WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.100 Welcome back to the deep dive. Today we are taking 00:00:03.100 --> 00:00:06.919 on a figure who I think for most people is maybe 00:00:06.919 --> 00:00:10.160 the most famous one hit wonder in all of literature. 00:00:10.380 --> 00:00:12.259 You have to be talking about Mary Shelley. Exactly. 00:00:12.480 --> 00:00:14.599 Mary Shelley. Most of us you know that we can 00:00:14.599 --> 00:00:17.379 probably list two facts about her. She was married 00:00:17.379 --> 00:00:20.300 to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and she wrote 00:00:20.300 --> 00:00:22.620 Frankenstein. And that's it. And that's pretty 00:00:22.620 --> 00:00:24.660 much it. The story ends there for a lot of people. 00:00:24.780 --> 00:00:28.339 But to just. boil her down to that. It does her 00:00:28.339 --> 00:00:30.780 such a huge disservice. I mean, when you say 00:00:30.780 --> 00:00:32.859 Mary Shelley, you immediately see the monster, 00:00:32.920 --> 00:00:34.719 right? The stitches, the lightning, the castle. 00:00:34.820 --> 00:00:37.280 Of course. But focusing just on Frankenstein 00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:40.960 means we miss, what, almost 50 years of this. 00:00:41.740 --> 00:00:45.320 breathtakingly productive and professional life. 00:00:45.399 --> 00:00:47.179 So that's our mission for this deep dive then, 00:00:47.240 --> 00:00:49.780 to get past the monster. Exactly. We want to 00:00:49.780 --> 00:00:53.219 understand the full picture. Her completely chaotic 00:00:53.219 --> 00:00:55.460 and radical upbringing, the almost unbelievable 00:00:55.460 --> 00:00:57.700 tragedy that she lived through, and the fact 00:00:57.700 --> 00:00:59.759 that she was a professional writer who wrote 00:00:59.759 --> 00:01:02.799 six other novels, short stories, travelogues, 00:01:02.799 --> 00:01:05.640 and these massive five -volume biographies. And 00:01:05.640 --> 00:01:08.379 this isn't just a literary history lesson. Mary 00:01:08.379 --> 00:01:11.260 Shelley's life is this incredible window into 00:01:11.260 --> 00:01:13.959 one of the biggest intellectual clashes in history. 00:01:14.200 --> 00:01:16.540 You've got the Enlightenment all about cold, 00:01:16.659 --> 00:01:19.200 hard reason, which was championed by her father. 00:01:19.519 --> 00:01:23.319 And then you have romanticism, fiery, individual, 00:01:23.459 --> 00:01:27.079 all about me, which was embodied by her husband. 00:01:27.280 --> 00:01:28.739 And she's standing right in the middle of that 00:01:28.739 --> 00:01:31.340 collision. Right. And she uses her life and her 00:01:31.340 --> 00:01:34.760 work to critique both sides. She gives us these. 00:01:34.829 --> 00:01:38.510 profound aha moments about ambition, about creativity, 00:01:38.629 --> 00:01:42.530 and really about survival. She was this ultimate 00:01:42.530 --> 00:01:45.969 outlaw who found her genius in surprisingly cooperation 00:01:45.969 --> 00:01:49.280 and family. OK, so to get Mary Shelley, you really 00:01:49.280 --> 00:01:51.540 have to start with her parents. She was born 00:01:51.540 --> 00:01:55.739 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in London, 1797. And 00:01:55.739 --> 00:01:57.560 her parents were I mean, they were basically 00:01:57.560 --> 00:01:59.959 radical royalty. They were the intellectual celebrity 00:01:59.959 --> 00:02:03.519 power couple of the 1790s. Absolute giants. Their 00:02:03.519 --> 00:02:05.340 lives were already making headlines and their 00:02:05.340 --> 00:02:07.840 ideas were, you know, actively trying to reshape 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:09.659 the world. And you really can't overstate how 00:02:09.659 --> 00:02:12.000 important that lineage was. Her mother, Mary 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:14.800 Wollstonecraft. The author of A Vindication of 00:02:14.800 --> 00:02:17.129 the Rights of Woman. A foundational feminist 00:02:17.129 --> 00:02:21.610 text. But this revolutionary start is just immediately 00:02:21.610 --> 00:02:24.550 hit with tragedy. A profound tragedy. Wollstonecraft 00:02:24.550 --> 00:02:28.069 died just 11 days after Mary was born. 11 days. 00:02:28.389 --> 00:02:31.469 Yeah. from puerperal fever. We hear that term 00:02:31.469 --> 00:02:33.990 a lot in history, puerperal fever. Can we just 00:02:33.990 --> 00:02:36.389 pause on what that actually was? It wasn't just, 00:02:36.409 --> 00:02:38.250 you know, getting sick. No, not at all. It was 00:02:38.250 --> 00:02:40.669 terrifyingly common. We call it childbed fever 00:02:40.669 --> 00:02:44.090 now. It was a systemic infection, usually streptococcal, 00:02:44.150 --> 00:02:46.270 that would just tear through a woman's body after 00:02:46.270 --> 00:02:48.780 childbirth. And this was before anyone understood 00:02:48.780 --> 00:02:52.219 germ theory. Right. So medically speaking, Mary's 00:02:52.219 --> 00:02:54.659 arrival in the world directly led to her mother's 00:02:54.659 --> 00:02:57.080 departure from it. That's, I mean, that's a heavy 00:02:57.080 --> 00:02:59.120 psychological burden for a child to inherit. 00:02:59.360 --> 00:03:01.860 And then, as if that wasn't enough, her father, 00:03:02.039 --> 00:03:04.479 the philosopher William Godwin, makes it all 00:03:04.479 --> 00:03:07.120 so much worse. He does. He publishes this book, 00:03:07.340 --> 00:03:09.659 Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the 00:03:09.659 --> 00:03:12.960 Rights of Woman, in 1798. It was meant to be 00:03:12.960 --> 00:03:16.419 a tribute. But it backfired spectacularly. Why? 00:03:16.759 --> 00:03:19.020 Because Godwin was so committed to his philosophy 00:03:19.020 --> 00:03:22.990 of complete, brutal honesty, he revealed everything 00:03:22.990 --> 00:03:26.009 about Wollstonecraft's life. Her previous affairs, 00:03:26.129 --> 00:03:28.469 the fact that Mary's older half -sister, Fanny 00:03:28.469 --> 00:03:32.169 Imlay, was illegitimate. And for late 18th century 00:03:32.169 --> 00:03:34.990 society, that was just... It was completely shocking, 00:03:35.069 --> 00:03:37.469 an absolute scandal. The woman who had championed 