I found this biography of Mary Shelley by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler in my mom’s collection after she died last year and decided to pick it up for the Halloween season, not sure if it was fiction or nonfiction.
It’s definitely nonfiction, and while the description focuses on the summer Mary spent with Percy and Lord Byron in 1816, the book really covers her whole life, beginning with the lives of her parents and how they ended up together.
The concept of “blended families” might seem new, but Mary’s family was about as blended as you could get. She had an older half sister, two step siblings, and a younger half brother. Given her mother’s promiscuity and both her parents’ vocal rejection of monogamous marriage, no one should be surprised that Mary ran off with a married man and didn’t see anything wrong with it.
At the same time, there’s a difference between promoting the ideals of free love in theory and practicing it in your own life. While Percy clearly believed in free love in both a theoretical and a practical sense, Mary wanted commitment. Unfortunately, she never got it.
In her later years, Mary would revisit and write about the Villa Diodati, where she and Percy stayed with Lord Byron in the summer of 1816, as the happiest time of her life, and it well might have been. She and Percy were still on good terms and Claire was too obsessed with Byron to pay any attention to Percy.
Despite the fact that Bryon didn’t seem to respect women as a general rule, he did come to respect Mary. He wouldn’t go so far as to let her participate in his lively conversations with Percy, but he would let Mary copy his writing to make it more legible for the printer, and in some instances he would write multiple endings and let Mary choose the one she thought worked best.
Mary’s life was certainly no picnic before she met Percy. Her father didn’t know how to be a single parent and he was cold and distant, and his second wife was far from the loving mother Mary could have hoped for. In a sense, running off with Percy might have been less about running off with Percy and more about running away from her family. What 16 year old hasn’t at least fantasized about running away from home now and then? Mary just had an opportunity to do it.
While Mary and Percy got along for a while, it didn’t last long. Claire quickly got between the couple and Percy encouraged Mary to sleep with his friends, although she had absolutely no interest.
I think they had four children together, but only one of them survived. The death of each child sent Mary into a deep depression and Percy was unsympathetic. He accused Mary of being cold towards him and his other lovers believed him, instead of seeing that he was the one who was cold by constantly prioritizing his feelings over those of his wife.
I knew going in that Mary had kept Percy’s calcified heart after his death and cremation, and I had thought that was a proof of their love, but maybe it was just a proof of her self delusion. Although the couple had fought right up until Percy left for his fatal boat trip, Mary later painted those months as the happiest of their lives. I do believe there was real love and respect between them, but I don’t think they were well suited to each other, given the fact that they wanted such different things out of a relationship.