Do you even read our posts? Are you going to provide a source or not?
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell might disagree with you on that score. As might all female nurses and midwives since the dawn of history.
In the nineteenth century:
Political theory was the domain of men, yet Mary Wollstonecraft wrote a political dissertation called A Vindication of the Rights of Women.
Literary reputation as a poet was the domain of men, yet Emily Dickinson was a published poet of enormous literary acclaim.
Knowledge of physics was the domain of men, yet Madame Curie managed to discover the element Radium.
And so forth.
…Where is the documented evidence for your claims?
So you don’t want a share of the royalties, then? That is might generous of you, because I see this thing blowing way the hell up. We’re talking dinosaur dollars.
Some sort of evidence or rational argument is missing here.
This is the difference between you and us. We “wish” nothing save to ascertain the truth.
That’s half bigotry and half outright nonsense.
Proof? None. Logic? None.
But that doesn’t faze you; you can just go on drawing conclusions from your imaginary premise.
Still more phantasy.
More phantasy.
Don’t worry. If I ever decide to do a companion page to my collection of the outrageous lies and delusions of the Shakespeare deniers, you’ll be one of the first.
In the spirit of Chalcedon, I’d say that uchtungbaby’s “femrev&gaysci” comments are fully bigotry and fully outright nonsense.
For some reason, I don’t have access to an 1831 preface at the moment (the Net link I pursued didn’t come up & I don’t have time to look for others), but I do know that there is a reference in it to the use of galvinism & to “the pale student of unhallowed arts” infusing his creature with a spark of life from some machinery.
So electrical references to the monster’s creation do exist there tho not in the text of the novel.
Re the whole OP, I never heard WG suggested as the author, but I have heard there was speculation at the time about PBS.
Slight hijack, please.
What is the correct pronunciation of ‘Bysshe’?
Per the Britannica, it’s “bish.”
That reminds me of a joke I just heard: what do you call a Bysshe with no eyes? bsh
It’s fish with no eyes. fsh
What do you call a pig with three eyes?
Piiig!
Not that I agree with the OP, but Elizabeth Blackwell was slightly later than Mary Shelley, in feminist years (she got her MD in 1845, rather than the 1818 of Frankenstein). (Seneca Falls, and the "discovery of women as people, was 1848). A lot happened between the time Mary wrote Frankenstein and Dr. Blackwell got her MD. And Emily Dickensen was never published in her lifetime and wasn’t even born until 1830. More appropriate would be to compare Shelley with an earlier Jane Austen or Fanny Burney or Anne Radcliffe (who wrote romantic horror).
Which isn’t to say its impossible for Mary to have the basic groundings in science. Regency women overall were less sheltered (IMO) than their Victorian counterparts, and Mary - given her mother and father’s liberalism and beliefs, as well as her own apparent disinterest in conforming to social norms (running off with a married man) was likely to have been even less sheltered from ideas than most.
uchtungbaby, one of the convention of the Straight Dope is that if you make a statement, you should be prepared to back it up with a cite, state it as opinion or as knowledge gleaned from somewhere (I can’t provide a cite, but I remember learning in Biology that). Obviously, the people here will weight your claims based on the quality of your cite.
Johnny that doesn’t help but I see what you mean. I’m not going to respond to everyone except in a generic way. If you want a source then get off your chair, visit your local library(where I come from they’re free), and request works by Claire Tomalin. She is a descendent of the Shelley’s but would probably not agree with me though she inadvertently provides the evidence I alluded to in my last contribution.
Too save time I might try to put everything in context. Human reproduction is anathema to the cause of feminists and advocates of gay science. They seek to turn every fertile man into an obedient eunuch and every woman into a discordant automaton. Such is there understanding of what Mary would have called ‘governance’. Even Germaine Greer would agree with this I believe(?) I think she now sees the fruits of her advocacy and regrets it all very much(?) But let’s resist shooting the messenger. The declining birth rate in her own demographic is enough punishment for the mischief.
When I think of feminism and gay science, I think of empty playgrounds and children with imaginary friends. I think of that Glen Campbell tune ‘Where’s the playground Susie ?’ I think of ‘mother’s little helper’. I think of lost mateship. I think of their attempt to murder an entire demographic with philidomide. All this because their intellectuals are incapable of reproduction.
If I openly promoted a discourse that was anathema to human reproduction, then in all likelyhood, I would be dodging rotten tomatoes from all directions. Yet advocates of gay science and feminism are able to get away with it. Why? Because they veil what they do in subterfuge. The hijacking of the Mary Shelley hoax is just one example in the many. Why do they do it? Because they wish to brainwash people into a belief that there are specific physiognomic markers in one subject(.i.e.,beta-sigma, P7 Chorea’s) that induce pathological markers in another subject. Put simply, they try to bolster the idea that heterosexual interaction is unhealthy to one or both of the partners in a relationship. Conversely, the behavioural sequences (usually alpha2,gamma1) endemic to both feminist and gay discourses are made to seem inevitable and appropriate. Were it not for an act of God they probably would get what they desire.
I leave you with this comment. Those who have seen the authentic work of Mary Shelley know her feelings on these sorts of matters.
"…They are bitter and cursed by God for the mischiefe(sic).’ (Mary Shelley,source: Vatican Library).
Here ‘mischiefe’ takes on the meaning ascribed to it in the 15th century ‘Haydyn’s Case’. It seems that this mob have been around before.
