The Shelleys Married

It’s official, Brangelina are breaking up, but the Shelleys are still the eternal romantic couple, and in essence the real love story of Frankenstein. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley married on December 30, 1816 at St Mildred’s Church in London. It was an eventful and turbulent two and half year romance up until then. They had eloped to the continent in the summer of 1814, endured the condemnation of society and estrangement of their families, one miscarriage and the infant death of another child, the suicide of Mary’s sister Fanny and spent that fateful summer of 1816 in Geneva from which Mary’s famous monstrous literary invention would launch them to forever Gothic fandom fame together. They would have to live separately, with Mary moving from one dingy neighborhood to another to avoid the unseemly criticism of their common associates, while Shelley dodged bill collectors, denied the money due from his grandfather’s estate by his father as penalty for his love of Mary, until the suicide of Shelley’s first wife would free him from the restriction of “living in sin”.

Curiously for a couple to be defined by their hurried and long delayed marriage, neither of them really believed in the institution of marriage, but could not avoid the social consequences of the institution. Mary’s philosopher father, William Godwin, had been famous for his intellectual rejection of the idea of marriage, as did Shelley in his concept of “free love” but Godwin had married Mary’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft to placate the judgment of their society and married again to Mary’s step-mother Mary Jane Clairmont. Indeed, it was Godwin, the most theoretical rejecter of the institution who was the hardest on Mary for her unmarried “illicit” relationship with Shelley, not because he believed in sin, but for its reflection on the reputation of his family, rejecting the affection of his daughter, even while accepting money from Shelley for his living expense, so much as to cause the scandalous perception that he had “sold” his daughter to the noble poet.

The modern version of Brad and Angelina at first avoided the artifice of official marriage, but ultimately fell to its hold on the concept of society. Curiously the divorce bill for the dissolution of Mr. and Mrs. Pitt doesn’t cite infidelity, but rather drug use in the home, as a cause of action. The tabloid scandal which had launched the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie romance to the headlines was contest between Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Anniston. Rumors had been spread and are even repeated to today suggesting that Shelley had an affair with Mary’s half-sister Claire Clairmont. Mary always rejected this idea until her dying day, but Shelley struggled with a dependence on laudanum for much of his life. It seems unlikely they would be broken up by the minor skirmishes of a modern day relationship. The Shelleys had endured so much turbulence and tragedy to be together, so that only Shelley’s tragic early death could break them up, and Mary would never marry again, so purely devoted, making them an eternal couple.

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley  – E-Book

Secret Memoirs of Mary Shelley – Paperback