--- title: "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) - IVU - International Vegetarian Union" description: "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851): A miniature by Reginal Easton [Bodleian Library, Oxford] (1840) A Painting by Richard Rothwell [National Portrait Gallery] Extract from the introduction to 'Mary Shelley Frankenstein 1818 text' - edited and introduction by Prof. Marylin Butler, Oxford" url: "https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews/2639-history-shelley-mary.html" date: "2026-11-06T00:17:53+00:00" language: "en-GB" --- # Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851) ![](https://ivu.org/images/legacy/history/history/shelley/mary1.jpg) *A miniature by Reginal Easton \[Bodleian Library, Oxford\]*![](https://ivu.org/images/legacy/history/history/shelley/mary2.jpg) *(1840) A Painting by Richard Rothwell \[National Portrait Gallery\]* Extract from the introduction to 'Mary Shelley Frankenstein 1818 text' - edited and introduction by Prof. Marylin Butler, Oxford University Press, 1993: > ". . . After Frankenstein vows to hunt down his 'progeny', the Creature nurtures Frankenstein to keep him alive, feeding him for example with a dead hare; only when killing for Frankenstein does the vegetarian Creature kill for food." Extract from a review of *The Sexual Politics of Meat* by Carol Adams > Dismemberment of a text can be achieved in a number of ways, including ignoring the text entirely, failing to acknowledge the vegetarian message in the text, or trivializing it, and by distorting the message so that it is consistent with and indistinguishable from the dominant discourse of meat. Adams argues that feminist literary critics and historians are among those who have dismembered such texts, and in using some of the same tools that patriarchy uses to silence feminists texts, these feminists have silenced some of their own feminist vegetarian sisters. > > Mary Shelly's FRANKENSTEIN is a case in point. FRANKENSTEIN has received an enormous amount of critical attention over the past two decades from feminists and other critics, all of whom have neglected to explore the vegetarian themes in the novel. Frankenstein's creature is a vegetarian. Adams says: "The Creature's vegetarianism not only confirms its inherent, original benevolence, but conveys Mary Shelley's precise rendering of themes articulated by a group of her contemporaries whom I call `Romantic vegetarians'" (p. 109). The story "bears the vegetarian word," as Adams puts it, in a variety of ways: by alluding to the literal words of famous, historical vegetarians; by allowing fictional characters to allude to famous vegetarians; by translating vegetarian texts; by using language which reveals the function of the absent referent. Shelley grew up in an intellectual environment in which vegetarianism was much discussed and often adopted by such writers and activists as [John Frank Newton](https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews/2445-history-england19a-newton.html), [Joseph Ritson](https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews/2448-history-england19a-ritson.html), and her father, William Godwin. Shelley's husband, [Percy](https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews/2638-history-shelley-index.html), authored two vegetarian texts, A VINDICATION OF NATURAL DIET and QUEEN MAB, and the Romantics with whom they kept company viewed radical politics and other unorthodox notions such as Republicanism as going hand-in-glove with their vegetarianism (p. 111). > > Adams claims that feminist literary critics and historians have failed to explore the associations that Shelley and a number of nineteenth and twentieth-century pacifists, such as Olive Shriener and [Anna Kingsford](https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews/2556-history-kingsford-index.html), made between flesh eating, domestic violence, and war. These woman saw the elimination of violence on the dinner table as a first and necessary step toward eliminating violence on the domestic "front," and ultimately between nations. Extract from an article on an American University website (author unknown): > Another considerable influence on Mary Shelley and in turn the monster, was the works of [Rousseau](https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews/2614-history-renaissance-rousseau.html). Mary studied Rousseau early in her own intellectual development (Marshall, 182) and during the period that she composed Frankenstein (Feldman, 93-97). In Rousseau's Second Discourse is a discussion on the state of natural man or what Rousseau calls the "noble savage". Frankenstein's monster is an embodiment of this state of being developed by Rousseau, in which the monster first discovers himself and later the knowledge of language and the conventions of society. The monster's narration of his personal development and later acquisition of knowledge has been recognized by critics of the novel as a "noble savage whose early life in the forest (drinking at brooks, eating nuts and berries and not meat, sleeping under trees, encountering fire for the first time, acquiring language, and so on) conforms