Loneliness and Isolation Caused by Rejection

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Many novelists base their books on real life experiences and in Mary Shelley’s case, it is no different. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley was born on August 30, 1797. At a young age, she was exposed to her father’s library of English authors and listened in on her father’s educational discussions with his friends. She never went to school, but was home schooled so this was one of the ways she learned. Her father owned a publishing company so, at a young of 13, she published her first work, Mounseer Nongtongspaw, which is a verse poem. She never knew her biological mother and hated her stepmother because she was the exact opposite of her real mother. As a result of this hatred, she was sent to Dundee by her father and when she returned to London, she was introduced to her future husband, Percy Bisshe Shelley. After meeting for the first time in 1812 at a dinner hosted by her parents, they did not see each other again until 1814 when they became very close. Mary’s father did not support the couple at first and tried to separate them . They were atheists and found themselves in controversial situations because of this and their political beliefs . After several disputes between the couple and family, Mary and Percy departed on a trip to Switzerland and France to escape. They began to discuss ideas on this trip and Mary used her hectic experiences to write her stories (Means 2).

After having their first son, William, in 1816, Percy’s legal wife committed suicide giving them the opportunity to legally get married (Gilliland 1). The Godwin and Shelley’s relationship began to get better after the marriage. After the wedding, Percy and Mary moved to Marlow, England and had a daughter, Clara (Means 3). Around 1819 when they moved to Pi...

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...oyage to visit a poet with a friend (Mary Shelley 3), his boat sank in 1822.In the same year, Mary had a miscarriage. She had a nervous breakdown because of these tragedies and it filled her life with loneliness (Lombardi 1). After her husband passed, Mary found it hard to support herself and her son. Sir Timothy Shelley gave her as small sum of money, and made her publish her works anonymously. She wrote a few other books after her husband’s death, but they got negative criticism. These novels also contained tragedies that probably were taken from her own life. In the very late years of her life, near death, Mary was constructing a biography of her husband but didn’t have time to finish it before she died (Shelley, Mary) She died from a brain tumor in her sleep on February 1, 1851 at 54 years old (Lombardi 1). She lived a tragic life and in her novels, it showed.

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