00:03:37.469 --> 00:03:40.449 reason was suddenly recast as this libertine, 00:03:40.509 --> 00:03:43.069 and baby Mary was, you know, tarred with that 00:03:43.069 --> 00:03:45.409 same brush from birth. So the world is condemning 00:03:45.409 --> 00:03:47.689 her mother, but at home, her father is telling 00:03:47.689 --> 00:03:50.229 her to cherish her mother's memory. It's this 00:03:50.229 --> 00:03:52.129 incredible contradiction she's... raised in. 00:03:52.310 --> 00:03:55.009 And Godwin himself was a philosophical anarchist 00:03:55.009 --> 00:03:57.129 who, at least at first, thought marriage was 00:03:57.129 --> 00:04:00.009 a repressive monopoly. So her whole world is 00:04:00.009 --> 00:04:02.750 built on defiance. But all that high -minded 00:04:02.750 --> 00:04:04.930 philosophy didn't exactly pay the bills, did 00:04:04.930 --> 00:04:07.050 it? Not even close. It was a house of intellectual 00:04:07.050 --> 00:04:10.770 extremes and financial chaos. Godwin was always, 00:04:10.849 --> 00:04:13.050 always in debt. Which is why he remarries in 00:04:13.050 --> 00:04:16.050 1801. He marries a neighbor, Mary Jane Claremont. 00:04:16.189 --> 00:04:18.769 And by all accounts, this was not a good move 00:04:18.769 --> 00:04:22.050 for Mary. She grew to absolutely detest her stepmother. 00:04:22.389 --> 00:04:25.370 Godwin's friends called her quarrelsome. And 00:04:25.370 --> 00:04:27.370 Mary was convinced she favored her own children, 00:04:27.470 --> 00:04:30.610 especially her daughter, Claire Claremont. So 00:04:30.610 --> 00:04:32.970 it's this emotionally tense home, constantly 00:04:32.970 --> 00:04:35.490 worried about debt collectors. But at the same 00:04:35.490 --> 00:04:38.149 time, she's getting this education that was, 00:04:38.170 --> 00:04:41.970 well, almost unheard of. for a girl at the time. 00:04:42.149 --> 00:04:45.529 Absolutely. The tension sort of fueled her. Her 00:04:45.529 --> 00:04:48.050 father tutored her directly in history, politics, 00:04:48.310 --> 00:04:50.850 literature, and the people who visited their 00:04:50.850 --> 00:04:52.750 house. I mean, can you imagine Samuel Taylor 00:04:52.750 --> 00:04:54.509 Coleridge sitting in your living room and reading 00:04:54.509 --> 00:04:57.250 The Rime of the Ancient Mariner out loud to you 00:04:57.250 --> 00:04:59.509 as a teenager? It sounds like a dream for an 00:04:59.509 --> 00:05:02.290 aspiring writer. And former U .S. Vice President 00:05:02.290 --> 00:05:04.730 Aaron Burr was a visitor, too. It was this incredible 00:05:04.730 --> 00:05:07.529 intellectual hothouse. And Godwin saw the genius 00:05:07.529 --> 00:05:09.879 in her, didn't he? Oh, he did. He wrote about 00:05:09.879 --> 00:05:12.439 her when she was 15, calling her singularly bold, 00:05:12.660 --> 00:05:15.959 somewhat imperious, and active of mind. He said 00:05:15.959 --> 00:05:18.240 her desire of knowledge is great and her perseverance 00:05:18.240 --> 00:05:21.579 almost invincible. But that was always set against 00:05:21.579 --> 00:05:24.980 this backdrop of financial disaster. The family 00:05:24.980 --> 00:05:28.300 publishing firm failed, which just plunged them 00:05:28.300 --> 00:05:30.279 deeper and deeper into debt. So she's not just 00:05:30.279 --> 00:05:31.920 learning about political theory. She's learning 00:05:31.920 --> 00:05:34.519 about the harsh reality of poverty, the constant 00:05:34.519 --> 00:05:36.939 threat of creditors. It must have been suffocating. 00:05:37.579 --> 00:05:39.560 Which is probably why the time she spent away 00:05:39.560 --> 00:05:41.259 in Scotland was so important for her. Right. 00:05:41.300 --> 00:05:42.899 She gets to stay with the Baxter family near 00:05:42.899 --> 00:05:46.420 Dundee in 1812 and 1813. And it was this crucial 00:05:46.420 --> 00:05:49.279 escape. It gave her the space to breathe away 00:05:49.279 --> 00:05:53.019 from the chaos in London. She said later in the 00:05:53.019 --> 00:05:54.800 introduction to Frankenstein that it was there 00:05:54.800 --> 00:05:57.959 beneath the trees or on the bleak sides of the 00:05:57.959 --> 00:06:00.939 woodless mountains that her true compositions, 00:06:01.240 --> 00:06:03.920 the airy flights of my imagination, were born 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:06.740 and fostered. it's amazing the seeds of the world's 00:06:06.740 --> 00:06:09.259 greatest horror story were planted not in some 00:06:09.259 --> 00:06:12.839 dark spooky castle but in the open wild landscapes 00:06:12.839 --> 00:06:15.920 of scotland that need for escape for a new reality 00:06:15.920 --> 00:06:18.480 led her directly into the next and probably most 00:06:18.480 --> 00:06:20.850 scandalous chapter of her life And that chapter 00:06:20.850 --> 00:06:23.470 is, of course, Percy Bysshe Shelley. This wasn't 00:06:23.470 --> 00:06:26.069 just a teenage romance. It was an explosion. 00:06:26.290 --> 00:06:28.850 It was always going to be a scandal. Oh, absolutely. 00:06:29.110 --> 00:06:31.329 Percy was, you know, a kind of intellectual rock 00:06:31.329 --> 00:06:34.370 star, a brilliant poet, and a huge fan of Godwin's 00:06:34.370 --> 00:06:37.430 radical ideas. But just like Godwin, he was always 00:06:37.430 --> 00:06:40.370 broke. He was 21. She was just 16. And he was 00:06:40.370 --> 00:06:43.670 married. To a woman named Harriet. Plus, he'd 00:06:43.670 --> 00:06:46.269 completely alienated his own wealthy aristocratic 00:06:46.269 --> 00:06:49.050 family with his radical politics so he couldn't 00:06:49.050 --> 00:06:51.069 get his hands on his inheritance. He was running 00:06:51.069 --> 00:06:55.430 on pure intellectual passion and basically no 00:06:55.430 --> 00:06:57.850 money. A perfect match for the Godwin household 00:06:57.850 --> 00:06:59.889 then. You could say that. The connection was 00:06:59.889 --> 00:07:03.170 immediate and deeply symbolic. They supposedly 00:07:03.170 --> 00:07:05.889 fell in love meeting in secret at her mother's 00:07:05.889 --> 00:07:08.620 grave in St. Pancras Old Church. That location, 00:07:08.740 --> 00:07:10.819 it feels so deliberate. It's almost like a statement. 