You're Dead to Me - Mary Shelley

Episode Date: February 28, 2020

Greg Jenner is joined by literary expert Dr Corin Throsby and comedian Lauren Pattison to explore the often turbulent life of literary icon Mary Shelley. Join us as we all question our life achievements while discussing the groundbreaking work Mary produced by the age of just 20, how far she was prepared to walk for love, and arguably the most gothic first date in history.A Muddy Knees Media production for BBC Radio 4

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a history podcast for people who don't like history, or at least people who forgot to learn any at school. My name's Greg Jenner, I'm a public historian, author, and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories.

This podcast serves up a delicious range of facts and fun, which may one day help you win a yellow cheese in triple pursuit. Or is it pie? I don't know. They've never really explained that bit. Today we are plugging in the electrodes and reanimating one of the literary giants of the 19th century, and perhaps one of the most influential science fiction writers ever. Also, she was a massive goth. That's right, it's Mary Shelley. And to help me do that, I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, she's returning to the show. She's a BBC Radio New Generation thinker.

She teaches at the University of Cambridge. She's an expert on all things romanticism. It is the wonderful Dr Corinne Throsby. Hello. Hello. You're back. Oh, it's so lovely to be back. I feel it's very fitting for Frankenstein that there's like a sequel and then maybe there'll be five more that get worse and

worse. You did Byron last time out and we've got you back in for Mary Shelley. There'll be some overlap, I guess. There's a bit of overlap. Yeah, there'll be some revisiting. But Mary has her whole own thing going on. Yeah, I should say up front, today's episode, very sad, some real trauma in there. So if you want like funny, funny, funny, maybe listen to the Byron episode and come back to this one when you're feeling a bit more like you can handle a bit of emo stuff. Anyway, in Comedy Corner, she's a rising star of stand up. She's nominated for the Best Newcomer Award in the Edinburgh Fringe 2017. She's the co-host of the lovely, funny and also thoughtful Dave Channel podcast, Conversations Against Living Miserably, which is about mental health. You may have seen her on Roast Battle.

It is the wonderful Lauren Patterson. Hey, Lauren, how are you doing? I picked a very bad time to have a sip of tea there. I think it was great. I was enjoying the compliments and then I was like, oh, time to step up. How are you with history? I like history, but we didn't learn a lot of it. I feel like my school was very much the war, repeatedly,

for three years, and then you dropped history. And that was... Which war? The one where you had rations. Is that both of them? Yeah, I mean, World War II mostly, but yeah, the war. I think I only ever really learned, never learned about the Egyptians, nothing like that.

So most of my history knowledge has come from horrible histories. Well, I mean, you know, thank you for the plug. I'll take the compliment back. And do you know anything about Mary Shelley? I know she wrote Frankenstein, and that's about it. So, what do you know? Well, that leads us on to this of what do you know? And this is where I have a go at guessing what you at home might know about today's subject.

And, you know, I think you've probably heard of her. Mary Shelley is best known for writing what is often regarded as the first sci-fi novel, Frankenstein. If you haven't read the book, you may have seen one of the countless film or stage adaptations. You've got the classic Hammer Horror ones. You've got the Bride of Frankenstein, the Son of Frankenstein, the Accountant of Frankenstein. Well, that hasn't been made yet, but I am pitching it right now. And then you've got the Green Monst monsters with bolts popping out of their heads and mad scientists shouting, it's alive! Alive!

Or perhaps you've seen one of the films about Mary Shelley herself, the cult classic Gothic starring Natasha Richardson. Or more recently, in 2017, there was the imaginatively titled Mary Shelley, about Mary Shelley, and also about her friendship with Arya Stark from Game of Thrones. And that starred Elle Fanning. So there are films about her. But what else is there to know about Mary Shelley? Well, let's find out.

Dr. Corrin, Mary Shelley, childhood. You know, she's born into a pretty interesting family. Yeah, so she was born in 1797 in Somersetown in London, just behind where Google now is. So both of Mary Shelley's parents were famous thinkers, intellectuals of their time. Her dad was a political philosopher called William Godwin

and her mother was an early feminist called Mary Wollstonecraft and she was really campaigning for the idea that women should be educated and treated equally to men and then maybe they would be able to contribute usefully to society. Madness. Absolute madness. Glad that never caught on. Sadly, Mary Wollstonecraft died soon after she gave birth to Mary from complications arising

from childbirth. So Mary grew up with this guilt that she had somehow been responsible for her mother's death. Yeah, it's a pretty sad start to quite a sad life. What's her dad like as a dad? I mean, you've said he's a radical anarchist philosopher. He's got big ideas. Is he a sort of kind and generous dad? He's a really mixed bag as a dad. Mary absolutely loved him. He remarried when Mary was four years old to a woman that Mary did not love. She wasn't exactly a Disney-style wicked stepmother, but she favoured somewhat her own two children

from previous relationships. Mary felt a little kind of cast aside at this point, and her dad, although he adored Mary, wasn't always there for her. I mean, in terms of childhood stuff, did Mary kind of have the standard, you know, getting to be a kid and running around and playing with dolls? Or was she sort of sitting there learning Latin? It was a little bit of both. There was definitely this expectation. She had these two brilliant

parents. And the household that William Godwin ran was one of, you know, all these amazing intellectuals, scientists, academics, writers of the time were coming around to his house. And Mary was exposed to all of this. She was having dinner with these people, meeting all the great minds at the time. So there was a little bit of playing with dolls, but there was also a lot of reciting of poetry. Tough. How would you cope with that kind of childhood, Lauren, if you'd been raised in a household with philosophers? Would you have rejected? We only had dinner at the table when it was Christmas,

so it would have just been a lot of intellectuals sat with little lap trays with my wee dad being like, can you shut up? Corrie's on. I don't think I would have fared well in that. Her childhood prepares her to be a writer, but in other ways perhaps makes her life challenging and difficult because she's got this big reputation to live up to. Yeah, she definitely had that feeling all through her life. And she also had some health problems when she was a kid.

