You're Dead to Me - Mary Shelley (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

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 them 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.For the full-length verion of this episode, please look further back in the feed.

This is the BBC. This podcast is supported by advertising outside the UK. Hello, Greg here. Just popping in to say that this is a radio edit of the episode, which means it's a bit shorter and some of the naughty stuff has been removed, so it's a bit more appropriate for family listening. If you want to hear the full-length versions, scroll down to the original episode further back in our feed. Thanks very much. Enjoy the show.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the history podcast for everyone. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and I'm the chief nerd on the BBC comedy show Horrible Histories. And you may have heard my other Radio 4 show, Homeschool History, although that one's mostly for the kids. This podcast serves up a delicious range of facts and fun, which may one day help you win a yellow cheese in Trivial Pursuit. Or are they pies? I can't remember. Never mind. 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 a BBC Radio New Generation thinker. She teaches at the University of Cambridge. She's an expert on all things romanticism. It's the marvellous Dr. Corin Throsby. Hello, Corin. Welcome to the show. Hello. Thank you for being here. And in Comedy Corner, she's a rising star of stand-up comedy and was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Edinburgh Fringe Award in 2017. She's a podcaster, and you may have seen her hilarious appearances on Roast Battle UK or various other lovely radio shows.

It's Lauren Patterson. Hi, Lauren. How are you? 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, no, time to step up. How are you with history? I like history, but we didn't learn a lot of it.

I felt like my school was very much the war, repeatedly, for three years and then you dropped history. And do you know anything about Mary Shelley? I know she wrote Frankenstein

and that's about it. So, what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you at home might know about today's subject. 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. 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, and that

starred Elle Fanning. But what else is there to know about Mary Shelley? Well, let's find out. Dr. Corrin, she's born into a pretty interesting family. Dr. Corrin, she's born into a pretty interesting family. 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? 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. Did Mary 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? 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. 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?

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. Mary'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 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. And that'd 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 learned to write her own name tracing the letters on her mother's grave so oh wow you know no wonder she became a goth maybe that's where it all started but it wasn't all bad i mean this really was an amazing and unusual household to grow up in she was a little bit creepy i mean there is a quote by the poet and philosopher samuel taylor coleridge who came around for dinner and said that uh the godwin children were cadaverous and a quite catacombish sort of vibe never heard children described like that that is that is a good picture i've got in my head yeah she was very pale um but she wasn't a true goth

because she had strawberry blonde hair oh no before they invented hair dye oh a true goth because she had strawberry blonde hair. Oh, no. This was before they invented the hair dye. Oh, no. Ginger goth. Yeah. 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. She's hanging around with sort of people who know her dad. Does this introduce her then to the love of her life? Yeah. So Percy Buscelli was basically a posh boy who didn't want to be posh. 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 i love which at the time

was totally scandalous he's a radical thinker he was a vegetarian and he was just so committed to his political ideals vegetarians in them day it was a very unusual lauren he was also borderline vegan um what a lad yeah um 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 he definitely was very earnest he was obviously a fan of mary's dad percy had read his work loved it and started to write to him william godwin was in a bit of financial trouble and he was a little bit like oh this rich aristocratic guy might be my meal ticket and then that is how mary meets him they fell in love instantly is the is the legend and how old is she here she is like six sort of 16 okay so it's not too creepy it's not too creepy and percy

bish is young as well okay how old is he he he? He might be like 20. That is creepy. Hang on, no, I'm stepping in here. I think he's 21 at this point, yeah. He's like that student on campus hanging around the freshers. He's like a mature student. 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 edgy, but I love your dad.

Surely you want a boyfriend who is kicking off against a parent. Mary 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. 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. Do you want to know about the first dates that Mary and Percy had? Did they go to a graveyard? Oh yeah. Did they raise the dead? Bingo.

And not just any graveyard. Or was it a man's graveyard? Oh Mary, what are you doing? And Lauren, it gets worse. Mary! I'm starting to resonate with you. There's no more goth than losing your virginity on your mum's grave.

Was it like a big reveal at the end? Like, surprise! Do you want to meet my mum? You already have! 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? 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. 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. But you can't help but feel that with Shelley, it's quite convenient that he was able to.

I'm actually philosophically opposed to marriage, which is why I'm cheating on you. He kind of had an idea that he was rescuing his wife, Harriet. 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. We're going to run away again. So Mary Shelley is the other woman, 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. 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 okay family a little so her name is Claire they're

both really intelligent cool girls but they're also somewhat rivals in the biographies it's like because Claire spoke French and so that's why they didn't have google translate in them days exactly we brought Claire. But it was all part of the Shelley vibe that he was wanting to create this new society. 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?

You're hot. You'll come with me. You're hot. You're not hot. You speak a language. You're useful. 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. 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. They make a nice clock. They do make a nice clock. They do. Good chocolate. 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. There was this huge problem of money. Percy Bysshe Shelley 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. 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 right not quite trip advisor read mary shelley's trip yeah not enough graves 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 how long would that journey have taken them as well? That would have been a while, yeah? It was six weeks that they're away. William Godwin does not welcome them with open arms. And they are kind of surprised by this because he is theoretically a proponent of free love and 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. Frankenstein is written sort of 1816

during a holiday in Switzerland. So if they return to Switzerland. They go back. They move around a lot. They're kind of outcasts now. And Claire, meanwhile, has had an affair with the great poet of the age, Lord Byron. That's what you do, isn't it?