00:07:11.040 --> 00:07:12.720 It was absolutely a statement. She wasn't just 00:07:12.720 --> 00:07:14.800 falling for a man. She was falling for the living 00:07:14.800 --> 00:07:18.139 embodiment of her parents' radical ideals. She 00:07:18.139 --> 00:07:20.399 was acting out Godwin's old theory that marriage 00:07:20.399 --> 00:07:24.139 was a repressive monopoly. By choosing a married 00:07:24.139 --> 00:07:26.660 man, she was staging her own philosophical rebellion. 00:07:27.000 --> 00:07:30.240 A rebellion by a 16 -year -old. And when they 00:07:30.240 --> 00:07:34.160 elope in July 1814, they even take her stepsister, 00:07:34.259 --> 00:07:37.839 Claire Claremont, with them. Mary called it acting 00:07:37.839 --> 00:07:40.279 in a novel. It sounds like a grand romantic adventure. 00:07:40.699 --> 00:07:42.879 But the reality hit them almost immediately. 00:07:43.180 --> 00:07:45.699 How so? They get to France, and they're traveling 00:07:45.699 --> 00:07:47.899 through a country that she said was recently 00:07:47.899 --> 00:07:50.800 ravaged by war. She wasn't just on a honeymoon. 00:07:50.920 --> 00:07:53.139 She was seeing real suffering, real poverty. 00:07:53.500 --> 00:07:56.459 She wrote that it gave a sting to my detestation 00:07:56.459 --> 00:07:59.759 of war. The utopian fantasy meets reality, and 00:07:59.759 --> 00:08:02.439 then when they get back to England, it gets even 00:08:02.439 --> 00:08:05.579 worse. Full force. They're broke. ostracized, 00:08:05.620 --> 00:08:08.420 and her own father, William Godwin, whose ideas 00:08:08.420 --> 00:08:10.920 inspired the whole thing, refuses to see her. 00:08:11.019 --> 00:08:14.000 The hypocrisy is just staggering. It is. He could 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:15.360 write the theory, but he couldn't handle the 00:08:15.360 --> 00:08:17.459 reality when it affected his own reputation and 00:08:17.459 --> 00:08:20.079 finances. It was a devastating rejection for 00:08:20.079 --> 00:08:22.300 Mary. She gets pregnant. Percy is constantly 00:08:22.300 --> 00:08:24.800 away dodging creditors. And she has to deal with 00:08:24.800 --> 00:08:26.279 the fact that he's still celebrating the birth 00:08:26.279 --> 00:08:28.180 of his son with his estranged wife, Harriet. 00:08:28.620 --> 00:08:31.720 Yes. And on top of all that, you have Claremont, 00:08:31.779 --> 00:08:34.100 her stepsister, who was always there and was 00:08:34.100 --> 00:08:36.679 very likely Percy's lover at some point. The 00:08:36.679 --> 00:08:39.019 jealousy and isolation for Mary must have been 00:08:39.019 --> 00:08:41.740 incredible. It's a pressure cooker. But the emotional 00:08:41.740 --> 00:08:43.860 strain was nothing compared to the tragedy that 00:08:43.860 --> 00:08:46.539 was coming. No. The true devastation was just 00:08:46.539 --> 00:08:50.940 relentless loss. In February 1815, she gives 00:08:50.940 --> 00:08:53.649 birth to a daughter prematurely. The baby dies. 00:08:53.769 --> 00:08:55.769 And this just sends her into a deep depression. 00:08:56.110 --> 00:08:59.549 A complete psychological rupture. Her diary entry 00:08:59.549 --> 00:09:02.230 from that time, it's just one of the saddest 00:09:02.230 --> 00:09:05.129 things. She writes to a friend, my baby is dead, 00:09:05.210 --> 00:09:07.250 will you come to see me? I'm no longer a mother 00:09:07.250 --> 00:09:10.190 now. To lose your first child like that is unimaginable, 00:09:10.190 --> 00:09:12.330 and it was only the beginning. It was. The losses 00:09:12.330 --> 00:09:15.730 just kept coming. In late 1816, two suicides, 00:09:15.730 --> 00:09:18.070 back to back. First, her half -sister. Fanny 00:09:18.070 --> 00:09:21.070 Imlay, Wollstonecraft's other daughter. She took 00:09:21.070 --> 00:09:23.509 her own life with laudanum in October. And we 00:09:23.509 --> 00:09:26.009 should remember, laudanum and opium and alcohol 00:09:26.009 --> 00:09:28.710 tincture was everywhere. It was the readily available 00:09:28.710 --> 00:09:32.129 tool of despair. Exactly. And then, just two 00:09:32.129 --> 00:09:35.370 months later, in December, Percy's estranged 00:09:35.370 --> 00:09:39.049 wife, Harriet, drowns herself in the Serpentine 00:09:39.049 --> 00:09:42.090 River in Hyde Park. Two women, both so closely 00:09:42.090 --> 00:09:44.889 tied to their lives, dead by suicide in two months. 00:09:45.340 --> 00:09:47.460 It's an overwhelming amount of trauma. They marry 00:09:47.460 --> 00:09:50.000 very quickly after that, partly for legal reasons, 00:09:50.100 --> 00:09:52.159 but that doesn't stop the pain. No, the legal 00:09:52.159 --> 00:09:54.639 nightmare just continues. Yeah. In March 1817, 00:09:54.980 --> 00:09:57.440 the court decides what to do with Percy's children 00:09:57.440 --> 00:09:59.820 from his marriage to Harriet. And they rule against 00:09:59.820 --> 00:10:02.759 him. They find him morally unfit. His atheism. 00:10:03.120 --> 00:10:05.700 his scandalous lifestyle, they strip him of his 00:10:05.700 --> 00:10:08.399 parental rights and give the children to a clergyman's 00:10:08.399 --> 00:10:11.620 family. So by 1817, Mary Shelley is not yet 20 00:10:11.620 --> 00:10:13.600 years old, and she has already lived through 00:10:13.600 --> 00:10:15.740 more loss and scandal than most people do in 00:10:15.740 --> 00:10:18.279 a lifetime. An almost unimaginable crucible of 00:10:18.279 --> 00:10:21.059 pain. And yet somehow, this is the exact moment 00:10:21.059 --> 00:10:24.179 when her greatest creative act is born. Which 00:10:24.179 --> 00:10:25.919 takes us back just a little bit to the summer 00:10:25.919 --> 00:10:30.019 of 1816 in Geneva. Mary, Percy, and their second 00:10:30.019 --> 00:10:32.659 child, William. who they nicknamed Wilmouse. 00:10:32.799 --> 00:10:35.120 They all travel there with Clara Claremont, who's 00:10:35.120 --> 00:10:37.240 now, by the way, pregnant with Lord Byron's child. 00:10:37.500 --> 00:10:40.240 So it's this traveling circus of romantic poets 00:10:40.240 --> 00:10:43.000 and their very complicated lives. They all rent 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:45.659 houses near Lake Geneva, along with Byron and 00:10:45.659 --> 00:10:48.340 his doctor, John Polidori. And the image we have 00:10:48.340 --> 00:10:51.059 of a beautiful, romantic summer couldn't be more 00:10:51.059 --> 00:10:55.139 wrong. This was 1816, the famous year without 00:10:55.139 --> 00:10:57.480 a summer. That's such a critical piece of context. 