She had a terrible skin condition, which biographers now think is probably was just eczema. But in those days, they didn't really have a sense of skin. And it was sort of associated with maybe TB, maybe leprosy. They thought it could be much more serious than it actually was. So Mary was kind of treated as a sickly child. I think that really affected how she felt about herself. That would make you feel even more of an outsider as well. It's quite a sad childhood, isn't it?

Well, there is the story that she learnt to write her own name tracing the letters on her mother's grave. Oh, wow. You know. No wonder she became a goth. Maybe that's where it all started. Maybe that's where it all started. But it was also, I mean, it's...

If she started with a Mr. Men book, she might have been a lot more jolly. We might have had some really fun books. Frankenstein would have had a really cool hat. But it wasn't all bad. I mean, this really was an amazing and unusual household to grow up in. And the influences of all these people can be seen in her later work and her lifelong love of writing. Lauren, you're a comedian now. As a kid, did you want to be a comedian? Were you like, this is what I'm going to do. I'm funny. That's the job.

I wanted to write. I wanted to be a writer. So I think, yeah, I do think the people you're exposed to as kids shape what you end up becoming. So I grew up in a house where I was always read to, read stories. So did you grow up reading Frankenstein? Have you ever read the book? Well, I think we studied it at school. This would have been about 10 years ago when I did my GCSEs. But I think in true working class school fashion, I think they put the film on. Because I was thinking, I was like, I definitely studied it, but I don't think I've read it.

And I was like, pretty sure they just put the film on. Which version? The Robert De Niro one? I think it was in black and white. Or that could have just been that my school was quite... Maybe an old school class. Maybe the TV wasn't working. Sally's on the blink again. Well, it's a lovely book. I mean, it's a really good book. Like sometimes books that are like classic books,

you read them, you're like, oh, it's not that good. I think Frankenstein's a genuinely great book. Yeah, there's lots going on in it. It's really it's really and you know we have this sort of image of from the movies uh this is why i'm slightly concerned that the movie was your go-to for the school but that the kind of kind of monster is not what mary shelley's monster was all he was actually a really kind of lovely, complex, intelligent being that was created. And it's society that drives him evil because they're so frightened by his disgusting appearance and treat him so badly that he becomes a monster. I wonder if that came from her skin stuff as well.

You know, it could tie in. I've got psoriasis and all it is, little red marks on your skin and people look at you like you've got the plague. You can't catch it. But the more people stare, I'm like, I'm going to rub my skin on you and you'll catch it. So she'd probably stop telling people. Maybe her feeling of like she was being judged. Maybe she felt like an outsider, felt like the monster.

Well, there was definitely a sense in her house that she had these, this sort of brilliant family. And even though she herself was brilliant, she didn't necessarily really truly believe that when she was young. And we do know that as a kid, she was a little bit creepy, a sort of Adam's Family star. I mean, there is a quote by the poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who came round for dinner and said that the Godwin children were cadaverous and a quite catacombish sort of vibe.

They looked a bit dead. I've never heard children described like that. That is a good picture I've got in my head. She was very pale, but she wasn't a true goth because she had strawberry blonde hair. This was before they invented the hair dye. Ginger goth. That is amazing.

But other people who visited the house were very taken with the Godwin children and found them incredibly delightful. So they had good days and bad days. All right. So she was nice, but a little bit sort of pale and a little bit bookish. Bookish is definitely. Okay. Yeah.

So she spends her childhood in London, and she's hanging around with sort of people who know her dad, really. So fancy people, clever people, intellectual people. Does this introduce her then to the love of her life? Yeah, it is. So Percy Bysshe Shelley was basically a posh boy who didn't want to be posh, whose dad was a conservative MP and also a member of the aristocracy. Shelley went to Eton and Oxford, but he was

totally anti-establishment and he managed to get himself kicked out of Oxford for handing out in front of chapel a pamphlet called The Necessity of Atheism, which at the time was totally scandalous. So he's kicked out of Oxford. He's a radical thinker. He was a vegetarian. And he was just so committed to his political ideals. I didn't even know they had vegetarians in them days. Well, it was very unusual, Lauren. Yeah.

And he was really, really, really committed to it. He was sort of borderline vegan. What a lad. Yeah. He sounds class. I bet if I'd met him at uni, I'd hate him though. Like, oh, there's Percy with his pamphlets again. Yeah, he definitely was very earnest.