I mean, pretty much everyone has. Right. People kind of see it as a bit of a competitive thing with Clare. 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. 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, really. I mean, it's the original dark and stormy night. 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. She went away after this challenge was issued and it took her a couple of weeks. And then she wrote what was this amazing novel.

The way that she wrote about this idea coming to her was almost like 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 or the modern Prometheus. So Prometheus being the ancient titan who steals uh fire from the gods for humanity so the idea here is is technology playing with fire playing with the gods yeah yeah of course prometheus also um created man out of clay so there's this kind of sense of a new creation tragedy how old is she here she is still insanely young yeah yeah she's like 18 19 oh my god Frankenstein's published I mean I've done nothing I know when I was 18 I was still like basically learning to take a bus I had to ring the manager of my halls of residence because I couldn't work out how to use the oven

I didn't have it switched on she was reading Frankenstein what a woman I mean Lauren did you grow up reading Frankenstein well I think we studied it at school. I think in true working class school fashion, I think they 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.

I think Frankenstein's a genuinely great book. Yeah, there's lots going on in it. It's really, and you know, we have this sort of image from the movies. This is why I'm slightly concerned that the movie was your go-to for the school. But the kind of grr, kind of grr, argh monster is not what Mary Shelley's monster was at 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 um 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 yeah i've got psoriasis and all it, little red marks on your skin and people look at you like you got the plague. It takes a couple of years to publish as well. And what's interesting, I guess, is that her name isn't on the book. No, 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.

Two years later, she says, all right, no, I wrote this. Yeah, she does. She 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 so part of the addition that did have her name on it was that she could then claim some copyright. Yeah.

Now, Percy's wife is now dead. tragically, so they can get married. How did she die? She kills herself. 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. Her half-sister also kills herself.

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 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. 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 Mary Shelley is a successful novelist. She's earning money, but her personal life is just relentlessly sad. 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. And they basically decide that Italy is the place for them. There's an expat community. 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 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. She's got every reason to be depressed. 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't being a good wife. And now looking back, it's like, oh my 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 of the Corsair. And he says he's not a posh boy.

I know, yeah. 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? 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, so she felt incredibly guilty and bad.

She does have one child who survives, Percy Florence, but the marriage with Percy Shelley is bumpy. There's also the fact that he's 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. 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 what Mary later defined as the greatest tragedy of her life, which is that Percy Bysshe Shelley doesn't make it back. He drowns out at sea in a terrible storm and she is left a widow. Yeah. 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 both lost their husbands but Jane is in 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 have to burn the bodies on the beach actually Mary wasn't there she couldn't face it 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? 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? It was like a piece of silk and some pages of Shelley's poetry. Yeah. Wrapped in her desk her whole life. For the rest of her life. Yeah. Well, she's 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 so much. It's so intense. It's too much grief. Mary 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? Was Mary Shelley bisexual? Was there a romantic thing here? 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 can 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 are seen probably in a relationship, elope together to France where one of them poses as the man of the relationship. Did Claire go along on that one as well? She's really been kind of embraced by queer theorists because she often writes about sort of outsiders who are misunderstood by society.

And so... Mary's like 25 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, you know.

So 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. And she manages to earn money by writing. She writes for magazines and she also writes a number of novels at this point. 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.

Has she comfortably went off? Yeah, I think she's okay. 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. 1851, what is it that finally catches up with her after this long, dramatic life?

Well, Mary actually, in the end, dies of a brain tumour. She devotes her whole life 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, 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 really good to Mary and they got along quite well. But Jane and Percy, 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 tumor and jane goes and digs up the bodies of william godwin and mollstonecraft, 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. Wow. Lauren, what are you thinking here? I mean, you know, we've thrown a lot at you. This is the best episode of Hollyoaks ever, isn't it? The nuance window! The best episode of Hollyoaks ever, isn't it? The nuance window!

We've reached the part of the show where we allow Corinne, 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. This novel is one of the first ever books about what would happen if there was an apocalypse. 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 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 Bershele, and the other one is a cool bad boy called Lord Raymond Byron. is a cool bad boy called Lord Raymond Byron. In this novel, a plague hits the hotter countries of the world. England becomes inundated with refugees, which gives Adrian lots of time to be saintly. 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. 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. 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 Strange weirdos kind of on brand for her, isn't it? But amazing foresight. 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. I'm afraid that's all we have time for today. All that's left is for me to thank our brilliant guests. In History Corner, we've had the wonderful Dr. Corin Throsby

from the University of Cambridge. And in Comedy Corner, the excellent Lauren Patterson. And to you, dear listeners, join me next time for another journey into the past where I'll be joined by two different time travel companions. But for now, I'm off to go and try and reanimate my own career by shooting jolts of electricity into it. Bye!

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