00:10:57.539 --> 00:11:00.220 They didn't know it, but a huge volcanic eruption 00:11:00.220 --> 00:11:02.740 in Indonesia the year before, Mount Tambora, 00:11:02.940 --> 00:11:06.299 had thrown so much ash into the atmosphere that 00:11:06.299 --> 00:11:08.799 it completely messed up the global climate. Europe 00:11:08.799 --> 00:11:12.379 was cold, dark, and endlessly rainy. Mary herself 00:11:12.379 --> 00:11:15.259 called it a wet, ungenial summer. So they're 00:11:15.259 --> 00:11:18.320 all trapped indoors, bored. What do you do? You 00:11:18.320 --> 00:11:21.299 read German ghost stories. And then... Lord Byron, 00:11:21.360 --> 00:11:23.179 ever the showman, says, hey, let's all write 00:11:23.179 --> 00:11:25.340 our own ghost story. And for Mary, who is surrounded 00:11:25.340 --> 00:11:28.360 by these literary giants, Byron, Shelley, that 00:11:28.360 --> 00:11:30.600 must have been terrifying. She felt immense pressure. 00:11:30.860 --> 00:11:32.879 She said she had to give a mortifying negative 00:11:32.879 --> 00:11:35.080 every morning when they asked her if she'd come 00:11:35.080 --> 00:11:37.320 up with anything yet. The anxiety of influence. 00:11:37.600 --> 00:11:39.320 But the breakthrough comes from a conversation 00:11:39.320 --> 00:11:42.259 they have one night. Late night discussion. It 00:11:42.259 --> 00:11:45.519 turned to the very nature of life. Could we reanimate 00:11:45.519 --> 00:11:48.330 a corpse? Could we cheat death? And they talked 00:11:48.330 --> 00:11:50.990 about galvanism. Yes, which we have to understand 00:11:50.990 --> 00:11:53.289 was the cutting edge science of the day. The 00:11:53.289 --> 00:11:56.190 idea that you could use animal electricity to 00:11:56.190 --> 00:11:59.250 make dead muscle tissue move. It wasn't magic. 00:11:59.309 --> 00:12:01.730 It was, you know, a plausible scientific theory 00:12:01.730 --> 00:12:03.850 at the time. They were basically debating the 00:12:03.850 --> 00:12:05.889 ethics of playing God, but with real science 00:12:05.889 --> 00:12:08.710 to back it up. Exactly. And Mary goes to bed 00:12:08.710 --> 00:12:11.070 that night, but she can't sleep. Her mind is 00:12:11.070 --> 00:12:13.590 just racing. And then she has what she called 00:12:13.590 --> 00:12:16.000 her waking dream. And astronomers have actually 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:18.600 pinpointed this moment. They have. To between 00:12:18.600 --> 00:12:22.259 2 and 3 a .m. on June 16, 1816. So what did she 00:12:22.259 --> 00:12:24.139 see in this vision? This is the birth of the 00:12:24.139 --> 00:12:27.860 monster. It's this perfect Gothic image. She 00:12:27.860 --> 00:12:31.159 saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling 00:12:31.159 --> 00:12:33.980 beside the thing he'd put together. She sees 00:12:33.980 --> 00:12:36.940 the body stir, this hideous phantasm of a man 00:12:36.940 --> 00:12:40.299 showing signs of life. And she realized, as terrifying 00:12:40.299 --> 00:12:42.970 as it was, that was her story. And she starts 00:12:42.970 --> 00:12:45.029 writing what she thinks will be a short story. 00:12:45.230 --> 00:12:47.649 But with Percy's encouragement, it just grows 00:12:47.649 --> 00:12:50.730 and grows and becomes the novel. Frankenstein 00:12:50.730 --> 00:12:53.809 or the modern Prometheus. Which brings us to 00:12:53.809 --> 00:12:56.250 the shadow that has hung over the book for 200 00:12:56.250 --> 00:13:00.830 years. The authorship controversy. Yes. It was 00:13:00.830 --> 00:13:03.149 published anonymously with a preface by Percy 00:13:03.149 --> 00:13:06.070 dedicated to her father. So, of course, everyone 00:13:06.070 --> 00:13:08.429 just assumed a man must have written it. Probably 00:13:08.429 --> 00:13:11.789 Percy. It was a combination of sexism and, frankly, 00:13:11.929 --> 00:13:14.789 the sheer audacity of the book's ideas. People 00:13:14.789 --> 00:13:17.129 just couldn't believe a 19 -year -old woman could 00:13:17.129 --> 00:13:19.629 write something so profound. And Mary had to 00:13:19.629 --> 00:13:21.529 keep defending herself, didn't she? She was clear 00:13:21.529 --> 00:13:24.549 that the core idea was hers, but she gave Percy 00:13:24.549 --> 00:13:27.350 credit for his incitement. That's the key word. 00:13:27.429 --> 00:13:29.929 He was her encourager, her editor, her cheerleader. 00:13:30.330 --> 00:13:33.409 But the story, the monster, the warning, that 00:13:33.409 --> 00:13:36.480 was all hers. But for a long time, some scholars 00:13:36.480 --> 00:13:39.000 argued he was basically a minor collaborator. 00:13:39.080 --> 00:13:41.399 So how did we finally settle this? Modern science, 00:13:41.519 --> 00:13:43.899 really. Textual analysis. We can now look at 00:13:43.899 --> 00:13:45.379 the original handwritten notebooks. The ones 00:13:45.379 --> 00:13:47.840 in the Bodleian Library. Exactly. And you can 00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:49.899 see her handwriting and then his edits in the 00:13:49.899 --> 00:13:52.679 margins. And it's definitive. And what did the 00:13:52.679 --> 00:13:54.879 experts who studied them, like Fiona Sampson, 00:13:54.940 --> 00:13:57.700 say? They say his contributions were no more 00:13:57.700 --> 00:13:59.940 than what most publishers, editors have provided 00:13:59.940 --> 00:14:03.799 new. or old authors. He fixed grammar. He clarified 00:14:03.799 --> 00:14:06.279 some sentences. He was a good line editor. So 00:14:06.279 --> 00:14:08.799 he polished it. He didn't create it. Not even 00:14:08.799 --> 00:14:11.600 close. The intellectual core, the critique of 00:14:11.600 --> 00:14:15.019 masculine ambition, the philosophical depth that 00:14:15.019 --> 00:14:18.860 is 100 % Mary Shelley. The monster was hers and 00:14:18.860 --> 00:14:21.830 hers alone. So she has this moment of incredible 00:14:21.830 --> 00:14:25.289 creative triumph in Geneva, but it's almost immediately 00:14:25.289 --> 00:14:28.289 followed by another period of just devastating 00:14:28.289 --> 00:14:31.269 sorrow. In 1818, the Shelleys decide to leave 00:14:31.269 --> 00:14:33.779 Britain for good. They go to Italy thinking they're 00:14:33.779 --> 00:14:36.019 escaping the debt, the scandals. Yeah. You know, 00:14:36.019 --> 00:14:39.480 starting a new grand romantic life. But that's 00:14:39.480 --> 00:14:41.519 not what they found. Not at all. What they found 00:14:41.519 --> 00:14:43.799 was a roving existence that was just blighted 00:14:43.799 --> 00:14:45.820 by one loss after another. They were constantly 00:14:45.820 --> 00:14:49.100 moving Venice, Rome, Naples, Pisa, but they couldn't 00:14:49.100 --> 00:14:50.980 outrun grief. And the grief came in the form 00:14:50.980 --> 00:14:53.240 of losing more children. It's just staggering. 