MAY 30 Listening to Our Mothers: Mary Shelley’s Maternal Ghost Virginia Woolf once wrote that “If we are women, we think back through our mothers.” Mary Shelley, the teen author of Frankenstein, is one of our mothers. Named for her mother, Mary grew up knowing that her birth caused her mother’s death. She was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, defender of the “rights of women” and the philosopher William Godwin. Mary’s childhood home was filled with prominent scientists, philosophers, and writers—but no mother. She sought her mother through reading her books…as we seek ourselves through the writings of women.

Miriam L. Wallace is a professor of English and Gender Studies at New College of Florida and Chair of Division of Humanities. She is the author of “Revolutionary Subjects in the English Jacobin Novel” and a special issue of Publication of Modern Language on “Emotions.” She teaches courses including Revolution and Romanticism, Rhetoric in Action: Law and Literature, and Feminist Theory: Conceiving Women.