I’ll try to be quick. After the great exhibition of 1851 there were an awful lot of unemployed printers and artists. There is a good chance that your references(though I am not sure because I have not seen them)were the product of forgers employed by the wealthy to try an promote the notion of a past golden age. This is probably where your Galvani leaflets fit in.
Nice try, but you’re still talking nonsense and, what is more, you know that you’re talking nonsense.
As it happens, the Newgate Calendar account was lifted almost word-for-word for the report in The Times of 22 January 1803 (issue 5625, col. D). Again, you can check this for yourself online at the Times Digital Archive, although this does require a subscription.
While Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to obtain a degree in medicine in 1849, that doesn’t mean that no women attended university studies in the subject. Women were frequently allowed to attend lectures, but not allowed to take degrees until comparatively late in the 19th century.
As for women scientists … allow me to introduce a well-known scientist from an even earlier era: the inimitable Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, one of Shelley’s intimates is acknowledged as an early thinker in the area of computer science. So it’s nonsense to suggest that women didn’t have access or interest in the area of science.
The difficulty with Victorian history is that it is, in some ways, still part of our present, and we assume that some of the attitudes which prevailed under Victoria were the same for previous generations. This isn’t true, Georgian society, without the rupture of the Industrial Revolution, was in many ways able to be a more open society than the Victorians. And the Georgians were also the inheritors of the European Enlightenment, when an interest in natural history, science and philosophy was a normal part of cultured life.
Emily Bronte was only 29 when she wrote “Wuthering Heights”, a book which contains a remarkable emotional lexicon for a young woman who never married, rarely left home and was ill for much of her life. Fanny Burney was only 26 when she published “Evelina”, Charlotte Bronte wrote “Jane Eyre” at 31, Anne Bronte was 27 when she published “Agnes Grey”. Jane Austen wrote her first novel at 14, and was only in her early twenties when she wrote “Sense and Sensibility”, “Pride and Prejudice” and “Northanger Abbey”.
In contrast, Mary Shelley was the daughter of two of England’s important intellectual figures, her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist writer and thinker, who’s first work was called, “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters”.
It’s not difficult to understand that a daughter of two such remarkable intellectuals might have had an unusual and extensive education and access to a wide range of learning.
At 19 Mary Shelley had two children and had had one which died early on in her relationship with Percy Shelley, she had also suffered the suicide of two people close to her. It would seem to me that those experiences would be a catalyst for adulthood for anyone, let alone a fiercely intelligent, well-educated young woman with an acquaintance which numbered some of the most prominent thinkers and writers of her day.
And in an age when the average life expectancy was under 50, a nineteen year old would most certainly be considered an adult, not a teenager and capable of an adult’s understanding.
It seems to me purest misogyny to insist, on the basis of no evidence to the contrary, that Mary Shelly couldn’t have written as she did, simply because she was a young woman.
…especially since she was home-schooled.
But really, the only “science” involved here is Luigi Galvani’s (1737–1798) somewhat mistaken notions of “animal electricity”, which Alessandro Volta (1745–1827) had already undermined in 1800, and the level she treats it at is approximately that of an EPCOT exhibit. (Volta had been made a count on the basis of his work in 1810; so much for the alleged “secret”.)
In short, you have nothing to defend your statements with but a paranoid conspiracy theory.
This thread has now become pointless.
England in the Eighteenth Century (1714 – 1815)
Gay science?
I remember the cop, the Indian, the construction worker, the cowboy… nope, no scientist …
Sorry for my previous mangled post.
The OP has asserted that Mary Shelley lacked the scientific knowledge necessary to have written Frankenstein. In particular, he insists that in Shelley’s time, the general public had no knowledge of electricity.
This OP is demonstrating one of the most basic flaws of historical research, which is to answer a historical question through his own reconstruction, deduction, and assumptions. The types of questions he attempts to answer in that way are better answered directly, from both primary sources and secondary sources. What did people at the time say, what historical evidence exists friom the era in question, and what have subsequent scholars said?
There are, for example, many accounts wriitten in the late 18th century describing the public fascination with electricity and public demonstrations of devices like the Leiden jar (invented around 1742) or George Adams’ spark machine (invented around 1762). By 1785, Adams and others had invented electical devices that were widely used in medical treatment.
Louis XV, who died almost 25 years before Mary Shelley was born, was fascinated with electricty, and he helped sponsor research and publications that drew worldwide attention. Public fascination grew as a result, and lightning rods sprouted all over Paris. This culture of scientific curiosity drew Benjamin Franklin to France in the 1750s. His book, documenting a decade of electrical research, was popular in England and France. All of these events are well documented in contemporary sources.
This half century before Mary Shelley was born was a period of intense public interest in science, history, and philosophy, known generally as the Age of Enlightenment. I could provide dozens of cites that describe the scientific knowledge of Shelley’s era… one should probably suffice: “England in the Eighteenth Century (1714 – 1815)” by Professor J.H. Plumb. He notes that in addition to many scientific discoveries about the nature of electricity during the late 18th century, it was a subject that generated great public interest.
So I will say again… uchtungbaby’s assertion that Mary Shelley could not have had any knowledge of electricity, that “people thought electricity was a type of magic,” is clearly and demonstrably false. Further, it displays a gross misunderstanding or disregard for the facts, and frankly that calls his/her entire claim into question.