00:14:53.639 --> 00:14:56.399 First, their little daughter Clara dies in Venice 00:14:56.399 --> 00:15:00.429 in September of 1818. Okay. Then their son, William 00:15:00.429 --> 00:15:03.009 Wilmouse, the one born after Geneva, he dies 00:15:03.009 --> 00:15:05.990 of malaria in Rome in June 1819. So that's three 00:15:05.990 --> 00:15:09.230 children she's lost now. Three. She falls into 00:15:09.230 --> 00:15:12.830 this deep, isolating depression. She wrote about 00:15:12.830 --> 00:15:15.610 the terrible irony of it all, that she came to 00:15:15.610 --> 00:15:18.730 Italy for Percy's health, and instead the climate 00:15:18.730 --> 00:15:20.730 killed her children. There's a letter she wrote 00:15:20.730 --> 00:15:24.860 that is just, it's brutal. May you. Never know 00:15:24.860 --> 00:15:27.299 what it is to lose two only and lovely children 00:15:27.299 --> 00:15:30.399 in one year, to watch their dying moments, and 00:15:30.399 --> 00:15:33.080 then at last to be left childless and forever 00:15:33.080 --> 00:15:35.500 miserable. I can't even imagine. And yet she 00:15:35.500 --> 00:15:37.659 keeps writing through it all. The writing becomes 00:15:37.659 --> 00:15:39.980 her solace, her way of processing it. She writes 00:15:39.980 --> 00:15:42.399 a novella called Matilda during this time. And 00:15:42.399 --> 00:15:44.440 it seems to speak directly to her trauma. It 00:15:44.440 --> 00:15:47.039 does. It's about a young woman who is just relentlessly 00:15:47.039 --> 00:15:49.960 punished by fate, simply for inspiring an incestuous 00:15:49.960 --> 00:15:52.789 love in her father. It's this dark... feminist 00:15:52.789 --> 00:15:55.029 critique of a patriarchal world that destroys 00:15:55.029 --> 00:15:57.429 women. It was so dark it wasn't even published 00:15:57.429 --> 00:16:00.190 in her lifetime. And during this dark period 00:16:00.190 --> 00:16:02.370 in Italy, there's also this really bizarre mystery 00:16:02.370 --> 00:16:05.710 that pops up. The story of Elena Adelaide Shelley. 00:16:05.970 --> 00:16:07.950 This is one of the great puzzles for Shelley 00:16:07.950 --> 00:16:11.179 biographers. Basically, between 1818 and 1820, 00:16:11.320 --> 00:16:13.659 they're being blackmailed by some former servants. 00:16:13.820 --> 00:16:16.320 Okay. And these servants reveal that in Naples, 00:16:16.399 --> 00:16:20.179 in February 1819, Percy Bysshe Shelley officially 00:16:20.179 --> 00:16:22.919 registered a two -month -old baby girl named 00:16:22.919 --> 00:16:26.580 Delana Adelaide Shelley as his child with Mary 00:16:26.580 --> 00:16:29.139 Shelley. With Mary. But she was grieving and 00:16:29.139 --> 00:16:31.259 pregnant almost that entire time. What did she 00:16:31.259 --> 00:16:33.679 say about this? She was absolutely adamant she 00:16:33.679 --> 00:16:36.009 was not the mother. She called Naples a paradise 00:16:36.009 --> 00:16:39.009 inhabited by devils. The whole episode seems 00:16:39.009 --> 00:16:41.289 to have been this bewildering, corrupt nightmare 00:16:41.289 --> 00:16:43.710 for her. So what's the theory? Who was this child? 00:16:44.110 --> 00:16:46.610 Nobody knows for sure. Maybe Percy adopted her. 00:16:46.690 --> 00:16:49.049 Maybe she was his child with Claire's nurse or 00:16:49.049 --> 00:16:51.009 even with Claire herself. We just don't know. 00:16:51.049 --> 00:16:53.509 The point is, Mary denied it completely. It just 00:16:53.509 --> 00:16:55.330 shows the level of chaos and secrets she was 00:16:55.330 --> 00:16:57.830 living with. Total instability. And the tragedy 00:16:57.830 --> 00:17:00.720 just continues. Elena, the mystery baby. dies 00:17:00.720 --> 00:17:03.419 in Naples in June of 1820. So the only stability 00:17:03.419 --> 00:17:06.299 they find is with the birth of their son, Percy 00:17:06.299 --> 00:17:08.759 Florence, their only child to survive to adulthood. 00:17:09.059 --> 00:17:12.319 Yes, he's born in late 1819. But their time in 00:17:12.319 --> 00:17:14.960 Italy is racing towards its final, ultimate tragedy. 00:17:15.359 --> 00:17:18.980 In June of 1822, Mary herself almost dies. A 00:17:18.980 --> 00:17:21.579 miscarriage. She was bleeding so heavily that 00:17:21.579 --> 00:17:24.220 Percy, in a moment of panic and genius, puts 00:17:24.220 --> 00:17:26.599 her in a bath of ice to stop the bleeding. The 00:17:26.599 --> 00:17:28.579 doctor later said it saved her life. And then 00:17:28.579 --> 00:17:32.160 just one month later, July 8th, 1822. The stability 00:17:32.160 --> 00:17:35.440 she fought so hard for is just wiped out. Percy 00:17:35.440 --> 00:17:39.079 is out sailing on his boat. The dawn won, a storm 00:17:39.079 --> 00:17:42.000 hits, and he drowns. The image of his body being 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:44.259 cremated on the beach by Byron and Trelawney 00:17:44.259 --> 00:17:46.500 with his heart that supposedly wouldn't burn, 00:17:46.619 --> 00:17:48.759 it's like the dramatic final scene of that whole 00:17:48.759 --> 00:17:51.220 romantic era. It's the end of a radical life, 00:17:51.299 --> 00:17:54.420 in a way. She returns to England in 1823, a widow, 00:17:54.579 --> 00:17:56.859 a single mother, determined to raise her son 00:17:56.859 --> 00:17:58.960 and live by her pen. But she's immediately thrown 00:17:58.960 --> 00:18:01.240 into a new kind of battle. A professional one. 00:18:01.579 --> 00:18:04.059 And a financial one. She's up against her father 00:18:04.059 --> 00:18:06.380 -in -law, Sir Timothy Shelley. A conservative 00:18:06.380 --> 00:18:09.119 aristocrat who despised everything about his 00:18:09.119 --> 00:18:12.619 son. Hated it all. He refuses to even meet Mary. 00:18:13.019 --> 00:18:15.789 And he gives her an ultimatum. He'll provide 00:18:15.789 --> 00:18:18.650 an allowance for her and her son, but only if 00:18:18.650 --> 00:18:21.289 she promises never to publish a biography or 00:18:21.289 --> 00:18:23.869 any detailed account of Percy's life. He's basically 00:18:23.869 --> 00:18:26.849 trying to erase his son's radical legacy. Exactly. 