Reading History: "Her Lost Words: A Novel of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley"

Stephanie Marie Thornton's newest novel is a triumphant feminist look at two of the most famous women writers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Warning: Major spoilers for the novel follow.

Stephanie Marie Thornton is one of those authors whose work I always try to read as soon as it comes out. When I saw that she had recently published a novel about the lives, loves, and words of both Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, I knew that it was going to be another triumph. Indeed, as soon as I started to read, I found myself caught up in the spell that Thornton herself weaves with her words. Through alternating viewpoints, she allows us to see these remarkable women in all of their enigmatic complexity. 

Raised in a broken and abusive environment, Mary Wollstonecraft knows from a young age that there is more to life than her dismal surroundings, and the sight of her father violently and cruelly abusing her mother is what sets the spark to the tinder of her desire to agitate for political and social equality for women. When she’s given an opportunity to escape her dismal small town, she leaps at it, and she’s soon on the path to becoming one of the most notable writers of her generation. From Revolutionary France to Scandinavia to England, she drinks in life in all of its heartache and beauty. And her life is indeed marred by heartbreak, as she finds that many men aren’t willing or able to live up to her expectations. 

Her daughter Mary Shelley’s life is no less eventful, and it is also no less tragic. Unlike her mother, who found immediate literary success, it takes more than a little while for her novel, Frankenstein, to become a true success. Meanwhile, she also has to contend with various heartaches of her own, for while her bond with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley is undeniably happy–once he leaves his wife, at least–theirs is a pairing that trails chaos in its wake, as both the mores of their society and their acquaintance with the infamous libertine Lord Byron causes them quite a few difficulties. Shelley’s death in a shipwreck, coupled with Shelley’s several miscarriages, cast a shadow over her life, but she nevertheless manages to soldier on.

It’s not always easy to adopt a dual perspective for a novel, particularly not when they take place in two different time periods, one of the narrators is the daughter of the other, and one is in first person and the other in third. Nevertheless, Thornton somehow brings the whole thing into tight focus, and she never lets us lose sight of the fundamental humanity of both Marys. In many ways, Wollstonecraft blazes the trail that her daughter will follow, and there are numerous times when the young Mary Shelley reflects on the long shadow that her mother casts over her own life. Indeed, it’s precisely the fact that Wollstonecraft was such a successful writer that for far too long keeps Shelley from exploring her own literary aspirations. 

While much of Her Own Words focuses on these two women’s literary lives, it also shows us how their relationships–both romantic and otherwise, were key to their lives and identities. After an ill-fated affair with an American businessman, Wollstonecraft engages in a true meeting of minds, hearts, and souls with William Godwin, who accepts her as she is and is devastated by her death. For Mary Shelley, Percy is obviously her north star, but her stepsister Claire is also a key part of her life, even if the latter’s romantic entanglements–particularly with the ne'er-do-well Lord Byron–are often a source of angst and heartache for Mary. Likewise, her bond with her father is also key to her life, and she is especially heartbroken when he almost completely cuts off contact with her during her antics with Percy.

For both women, however, it’s their bond as a mother and a daughter which is the most important even though, in a tragic bit of irony, they never really meet one another, as Wollstonecraft dies shortly after the birth. There is, then,  an ache at the heart of the narrative, and it’s to Thornton’s immense credit that she manages to sustain this thread through the whole story. You can’t help but feel for these two extraordinary individuals as they weather the storms of the period. 

Thornton also immerses us in the strange, fertile, and wonderfully chaotic world of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. We stand next to Wollstonecraft as she stumbles through the wreckage and carnage of the French Revolution, just as we walk with Shelley through the sun-drenched countryside of Italy. Again and again I was struck by the rich texture of Thornton’s prose, which does so much to help us understand these extraordinary women and the world in which they move and live and write. Of all of her works, I think this is the one that truly shows her skills as an author, as she allows us to truly appreciate and inhabit the minds of these literary geniuses. 

Overall, I truly loved everything about Her Lost Words. It’s the perfect type of historical fiction, a resonant and heartfelt story but one with a great deal of political bite. This book is a timely reminder of the lives behind the words that so many of us take for granted, and this is particularly timely given the extent to which far too many people (on Twitter, at least) seem to think that AI can ever truly take the role of the human element of creative endeavor. Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley were two of the great literary luminaries of their era, a key part of the intellectual ferment that was taking place through all of Europe during this period. Thanks to Thornton’s deft prose and brilliant illumination, we now have a better understanding of who they were and how their personal lives and social milieus shaped their perspectives on everything from women’s rights to the nature of creation itself. 

The only problem is that now I have to wait for Thornton’s next novel. I can’t wait to see what she has in store for us.