There's also this thing that he was so posh that he's wanting to bring down the class system. He's wanting to bring down the aristocracy. He was obviously a fan of Mary's dad because Mary's dad was also a radical philosopher. Percy had read his work, loved it, and started to write to him in what was basically kind of a fanboy way. Made contact, and these two, at this time, William Godwin was in a bit of financial trouble, and he was a little bit like, oh, this rich aristocratic guy

might be a bit of a meal ticket. So they're in a correspondence, and then that is how Mary meets him. Yeah, so Mary spent a bit of time in Scotland and she's come back down to London. Yeah, she got sent up to Scotland, possibly for her health. And she went and stayed with another radical philosophical family up there. She loved Scotland. Maybe it's because they're all pale up there. They're all a group there.

You'll blend in. Go be with your people. The redhead. You'll blend in. Go be with your people. Redhead. People are staring Mary. And she came out famously. She was wearing a little tartan skirt when she met Percy. She'd been in Scotland. And yeah, they fell in love instantly, is the legend.

And how old is she here? Like 15? She's like sort of 16. Okay, so it's not too creepy. It's not too creepy. And Percy Bish is young as well. Okay, so it's not too creepy. It's not too creepy. And Percy Bish is young as well. How old is he? He might be like 20.

That is creepy. Hang on. No, I'm stepping in here. That's creepy. I think he's 21 at this point. Yeah. That's not cool. He's like that student on campus hanging around the freshers.

He's like a mature student. Hey kids, I want to learn some knowledge. Oh no. Okay, and he's doing the big like, I'm a romantic, I'm a radical, I'm politically, like, edgy, but I love your dad. Surely you want a boyfriend who is, like, kicking off against a parent. Don't worry, Greg, her dad soon turns. Okay.

But at this point, Mary kind of loved her mum and dad too and really defined herself in terms of her mum and dad. So she loves the fact that Percy's also into their ideas. She was like flattered by it. Definitely. Definitely. He was a really charismatic guy and she completely fell for him. Because I love my mum.

She works in Morrison's on the cafe. And if someone ever came to me and was like, your mum makes the best cups of tea. I want to be your girlfriend. I'd be like, she does make the best cups of tea. Yeah. I'd be well chuffed. Someone respects my mum for what she does. Lauren, you have a nice boyfriend. You mentioned on the way in. What was your first date like?

What kind of stuff did you do? I was 45 minutes late because I'm not good at timekeeping, but I thought you might as well learn that now. We went to a pub and had a couple of drinks. Okay. Do you want to know about the first dates that Mary and Percy had? Was she on time? I can imagine she would be a timekeeper. You know, we don't know that. But where do you think they had their first sort of dates?

I bet it was something gothy. Did they go to a graveyard? Oh, yeah. Did they raise the dead? Bingo. And not just any graveyard. No, they went to... Or was it a man's graveyard?

Oh, Mary. What are you doing? And Lauren, it gets worse. I mean, we don't know for sure. Please don't tell me they had sex on the grave. Mary, I'm starting to resonate with you. There's no more goth than losing your virginity on your mum's grave. You're boning on the bones of your mum.

You're really committing to the goth life. You said she felt really guilty about what she'd done to her mum. That's not making it better. That's not helping anyone. I feel like her mum might have been down with it. I don't know. That's like a weird proof of the grave. Just a hand and they just see the soil for a high five.

But also, Percy must have been like, this is weird. I mean, you know, I'm down with the sex stuff, but like, does it have to be here with your mum watching? Did she tell him beforehand it was her mum's grave or was it like a big reveal at the end? Like, surprise! Do you want to meet my mum?

You already have! Anyway, that's very much Mary Shelley. The goth life is strong with this one. But there is one piece of key information that Percy hasn't shared. Do you want to guess what it is? Oh, they're not related, are they? Maybe that's worse.

No, he's married. He's married? Yeah. Would you believe it? I mean, Mary does know this. Everyone knows that he is married. Yeah. But it's sort of part of his philosophy that, you know, what is marriage?

Oh, he's one of those boys. Yeah. you know what is marriage one of those boys yeah i mean at this time to be fair to him marriage was this incredibly oppressive institution to women they were basically considered the property of their husbands and so all of this group were against marriage for very valid reasons but you can't help but feel that with shell, it's quite convenient that he's able to. I'm actually philosophically opposed to marriage, which is why I'm cheating on you. And it's awful because he actually had a little,

his wife had a little child, they had a little child together and she was also pregnant. He used to be married quite young. He got married very young. Was that like dead normal back then though? It was, it was. I imagine they didn't live as long either. It was like, come back then, though? It was, it was. I imagine they didn't live as long either.

It was like, come on, let's get everything through a bit quicker. He kind of had an idea that he was rescuing his wife, Harriet, from school. She was in a boarding school. And so they sort of ran away together and it was all very romantic. And then they had a child and he's like, this isn't as fun as it used to be. You're going to run away again. And he kind of felt like she wasn isn't as fun as it used to be. We're going to run away again.

And he kind of felt like she wasn't maybe as clever as he'd hoped or wasn't at least fully on board with his political ideals as much as he'd hoped. He's sort of romantic and kind of like interesting and progressive and then on the other hand, bit of a dick. Yeah, it's this problem with him. His ideas and his poetry were completely brilliant but as we'll see increasingly in his personal life, he's not so great.

So Mary Shelley is the other woman. You know, she's essentially a mistress. A mistress at 16. And they run away together. I mean, in a sort of parallel with his first wife, he runs away with another 16-year-old, Mary Shelley, and they go to France. They do a full

dead of night. Like a proper pack your bags. A proper pack your bags. 5am sneak out of the house and go to France. How did they get there? They got there by carriage and boat. That would be a good test though of whether you're suitable for someone because I imagine boats

took a while in them days as well. Imagine. And Mary got heinously seasick. Oh really? Yeah, she really didn't go well. I hope she proper chundered on them.

