Mary Shelley was a novelist who wrote novels that are now looked at as literary concepts. Mary used life experiences to create novels that would be explained in many ways in time. Many saw these novel as enjoyable horrors while others viewed them as disgusting and freak show, only few actually understood the real meanings to the novels. She wrote these novels to express herself and explain her life. Her mother was a writer as well but at the time they were not viewed the same. Many of her novels were later used on premises of rights for women and equal rights for others. Her novel Matilda looked at in the late 1950's as a novel on equality, she had no intentions on it being looked at like that. Mary Shelley's novels reflected on and drew forth the aspects of science and equality in society.To think that Mary had created her novels to convey that science and technology is something to be feared is outrageous.
Mary had a rough childhood and even harder teen years. Mary Wollstonecraft (her mother) died during childbirth. Her father after her mother's death married Mary Jane Clairmont who is Shelley's evil step mother forced her to leave the house at age fourteen. Shelley just like her mother became a novelist, her ideas and writings were all about her own life experiences. She was not trying to interoperate the novels as something that would happen in the future but more as putting science behind her stories to make them a different type of writing. Even though people did interoperate these novels with a sense of realty, it added to the time period where there was many scientific and technological advancements happening.
Mary read lots of books and articles which were mostly were on evolution, chemistry, and article exploration. In Frankenstein, Patricia Fara quoted a well known arctic explored named Robert Walton. The way he writes is the same ways in which Shelley writes. They are both writing about real life situations and how hard they were on their lives. Shelley tried to express herself in the ways of this quote by Robert Walton the wondrous power which attracts the needle... you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation... by ascertaining the secret of the magnet. This quote was one way in which she tried to convey her opinions and her own experiences during her time period. The quote as well showed how she dealt with narrow minded people always looking down on her for thinking outside of the box.
She got this idea from when her father William Godwin was so caught up in caring about him financial situation that he didn't even notice nor ask about Mary through her dark times in life. Mary wrote from real life experiences, whether they were the best or the worst trying to put her life into writing. Although many people took her writings into many different views and most had not understood what she was trying to convey that even the ones she held so close and thought would understand did not.Shelley wrote to look back on her life and to write about future too, in writing about the future she wanted to add in the idea of man as the creator and how it would change society.
One of her views was her Romantic aim to resuscitate organic speech and poetic utterance to overcome post enlightenment solipsism(Hyewon Shin). She believed that the best stories were when they were written or orally told and the listeners and readers felt like they were in the story and gave them the sense of realism which made it all more entertaining. The only thing during this time that was against her was the timing, it was the height of the printing era and she believed that it defied the way writing was meant to be. These beliefs were held so dearly to her contradicted society's views with the aspects of technological advancements in printing. She believed that this took away from people being the creators themselves and them telling the story took them away from being human and more into the life of the characters.
As seen in Frankenstein man creating man can only make something new but something worse can only come from it, it also could change society for better or for worse. Some could say that Shelley was trying to warn us of this happening, but many also say that she never intended to write about the consequences of these actions, she was only trying to write about life itself. Though Shelley had many life problems she had ways of putting them into her writings in order to relate them to society.
She was also able to relate in which how money affected society. She saw how money changed her father and manipulated his life to revolve around and and took the place of loving for his family and how that being absent in his life they all drifted apart day by day.Mary did experience many life changing situations that expanded her knowledge but the one thing that stuck with her the most was her feminist views. Mary did grow up to be just like her mother; a writer and a woman's advocate in a way.
Her writings did play a major role during the time as well. She added romanticism through some writings. One of the novels that became popular in the 1950's was Matilda. It was a psychological analysis of the trauma rising from the juxtaposing of romanticism and feminism(Tilottama Rajan). It's a short narrative of the trauma a girl goes through because her father has an incest love for her. The incest is the reason why her father did not publish the short novel. The trauma is supposed to relate to what Mary felt when Godwin was abandoning the family over money and Mary was dealing with the death of her own children.
Matilda is a beginning, middle, and end short novel and it is obvious that Mary was confused on where the writing was going and how it was relating to language of the monstrosity and abjection. With all the abjection and confusion it is truly unclear who is the abject thus making the no evil confusing on the actual point of it. The loss of a relationship to a masculine romanticism shows how she lost her father and her male influence. All these feelings Shelley had throughout her life made her a voice and activist for women's rights and later in history equality for all.
Mary Shelley's novels reflected on and drew forth the aspects of science and equality in society. Mary experienced many life changing situations that expanded her knowledge beyond others but one thing that stuck with her was her feminist views. To think that Mary had created her novel to create a fear behind science and technology is an outrage. Mary wrote to look back on her life but to also look into the future, in writing about the future she wanted to add in man creating man and how it would affect society. Mary Shelley wrote about real life situations as a way of putting her own touch on writing.
She wrote fictional novels and science fiction novels but they all had a meaning behind them that related to her real life experiences. Mary never had any intentions to make the novels something that people would read and fear what is going to come in the future, she was writing about her life experiences and with technology and science advancements during the time it was right for what was happening. Mary went through a lot in life with her father not caring about the family and only about money she bad no male model in her life which leaned her more towards fighting for women's rights and equality for all.
Mary Shelley Was A Novelist. (2019, Apr 12).
Retrieved November 21, 2024 , from
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