Remembering Harriet: The Other Shelley Woman
This is an imperfect chapter in the life of the author we love, Mary Shelley. We do not love her any less for it, but we can’t ignore the fact. We can’t discard Harriet like Percy did.
(Trigger Warning: Suicide)
Last week, I posted an introduction to my long teatime interview with Mary Godwin Shelley, the brilliant and strong-willed authoress of Frankenstein. It is the book we are currently reading for our Teacups and Tomes book club, and I confess that I’ve become so caught up learning about Mary and her life that the book itself sometimes pales in comparison.
As I learn about the author behind each story I read, I’m reminded of what I know is true for every human: even those who achieve great things make questionable choices. I have just finished reading The Mystery of Charles Dickens, a book that sheds light on his imperfections: how he sent his wife away and kept the children, trying to erase her in spite of her having given him a family. This is the man who wrote A Christmas Carol, a story which urges us to do good in the world. He wrote a story preaching for us to live lives of Christian perfection, but himself was far from practicing it.
Yet we love the book, and I read it every Christmas Eve. Each year, I put it back on the shelf with a heart full of light and the desire to help others. The words in A Christmas Carol have value, even if the author is flawed.
Mary Godwin Shelley does not escape the mark of human imperfection. She was only sixteen when she and Percy Bysshe Shelley met, and her heart seems to have overcome her senses. Their infatuation was instantaneous: he was drawn to her sharp mind and beautiful features, while she was attracted to his ideas and free way of living.
There was only one problem: Percy wasn’t free.
Time seems to have erased from most accounts that this man was married when he and Mary met, and that he was a father. The fairy tale story of how Frankenstein came to be makes little to no mention of his already-established marriage to a woman named Harriet Westbrook Shelley. And while there are many reasons to admire Mary Shelley, I find that I must make mention of Percy’s first wife.
Last week, I began reading the first of the Shelley biographies on my list, Mary Shelley: The Strange Tale of Frankenstein’s Creator by Catherine Reef. Written for a YA audience, it tells the authoress’s story in an easy-to-follow manner. It introduces us to the creator of Frankenstein with easy language, telling the story of how she was inspired to pen what is perhaps the most famous piece of Gothic literature.
Harriet is mentioned in this book, but her name feels tacked on as an afterthought, as if she was insignificant in the whole. She was not. This woman was Percy’s first wife; she gave him two children; her ending was so tragic that I do not believe she deserves to be glossed over. I don’t think Mary would have believed so, either.
This excellent blog post by a far more experienced historian paints a better picture of who Harriet Westbrook Shelley was. I felt it in my heart, though, that I wished to talk about Harriet as well. I don’t think that Mary would mind.
According to the book, Mary met the eccentric poet Percy Bysshe Shelley when he was visiting her father, William Godwin. Godwin often entertained guests and hosted discussions at their home in London. When I learned Percy was married at the time, the knowledge came to me with great surprise. What struck me when I learned about Harriet is that I’d never heard of her before, but I’d heard countless times of Mary and Shelley and Byron and the summer in Switzerland where they all went and had a party.
It’s as if the poor woman had been intentionally written out of the popular part of the story, perhaps to protect Percy’s reputation, as he came from a good family. Interestingly, Mark Twain wrote a piece years later titled In Defence of Harriet Shelley, as if he also noticed what I’ve seen just now and considered it equally unfair. I have downloaded it and will be reading soon.
As was the custom among wealthy Victorians, a campaign appears to have been carried out successfully to destroy a reputation or erase it altogether—to pretend as if Harriet Shelley had not existed—and no woman deserves that. No woman who stands for the rights of other women would believe so, which is why I think that Mary would approve of my dedicating a post to this first Shelley who was a victim of her husband’s whims and the disadvantages of the times.
When I was planning my Shelley post for the week, I thought that the point of discussion was going to be Percy and his life. It turns out that, in a way, he is—but not in the way that I’d expected. No, indeed; I find myself thinking instead of the woman he married first.
I have my doubts that Percy loved Harriet. He was a free spirit with an open mind, seeking ideas that were higher than him. Perhaps he was besotted for a time, but not so much that he would have settled down for her. After they married and had children, he did not choose the conventional life of fatherhood, but continued his life of poetry and castles-in-the-air thinking.
This thinking drew him to Mary’s father. As a youth, William Godwin had similar perspectives about the world to Percy’s. Since then, however, Godwin had remarried. His opinions on some topics seemed to have matured by the time Percy and Mary fell in love, and marriage was one of them.
