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"INVENTION, IT MUST BE HUMBLY ADMITTED, DOES NOT CONSIST
IN CREATING OUT OF THE VOID BUT OUT OF CHAOS.”
— MARY
SHELLEY
A woman’s fascination with the lives and works of feminist authors Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley leads her to re-examine love, loss, and friendship in her own life. With the quirks and tropes of history repeating themselves, the lives of these two women aid her in navigating the struggles of her own story.
Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer and a passionate advocate of educational and social equality for women. She called for the betterment of women’s status through such political change as the radical reform of national educational systems. She wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), a trailblazing feminist work which argues that the educational system deliberately trained women to be frivolous and incapable and that if girls were allowed the same advantages as boys, women would be not only exceptional wives and mothers but also capable workers in many professions.
Mary Shelley was deeply influenced by the writings of her parents Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. When only sixteen, she eloped to the Continent with Percy Bysshe Shelley and married him two years later. In 1816, when they were neighbours of Byron, on the shores of Lake Geneva, Mary began Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus (1818) the tale of an idealistic student who discovers the secret of imparting life to inanimate matter. Contrasting scientific discovery with moral responsibility, Frankenstein, for the first time, seriously questioned the human impact of scientific research.
15th June at 4.30 pm
21st June at 8.30 pm
