The Great Lady Mary Wollstonecraft - Avneet Kumar Singla - E-Book

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Avneet Kumar Singla

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Beschreibung

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (30 August 1797-1 February 1851) was an English writer, who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus (1818), considered as an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft.
Shelley's mother died less than a month after birth. She was brought up by her father, who offered her a rich, if informal, education and encouraged her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four years old, her father married a neighbor, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley had a troubled relationship.
In 1814 Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political supporters, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister Claire Clairmont, she and Percy travelled to France and travelled through Europe. After her return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. For the next two years, she and Percy faced exclusion, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married at the end of 1816 after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife Harriet.
In 1816, the couple and their stepsister spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822 her husband drowned when his sailboat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and devoted herself to her son's education and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was marked by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumor that killed her at the age of 53.
Until the 1970s, Shelley was best known for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which is still widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. The most recent scholarship has given a more comprehensive overview of Shelley's achievements. Scientists have shown increasing interest in her literary work, particularly her novels, including the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel the last man (1826), and her last two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829-1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's work often argues that cooperation and sympathy, especially practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father William Godwin.

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The Great Lady

Mary Wollstonecraft

Avneet Kumar Singla

Copyright © 2020-2030 by Avneet Kumar Singla

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

Avneet Kumar Singla

[email protected]

 

Disclaimer

All the information provided in this book is the best to our knowledge and Belief. However, we do not guarantee the authenticity, completeness and accuracy of the information. The author, publisher or distributor (s) of the book will not be responsible for the authenticity and accuracy of the information mentioned in this book.

Contents

Introduction & Preface

Chapter-1: - 1759-1775.

Chapter-2 :- 1775-1783.

Chapter-3 :- 1783-1785.

Chapter-4 :- 1785-1787.

Chapter-5:- 1787-1790.

Chapter-6 :- 1790-1792.

Chapter-7 :- 1792-1795.

Chapter-8 :- 1795, 1796.

Chapter-9 :- 1796, 1797.

Chapter-10

 

Introduction & Preface

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (30 August 1797-1 February 1851) was an English writer, who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus (1818), considered as an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft.

 

Shelley's mother died less than a month after birth. She was brought up by her father, who offered her a rich, if informal, education and encouraged her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When she was four years old, her father married a neighbor, Mary Jane Clairmont, with whom Shelley had a troubled relationship.

 

In 1814 Shelley began a romance with one of her father's political supporters, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with her stepsister Claire Clairmont, she and Percy travelled to France and travelled through Europe. After her return to England, Shelley was pregnant with Percy's child. For the next two years, she and Percy faced exclusion, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married at the end of 1816 after the suicide of Percy Shelley's first wife Harriet.

 

In 1816, the couple and their stepsister spent a summer with Lord Byron and John William Polidori near Geneva, Switzerland, where Shelley conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein. The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822 her husband drowned when his sailboat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Shelley returned to England and devoted herself to her son's education and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was marked by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumor that killed her at the age of 53.

 

Until the 1970s, Shelley was best known for her efforts to publish her husband's works and for her novel Frankenstein, which is still widely read and has inspired many theatrical and film adaptations. The most recent scholarship has given a more comprehensive overview of Shelley's achievements. Scientists have shown increasing interest in her literary work, particularly her novels, including the historical novels Valperga (1823) and Perkin Warbeck (1830), the apocalyptic novel the last man (1826), and her last two novels, Lodore (1835) and Falkner (1837). Studies of her lesser-known works, such as the travel book Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844) and the biographical articles for Dionysius Lardner's cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829-1846), support the growing view that Shelley remained a political radical throughout her life. Shelley's work often argues that cooperation and sympathy, especially practiced by women in the family, were the ways to reform civil society. This view was a direct challenge to the individualistic romantic ethos promoted by Percy Shelley and the Enlightenment political theories articulated by her father William Godwin.

Chapter-1: -1759-1775.

It has always appeared to me, that giving the public an account of the life of a person of outstanding merit deceased is a duty incumbent upon survivors. It rarely happens that such a person goes through life without being the subject of thoughtless calumny or malicious misrepresentation. It is not possible for the general public to deal with their intimate acquaintance and observe those virtues which are mainly discovered in personal intercourse. Every benefactor of humanity is more or less influenced by a liberal passion for fame; and survivors pay only a debt due to these benefactors when they assert and justify the honor they loved. The Justice thus done to the illustrious Dead is transformed into the most beautiful source of animation and encouragement for those who would follow them in the same car. The human species in general is interested in this justice, as it teaches them to place their respect and affection on those qualities that deserve best to be appreciated and loved. I cannot easily prevail upon myself to doubt that the more fully we are presented with the image and history of such persons as the subject of the following narrative, the more generally we will feel within ourselves a bond with their fate and a sympathy for their excellencies. There are not many persons with whose character public welfare and improvement are more closely connected than the author of a justification of women's rights.