The weird thing about this whole scenario as well was that Mary Shelley's stepsister came with them. So it was

an elopement of three. Just a little family. Family little family okay so her name is claire yeah and uh mary and claire actually get along quite well as children um they're both really kind of intelligent cool girls but they're also somewhat rivals they're kind of frenemies throughout their life in the biographies it's like because claire spoke french and so that's why they make sense, that makes sense. I suppose they didn't have Google Translate in them days. Exactly. We brought Claire.

We're eloping, darling, but I don't speak French. So I brought your random sister and she'll do the translation. But it was all part of the Shelley vibe that he was wanting to create this new society and he wanted to get it. He wanted to rescue as many teenage girls

as he possibly could what a hero it's still kind of creepy he's not rescuing teenage boys is he right I mean it's like you're hot

you'll come with me you're hot you're not hot if you speak a language you're useful alright so they're in France Claire's with them is anyone else with them

no at this point it's just the three of them and a long walk across France. They decide that Switzerland is the future. Walk there with like... What have they seen? Why Switzerland the future?

I think there's this whole idea that it was like the place to kind of start a new society. It's sort of free thinking and... They make a nice clock. They do make a nice clock. They do. Good chocolate. Good cheese.

They have a terrible time because France has just endured the Napoleonic Wars. It's full of French people. I mean, really, they complained about that a lot. Why didn't you warn us, Claire? And by the time they get to Switzerland, they're kind of over it. And Switzerland sucks. And they basically turn around and go back home. They walk through France.

Yeah. I hope she had good shoes on. So do I. And can you imagine? The women were in like corsets. They were in proper, you know, old fashioned garb. Not practical. And when they get to Switzerland, is it there that they're like, this isn't working?

Or is it just Switzerland's the problem? Like, is the relationship fine? Because he's presumably also trying to chat up other women because he's into his polyamory and all that. Possibly. They're pretty in love at this point, but there was this huge problem of money. Percy Bysshelly is from a wealthy family,

but his dad obviously is not happy with what's going on and he is not getting any kind of allowance from his dad. Canceled the credit card. He's cancelled the credit card. So they're realising that they're in a bit of trouble and that's largely the reason why they have to give up on the idea of the new society. But also when she's out in France and Switzerland

she's also sort of doing travel blogging. Yeah, yeah, she is. I mean, you could call it that, Greg. I mean, it's not quite TripAdvisor. I'd love to read Mary Shelley's TripAdvisor. Yeah, you know, read, she is. I mean, you could call it that, Greg. I mean, it's not quite TripAdvisor. I'd love to read Mary Shelley's TripAdvisor. Yeah, you know. I want to read her restaurant reviews. Not enough grapes.

One star. Yeah, it's her first book is her record of this trip. She's starting to write. She's now starting to actually. She's starting to write. And this is a journal and Shelley's also contributing to it. And yeah, this is her great memoir. What are you like on holiday?

Do you like to keep a diary? Are you like a trip advisor, kind of updater? Long essays about the minibar? No, not really. I always feel so bad. I don't like leaving any form of criticism. I'm just so British. I'm like, no, no, no.

The place could be falling apart around us. And I'd be like, they did a lovely breakfast. Don't like complaining at all. Reception was on fire, but the car park is very nice. We once had somebody come into our room in the middle of the night. It was one of those holidays where me mum and dad had a room and I was on the sofa in the living room. This guy just walked in, saw me, walked back out,

and I was like, it must be a waiter, and fell back asleep. And then I was like, why would there be a waiter in our room? I was about 14 or something, so I woke my mum and dad up, and my dad was like, you dreamt it. And I was like, okay. Went back to sleep, and my mum was like, no, no, she says she saw someone, she saw someone.

So they went down to reception. Turns out a bloke, Hammond, had brought his lady of the night back with him, forgotten his room number, just guessed one, and that was ours. They gave him the key, and obviously he'd waltzed in to just a 14-year-old being like,

hello! And then he was like, it's not our room. And my mum was like, well, thank you for actually bothering to tell us about it. And I tried to get a free breakfast out of it, and they wouldn't.

I once stayed in a hotel for a wedding, and I had insomnia, and the tv light was on like it was blinking really bright and i was like that's really annoying i'll just turn that off at the wall turned it off at the wall went to bed woke up in the morning and everyone at breakfast was like oh my god the entire all the power went out last night the whole hotel totally bizarre we i had to bath in the dark i couldn't dry my hair like everyone preparing for a wedding in the pitch black hours and i had basically turned off all the power in the hotel.

And so Mary Shelley, travel journalism, but they run out of money, back home. Presumably they have to slink back in, back to William Godwin and like, Dad, I ran out of money. How long would that journey have taken them as well? That would have been a while, yeah? It was six weeks that they were away. William Godwin does not welcome them with open arms. And they are kind of surprised by this because he is, you know, he's a radical thinker.

He is theoretically a proponent of free love and, you know, sticking it to the man. But he is not happy that this has happened with his daughter. They basically have to go out on their own. She's a young woman now. Yeah. Frankenstein is written sort of. She's a young woman now. Yeah. Frankenstein is written sort of 1816, during a holiday in Switzerland. So if they return to Switzerland...

