Mary Shelley
See also: Shelley
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is a British woman of letters . Born the August 30th 1797 with Somers Town, it is especially known for its novel Frankenstein or modern Prométhée .
Girl of the feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft and of the essay writer and political writer William Godwin, it married the British poet Percy B. Shelley in 1816, from which the first woman came to commit suicide.
She died the 1 {{er}} February 1851 in London.
Frankenstein or modern Prométhée
Frankenstein , its major work, was written in 1818 and is inspired by the life of Johann Conrad Dippel, alchemist. The mother-in-law of Mary Shelley was Mary Jane Clairmont, the translator of the tales of Grimm in English language, and it had read in a letter of Jacob Grimm, in 1813, a history on the alchemist, theologist and doctor Johann Conrad Dippel . In this history, Dippel tries to create a man made up of the blood of young women and various parts of human body. The prison of its castle was used as laboratory for its experiments. Dippel was a very disputed alchemist and its experiments were very discussed. The color of the Prussian blue was discovered for the first time in one of its laboratories. It surely carried out autopsies but its adversaries exaggerated the facts. They perhaps wanted to create the scandal in order to prevent the realization of its experiments.
But, the idea of this novel goes back to 1816, whereas Mary Shelley was in holiday with Cologny close to Geneva, in company of her husband and their mutual friend Lord Byron. The season was very rainy and the trio spoke lengthily; it is during a discussion on the German literature that Mary Shelley had the idea of a Gothic novel telling the creation of a man, without being God, but by using a divine gasoline energy, the “ fire of heaven ” of which Pline Old the regarded its use as a sacrilege with the terrible consequences, from where the nickname “ modern Prométhée ” referring to Titan which had given fire crowned to the men.
The time was, in fact, that of the beginnings of the control of electricity; what seemed basically magic and concerning indeed with the divine power.
Mary Shelley is also conscious of sublime alpine mountains which offer to its feather so much occasions to paint landscapes which force admiration. The Massif of Mont Blanc was very at side and its presence is real in its novel when it describes “ the furious howling of the river (...) the chasms (...) the immense mountains (...) revealed in these places the presence of forces evoking that of the any power ”; ” prestigious giant of the Alps (… are…) pyramids and of the white domes and étincelants (...) another world, habitat of an unknown species of us .
| Random links: | Valençay (wine) | Dambenoît-the-dove | Fabien Degryse | Adolf Bertram | March 30th in sport |