00:18:27.029 --> 00:18:29.750 And this act of censorship forces Mary into this 00:18:29.750 --> 00:18:32.289 impossible choice between financial survival 00:18:32.289 --> 00:18:34.589 for her son and telling the truth about the man 00:18:34.589 --> 00:18:37.410 she loved. It shaped the entire rest of her career. 00:18:37.589 --> 00:18:39.710 And this is where the story really pivots, because 00:18:39.710 --> 00:18:42.599 Mary Shelley, the widow, doesn't just retreat. 00:18:42.700 --> 00:18:45.119 She becomes this incredibly hardworking professional 00:18:45.119 --> 00:18:48.240 author. For decades. This is not someone resting 00:18:48.240 --> 00:18:50.700 on her laurels. She's a single working mom writing 00:18:50.700 --> 00:18:54.140 to pay the bills. In 1830, she even sold the 00:18:54.140 --> 00:18:56.279 copyright to a new edition of Frankenstein for 00:18:56.279 --> 00:18:59.599 just 60 pounds. Wow. Her output was huge. She 00:18:59.599 --> 00:19:02.299 wrote six more novels after Frankenstein. Valperga, 00:19:02.359 --> 00:19:04.099 The Last Man, which is an amazing book. We'll 00:19:04.099 --> 00:19:07.150 get to that. Perkin Warbeck, Lador, Faulkner. 00:19:07.289 --> 00:19:09.769 And she was constantly writing short stories 00:19:09.769 --> 00:19:12.250 for the popular magazines of the day, travel 00:19:12.250 --> 00:19:15.269 writing. But the work that really shows her status 00:19:15.269 --> 00:19:17.890 as a professional intellectual isn't the fiction, 00:19:17.990 --> 00:19:20.309 is it? No. This is the part of her career that 00:19:20.309 --> 00:19:23.309 gets completely overlooked. She wrote five enormous 00:19:23.309 --> 00:19:26.690 volumes of biographies for something called Lardner's 00:19:26.690 --> 00:19:29.410 Cabinet Cyclopedia. So what was the Cabinet Cyclopedia? 00:19:29.509 --> 00:19:31.829 Why was this such a big deal? Think of it as 00:19:31.829 --> 00:19:34.980 like... the high -end Wikipedia of its day. It 00:19:34.980 --> 00:19:37.480 was this massive project to bring serious history 00:19:37.480 --> 00:19:40.180 and science to the growing Victorian middle class. 00:19:40.339 --> 00:19:43.140 It was hugely popular with print runs around 00:19:43.140 --> 00:19:46.400 4 ,000 copies per volume. So for her to write 00:19:46.400 --> 00:19:49.740 five volumes of biographies of eminent men from 00:19:49.740 --> 00:19:52.940 Italy, Spain, France, that's a huge undertaking. 00:19:53.200 --> 00:19:54.920 It required incredible research, translation, 00:19:55.180 --> 00:19:57.880 synthesis. It established her not just as a novelist, 00:19:57.900 --> 00:20:00.700 but as a serious public intellectual. a professional 00:20:00.700 --> 00:20:03.539 woman of letters, which was rare. What's so fascinating 00:20:03.539 --> 00:20:05.359 to me, though, is that the themes in her work 00:20:05.359 --> 00:20:07.960 seem to be a direct challenge to the very ideas 00:20:07.960 --> 00:20:09.920 that the men in her life championed. Yeah, it 00:20:09.920 --> 00:20:12.200 is the absolute core of her genius. She lived 00:20:12.200 --> 00:20:14.359 through this radical, individualistic experiment, 00:20:14.519 --> 00:20:17.059 and her writing is a lifelong critique of its 00:20:17.059 --> 00:20:19.319 failures. Let's start with Victor Frankenstein. 00:20:19.480 --> 00:20:22.019 He's not the hero. Not at all. He's the critique. 00:20:22.420 --> 00:20:24.700 He's like Prometheus or Satan from Milton, this 00:20:24.700 --> 00:20:28.549 great, ambitious rebel. But his ambition... His 00:20:28.549 --> 00:20:31.109 relentless pursuit of knowledge with no thought 00:20:31.109 --> 00:20:33.390 for the consequences. It's a self -delusion, 00:20:33.410 --> 00:20:36.109 as she calls it. It is. He abandons his family, 00:20:36.230 --> 00:20:38.250 his community, and most importantly, his own 00:20:38.250 --> 00:20:42.289 creation. The monster is a monster because Victor 00:20:42.289 --> 00:20:44.609 fails in his domestic and social duty of care. 00:20:45.130 --> 00:20:47.589 She's condemning that kind of selfish, masculine 00:20:47.589 --> 00:20:50.190 genius. And she takes that critique to a global 00:20:50.190 --> 00:20:54.269 scale with her 1826 novel, The Last Man. An incredible 00:20:54.269 --> 00:20:57.390 and incredibly bleak apocalyptic novel. It's 00:20:57.390 --> 00:20:59.289 about a global plague that wipes out humanity. 00:21:00.009 --> 00:21:02.549 And it's a profoundly disenchanted commentary 00:21:02.549 --> 00:21:05.029 on the whole age of revolution. She has characters 00:21:05.029 --> 00:21:07.630 in it that are pretty clearly based on Byron 00:21:07.630 --> 00:21:09.849 and Percy Shelley. Oh, yes. And when the apocalypse 00:21:09.849 --> 00:21:13.190 comes, all their grand, lofty ideals and political 00:21:13.190 --> 00:21:15.650 theories are completely useless. So she's basically 00:21:15.650 --> 00:21:18.430 rejecting her father's core belief, the Enlightenment 00:21:18.430 --> 00:21:20.829 faith in progress, that humanity is always getting 00:21:20.829 --> 00:21:23.829 better. She's rejecting it completely. She's 00:21:23.829 --> 00:21:25.990 showing that humanity has no control in the face 00:21:25.990 --> 00:21:28.750 of nature and fate. After seeing her own utopia 00:21:28.750 --> 00:21:31.269 crumble, she seemed to decide that individual 00:21:31.269 --> 00:21:34.869 fervor just leads to disaster. So if she's tearing 00:21:34.869 --> 00:21:37.509 down those masculine ideals, what does she propose 00:21:37.509 --> 00:21:40.509 instead? What's her solution? It was consistent 00:21:40.509 --> 00:21:43.190 across all her work, and it was born from her 00:21:43.190 --> 00:21:46.130 grief. She argued that cooperation and sympathy, 00:21:46.390 --> 00:21:48.970 the values usually practiced by women in the 00:21:48.970 --> 00:21:51.769 family, were the only real way to reform society. 