They go back. Give them a second chance. They move around. This is going to be a theme, right? They move around a lot. They sort of don't quite settle back into London. They're kind of outcasts now in many ways. And Claire, meanwhile, has had an affair with the great

poet of the age Lord Byron um that's what you do isn't it I mean pretty much everyone has right and they're sort of you know people kind of see it as a bit of a competitive thing with Claire it's like well you've got your poet how about my poet he's like the absolute best. She has this affair. She's actually pregnant by him. And she convinces Mary and Percy to go with her to Switzerland, which is where Byron is. Corinne, we did an episode on him, but very quickly, how would you summarise Lord Byron? He was the most famous poet of the day. He was kind of like a rock star. He's sort of had a bad boy image and everyone was reading his poetry and were

being scandalised by it. And so they take a house near Byron's and they have what is now an incredibly famous summer in literary history where they all hang out. You've basically got three brilliant stories that come out that night. You've got a vampire story, you've got a ghost story and you've got Frankenstein. I mean, it's the original dark and stormy night. There's a terrible storm. It's called the year without a summer because there's terrible weather the whole summer.

And on this night, they all read ghost stories. And then Byron suggests that they tell ghost stories. And I actually, listening back to our Byron podcast, make it sound like Mary told the story of Frankenstein on that night. But actually, she went away after this challenge was issued and it took her a couple of weeks to come up with the idea. She was really kind of, it's a classic thing where the guys were able to just kind of tell the story at the time

and then nothing came of it. Whereas Mary, you know, couldn't quite come up with the goods on the night and then she wrote what was this amazing novel that we still have today. She played the long game. She put the work in. The way that she wrote about this idea coming to her was almost like it came to her in a waking dream that it was like a nightmare that she had.

So 1816 she writes Frankenstein. Do you know the full title? Mr. Frankenstein. Not quite. Frankenstein. Do you know the full title? Mr. Frankenstein. Not quite. Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus. So Prometheus being the ancient

titan god who steals fire from the gods for humanity. So the idea here is technology playing with fire, playing with the gods. Yeah, yeah. And of course Prometheus also created man out of clay. So there's this kind of sense of a new creation, a new being. The book is about reanimating a corpse, essentially.

Yeah, it is. And you tied in some ways to Mary Shelley's, that there was kind of death throughout Mary Shelley's life. How old is she here? She is still insanely young. Yeah, she's like 18, 19. Oh my God. She's 19 when Frankenstein's published. But Yeah, she's like 18, 19. Oh my God. She's 19 when Frankenstein's published,

but yeah, she's a teenager. She was that young when she wrote it. Yeah, yeah, she's really... I've done nothing with my life. When I was 18, I was still like basically learning to take a bus. Yeah. I had to ring the manager of my Halls of Residence

because I couldn't work out how to use the oven and I didn't have it switched on. She's written Frankenstein. What a woman. So she, I mean, it takes a couple of years to publish as well. It does.

So, and what's interesting, I guess, is that her name isn't on the book. It's not on the book. No, she, I mean, basically because she's a woman, she publishes it anonymously. Lots of people thought

because she dedicates it to her father, William Godwin. So people knew that it was from someone in the circle and a lot of people thought it might have been Percy Bysshe Shelley who wrote it because she does it two years later she says all right no I wrote this yeah she does she um makes a claim for it because I mean part of the thing of being anonymous was that she didn't get any royalties from it right there were lots of pirated copies and things going around and play version like theatrical versions and things

being made and she didn't profit from that and so part of the edition that did have her name on it was that she could then kind of claim some copyright yeah over the work so she was actually sort of saying i wrote this and actually where's my money yeah yeah well fair play exactly it's you know her book absolutely and also presumably people are saying percy wrote it she's probably thinking uh no he didn't did other people try and take credit for it as well possibly

but there's still this kind of thing even really recently academics have sort of suggested that Percy had a huge role in writing the book and kind of

he wrote half of it because a woman couldn't possibly have written it herself yeah absolutely now Percy's wife is now dead. Oh, I forgot about that. Tragically.

So they can get married. How did she die? She kills herself. And I mean, it's at this point that we really see the fallout for what Mary and Percy have decided to do. That running away together and living to Percy's strict

ideals of how society should live has meant that there have been, well, there are a couple of major casualties. Poor Harriet. Poor Harriet. She is pregnant. Yeah, and the kids. She drowns herself in the serpentine in Hyde Park. Oh, wow.

It's a tragic story. It is a tragic story. And meanwhile, there's also a horrible tragedy happening to Mary herself. She loses three children. It is a tragic story. And meanwhile, there's also a horrible tragedy happening to Mary herself. She loses three children. She has miscarriages. Five-year period of real, real horrible sadness. Yeah, absolutely. She loses three of her children.

One is a tiny baby. Two is kind of two and three-year-old. So it's really unimaginable. She was basically pregnant the entire time she was with Percy Bysshe Shelley. And, you know, with all of this, she was moving around and managing to write one of the greatest novels of the age. It really is incredible. Her half sister also commits suicide, the sister that they left back in the house. So it really, there's a lot of death. And so you can see Frankenstein, this idea of, you know, when her first baby dies, she imagines that if she puts the baby by the fire, it might come back to life. And so this kind of sense of bringing things, reanimating. Yeah, which obviously is a deeply powerful emotive response.

