misseffect:

maryshelleyy:

mary shelley was the daughter of one of the first feminists as we know it, she met & ran away with percy shelley when she was 18, she wrote BOTH the first sci fi AND post apocalyptic novels, she was at the forefront of romanticism AND gothicism, two of the most influential literary and artistic movements in present day, she suffered from depression and only one out of her four children lived, her husband, who had several affairs, died when they were in their twenties, a majority of her friends and romantic poets also all died in their twenties, and yet she still continued writing poetry and novels and creating art throughout the rest of her life and lived til she was nearly 60. mary shelley is incredibly underappreciated she went through so much and has contributed & influenced so much to the english lit. canon as we know it she is one of the most remarkable writers & women of this era & i love her

so hey mary wollstonecraft is now widely thought of as the origin of the feminist movement but GOD every time i think about her i’m filled with the righteous fury of a thousand feminists bc my dudes. my guys. the unadulterated shite this woman had to go through.

not only did she have an illegitimate child in 18th century england, she lived in JACOBIN-ERA FRANCE as a SINGLE PARENT for THREE FUCKING YEARS. and bear in mind that by this point she already had a foot in the door with some pretty radical writerly types back in britain so rlly she might as well have been walking around with a sign that said ‘guillotine me’.

AND THEN after a journey across mainland europe (alone except for a maid and her infant daughter) and two suicide attempts this hard-ass motherfucker goes on to write THE foundational modern feminist text and bone down on william godwin who – by the way -was maybe one of the most iconic pro-anarchic authors of the period.

BUT DO YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT MAKES ME MAD AS ALL FUCK. days after giving birth to the baby who would go on to become mary shelley this incredible, difficult, fearsome woman died of septicemia and do you know what happened. her conservative critics g l o a t e d bc of course the vocal advocate for women’s rights dies of the female-exclusive affliction that is childbirth. and (and) after memoirs detailing her then-controversial lifestyle were published posthumously (thanks for nothing william) her work was virtually excluded from academic circles for the next hundred years.

SO IN CONCLUSION if i ever get hold of a time machine you bet your entire ass i’m zapping myself straight into mary wollstonecraft’s living room and i’m taking my bachelors degree certificate and my polling card and my birth control pills with me because if anyone deserves to know that at least some of us are luckier than the very luckiest 18th-century woman, it’s my gal mary.