Mary Shelley, Mathilda
MSL: Letters of Mary Shelley, ed. Bennett. MSJ: Journals of Mary Shelley, ed. Feldman & Scott-Kilvert.
birth of William Mary begins Frankenstein Mary and Percy marry in London birth of Clara Everina departure for Italy death of Clara Everina in Venice death of William in Rome We went from England comparatively prosperous & happy -- I should return broken hearted & miserable -- I never know one moments ease from the wretchedness & despair that possesses me (Letter to Marianne Hunt, MSL, i.101) That time is gone for ever -- child --
Those hours are frozen forever
We look on the past, & stare aghast
On the ghosts with aspects strange & wild
Of the hopes whom thou & I beguiled
To death in life's dark river.The waves we gazed on then rolled by
Their stream is unreturning
We two yet stand, in a lonely land,
Like tombs to mark the memory
Of joys & griefs that fade & flee
In the light of lifes dim morning. [verses by Shelley, 1817?]I begin my journal on Shelley's birthday -- We have now lived five years together & if all the events of the five years were blotted out I might be happy -- but to have won & then cruelly have lost the associations of four years is not an accident to which the human mind can bend without much suffering (MSJ, i.293)
Mary writes 1st draft of Mathilda at Livorno Shelleys move to Florence Ms. of Mathilda dated at Florence Percy Florence born it is a bitter thought that all should be risked on one [child] yet how much sweeter than to be childless as I was for 5 hateful months -- Do not lett us talk of those five months: when I look back on all I suffered at Leghorn I shudder with horror yet even now a sickening feeling steps in the way of every enjoyment when I think -- of what I will not write about (Letter to Marianne Hunt, MSL, i.114) correcting Mathilda (MSJ, i,308) Gisbornes take Ms of Mathilda to England, who gives it to Godwin for publication writes to Maria Gisborne, seeking a copy of Mathilda from Godwin Percy Shelley drowned without resting we posted to Pisa. It must have been fearful to see us -- two poor, wild, aghast creatures -- driving (like Matilda) towards the sea to learn if we were to be for ever doomed to misery (Letter to Maria Gisborne; MSL, i.247; whole letter, see Reader, pp. 395-403) There is much anguish in this -- Before when I wrote Matilda, miserable as I was, the inspiration was sufficient to quell my wretchedness temporarily -- but now I have no respite -- & shall have none -- I do not wish for any -- the eternity of my sorrow is a pledge of our reunion & I would not barter it for ages of more pleasurable feeling. (MSJ, ii.442) But it seems to me that in what I have hitherto written I have done nothing but prophecy what has arrived to. Matilda fortells even many small circumstances most truly -- & the whole of it is a monument of what now is -- (Letter to Maria Gisborne, MSL, i.336) Mary with Percy Florence returns to London Additional notes
In a society where the father or male is the dominant authority and wielder of power and the female is taught to love and obey, the father-daughter relationship becomes a paradigm for all male-female relationships. Women are urged to remain daughters (or children) and to marry 'father figures,' men who are older, wiser, stronger, and more economically powerful than they. (Anne K. Mellor, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. London: Routedge, 1988. p. 198)
overt incest represents only the furthest point on a continuum -- an exaggeration of patriarchal family norms, but not a departure from them . . . incest represents a common pattern of traditional female socialization carried to a pathological extreme. (Judith Herman, cited Katherine C. Hill-Miller, "My Hideous Progeny": Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and the Father-Daughter Relationship. U. Delaware P., 1995. p. 104)
[If women were properly educated.] Such a developement of mind would undoubtedly enable them to see and reason upon what principles, all the other regulations of society were formed, -- which however they may deviate in execution, are evidently founded on justice and humanity, -- and would consequently enable them to bring home and apply those principles to the situation of their sex in general. Thus awakened to a sense of their injuries, they would behold with astonishment and indignation, the arts which had been employed, to keep them in a state of PERPETUAL BABYISM. (Mary Hays, Appeal to the Men of Great Britain in Behalf of Women. London: J. Johnson and J. Bell, 1798. p. 97)
Psyche, Mathilde, p. 190. Venus jealous of homage paid to the beautiful Psyche, instructs her son Cupid to make her fall in love with some low, unworthy thing; exiled, but loved by Cupid, he sequesters her to enjoy their love on condition that she will never see him; when she does Cupid departs and Psyche is left wandering (Mathilde refers to this phase); she goes to Venus for foregiveness, but Venus is still angry and sets her impossible tasks to perform; Cupid intervenes in third, and Psyche is taken up to Jupiter where she is made immortal and marries Cupid.
p. 215: Antiparos Cave.
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Document prepared October 25th 2003