But there's also a slightly rational response in that there are experimentations happening with electricity. Galvani, there are sort of various Italian scientists who are trying to reanimate frogs and things. So she's also an intellectual, she's interested in new scientific ideas. So there's a combination perhaps of her writing about what's kind of cutting edge science. Oh, absolutely. I mean, this was really what the novel was about. She was fascinated with, and she had been since she was a child, fascinated with science. And, you know, this is really a shift that we see in the entire world where science is becoming a thing that we

need to be careful of, we need to be responsible in our use of. Okay, so this is a five year window where she's a successful novelist, she's earning money, but her personal life is just relentlessly sad and brutal. What is Percy up to at this point? Because hopefully he's being a sensitive, modern, progressive man who's like, oh my God, my poor wife having a terrible time. No, he's not. Percy, come on. I know.

So there have been various kind of to's and fro's back between the continent and England. And they basically decide that Italy is the place for them. There's an expat community with lots of fun English people who are wanting to... Byron, for example, is out there. Byron is there. And so they settle in Pisa for a little while and there's a cool group of dudes that Shelley goes out shooting with,

sailing his yacht. I mean, he does... Well, he writes some great poetry in this time. And it's not all terrible with him and Mary, but he feels a bit sulky that Mary falls into a bit of a depression at this point. So she has, I mean, she's lost three children. She's got every reason to be depressed. She has a terrible miscarriage that Shelley, to his credit,

during a miscarriage, he realises what is going to help and he makes her sit in an ice bath to stop the bleeding. So he does kind of effectively save her life at that point. Yay, Shelley. But it's a shame because this period has really set Mary in history as being a bit of a downer and a bit of an ice queen. And a lot of Shelley's friends at the time were like, you know, Mary isn as being a bit of a downer and a bit of an ice queen and a lot of Shelley's friends at the time were like, you know, Mary isn't being a good wife to Shelley. And now looking back, it's like guys, come on.

She was going through all of this. So he's palling around with the Corsair crew is what they called themselves, isn't it? The Pistol Club. The Pistol Club. And he says he's not a posh boy. I know, yeah. It's such a sort of, like, I'm just hanging out with Jonty and we're just going to pop down to the old Corsair crew.

Meanwhile, she's like, I guess I'll be over here then. Like, really sad. I wonder if that made her think of her own mum too, because if her mum died in childbirth with her and then if all her children... You'd start to think you were, like, cursed or something. Lauren, you've absolutely... Did she?

She really, really did. There were all these deaths happening around her and she did feel like she was somehow causing them or responsible for them and there were these things that her children died from fever because she was travelling through Italy where there was malaria and her child catches malaria

so she felt incredibly guilty and bad about all the things that were happening. She does have one child who survives, Percy Florence. So she does get to be a mum and she's got something to live for, essentially. But the marriage with Percy Shelley is bumpy because he's essentially being a bit of a douche. There's also the fact that he's kind of hitting on her friends.

Part of the gang that they're hanging out with, there's a couple called Edward and Jane Williams, and he kind of falls in love with Jane at this point and is writing her romantic poetry. And he and Edward, Jane's husband, go on a trip together, and this is where the, I mean, what Mary later defined as the greatest tragedy of her life, which is that Percy Buscell Shelley doesn't make it back.

He drowns out at sea in a terrible storm and she has left a widow. Yeah, and they take a little while for the body to wash up and they don't know initially where he is, what's happened to him. Yeah, there's sort of an awful account of her and Jane kind of waiting back at the house, knowing that something must have gone wrong. So these two women who both love him. Yeah.

One married to him. Well, Jane's also losing her husband. Oh, is he there as well? Yeah, her husband's there as well. I was going to say, I'd be like, Jane, excuse me. It's so dramatic. So they've both lost their husbands, but Jane is in a relationship with Percy. And there's so much going on there.

There's so much going on. It's quite incestuous. Because of Italian quarantine regulations, they can't take the bodies back to England or wherever they want to bury them. And so they have to burn the bodies on the beach. It's now being kind of romanticised as this scene, which actually in the Walker Gallery in Liverpool, there's this wonderful, historically inaccurate painting of them burning the bodies on the beach with Mary there crying. But actually, Mary wasn't there.

She couldn't face it. Oh, really? So Byron and other friends kind of took care of it. Pretty brutal. There is one part of Percy which doesn't burn. Do you want to guess what it was? Am I right? It wasn't that, if that's what you're thinking.

Was it his ankle? No. More romantic than that. It was the heart. His heart. His heart. She probably kept it in her jaw, not on her. Well.

You know, she did. She kept it in a silk scarf, didn't she? Or a silk bag. It was like a piece of silk and some pages of Shelley's poetry. Yeah. For the rest of her life. But does it go off a heart? I don't know, Lauren.

I feel like it wasn't in good shape. And there is some question about whether it was actually the heart. But we all like to think it was the heart. Imagine if you find out it was just the spleen or something. Liver. Yeah, not quite as nice. Was she still really young here as well, I imagine? Oh my goodness, she is 24 years old.

