In Search of Mary Shelley by Fiona Sampson

 

Summary (from the publisher): We know the facts of Mary Shelley’s life in some detail—the death of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, within days of her birth; the upbringing in the house of her father, William Godwin, in a house full of radical thinkers, poets, philosophers, and writers; her elopement, at the age of seventeen, with Percy Shelley; the years of peripatetic travel across Europe that followed. But there has been no literary biography written this century, and previous books have ignored the real person—what she actually thought and felt and why she did what she did—despite the fact that Mary and her group of second-generation Romantics were extremely interested in the psychological aspect of life.

In this probing narrative, Fiona Sampson pursues Mary Shelley through her turbulent life, much as Victor Frankenstein tracked his monster across the arctic wastes. Sampson has written a book that finally answers the question of how it was that a nineteen-year-old came to write a novel so dark, mysterious, anguished, and psychologically astute that it continues to resonate two centuries later. No previous biographer has ever truly considered this question, let alone answered it.

Review: This was a very introspective, contemplative biography of author Mary Shelley, best known for her novel Frankenstein, which was written when she was just 18. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died right after her birth, so Mary was raised by her father William Godwin in an unconventional home filled with radical thinkers, writers, and philosophers. At just 17, Mary eloped with the already married Percy Shelly and they spent many years traveling across Europe while she wrote extensively. 

The author spends much time imagining what Mary might have been thinking or feeling in this text, which encourages the reader to do the same: "What must it be like for a child to grow up in the house where her mother has died, to pass the door of the death chamber on the landing every day? Perhaps Wollstonecraft's daughters open it sometimes and step inside, looking around at the smallish, ordinary bedroom. Do they expect its banal bed and dressing table to communicate something? How can such big meaning be crammed into such a domestic space? And does this upper-floor room become the 'solitary chamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and staircase' that they younger girl will grow up to imagine as a 'workshop of filthy creation'?" (27). 

Author Sampson paints a vivid picture of Mary's childhood despite the lack of detailed records of that time of her life. "When these figures visit Godwin at home, their talk fills the rooms. Mary, who is allowed from early childhood to listen in and soon, while still a child, to join them for dinner, is surfacing into a world where talk is debate, and thinking the paramount human activity. [...] She's a child raised by the intellectual zeitgeist" (38). It's little wonder that a child with such an unconventional childhood would pursue writing that principally focuses on ethical dilemmas. Or that she would run away with a young, idealistic poet. 

Mary's life takes a very different arc once she does elope with Percy. The relationship is not what either of them probably imagined. Percy was frustrated by monogamy and not particularly kind or faithful to Mary. They struggle with money and are constantly on the and trying to set up house in different locations. Mary was almost constantly pregnant in these years and suffered the devastating loss of most of her children before Percy's tragic accidental drowning again changed the course of her life permanently. 

The author seems to gloss quickly over the final years of Mary's life. Little is shared about her only surviving child, the son she lived with until her death. But what is shared is not complimentary and made me chuckle and its cutting burn both at her son's intelligence and physical appearance: "His face seems squashed on one side, as if compressed during a rapid two-hour birth that is, one feels, almost the last thing he did fast" (218). The academic and philosophical zeal that had Mary learning and writing so frantically in early life seems to have evaporated after Percy's death and in her final years. I wish more detail about her son's life and her final years and final illness had been shared to give a fuller picture of this period of her life. Otherwise, a very informative biography about an interesting character and writer who still captures our interest today. 

Stars: 4