The facts detailed in the following pages are taken mainly from the mouth of the person to whom they relate; and of the truthfulness and ingenuity of their habits, perhaps no one who has ever been acquainted with them entertains doubts. The author of this narrative, when he has met with persons who have created an interest and a bond in his mind to any extent, has always felt a curiosity to know the scenes through which they had passed, and the incidents that had helped to form their understanding and character. Driven by this feeling, he repeatedly led Mary's conversation on topics of this kind; and, once or twice, he made notes in her presence, calculated by a few dates to arrange the circumstances in his mind. To the materials thus collected he has added a diligent investigation among the persons who know them most in the different periods of their lives.

________________________________________

Mary Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759. Her father's name was Edward John and her mother's name Elizabeth from the Dixone family of Ballyshannon in the kingdom of Ireland: her paternal grandfather was a respected manufacturer in Spitalfields and is said to have left his son a property of about 10,000 l. Three of her brothers and two sisters are still alive; their names, Edward, James, Charles, Eliza and Everina. Of these, Edward was only older than herself; he lives in London. James is in Paris, and Charles in or near Philadelphia in America. Her sisters have been working in the governesses ' office in private families for several years and are both currently in Ireland.

I am doubtful whether the father of Mary was bred to any profession; but, at the time of her birth, he resorted to the employment of agriculture rather as a amusement than as a business. He was very active, and somewhat versatile in disposition, and so frequently changed his abode to throw some ambiguity on the place of their birth. She told me that the doubt in her mind in this regard, lay between London, and a farm on Epping Forest, which was the main scene of the five first years of her life.

Mary distinguished herself in early youth by a part of that exquisite sensibility, solidity of understanding, and decision of character, which were the chief characteristics of her mind throughout her life. She experienced in the first period of her existence, but only a few of these indulgences and signs of affection, which are mainly intended to soothe the subjugation and sorrows of our early years. She was neither her father's nor her mother's favorite. Her father was a man of quick, impetuous disposition, subject to alternating bouts of kindness and cruelty. In his family he was a despot, and his wife seems to have been the first and most submissive of his subjects. The partiality of the mother was fixed on the eldest son, and her system of government with regard to Mary was marked by considerable severity. She was finally convinced of her mistake and adopted a different plan with her younger daughters. When Mary, in the wrong of the woman, speaks of "the little cares" which concealed the morning of her heroine's life; constant restraint in the most trivial matters; unconditional submission to orders which, as a mere child, she soon discovered to be unreasonable, because inconsistent and contradictory; and the being often obliged to sit together in the presence of her parents for three or four hours without daring to utter a word;" she is, I believe, to be regarded as a copy of the outlines of the first period of her own existence.

But it was in vain that the flashing winds of unkindness or indifference seemed destined to counteract the superiority of Mary's spirit. It surpassed any obstacle; and, by degrees, considered by a person little in the family, she became in some way its director and arbitrator. The despotism of her education cost her many heartaches. It was not formed to be the contented and irresistible subject of a despot ; but I have heard her remark more than once that when she felt she had done something wrong, the condemnation or chastisement of her mother, instead of being a terror to her, she found the only thing she could reconcile with herself. The blows of her father, on the contrary, which were the mere ebullition of a passionate temperament, instead of humiliating her, aroused her indignation. On such occasions, she felt her superiority and was inclined to betray signs of contempt. The quickness of her father's temper sometimes led him to threaten similar violence against his wife. If this was the case, Mary would often throw herself between the despot and his victim, with the aim of receiving on her own person the blows that might be directed against her mother. She even spent entire nights on the landing site near her chamber door when she mistakenly or rationally determined that her father might break out into violent paroxysms. The behavior he observed toward members of his family was the same as what he observed toward animals. He was for the most part extravagantly fond of her; but when he was dissatisfied, and this happened frequently and for very trivial reasons, his anger was alarming. Mary was what Dr. Johnson would have called " a very good hater."In a case of passion that her father exercised for one of his dogs, she was used to talking about her abominable feelings as if she had risen to torment. In a word, her behavior during her girlish years was like extorting some of the affection from her mother, and keeping her father in considerable awe.