Fanny Imlay
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"On Fanny Godwin"
- Her voice did quiver as we parted,
- Yet knew I not that heart was broken
- From which it came, and I departed
- Heeding not the words then spoken.
- Misery—O Misery,
- This world is all too wide for thee.
Frances "Fanny" Imlay (14 May 1794 – 9 October 1816), also known as Fanny Godwin and Frances Wollstonecraft, was the illegitimate daughter of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the American commercial speculator Gilbert Imlay.
Although Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay lived together happily
for brief periods before and after the birth of Fanny, Imlay left
Wollstonecraft in France in the midst of the French Revolution. In an attempt to revive their relationship, she travelled to Scandinavia
on business for him, taking the one-year-old Fanny with her, but the
affair never rekindled. After falling in love with and marrying the
philosopher William Godwin, Wollstonecraft died in childbirth in 1797, leaving the three-year-old Fanny in the hands of Godwin, along with the newborn Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (the future author of Frankenstein).
Four years later, Godwin remarried and his new wife, Mary Jane
Clairmont, brought children of her own into the marriage, most
significantly—from Fanny Imlay's and Mary Godwin's perspective—Claire Clairmont.
Both girls resented the new Mrs Godwin and the attention she paid to
her own daughter. The Godwin household became an increasingly
uncomfortable place to live as tensions rose and debts mounted. The
teenage Mary and Claire escaped by running off to the Continent with the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
in 1814. Fanny, left behind, bore the brunt of Godwin's anger. She
became increasingly isolated from her family and committed suicide in
1816 at the age of 22.
Frankenstein?
Early life
Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in Somers Town, London, in 1797. She was the second child of the feminist philosopher, educator, and writer Mary Wollstonecraft, and the first child of the philosopher, novelist, and journalist William Godwin. Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever ten days after Mary was born. Godwin was left to bring up Mary, along with her older half-sister, Fanny Imlay, Wollstonecraft's child by the American speculator Gilbert Imlay.[2] A year after Wollstonecraft's death, Godwin published his Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1798), which he intended as a sincere and compassionate tribute. However, because the Memoirs
revealed Wollstonecraft's affairs and her illegitimate child, they were
seen as shocking. Mary Godwin read these memoirs and her mother's
books, and was brought up to cherish her mother's memory.[3]
Mary's earliest years were happy ones, judging from the letters of William Godwin's housekeeper and nurse, Louisa Jones.[4] But Godwin was often deeply in debt; feeling that he could not raise the children by himself, he cast about for a second wife.[5] In December 1801, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, a well-educated woman with two young children of her own—Charles and Claire.[note 1] Most of Godwin’s friends disliked his new wife, describing her as quick-tempered and quarrelsome;[6][note 2] but Godwin was devoted to her, and the marriage was a success.[7] Mary Godwin, on the other hand, came to detest her stepmother.[8]
William Godwin's 19th-century biographer C. Kegan Paul later suggested
that Mrs Godwin had favoured her own children over Mary
Wollstonecraft’s.[9]
Together, the Godwins started a publishing firm called M. J. Godwin,
which sold children's books as well as stationery, maps, and games.
However, the business did not turn a profit, and Godwin was forced to
borrow substantial sums to keep it going.[10]
He continued to borrow to pay off earlier loans, compounding his
problems. By 1809, Godwin's business was close to failure and he was
"near to despair".[11] Godwin was saved from debtor's prison by philosophical devotees such as Francis Place, who lent him further money.[12]
Though Mary Godwin received little formal education, her father
tutored her in a broad range of subjects. He often took the children on
educational outings, and they had access to his library and to the many
intellectuals who visited him, including the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the former vice-president of the United States Aaron Burr.[13] Godwin admitted he was not educating the children according to Mary Wollstonecraft's philosophy as outlined in works such as A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), but Mary Godwin nonetheless received an unusual and advanced education for a girl of the time. She had a governess, a daily tutor, and read many of her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in manuscript.[14] For six months in 1811, she also attended a boarding school in Ramsgate.[15]
Her father described her at fifteen as "singularly bold, somewhat
imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her
perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible."[16]
In June 1812, her father sent Mary to stay with the Dissenting family of the radical William Baxter, near Dundee, Scotland.[17] To Baxter, he wrote, "I am anxious that she should be brought up ... like a philosopher, even like a cynic."[18]
Scholars have speculated that she may have been sent away for her
health, to remove her from the seamy side of business, or to introduce
her to radical politics.[19]
Mary Godwin revelled in the spacious surroundings of Baxter's house and
in the companionship of his four daughters, and she returned north in
the summer of 1813 for a further stay of ten months.[20] In the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein,
she recalled: "I wrote then—but in a most common-place style. It was
beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak
sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true compositions, the
airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered."[21]
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by Mary Shelley about a creature produced by an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823.
Shelley had travelled the region in which the story takes place, and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her future husband, Percy. The storyline emerged from a dream. Mary, Percy, Lord Byron, and John Polidori decided to have a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for weeks about what her possible storyline could be, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made. She then wrote Frankenstein.
Frankenstein is infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction. Brian Aldiss has argued that it should be considered the first true science fiction story, because unlike in previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of later science fiction, the central character "makes a deliberate decision" and "turns to modern experiments in the laboratory" to achieve fantastic results.[1] The story is partially based on Giovanni Aldini's electrical experiments on dead and (sometimes) living animals and was also a warning against the expansion of modern humans in the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in its subtitle, The Modern Prometheus. It has had a considerable influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films.
Since publication of the novel, the name "Frankenstein" is often used to refer to the monster itself, as is done in the stage adaptation by Peggy Webling. This usage is sometimes considered erroneous, but usage commentators regard the monster sense of "Frankenstein" as well-established and not an error.[2][3][4] In the novel, the monster is identified via words such as "creature," "monster", "fiend", "wretch", "vile insect", "daemon", and "it". Speaking to Dr. Frankenstein, the monster refers to himself as "the Adam of your labors", and elsewhere as someone who "would have" been "your Adam", but is instead your "fallen angel."
Now, what's the story of Percy and Mary?
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