00:21:52.109 --> 00:21:54.509 So it's not grand revolution, it's small -scale 00:21:54.509 --> 00:21:57.430 domestic reform. Exactly. Her later novels are 00:21:57.430 --> 00:21:59.950 all about this. Ludor, for example, is a direct 00:21:59.950 --> 00:22:02.650 attack on patriarchal culture and a plea for 00:22:02.650 --> 00:22:05.119 equal education for men and women. And Faulkner 00:22:05.119 --> 00:22:07.119 is the one where the heroine's agenda finally 00:22:07.119 --> 00:22:09.279 wins. Yes. It's the only one where her moral 00:22:09.279 --> 00:22:11.799 vision triumphs and the men around her are guided 00:22:11.799 --> 00:22:14.400 to express compassion, sympathy and generosity. 00:22:14.859 --> 00:22:17.480 She was using fiction as a political tool. And 00:22:17.480 --> 00:22:19.140 she didn't just write about these principles. 00:22:19.279 --> 00:22:21.720 She lived them, even when it was risky. This 00:22:21.720 --> 00:22:24.440 is such a crucial part of her story. She was 00:22:24.440 --> 00:22:27.900 constantly helping women who society had cast 00:22:27.900 --> 00:22:31.059 out. The most amazing example is Isabel Robinson. 00:22:31.669 --> 00:22:34.529 and Mary Diana Dodds. Tell us about them. Mary 00:22:34.529 --> 00:22:36.630 Diana Dodds was a writer who seems to have been 00:22:36.630 --> 00:22:39.930 a lesbian and lived as a man. Society, of course, 00:22:39.990 --> 00:22:42.410 would not tolerate this. So what did Mary Shelley 00:22:42.410 --> 00:22:45.490 do? She financed them. She helped them get false 00:22:45.490 --> 00:22:47.329 passports so they could escape to France and 00:22:47.329 --> 00:22:49.569 live together as husband and wife with Dodds 00:22:49.569 --> 00:22:52.549 taking the male identity of Walter Sholto Douglas. 00:22:53.109 --> 00:22:56.490 This was a hugely risky... radical act of solidarity. 00:22:56.789 --> 00:22:58.990 Wow. She was putting her money and her reputation 00:22:58.990 --> 00:23:01.490 on the line. Absolutely. And this brings us back 00:23:01.490 --> 00:23:04.410 to that huge editorial challenge she faced. Sir 00:23:04.410 --> 00:23:06.849 Timothy's ban on a biography of Percy. Right. 00:23:06.950 --> 00:23:09.029 So she has to find another way to tell his story. 00:23:09.150 --> 00:23:11.450 And she does it brilliantly. She agrees to edit 00:23:11.450 --> 00:23:14.190 the poetical works of Percy Buscelli in 1839. 00:23:14.390 --> 00:23:16.970 And this project becomes the canonizing event 00:23:16.970 --> 00:23:19.410 that saves his reputation for a new Victorian 00:23:19.410 --> 00:23:21.710 audience. How does she do it? How does she sell 00:23:21.710 --> 00:23:24.599 this radical atheist to the Victorians? By breaking 00:23:24.599 --> 00:23:27.140 the rules. She gets around the biography ban 00:23:27.140 --> 00:23:29.920 by writing these extensive, beautiful biographical 00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:34.279 notes for all the poems. And she very carefully 00:23:34.279 --> 00:23:37.440 frames him. She sanitizes him. She does. She 00:23:37.440 --> 00:23:40.759 portrays him as this gentle, lyrical poet whose 00:23:40.759 --> 00:23:43.859 radicalism came from a deep, almost childlike 00:23:43.859 --> 00:23:46.339 sympathy for others, not from dangerous ideology. 00:23:47.039 --> 00:23:50.349 She... shapes his image for survival. Did she 00:23:50.349 --> 00:23:53.210 have to actually cut his work? She did. With 00:23:53.210 --> 00:23:56.349 his most radical early poem, Queen Mab, she initially 00:23:56.349 --> 00:23:58.910 cut out all the fiercely atheistic parts. She 00:23:58.910 --> 00:24:00.410 was terrified they would destroy his reputation 00:24:00.410 --> 00:24:03.170 and, by extension, her son's future. But she 00:24:03.170 --> 00:24:05.490 did restore them later, right? She did, and it 00:24:05.490 --> 00:24:07.589 shows her courage. Because when a later, cheaper 00:24:07.589 --> 00:24:09.569 edition came out with the atheist passages restored, 00:24:09.930 --> 00:24:12.509 her publisher was actually prosecuted for blasphemous 00:24:12.509 --> 00:24:14.829 libel. Unbelievable. Just shows the tightrope 00:24:14.829 --> 00:24:17.259 she was walking. Preserving the truth of the 00:24:17.259 --> 00:24:19.259 man she loved while fighting for her own family's 00:24:19.259 --> 00:24:21.740 survival, it was an editorial masterpiece of 00:24:21.740 --> 00:24:24.640 political calculation. But despite all of this, 00:24:24.799 --> 00:24:27.339 I mean, decades of work as a novelist, a biographer, 00:24:27.500 --> 00:24:30.339 an editor, for more than a century after she 00:24:30.339 --> 00:24:33.420 died in 1851, she'd just forgotten. Or worse, 00:24:33.559 --> 00:24:36.500 misremembered. She was just Percy's wife who 00:24:36.500 --> 00:24:39.539 wrote that one monster book. Right. A prolific, 00:24:39.539 --> 00:24:42.200 brilliant career just reduced to a fit note. 00:24:42.680 --> 00:24:45.559 And sadly, That was actively encouraged by her 00:24:45.559 --> 00:24:48.500 own family. Her son, Percy Florence, and his 00:24:48.500 --> 00:24:51.960 wife, Jane. Yes. They went on this deliberate 00:24:51.960 --> 00:24:55.400 campaign to Victorianize her. They censored her 00:24:55.400 --> 00:24:57.700 letters and diaries. They destroyed documents. 