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Mary Shelley: Frankenstein’s Mother & My Taliswoman
A Taliswoman short
When I first discovered Mary Shelley, I was 17 — just younger than she’d been when she wrote Frankenstein.
I’m ashamed to say that it was still several years before I stopped thinking of her as “Percy’s wife.” And I thought of Percy as “Byron’s friend.” My God, how I bought the poets’ own hype! They were, to me, the Plant & Page of their day, the Bad Lads I romanticized.
But now I know the truth. Mary was the one I should have idolized all along.
Her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, often considered the first feminist writer, who died shortly after giving birth. Her father was a philosopher, and it was through him the 15-year-old Mary would meet her doom, aka Percy (I highly recommend the film Mary Shelley).
Mary Shelley, the motherless monster’s mother, is one of my Taliswomen.