When Shelley told William that he was in love with Mary, her father would not stand for it, and with good reason: he did not wish for his daughter’s reputation to be destroyed. He attempted to forbid her from meeting with Percy, locking her in the attic where he believed the two would have no contact. They, however, continued to communicate: Mary’s stepsister slipped notes back and forth, foiling his plans to end their flirtation.
Percy, Mary and Jane eventually fled England for France, where they would begin their well-known adventure across the continent. This is the part of the story that is told most often in literature class, the ‘good part,’ the chapter that culture has mythologized. It describes the leading up to Frankenstein’s birth.
And yet I cannot put from my mind that Percy had a wife and two children (a son, Charles, was born one year after Ianthe). Percy attempted to make up for discarding Harriet by inviting her and the children to join him on his trek with Mary across Europe. Unsurprisingly, poor Harriet did not reply.
I had to make a small timeline when I learned of Harriet’s existence.
August 1811 - Percy and Harriet marry. June 1813 - Elizabeth Ianthe is born. It is debated whether he met Mary in November 1812 or March 1814. (This would have been through Mary’s father, so I must concede he did not set out intentionally to find her.)
It’s the later part of the timeline that upsets me.
Percy, Mary and Jane flee Godwin’s house in July 1814. Mary Shelley was in Switzerland writing Frankenstein with Byron and their other important friends during the summer of 1816, but that very same year in December, Harriet Shelley ended her life by stepping into the Serpentine River. She was pregnant at the time, though most people do not think it was Shelley’s child.
In 1816, Percy and the rest of the party were enjoying themselves in Switzerland; meanwhile, Harriet was scrambling for a reason to live, and she lost the battle in the end. She wrote a letter of farewell to her father, sister, and husband. She then walked from her lodgings in Hyde Park and ended her pain.
She was only twenty-one.
Let me now pretend to address our esteemed authoress. If we were at the tea-table talking with Mary, the conversation would turn heavy.
“If you’ve come to be candid and honest about your choices,” I’d tell Mary, “I must confess that Harriet Shelley tugs at my heart this week. While it was not all your fault, you were part of the drama. Years later, how did you feel? When you lost your first baby, did you think of her children? When your life later was so full of tragedy and death, did you sympathize with her?”
I would listen without judgment, because she was only sixteen when it began—sixteen, malleable, unhappy with her stepmother, and besotted with the troublemaker named Percy Byssce Shelley.
All the same, in this (mostly) judgment-free tearoom, I would request an honest response. We can be almost certain that Mary Shelley would reply honestly: in her words and in her choices, she was never anything other than herself.
I wonder if some of the despair we read in the novel of Frankenstein stemmed from a sense of complicity that she herself might have felt about Harriet when she had grown up a little, or perhaps after Percy’s death. I wonder if she sometimes placed herself in Harriet’s shoes—and maybe felt regret.
If we are to defend women’s rights, we cannot paint over the death of a young mother. This is an imperfect chapter in the life of the author we love, Mary Shelley. We do not love her any less for it, but we can’t ignore the fact.
Ladies, gentlemen, esteemed visitors of the Tearoom, we can’t discard Harriet like Percy did.
Keep in mind that this does not detract from Mary’s brilliance as a writer; no, it adds a level of reality to her humanity, which makes her all the more fascinating to me. Imperfect humans can make poor choices and also create immortal things.
My heart remains heavy as I try to think of a way to close up this blog post. I am sure I do not have all the details, and my rendition of the story is incomplete; if I have stated any facts incorrectly, please do tell me in the comments, as I’m here to learn as much as the rest of you.
Please reply in the comments, if you can, whether you knew before of Harriet Shelley. Tonight, before drifting off, I will take a moment to think about her. While we did get Frankenstein at the end of all this, Harriet, I know the world would was much emptier without you in it. I do wish that you’d have found the reason to keep going; your life was important, too.
I hope that my post next week will be lighter. Thank you for reading thus far. If you’d like to join our book club to read along, this is the link!
Mary Shelley: An Introduction & Her Dream
We have a new guest at Top of the Page this month! For, what else can I call it when a character knocks at the door, insisting to be let in? Insisting to be ‘interviewed’? Insisting that it is now her turn to be heard?
Excellent piece! I think we might note that Mary and Percy were both reading the writings of Mary’s late mother, which included some rather liberal ideas about marriage. I, too, mourned for Harriet when I first learned of her way back, Percy was a bit of a cad. His ideas on free love often came down to just his own sense of freedom from responsibility. I have an excellent biography of Godwin which sheds a good deal of light on these times, I just need to lay my eyes on it to remember which. It’s lovely to see an article so thoughtfully and artfully done concerning literary history.
Thanks. I knew in an abstract way that Shelley had been married before, but this post has shown me the real story.