Mary Shelley’s Mediation

Abstract

When looked at beside her companions, Mary Shelley remains an undefined, somewhat prosaic figure. Trelawny describes his first impression of her, bringing the company back from the ideal world to which her husband had tried to transport them with her requests for news of London and Paris, the new books, operas, and bonnets, marriages, murders … In a note added later to his Records he asserted that she was a person as conventional as her husband had been the opposite, setting this down partly to her upbringing by her father and his wish that she should not be made to suffer as he had done for beliefs found unacceptable by her society:

Mrs Shelley was a firm believer, and had little or no sympathy with any of her husband’s theories; she could not but admire the great capacity and learning of her husband, but she had no faith in his views, and she grieved that he was so stubborn and inflexible. Fighting with the world was ‘Quixotic’ .… Mrs Shelley did not worry herself with things established that could not be altered, but went with the stream.¹