Page 53 - All About History - Issue 70-18

Scream Queens

Mary Shelley (1797-1851)

The mother of Frankenstein and science fiction

The daughter of feminist icon contest organised by Lord Byron arts kneeling beside the thing
Mary Wollstonecraft and radical in Geneva during 1816, ‘the year he had put together”. Her vision
thinker William Godwin, Mary without a summer’ – has become resulted in the Romantic era’s
Shelley was destined for big things. legendary. In a “waking dream”, most recognisable work, which is
Her stunning debut Frankenstein Shelley, then 18, saw “with shut often credited with establishing
has enthralled for 200 years, and eyes, but acute mental vision” the the science fiction genre in
its origin – from a ghost story “pale student of the unhallowed England’s literature. Shelley
utilised Gothic devices to examine
An 1831 illustration of the corrupt nature of power, and
Frankenstein’s Creature
was among the Gothic writers
of her generation to feature ‘the
double’, which reached its height
with Robert Louis Stevenson’s
The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And
Mr Hyde. Upon Frankenstein’s
publication, critics were of the
impression it was written by a
man – Sir Walter Scott theorised “God, in pity, made man
that Mary’s husband Percy Bysshe beautiful and alluring,
Shelley was the thinker behind
the pen – and when the novel’s after his own image; but
true author was revealed, critics my form is a filthy type
mostly ignored its politics, which of yours…”
examined the social, scientific and
economic problems of Mary’s time. Frankenstein

Louisa May Alcott

(1832-1888)

The children’s author also explored the darker side of life

Little Women, the beloved villains, ghosts, bandits and
classic which has never been disdainful queens”. Alcott –
out of print, was undoubtedly who had grown up in poverty
Louisa May Alcott’s big – was driven by a strong social
success, but she much awareness. She believed in
preferred her work for adults, abolition, prison reform and
and intriguingly dabbled temperance, with her main
in Gothic fiction. Going by campaigning centring on
the name A M Barnard, her women’s suffrage.
thrillers blended elements Alcott’s writing was notably
of madness, violence, and feminist for its time, with her
perversity, material deemed most famous character Jo
“unfit” for a female writer. March known for her fierce
Alcott’s work was independence and refusal to
championed by a new ascribe to the expectations
generation in the 1970s of others as to how girls of
when these tales were her time should behave.
rediscovered and published Alcott was delighted about
“Nothing is in the anthology Behind A the fact that when Concord,
impossible to a Mask (1866). As a child Alcott Massachusetts allowed

determined woman.” had acted in dramas with her women to vote in school The four March girls of Little
Behind A Mask sisters, and she preferred to board elections in 1879, she Women were loosely based
play the “lurid” parts – “the was the first to register. on Alcott and her own sisters

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