Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley (2017) is a biopic of the famous author before she married Percy Bysshe Shelley, her husband and romantic poet and philosopher. It explores Mary's life from age sixteen to her eventual marriage at age 21. The screenplay was written by Emma Jensen and Haifaa Al-Mansour, who also was the first female Saudi director to direct a Hollywood film.
We are introduced to Mary's home life, family dynamics and life experiences that formed the famous author. Insight about her parents, who were also famous authors and activists is explored. Mary Wollstonecraft, her mother, was a famous writer, philosopher and women's rights advocate who unfortunately died after Mary's birth. Her father, political philosopher and writer, William Godwin, remarried Mary Jane Clairmont when Mary was four.
Mary always felt she had killed her mother and felt a sense of abandonment from her mother not being there and her father being emotionally absent. Although she did have a stepmother, her relationship with her was highly strained, because she was a reminder of a woman her husband still revered.
Mary studied her mother's life, writings and philosophies, choosing to adopt her mother's open minded views. In the movie they make it clear that Mary's parents only married, because they were pregnant with her. They lived a very open lifestyle for the time. Mary chose to adopt the same open minded views toward life and relationships.
Mary being sixteen, was very curious and rambunctious. Her father chose to send her away to relatives in the Scottish countryside. During her stay there she met Percy Shelley. He was handsome and had a reputation as a womanizer. Unfortunately, he did not tell Mary he was already married and had a child. When Marry finds out later, she decides to adopt the openness of her parent's youth and run off with him. But not before she meets his current wife and child, whom warns her of Percy's wondering eye.
As the story progresses, one night Mary, Percy and her stepsister Claire go to see a science exhibit showing how electricity can move a frog's legs even after death, then dubbed galvanism. We see where Mary, at 18, got the idea for charging life into her future creation of science fiction in her Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).
We meet English romantic poet, Lord Byron, as well as physician and author John William Polidori. Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, has an affair and a child with Lord Byron as a result.
On one rainy night, in their boredom staying in Geneva, Switzerland, Lord Byron challenges them all to write a ghost story. Thusly, the beginnings of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) novel about narcissism and abandonment were spawned. Also, the night Dr. Polidori started to write his book, credited with beginning the vampire genre, "The Vampyre" (1819).
We get to look into the reasoning of why Mary wrote this very famous book and the personal life influences that shaped this story. Also, the social commentary she meant to create with her story of a monster created by a society that would only see it with disdain and want to abandon it. As she had felt abandoned by the narcissists in her life, her mother, father, step-mother and her husband.
A deep dive into the psyche of a very special young woman who was far ahead of her time in life choices, her world views and her intelligence. I think you will enjoy discovering more about this amazing woman.