00:24:58.059 --> 00:25:00.559 They basically scrubbed away all the radical, 00:25:00.759 --> 00:25:03.160 messy, chaotic parts of her life to make her 00:25:03.160 --> 00:25:05.000 seem respectable. They even controlled where 00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:07.660 she was buried. They did. She had wanted to be 00:25:07.660 --> 00:25:09.579 buried with her parents in a radical graveyard 00:25:09.579 --> 00:25:12.140 at St. Pancras, but they thought the place was 00:25:12.140 --> 00:25:14.460 dreadful. and they buried her in Bournemouth 00:25:14.460 --> 00:25:17.099 instead, physically separating her from her radical 00:25:17.099 --> 00:25:19.680 roots. And Kersey's old friends, like Edward 00:25:19.680 --> 00:25:21.680 Trelawney, they didn't really help her reputation 00:25:21.680 --> 00:25:24.039 either, did they? No, they often downplayed her 00:25:24.039 --> 00:25:26.140 intelligence, cast doubt on whether she really 00:25:26.140 --> 00:25:28.779 wrote Frankenstein all by herself. She was effectively 00:25:28.779 --> 00:25:31.359 sidelined by history written by men. Until a 00:25:31.359 --> 00:25:33.660 year after her death, when her son opens up her 00:25:33.660 --> 00:25:36.839 old box desk, and what they find inside is just... 00:25:37.130 --> 00:25:40.130 It's so incredibly poignant. It is. It's like 00:25:40.130 --> 00:25:43.109 a physical archive of her life's love and sorrow. 00:25:43.309 --> 00:25:46.390 What was in there? Locks of her dead children's 00:25:46.390 --> 00:25:50.210 hair, a notebook she and Percy had shared, and 00:25:50.210 --> 00:25:53.670 then a small silk parcel. Inside was some of 00:25:53.670 --> 00:25:56.609 Percy's ashes and the remains of his heart, the 00:25:56.609 --> 00:25:59.150 part that wouldn't burn on the beach. Wow. And 00:25:59.150 --> 00:26:01.150 it was all wrapped up inside a copy of his poem, 00:26:01.269 --> 00:26:04.109 Adonais. It's the perfect metaphor for her life. 00:26:04.559 --> 00:26:07.039 She carried the literal heart of her radical 00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:09.539 past with her, but she kept it hidden away, safe 00:26:09.539 --> 00:26:11.960 in a box, while she navigated the public world. 00:26:12.140 --> 00:26:14.599 It's beautiful, isn't it? And thankfully, in 00:26:14.599 --> 00:26:16.720 the modern era, we've finally opened that box, 00:26:16.839 --> 00:26:19.680 metaphorically speaking. Starting in the 1970s 00:26:19.680 --> 00:26:21.880 with the rise of feminist literary criticism. 00:26:22.240 --> 00:26:24.759 Exactly. Scholars started asking, what about 00:26:24.759 --> 00:26:27.380 the women's voices that have been silenced? And 00:26:27.380 --> 00:26:29.640 they rediscovered Mary Shelley, not just the 00:26:29.640 --> 00:26:31.279 author of Frankenstein, but the whole woman. 00:26:31.420 --> 00:26:33.380 And now her other works are getting the attention 00:26:33.380 --> 00:26:36.039 they deserve. The Last Man, her travel writing, 00:26:36.180 --> 00:26:40.000 those huge biographies. And we now see her as 00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:43.420 a major romantic figure in her own right. A brilliant 00:26:43.420 --> 00:26:45.759 intellectual with a powerful, consistent political 00:26:45.759 --> 00:26:48.500 voice who not only participated in the revolution, 00:26:48.579 --> 00:26:52.240 but crucially survived it. A survivor who chronicled 00:26:52.240 --> 00:26:54.500 the failures of the brilliant doomed men who 00:26:54.500 --> 00:26:56.900 surrounded her and offered a different way forward. 00:26:57.059 --> 00:26:59.349 Hashtag tag tag outro. So when you put it all 00:26:59.349 --> 00:27:01.170 together, what do you see? You see this woman 00:27:01.170 --> 00:27:03.869 who was born into this radical, chaotic world. 00:27:04.049 --> 00:27:06.890 With the competing ideas of her parents. Reason 00:27:06.890 --> 00:27:09.990 versus individualism. And she takes that life 00:27:09.990 --> 00:27:12.990 and uses it to write literature that is a constant 00:27:12.990 --> 00:27:16.269 critique of the very egotism and unchecked ambition 00:27:16.269 --> 00:27:19.089 she saw in the men she loved. She loved the genius, 00:27:19.269 --> 00:27:22.109 but she deeply, deeply distrusted the philosophy. 00:27:22.390 --> 00:27:24.509 And she was a master synthesizer. She could pull 00:27:24.509 --> 00:27:26.630 from European history for her biographies, from 00:27:26.630 --> 00:27:28.910 scientific debates for her fiction. She could 00:27:28.910 --> 00:27:31.210 create this immortal monster, but also chart 00:27:31.210 --> 00:27:33.309 a path for social reform based on cooperation, 00:27:33.609 --> 00:27:36.460 not just individual rebellion. That warning in 00:27:36.460 --> 00:27:38.579 Frankenstein about overreaching ambition, about 00:27:38.579 --> 00:27:40.920 creation without responsibility. I mean, has 00:27:40.920 --> 00:27:43.299 there ever been a more relevant message for our 00:27:43.299 --> 00:27:45.960 world today? Probably not. And yet this incredibly 00:27:45.960 --> 00:27:49.220 prolific, brilliant professional spent the last 00:27:49.220 --> 00:27:51.920 two decades of her life carefully, meticulously 00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:54.799 crafting a safer, more palatable public image 00:27:54.799 --> 00:27:57.720 for her radical husband just to make sure his 00:27:57.720 --> 00:28:00.759 legacy survived. Which brings us to a final, 00:28:00.859 --> 00:28:03.940 really provocative thought. Go on. We know Mary 00:28:03.940 --> 00:28:06.200 Shelley was a lifelong liberal and feminist. 00:28:06.619 --> 00:28:09.279 We know she risked her own safety to help ostracized 00:28:09.279 --> 00:28:12.180 women, creating false identities for them. We 00:28:12.180 --> 00:28:14.640 also know she spent years carefully hiding the 00:28:14.640 --> 00:28:16.720 most radical parts of her husband's work from 00:28:16.720 --> 00:28:19.940 the public. So if she was forced to censor him 00:28:19.940 --> 00:28:22.759 to ensure his survival, What hidden depths of 00:28:22.759 --> 00:28:24.920 revolutionary thought did she consciously keep 00:28:24.920 --> 00:28:27.539 out of her own public work? What truly dangerous 00:28:27.539 --> 00:28:30.740 ideas about society, power, and revolution did 00:28:30.740 --> 00:28:33.140 the ultimate literary survivor choose not to 00:28:33.140 --> 00:28:35.400 share with the world? What would the book by 00:28:35.400 --> 00:28:38.160 the completely uncensored Mary Shelley have looked 00:28:38.160 --> 00:28:40.880 like? That is the hidden legacy of the ultimate 00:28:40.880 --> 00:28:43.660 romantic outlaw that we're still maybe waiting 00:28:43.660 --> 00:28:44.539 to fully discover.