She's younger than me. The life she has lived, it's just years old. She's younger than me. The life she has lived, it's just so much. It's so intense. It's too much grief. She now kind of moves back to England and Jane Williams, who has been having a relationship

with her husband. I don't know if I trust Jane. Okay, so see if you can see this one coming. They start having a bit of a thing. Really? So, I mean, this is the big question isn't it was was mary shelley bisexual was there a romantic thing here it's difficult to say because

women at this time wrote about friendships in incredibly passionate and romantic terms but there's definitely some evidence that maybe it was a physical relationship as well, possibly, but we can't know for sure. But there's like a couple of letters where, yeah, Mary alludes to maybe being into women. The quote is, I was so ready to give myself away and being afraid of men, I was apt to get talcy mousy for women. Talcy mousy? Do you know what talcy mousy might mean?

Get frisky? Towsie Mousie basically meant a lady's private parts. Oh, that's so sweet. So maybe she was down with going down with lady parts. So, you know, or maybe she was just sort of thinking it through and going, well, men are dicks, maybe I should just hang out with ladies. And, you know, we don't know if there was a sort of sexual attraction. Maybe she's just thinking it through as an idea.

Can I imagine she was quite a free thing. If anyone's going to be open to it, sounds like it would be Mary. Oh, absolutely. There's a great story where she helps two female friends who seem sort of probably in a relationship, elope together to France, where one of them is dressed as a man or kind of poses as the man of the relationship.

Did Claire go along on that one as well? So she's definitely, and she's really been kind of embraced by queer theorists because her work kind of lends itself. She often writes about sort of outsiders who are misunderstood by society. And so, yeah. So she's a sort of LGBT ally because she, as you say, the friends are Isabel Robinson and and mary diana dodds and known as doddy doddy yeah and so this idea of they elope to go and live together and she

helps them to get out the country she does she helps doddy get a male passport wow drags him up or drags her up yeah i mean at this point she's like 25. She's still really young. And she's got loads of living to do still. What happens after Percy Shelley's death? Does she go, right, OK, I better crack on with the writing? Absolutely. I mean, she's effectively a single mum at this point because Sir Timothy, Percy's dad, he wants Percy Florence to be raised by him and his... So he wants to raise his grandchild.

He wants to raise his grandchild. He wants to raise his grandchild. She says no way. He effectively cuts her off and she needs to earn money. And she manages to earn money by writing. She writes a whole load of stuff, writes magazines and does really kind of jobbing writing. And she also writes a number of novels at this point. So she's really cranking it out. And it's amazing.

It was really difficult at this time for a woman to make a living in this way, particularly a single woman who was still seen as dubious because of her background. And she really, you know, makes a life for her and Percy Florence. Does she earn good money? You know, is she comfortably well off? Yeah, I think she's okay. But then Percy Florence eventually, Sir Timothy lives forever.

She's basically constantly waiting for Sir Timothy to die. Finally he dies and then Percy Florence inherits the title. And then he can look after his mum a bit, yeah. Yeah. And how does Mary Shelley die? What, you know, 1851, what is it that finally catches up with her after this long, dramatic life?

Well, she actually in the end dies of a brain tumour or what they think is a brain tumour. She's sick for a while. At this point she devotes sort of her whole life in the end to Percy Florence. It's a shame because Percy Florence is possibly the most boring man in the world. I mean, it's really such a shame for history that the son of two of the greatest radical thinkers of all time turned into a kind of, you know, he went to Eton and Oxford, loved it.

You know, played rugby, did some yachting, loved golf, hated travel, didn't much care for literature either. But Mary adored him. And his wife, a woman called Jane, was good to mary and they got along quite well but jane and percy they were victorians and they did a great job of whitewashing the whole story it's like mary and percy greatest love of all time let's just forget about the more radical free love bits of what they were all about. But Mary dies of a brain tumour and is buried. Weirdly, Jane goes and digs up the bodies of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary's mum and dad, brings them down to Bournemouth, which is where they live, and buries them all together. Oh, it's sort of a family plot.

It's a family plot. Shelley's heart joins them later when Percy Florence dies. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, Lauren, what are you

thinking here? I mean, you know, we've thrown a lot at you. This is the best episode of Holly Oaks

ever. The Nuance Window! We've reached the part of the show which is my favourite part.

It's the Nuance Window where we allow Corin, our expert, to geek out for two uninterrupted minutes on her favourite thing that we need to know. So, Corinne, what are you going to tell us? I'm going to talk about one of Mary Shelley's other novels, The Last Man.

OK, take it away. This novel is one of the first ever books about what would happen if there was an apocalypse, basically, the end of the world. She started writing it just after she found out about Byron's death. And she was feeling like it was the end of an era and that she was this sole survivor of her generation. And the novel has lots of biographical, autobiographical elements to it. It's from the point of view of a man called Lionel Verney, and he is friends with these two larger-than-life characters. One is a saintly, free-thinking nobleman called Adrian

slash Percy Bershelly, and the other one is a cool bad boy called Lord Raymond. Byron! called Lord Raymond Byron. In this novel, a plague hits the hotter countries of the world and all of those people flee up to England and England becomes inundated with refugees, which gives Adrian lots of time to be kind of saintly and offer land to like house and feed the refugees. Then, spoiler alert, everyone dies from the plague except Lionel Verney, who is left wandering the world. And this novel is interesting for two reasons. First of all, it takes place at the end of the 21st century, which is approximately 50 years from now. And along with the plague, there's all sorts of climate catastrophes. And I'm saying if Mary Shelley predicts the end of the world in 50 years, we should all start listening, climate deniers.

