Mary shelley biography essay thesis
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Her rapidly growing powers of mind and observation were nourished and developed by the stimulating intellectual atmosphere around her; to the anxieties[Pg 25] and uncertainties which, like birds of ill-omen, hovered over the household and were never absent for long together, she was well accustomed, besides which she was still too young to be much affected by them.
After dinner talk and let off fireworks. No account of these events has ever been given at all approaching reality in their details, either as regards himself or others; nor shall I further allude to them than to remark that the errors of action committed by a man as noble and generous as Shelley, may, as far as he only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed by those who loved him, in the firm conviction that, were they judged impartially, his character would stand in fairer and brighter light than that of any contemporary.
But they never “made the public their familiar confidant.” They screened the erring as far as it was in their power to do so, although their reticence cost them dear, for it lent a colouring of probability to the slanders and misconstruction of all kinds which it was their constant fate to endure for others’ sake, which pursued them to their lives’ end, and beyond it.
Life, which is to no one what he expects, had many clouds for them.
Never weary of argument, he thought that by its means, conducted on lines of reason, all questions might be finally settled, all problems satisfactorily and speedily solved. and telling us he has been born a week.
Wednesday, December 7.—Clara and Shelley go out together; Shelley calls on the lawyers and on Harriet, who treats him with insulting selfishness; they return home wet and very tired.
The moss was so soft; the murmur of the wind in the leaves was sweeter than Æolian music; we forgot that we were in France or in the world for a time.
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August 17.—The voiturier insists upon our passing the night[Pg 75] at the village of Mort.
Atraídos en virtud de sus compartidas creencias filosóficas, comenzaron un romance en el otoño de 1796. They are given without comment or dilution, just as they occur; where omissions are made it is in order to avoid repetition, or because the everyday entries refer to trivial circumstances uninteresting to the general reader.
[Pg vi]Letters which have previously been published are shortened when they are only of moderate interest; unpublished letters are given complete wherever possible.
Those who hope to find in these pages much new circumstantial evidence on the vexed subject of Shelley’s separation from his first wife will be disappointed.
Converse of various things. Godwin’s answer, giving his own description of her two daughters, has often been printed, but it is worth giving here.
Your inquiries relate principally to the two daughters of Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley alone looks grave on the occasion, for he alone clearly apprehends that francs and écus and louis d’or are like the white and flying cloud of noon, that is gone before one can say “Jack Robinson.” Shelley goes to secure a place in the diligence; they are all taken.
Clara imagines that I treat her unkindly; Mary consoles her with her all-powerful benevolence. She has occasionally great perseverance, but occasionally, too, she shows great need to be roused.
You are aware that she comes to the sea-side for the purpose of bathing. She is four months short of fifteen years of age.
I have written to Hooper and Sir J. Shelley.
Journal, Thursday, November 3 (Mary).—Work; write to Shelley; read Greek grammar. After some hours of tedious travelling, through a most beautiful country, we arrive at Noè. Shelley and I talk about her character. We arrived at Trois Maisons at nine o’clock.
Change our resolution. To keep pace with the electric mind of this companion required some effort on her part, and she applied herself with renewed zeal to her studies. To talent she had been accustomed all her life, but here she saw something different, and what of all things calls forth most ardent response from a young and pure-minded girl, a genius for goodness; an aspiration and devotion such as she had dreamed of but never known, with powers which seemed to her absolutely inspired.
Godwin se enfureció con este devenir, y expulsó inmediatamente al poeta de su hogar. But she was young, impatient, and unhappy. He shunned his old friends, and they, for the most part, felt this and avoided him.