This title has been in my ongoing reading list for some time. I started it but was then laid low with a combination of the mirror incident and a virus and it had to be abandoned. This means that the impetus slowed right down and I had to refresh my mind and check my rather notes and concentrate to immerse myself once more. I have to state right at the beginning of this post that my knowledge of the history and literature of this period is pretty sketchy. I am now beginning to get used to the idea that publishers deem me capable of reviewing books sent to me, though I shall never be anything but overwhelmed that they think this way, and can usually tackle a review fairly confidently. When a book such as Death and the Maidens arrives, I am slightly less confident. Janet Todd is Professor of English at Aberdeen University and as well as 
writing an biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, she is also the general editor of the definitive Cambridge edition of Jane Austen. So deep breath and here goes.
The subtitle of Death and the Maidens is Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle. Fanny was the child of Mary Wollstonecraft by her lover Gilbert Imlay, who abandoned them both. Mary then became the lover and later the wife of William Godwin, a journalist, philosopher and author and in due course a second daughter was born to them. Mary did not survive childbirth and Godwin was thus left with two young children to raise. It was not too long before Godwin married again, probably out of necessity more than anything else and more children were born. In this household, Fanny was the one child who had no blood relatives, both her parents were her step-parents, and her sense of displacement of never being sure of her place in the family was part of her make up. She revered Godwin 'to Fanny he was a wonderful overbearing presence for whose artistic powers she had the greatest respect'. She 'served him with an enthusiasm that was both intellectual and emotional'.
Shelley's arrival and his ideal of free love had a devastating effect on the Godwin household. The story of Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein, Shelley and Byron, has been well documented so it is not necessary for me to write about this aspect here, only the effect this break up of the family had on Fanny, herself in love with Shelley and who was left behind when Mary and Shelly went to Switzerland. She wrote to them how much she longed to be included in their life 'I had rather live all my life with the Genevese...' She imagined them enjoying themselves by the lake, was fascinated by Byron and asked for information and gossip 'tell him that you have a friend who has few pleasures and is very impatient to read the poems written at Geneva'.
This was a painful and lonely time for Fanny. Many of the other Godwin children had left home and escaped to other interests and she felt abandoned and miserable. When Shelley and Mary returned to England she was surprised not to meet her sister or receive any invitation to join them in Bath and she determined to visit them even though Mary had parted irritably with her before leaving for Geneva and had recently been cross with her. Fanny was not invited to their lodgings, instead Shelley went to meet her at the coaching inn where she was waiting. He would have to put her off somehow.
No record of this meeting is available. Fanny appealeded to Shelley but did not directly tell him of her love for him. He withheld himself, ignored her appeal and left her alone. There are poetic fragments which form the only account of what might have happened:
'Her voice did quiver as we parted
yet knew not I that heart was broken
From which it came and I departed
Heeding not the words then spoken'
Fanny had been rejected once more and for the last time and she now determined to end her life. She travelled to Swansea by the Bristol Coach and took a room in a coaching inn, the Mackworth Arms, in Wind Street. She had no difficulty in obtaining laudanum and then went to her room where she wrote letters to Shelley and Godwin in which she said she was 'disgusted with life'. All her hopes had been vested in Mary and Shelley and when they cruelly rejected her she had nothing left to live for.
"I have long determined that the best thing I could do was to put an end to the existences of a being whose birth was unfortunate and whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in promoting her welfare. Perhaps to hear of my death will given you pain but you will soon have the blessing of forgetting that such a creature every existed"
Fanny then took the laudanum and went to bed without undressing and waited for death. She had signed her final note but it was found later that the signature had been torn off presumably to conceal her identity. Nobody came forward to claim the body which was buried in a pauper's grave and her death was hushed up and kept secret from family and friends for fear of a scandal. It seems such a lonely and tragic end.....
"Full of warmth and affectionate and ideal aspirations; sympathetically responsive to every poem,e very work of art appealing to the imagination, she was condemned by her temperament and the surroundings of her life to idealize nothing, and to look at all objects as they presented themselves to her in the light of the very commonest day'
I am glad that Janet Todd has researched the life of what is, to us, a largely unknown character in the Mary, Shelley and Byron canon, about which so much has been written. This is what makes history so fascinating, exploring the byways and going down hidden paths to the discovery at the end.
I am aware that I have encapsulated Fanny's story in a few paragraphs and have not given a full sense of the desolation and rejection she suffered from all her life that brought her to her untimely end. A post twice as long as this would be needed so if you feel after reading this that her death seemed somewhat abrupt then the fault is mine and I can only recommend that you obtain a copy of this book and read it for yourself . (Please also read an excellent review over on Vulpes Libris )
As I stated at the start of this post, I was somewhat daunted at reviewing Death and the Maidens, so I hope I have done it justice and made you want to read this thoughtful and intriguing book.
