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A review by lakecake
Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle by Janet Todd
3.0
The actual subtitle of the book is "Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle," which is much more descriptive of what the book is actually about. So little is left of Fanny Wollstonecraft's correspondence and, really, her memory that it would be nearly impossible to give a full accounting of her life or death. The Wollstonecraft-Godwin-Shelleys had so much scandal in their surrounding them that Fanny's death was just one more problem that had to be covered up for propriety's sake. As a consequence, her name was torn off of her suicide note, her body was never claimed, her death was denied by her family in letters for months and sometimes even years afterward, and her name was essentially removed from all of the memoirs written about her family after her death.
For me, though, the real tragedy of this story, beyond even Fanny's suicide, was the sheer numbers of people whose lives were destroyed or made otherwise severely unpleasant by the whims of one man, Percy Bysshe Shelley. He destroyed people without thought, and then later re-wrote his personal history, oftentimes even in his own mind, to make it seem as though he were blameless. Worse yet, the people around him let him get away with it because he was a "genius." It makes you ask yourself whether things have changed all that much in our current "cult of celebrity."
For me, though, the real tragedy of this story, beyond even Fanny's suicide, was the sheer numbers of people whose lives were destroyed or made otherwise severely unpleasant by the whims of one man, Percy Bysshe Shelley. He destroyed people without thought, and then later re-wrote his personal history, oftentimes even in his own mind, to make it seem as though he were blameless. Worse yet, the people around him let him get away with it because he was a "genius." It makes you ask yourself whether things have changed all that much in our current "cult of celebrity."