in general outline and specific details to the life of Rousseau's savage"(Marshall, 183). ***Note:** apparently Mary Shelley was also influenced by 'Observations on Man' by [David Hartley](https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews/2597-history-renaissance-hartley.html) and [Ovid](https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews/2534-history-greece-rome-ovid.html)'s *Metamorphoses** - **[Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus (complete)](http://books.google.com/books?id=5twBAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=frankenstein&hl=en&ei=yREfTfvqEIiahQf62JG3Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBw#v=onepage&q&f=false)** *(link to Google Books, 1823 edition, 2 volumes in one scan)* by Mary W. Shelley. Written 1816-17, first pub.1818. Revised 1831. - [**Frankenstein**](http://books.google.com/books?id=BWbS7fVqOwMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=frankenstein&hl=en&ei=QxMfTZuTNJOxhQe45723Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAA) (*link to google books)* - "Annotated text -- Critical essays -- Special text layout for students" - [***Frankenstein*: Complete, Original Text**](http://books.google.com/books?id=_jf4QJSNcj8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=frankenstein&hl=en&ei=IRUfTYW-Nse4hAfszui2Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDcQ6AEwBA) *(link to google books)*, modern reprint of 1818 edition. A note on this archive. The history section of this website is drawn from a body of legacy content originally compiled by John Davis, former manager of the International Vegetarian Union. It represents his curation of historical material, and in places includes passages written by him directly. Over the years, the IVU website has migrated between several different hosting servers. In the course of these migrations, a number of PDF files were unfortunately lost, and **some links to PDF documents may no longer function**. Where this is the case, we have chosen to leave the original link text in place, as it may itself carry information of historical value. - Hits: 1689 ## Schema ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://ivu.org/hv-societies-ivu-history-societies-united-kingdom.html?view=article&id=2639:history-shelley-mary&catid=74","url":"https://ivu.org/hv-societies-ivu-history-societies-united-kingdom.html?view=article&id=2639:history-shelley-mary&catid=74","name":"Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)","inLanguage":"en","isPartOf":[{"@id":"https://ivu.org/history-of-ivu.html#archive"},{"@id":"https://ivu.org/hv-societies-ivu-history-societies-united-kingdom.html"}],"publisher":{"@id":"https://ivu.org/#organization"},"description":"A miniature by Reginal Easton [Bodleian Library, Oxford] (1840) A Painting by Richard Rothwell [National Portrait Gallery] Extract from the introduction to 'Mary Shelley Frankenstein 1818 text' -…"}]} ``` ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://ivu.org" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "IVU", "item": "https://ivu.org/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Resources", "item": "https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources.html" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Interviews", "item": "https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews.html" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 5, "name": "History of the Vegetarian Societies", "item": "https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews.html" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 6, "name": "history", "item": "https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews.html" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 7, "name": "shelley", "item": "https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews.html" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 8, "name": "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)", "item": "https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews/2639-history-shelley-mary.html" } ] } ``` ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Article", "mainEntityOfPage": { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://ivu.org/international-vegetarian-union/resources/interviews/2639-history-shelley-mary.html" }, "headline": "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)", "description": "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851): A miniature by Reginal Easton [Bodleian Library, Oxford] (1840) A Painting by Richard Rothwell [National Portrait Gallery] Extract from the introduction to 'Mary Shelley Frankenstein 1818 text' - edited and introduction by Prof. Marylin Butler, Oxford", "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "name": "International Vegetarian Union", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://ivu.org/images/logos/logo-ivu-tranparent-background.png" } }, "author": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Alex Fernandes", "url": "https://ivu.org/international-council.html" }, "datePublished": "2026-10-16T00:00:16+00:00", "dateCreated": "2026-05-29T01:56:00+00:00", "dateModified": "2026-10-08T00:53:41+00:00" } ```