunts Frankenstein
Summer 1812: Godwin sends Mary to live w/ family in Dundee, Scotland - model of domestic affection surfaces in Frankenstein
Fall 1812: Mary returns to London, meets Godwin's wealthy disciple, Percy Bysshe Shelley, & his WIFE, Harriet Westbrook Shelley
Young WEALTHY Percy educated at Eton & Oxford < the age of 17, published two Gothic romances, Shelley supports Godwin financially
1814: Mary (Shelley!) meets Percy again, views him as generous idealist & budding genius—uh oh, Percy, where’s Harriet, your WIFE?
Percy unhappy w/ Harriet, smitten with Mary' (Shelley!)’s beauty, interests, & her identity as daughter of Wollstonecraft and Godwin
June, 1814: Percy dining w/ the Godwins almost every day, stepsister, Jane/Claire (also 17!) chaperones visits to Wollstonecraft's grave
Percy & Mary (Shelley!) declare love for each other—how sweet! Percy, where’s Harriet, your WIFE during this lovefest?
Godwin forbids Percy’s visits, still accepts Percy’s $ - Percy attempts suicide, flees to France w/ Mary (Shelley!) + stepsister, Jane/Claire
Mary (Shelley!) had terrific difficulty in the “viable birth” department: a girl born in 1815, died > 11 days; William, born in 1816 and died in
1819; Clara, born in 1817 and died, 1818; Percy, born in 1819, died 1889; miscarried in 1822 and nearly died herself
Link btw themes of creation, birth, & death in Frankenstein & Mary (Shelley!)'s real preoccupation w/ pregnancy, labor, maternity, death?
>1st baby’s death: "Dreamed that my little baby came to life again--that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it before the fire & it lived."
Anxieties a/b motherhood & inability to give life + tale of the aspiring scientist who succeeds in creating a being by unnatural methods?
1815: Percy still legally married to Harriet, living w/Jane/Claire (changed name 3 times, she’s not right at all) and Mary (Shelley!)
Unconventional domestic arrangement, Mary (Shelley!)’s beloved (hypocritical) father says she’s "guilty of a crime" (Harriet)
Mary (Shelley!) 17 years old! Not yet a wife, no longer a mother, insecure & increasingly dependent on Percy for emotional support
Percy wants live out his theory of "free love," encouraging stepsister, Jane/Claire's affections—yeah…theory, schmeery
1815 Percy's friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg visits Mary, Percy, & Jane/Claire for 6 weeks, Percy urged reluctant Mary to sleep w/ Hogg
1816 Jane/Claire (lives w/ Mary Shelley & Percy until 1820) affair w/ George Gordon, Lord Byron – extremely famous poet (and SADIST)
Percy & Mary (Shelley!) accompany Jane/Claire to Switzerland Byron’s chalet on the banks of Lake Geneva
Byron’s personal physician, Dr. John William Polidori, lived w/ him (Michael Jackson, anyone?) Byron & Percy became close friends
Oh, incidentally, Byron is LOADED – Hence the title, “Lord” and the estate in Geneva– Mary & Percy’s financial woes temporarily eased
Sailing, literary & philosophical discussions, Mary (Shelley!) & Percy find Byron fascinating, handsome, capricious, cynical, Byronic Hero
1816: poor Fanny Imlay Godwin (Mary Shelley’s half sister) commits suicide after a really wretched life – OD laudanum?
1816: Harriet Shelley (Percy’s wife) drowns herself in the Serpentine (a river in London’s Hyde Park) while pregnant – horrific, yeah…
Introduction to 1831 edition of Frankenstein explains how "a young girl, came to think of & to dilate upon so very hideous an idea"
June 1816: stormy night Byron, Mary (Shelley!), Percy, Jane/Claire, Polidori, read aloud a book of ghost stories by the fireside
Byron suggests they each write a horror story, everyone writes one (largely forgettable) except for Mary (Shelley!)
Weeks later, Mary (Shelley!), Byron, Polidori, & Percy discuss galvanism, Erasmus Darwin causes pasta to move “voluntarily” (electricity!)
Mary has “waking dream” sees "the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together."
Terror for artist who "mock[s] the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world" by giving the "spark of life" to a "hideous corpse."
