Robin Morgan:
The "otherizing" of women is the oldest oppression known to our species, and it's the model, the template, for all other oppressions.

UPCOMING PRODUCTION:

Where do monsters come from?

Frankenstein Incarnate: The Passions of Mary Shelley
A world premiere
written by Anne Bertram
directed by Carin Bratlie
October 26 – November 17, 2007

The life of novelist Mary Shelley overlaps and intertwines with the story that made her famous, illuminating the creator and creature within us all.

Mary W. Shelley Biographical Highlights and Chronology

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)

"I busied myself to think of a story ... one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart."

--Mary W. Shelley, introduction to Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was the author of Frankenstein, the classic story of a scientist who discovers how to re-animate the dead and his monstrous creation, who ultimately destroys him. Ever since its publication in 1818, Frankenstein has seized the imagination of its readers and inspired countless dramatizations, imitations, and take-offs. It has become a cultural myth about the dangers of seeking knowledge.

Mary's background prepared her to think deeply and to express herself with conviction. Born in London, she was the daughter of influential philosopher William Godwin and trailblazing feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (who died from complications of giving birth to her). She grew up in a lively, intellectual household, which, after her father's second marriage, eventually came to include five children, three girls and two boys. Godwin encouraged the children to keep abreast of current events, to read widely, to write, and to think for themselves. A bookseller and publisher, he published Mary’s first book, a children's story that she wrote at the age of eleven.

Guests in the Godwin home included poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, American political exile Aaron Burr, and, fatefully, poet and utopian thinker Percy Bysshe Shelley. An admirer of Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Shelley came to London to meet its author, and was soon regularly attending dinner at his house. Shelley was twenty-two, married, the father of a small daughter, with another child on the way. Sixteen-year-old Mary fell in love with him and declared her willingness to run away with him, in accordance with his (and her father's) principles of free love. Along with her stepsister Claire Clairmont, they went to Switzerland, then lived a wandering life in England and Italy. Mary and Shelley were together for eight years, during which she was pregnant five times. Only one of their children, Percy Florence, survived to adulthood.

In the summer of 1816, Mary, Shelley and Claire were staying with Claire's lover, the (in)famous poet Lord Byron, in a villa in Switzerland. Bad weather kept them indoors, and, as an amusement, Byron proposed that they all write ghost stories. This celebrated challenge inspired Mary to write Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. It was published in 1818, when Mary was twenty years old.

Mary wrote professionally for the rest of her life. Her other books included Valperga, a historical novel about fourteenth-century Italy; Lodore, a romance whose hero strongly resembled Lord Byron, and The Last Man, a science fiction story set in the 21st century, as a mysterious plague depopulates the world. Mary also edited, annotated, and promoted Shelley’s work after he died in a boating accident at the age of 29. She died of brain cancer, aged 53.

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) – Mother of Mary W. Shelley

"I wish to see women neither heroines nor brutes; but reasonable creatures."

--Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

English writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) is best known for her treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. In it, she argues that women are rational human beings with the potential to benefit society, and should therefore enjoy the same rights and educational opportunities as men.

Wollstonecraft's unconventional life had a strong influence - stronger, perhaps even, than her Vindication - on the way people think about women's place in society. As a young woman, she would protect her mother from her drunk and violent father by sleeping on the landing in front of her mother's room. Unusually for a middle-class woman of her time, she earned her own living, first as a teacher and governess, and then as a writer and translator. She risked her social standing by pursuing sexual relationships outside of marriage, first with British painter Henry Fuseli, and then with the American Gilbert Imlay, with whom she had a daughter, Fanny. When Imlay rejected her, she attempted suicide. Her next partner was philosopher William Godwin. In his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Godwin had described marriage as "a monopoly, and the worst of monopolies." However, when Mary became pregnant with his child, they decided to marry so that the child would be legitimate. Mary Wollstonecraft gave birth to her second daughter - Mary Wollestonecraft Godwin, later Shelley - in August of 1797, and died twelve days later, from an infection she contracted in childbirth.

Wollstonecraft's grieving husband published A Memoir of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which he sought to give a plain account of her life, including her affairs and attempt at suicide. As a result, many people perceived her as mentally unsound and sexually immoral, and discounted her work on account of her lifestyle. Others, however, were inspired by her commitment to her own principles rather than to society's conventions. To take just one example, groundbreaking American suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton dedicated their History of Women's Suffrage (1881) to her.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: A Chronology