#since william had like a note in his diary or something saying harriet died the last day she was seen alive

[bookwyrminspiration]

gonna be real with you, i know nothing about the personal OR professional lives of percy or mary, but like. they literally said it was her. even fuckin' BYRON (i think?? maybe it was someone else though) said it wasn't percy but his wife, didn't he?

also, about the theme/style things.... god forbid a writer changes things up a bit??? percy's her husband, it wouldnt be like. crazy for her to take inspiration or whatever. and even then it's not like the book doesn't carry topics mary herself wouldve been invested in.

at the end of the day i dont know much about this theory, but on first pass through it seems like bullshit. there is more than enough evidence that she did write it, and i think doubting that, despite the fact that it wouldve been really easy for percy to be like "hey no, i wrote this actually", especially since people already kind of couldnt believe a woman would write such a thing, is bordering on straight up misogyny at this point.

i dont know though. could be wrong. if anyone has actual evidence maybe itd be worth listening to. but as of now it doesnt seem like it.

There's really not much I can say in response because I, myself, wasn't approaching this with a passionate stance--but I did find this source from one of the main people arguing Percy wrote Frankenstein, just to sort of explain better than I summarized. He's also got an entire book called The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, where I presume the bulk of the evidence is. Haven't read it and probably won't. Again, not me arguing with you, simply being like this is the alternative I was made aware of

Also context for me sending that ask: we weren't even talking about Frankenstein that day, we were talking about "the cold earth slept below" by Percy, and it was just a passing thing, so we didn't truly get into it. The personal life context was surrounding Percy's first wife, Harriet (who is widely regarded to be the subject of the poem, written after she was found dead in a river) and the complicated and messy situation of Percy leaving her for Mary, but then almost leaving Mary for her again? but their being a lot of financial motives in the Godwin family to keep Percy around, so messing with Harriet's reputation (claiming she was unfaithful) to make him leaving her for Mary more acceptable/reasonable, etc. And later potentially fudging dates (like on the poem, mary claiming it was written before Harriet died and had nothing to do with her), probably among other things I'm unaware of.

Again, not an expert, just the context I was given in brief. I truly know very little about the subject, hence why I came to you! It's my understanding its a rather unorthodox position to take among scholars? But regardless it is one that exists