Secondly, this novel was a real shift away from the romantic ideas of Mary's contemporaries. So they believed in the power of humanity and the power of the imagination to take us out of terrible things. And Mary Shelley was like, let your imagination get you out of this, guys. Oh, no, you can't because you're all dead. So she was really busting genres. She's a complete genius. I mean, this is a work of despair and horror. But in doing so, she was really shifting the science fiction genre.

So well done, Mary, you strange weirdo. Very good. Thank you. Strange weirdo is kind of on brand for her, isn't it? But amazing foresight. This is a woman looking forward to the future and going, this might be the future of humanity. Yeah, it's really, I mean, she has this theme in so much of her work that if we treat people who are different from us badly, if we treat the environment badly, then it's going to come back to bite us. And I think that that's a great legacy of her work. Yeah. She seems so, like, ahead of her time.

So much so. And there's, you know, Frankenstein just lends itself to so many readings and, yeah, so many different interpretations. All right, well, I think we have covered an awful lot of stuff here, so it's time to quiz our guest. So what do you know now? This is the So What Do You Know Now? We had the So What Do You Know at the beginning.

Now it's time for a 60-second quickfire quiz. Some of these questions might be a bit tricky, some of them hopefully not too tricky. We'll see how you do. So I'm going to get the stopwatch up. Are you feeling confident, Lauren? Sort of. I don't want to say yes and then get every single question wrong

and be like, damn, here it is. I'm sure you'll be fine. All right, here we go. Question one In 1797, what happened to Mary Shelley? She was born She was born, I mean, yeah Good stuff

Good stuff Who was Mary Shelley's famous mother? It was Mary something Yes And she was like a radical feminist That's right, Mary Wollstonecraft Wollstonecraft, that's the one I will give you that one

What did a teenage Mary do on her mother's grave? Had a little bit of tousy-mousy time. She did indeed. What, allegedly, did Mary keep in a silk bag on her desk for the rest of her life? A heart, possibly spleen. We don't know. I think spleen is possible. Name a novel by Mary Shelley other than Frankenstein.

That one you just spoke about. Yes. Ah, the... It was called The Something. Not The Last of Us. That's a video game. Oh, nearly, nearly. Man, that's man.

The Last Man, yes, yes. Well remembered. Question six. At the time of her death, who was her only surviving child? Percy Florence. Percy Florence. What was the full title

of Frankenstein, the novel? The Modern Prometheus. Oh, seven out of seven so far. Yeah! In her widowhood, she was a close friend and potential lover of which lady? Jane Edwards. No, not Edwards. Jane Williams.

Jane Williams. Her husband was Edwards. Question nine. How did Mary help her friends Mary and Isabel? She made her into a drag king and sent them off to France with a male passport. Absolutely. Final question. In 1851, Mary died of what?

Braintuber. Braintuber. Very sad. That is nine and a half out of ten. Yeah. Which is a very stonkily good score. I told you I like learning. I mean, you nailed it.

I mean, this is what happens when you get a good expert in to share all the good stuff. How do you feel about Mary Shelley now? I feel bad that I didn't know more about her before. You get to talk Frankenstein, but she's so interesting. I don't get why we're not talking more about her. I think it is because she had all these huge personalities in her life and that she herself kind of figured herself as this quiet observer, that her life is being kind of overshadowed

by these men basically of Byron and Shelley and you know her mum and well her mum and dad she really was a fascinating woman in her own right can you imagine teaching like 15 year old girls about her they'd be like what a badass yeah and especially 15 year old goth girls like an icon absolutely yeah all right well I think we've reached the end of the podcast, unfortunately. We've learned a lot and it sounds like you learned a lot, Lauren,

because nine and a half out of ten is a properly good score. I think I love her. She's great. A little bit weird, but all the best people are. Are you going to go read Frankenstein now?

I genuinely think I might, you know. Oh, great. Yeah. I think we should. I think we should all read it. And The Last Man. Yeah. No, don't read The Last Man.

It sucks. It's too depressing. At the end, don't read The Last Man. It sucks. It's too depressing. At the end, you're like dying for the apocalypse to happen. It's like, let this disease try. So an important work of literature, but no fun. No fun. I hope you've enjoyed our grand tour of the fascinating, tragic, but dramatic life of a true literary legend, Mary Shelley.

If you've enjoyed today's podcast, please do share it with your friends. Leave a review online. Do all those things you're meant to do with podcasts. And of course, subscribe to You're Dead to Me so you never miss an episode. And if you're a new listener to the podcast and you've not heard it before, then go back through our back catalogue and listen to some other episodes about trailblazing women, for example. We've got Harriet Tubman, we've got Joan of Arc, and of course, if you like your romanticism, we've got Lord Byron as well. But for now, let me say a huge thank you to our marvellous guests. In Comedy Corner, the wonderful Lauren Patterson.

Thank you. Thank you. And in History Corner, Dr Corinne Throsby. Thank you. Thank you. All right, with that, I'm off to go and bury my heart and maybe dig it up and then maybe put it in a silk bag. With that, I will say goodbye.

Bye. Your Dead to Me was a Monday News media production for BBC Radio 4. goodbye. Bye! to tell you about Evil Genius, our hit podcast, two and a half million downloads in 2019, top ten, where we take people from history, Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, John Lennon, and detonate fact bombs around their reputations. It's stuff you don't want to know, but you really do want to know.

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