Next morning, Mary (Shelly!) wrote a chapter of Frankenstein, Percy “encouraged,” she finished novel May, 1817, published March, 1818
Mary (Shelley) & Percy stayed together for 8 years of drama-rama, moving constantly, livin’ on love b/c Percy’s dad cuts him off financially
Spring 1822: Percy claims to have meet his doppelganger “in a dream”; warns him of his imminent death - GOTHIC
Summer 1822: Percy drowns sailing, Italian coast month < 30th b-day, boat sank, didn’t capsize, body washes ashore, damaged severely
Percy couldn’t swim or navigate - Accident? Suicide? Murder? Mary (Shelley!) doesn’t attend funeral—custom, women’s “health reasons”
Percy’s friend snatched his heart, yeah, out of the funeral pyre, yeah, gave it to Mary, yeah
Percy’s heart is interred next to Mary’s grave in London - GOTHIC love, baby
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1848: Mary (Shelley!) suffers what were apparently symptoms of brain tumor; disease diagnosed 1850 paralysis, impaired speech
February 1851: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley died in London, buried w/ mother & father, and Percy’s disembodied heart
Only surviving child, Percy had all three bodies exhumed and reburied in the churchyard of St. Peter's, Bournemout
Introduction to Postcolonial Literature
"Postcolonial" literature studies the interactions between European nations and the people and lands they colonized
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colonial expansion spanned mid-17th to the mid-20th centuries (dates are up for scholarly debate!)
European empire held over more than 85% of the rest of the globe by the time of WWI I
European empire disintegrates after the Second World War
formation of the colony through various mechanisms of control
various stages in the development of anti-colonial nationalism
the cultural productions and social formations are studied to understand the experience of colonization.
"postcolonial" sometimes people in economically developed industrial countries who are minorities
independent colonies subjected to "neocolonialism" capitalism and globalization
second half of the twentieth-century sees the aftermath of the heyday of colonialism
"postcolonial" used to signify a position against imperialism and Eurocentrism
Western world-views imposed on non-western cultures become objects of study for postcolonial literature
FrankenProject
Directions: You may choose a project from the list below, or you may develop a project of your own (subject to approval). The entire novel can
be found online at: http://www.literature.org/authors/shelley-mary/frankenstein/.
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Frankensoundtrack: Develop a soundtrack for the major scenes the novel. Review the novel to make a list of key scenes. Make a
two-column outline of your soundtrack. In the first column list the key scenes or events in order. In the second column identify or
describe the music that will accompany the scene and why it was chosen. Focus on conveying the mood of the scene. Make a CD
of your music to accompany your list.
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Frankenvideo: Create a short film. Choose a scene from the novel, adapt the dialogue for a screenplay, write a script, and shoot the
video. Several of you can be involved in this project. Ask me if you have questions.
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Frankensculpture: Build your own creature. Again, this can involve several of you. Ask me if you have questions.
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Frankenscene: Illustrate a scene from the novel that includes the creature. Before you begin, reread the related passages of the novel
to gather details provided by the author. Use the evidence in the novel and your imagination to create your own visual interpretation of the
creature. Be sure to add to caption identifying the scene to your illustration. If you are not artistically inclined (the image must
tell the story), this is not the project for you.
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Frankensequentialart: Create your own graphic depiction of a scene from Frankenstein. Include at least 15 frames with accompanying
dialogue or quotations in order to tell the reader what is happening in the scene you have selected. Incorporate direct quotations from
the text as captions for the frames. You don’t have to use realistic drawings to tell the story. Check out a graphic novel or sophisticated
comic for ideas.
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FrankenFacebook: Create a Facebook page for one of the characters in Frankenstein. Look at the categories of a Facebook account
and create one on a poster board for one of the characters in the novel.It needs to be textually detailed (Username, E-mail address,
interests, about me, favorite things, friends, etc.) and visually detailed. You don’t have to draw the images yourself, but you do need to
provide images.
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Frankenfailure: Although I don’t encourage this project, some of you may choose to take this option. This project involves not doing
anything. Hey, as always, autonomous beings with free will have the choice not to do anything! I just thought it might be fun to have a
category for it. Again, several of you may choose to be involved in this project. Liam Holzer made up this category.