Two Marys
Hello dear readers, I am wondering how many of you have read Frankenstein, one of the first Gothic works of fiction, written by a very young brilliant author named Mary Shelley and published anonymously (quite fitting for her times, as I am reminded of a Virginia Woolfe quote "For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."). A tale so profound in its questions of the soul, and the human condition that it endures to the present day, more than two hundred years after it was first written in 1818.
I've always enjoyed reading classic English literature and several months ago I bought myself a book called 'Romantic Outlaws' the story of Mary Godwin, who later became Mary Godwin Shelley after she fell hopelessly in love with Percy Byshe Shelley, and her powerful but absent mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, herself considered an important author of her time and an original proto-feminist. It was an incredible read and I couldn't put the book down. The book wove the two women's life stories together as young Mary Godwin revered her mother who passed away after giving birth to her, and her life story was remarkably similar to her mothers. Both were acclaimed authors, both broke nearly every convention of the strict Georgian and Victorian societies in which they lived, and both left a legacy of the some of finest English literature ever written. I enjoyed this journey into the heart of these two women so much that I reread Frankenstein, Shelley's masterpiece of Gothic fiction, then gathered a basket of beautiful vintage silk brocade, salvaged remnants of an antique beaded dress and some dark wine velvet and pieced together a Gothic inspired book exploring the lives and works of both Marys.
Portrait of Mary Godwin Shelley shown at the Royal Academy in 1840, accompanied by lines from a Percy Shelley poem calling her a "child of love and light".
“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”
"The Vindication of the Rights of Women" - Mary Wollstonecraft
The following two journal pages were what I created after reading about Percy Shelley's first wife who he abandoned when he met Mary Godwin. As I read on I saw that her name was Harriet Westbrook, at this I felt a little pang of surprise and joy...Westbrook is my maiden name, and I am descended from a long line of John Westbrooks from Bromley, a suburb of London. Not that my name is particularly special, but of course I went back to my family tree I created a few years ago, and at first glance I could not find a connection from my line of Westbrooks to John Westbrook, Harriet's father who owned a popular coffee house and tavern in Mayfair, London, but that doesn't mean I won't stop looking! This prompted me to look for a book on Harriet Westbrook Shelley, and I found one, called 'Five Long Years' which I purchased and read as well. Although the intrigue of her family was enjoyable to read about, discovering her tragic life story was not. Harriet bore Percy Shelley two children and was callously tossed aside when he met young Mary Godwin, herself also 16 years old, the same age as Harriet was when Percy Shelley convinced her to elope, much to the chagrin of his father. I read that Harriet returned to live with her own family but felt so lost and miserable that she disappeared for a few weeks, apparently living under an alias in rented rooms in a London tavern before they found her drowned in The Serpentine River in Hyde Park. Harriet left a long and painful suicide note in her room and here I have written this note on some rust dyed muslin. Tragedy and death haunted this trio of young lovers as Percy and Mary lost a young daughter and a son to illness, Percy Shelley died young and unexpectedly in a boating accident off the shores of Italy, and Mary Shelley never remarried, but lived on in the shadows of her famous lost husband.
“On Tuesday a respectable female, far advanced in pregnancy, was taken out of the Serpentine River and brought to her residence in Queen Street, Brompton, having been missed for nearly six weeks. She had a valuable ring on her finger. A want of honour in her own conduct is supposed to have led to this fatal catastrophe, her husband being abroad”
