The Life Of Mary Shelley: Inspiration For All Women

England was undergoing a lot of changes in the late 1700s that had an impact on the way Mary Shelley spent her time here on earth. The way she lived her childhood, received her education, and accomplished things throughout her lifetime, allowed her to be involved with the development her country was going through. She has experienced the loss of many people who were dear to her and dealt with the pain in different ways.

The late 1700’s in England is characterized by a violent revolution in France, a rebellion within the British Navy, and an economic depression across the kingdom. There was also an attempt at abolishing slavery, but it failed. During the American Revolution Canada was divided into two halves. This was done to inspire loyalty among the Canadian colonies including the new colonies that were established in Australia. With all that’s happened, Britain decided they wanted to change the way their government works. They changed the structure of the Parliament then they removed certain powers from the monarchy.

As they moved into the new century there a boom in industry. Labor practices and working conditions were terrible which caused the inventions of machinery. With coal, iron, and steam replacing wood, wind and people, there was remarkable progress made in many factories. The cotton gin increased the production of goods that used cotton such as clothing and bedding, while steamboats increased the transportation of goods and services. Oceans that once took two months to cross were crossed in two weeks due to the steamboat. Power hammers and presses made it possible to mass produce goods made of steel and iron in short amounts of time. The depression was over and business was booming, even young children were working at this time. This was an era of innovation, exploration and, creativity. In a few years Carl Benz will have invented the first automobile with a single cylinder engine and gasoline made like moonshine.

While this was happening there was a movement in the world of literature. It was called romanticism and it’s still used in today’s time. This created the idea that life was full of beauty and inspiration. There was self-awareness and individuality going around and spreading quickly. Like an awakening, there were new concepts and rules were being broken all the time. Henery David Thoreau wrote a book called Walden, which is about being self-reliant and living as an individual. During those times Elizabeth Dixon, who was married to Edward Wollstonecraft, gave birth to Mary Wollstonecraft on the 17th of April in 1759. Out of the seven children the two of them had together Mary was the second child and in the younger years of her life, her family led a comfortable lifestyle. But as time passed they eventually became bankrupt and started to endure hardships as a family. They never stayed in one city for too long, they moved around London on multiple occasions. In that rough time her father became abusive to herself and her mother, as time passed so did she.  In Mary’s journal entries she religiously kept note of what she read every day. A majority of her time was spent reading and studying on her own from the lack of being in a school for formal education.

Between the years of 1770 to 1778 she indicated in her journal entries that she read an enormous amount of literature. Some of the literature she read belonged to authors such as William Shakespeare, Homer, Thomas Moore, John Milton, Plutarch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Keats. ”The Discoveries of John Bull in a trip to Paris” was ten years old Mary’s first experience with publication and it was printed by the Juvenile Library.  Soon Mary couldn’t handle the actions of her father anymore and moved out in 1780, finding her own livelihood. For a short while after moving out, she lived with a widow in Bath, then moved back to London. At Newington Green, Mary opened up a school for girls at the age of 24 in 1784, along with the help of her sister Eliza and her best friend Fanny. Shortly after they started the school Fanny died leading Mary to take a position as governess in Ireland for the Kingsborough family. That didn’t last long either and she moved back to London living close to the centre of the publishing trade, which was also St. Pauls’ churchyard.

Joseph Johnson was a publisher of radical texts and appointed Mary to be his translator. “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters” was written by Mary in 1787 and it was about the experiences she went through and her thoughts about intelligent women who would marry rich men. In 1788 she was a regular contributor to the “Analytical Reviews” magazine which were written by John. One of her most feminist writings was “Mary: a Fiction”, published in 1788, described the effects that marriage had on women. In 1792 when her novel“A Vindication of the Rights of Women” was published it caused a lot of controversy due to the revolutionary ideas that were presented in the book, It criticized the belief of women being purely used for household adornments.  While she was visiting in France in 1792 she fell in love with Captain Gilbert Imlay and soon became pregnant with a baby girl, they named her Fanny, after Mary deceased best friend. Imlay started to reject Mary and that caused her to attempt suicide twice in 1795 and failed each time. Returning to the literary world shortly after she started to develop a relationship with William Godwin. After finding out she was pregnant with his child the two of them got married on March 29, 1797 so that when she gave birth the child would be legitimate. On August 30, 1797 her second daughter Mary Shelley was born but during the child’s birth she had uterine complications. Septicemia is what caused Mary Wollstonecraft to pass away ten days after giving birth.  Her husband Godwin narrated her life and works within the novel “memoirs” and a few other female writers started to embrace her ideologies.

In the 1960s and 1970s her work made another appearance during the feminist movement happening for the second time. She is well known for being a very intelligent feminist writer who shared her ideologies with those around her. An inspiration for all women who were involved in the feminist movements that happened throughout history.