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[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

I want to read War and Peace but I can’t because I have A Levels… :(

If im reading a 800 page book I should be freed of all other responsibilities in my life. Like sorry I can’t do that right now because im reading this long ass book. Yeah you know how it is

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

Sex is actually a myth created by classic Russian lit authors as a plot device to stir up drama

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

angela carter's introduction for my mother she killed me, my father he ate me

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

happy shakespeare day! ✨

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

I love Much Ado About Nothing and have watched a lot of adaptions lately. I have noticed a trend of trying to soften Claudio's character, to make him appear more sympathetic, to make it seem like Hero is in love with him from the start, so we, the audience, root for them being together. I understand these choices because it is a "comedy" and performers want to give audiences a comfortable, happy ending. But personally I would prefer a raw, harder hitting adaption.

Much Ado About Nothing (1993) was my first introduction to the play and I remember how jarring the wedding scene was, how frightening Claudio's rage, how heartbreaking Hero's fear and despair, how I kept waiting for someone to intervene, for Leonato to defend his daughter, only for him to abuse her himself. And later, when you expect Hero to be given full apologies, she receives pittance, and it makes me ache, it is dissatisfying, and that is the point.

The play is not meant to be a cute romcom between Hero and Claudio. It is about men of power abusing and ruining the reputation of an innocent woman because of a perceived slight, about how powerless women are in a world run by men, how they are not believed.

We are not meant to root for Claudio and Hero. As far as the text goes, Hero has no feelings for Claudio before their engagement. It is the Prince who woos her and then she is handed to Claudio like a trophy. He makes no effort to earn her love, because he does not need to, the Prince and her father give her to him. She sets herself to loving him because that is what is expected of her, but she has no choice, and no amount of heart eyes can change that. Her father would have given her to the Prince if he wanted her.

Let us portray Claudio for what he is... emphasise his interest in Hero being Leonato's sole heir, how he mocks Antonio and Leonato as two old men without teeth after learning of Hero's death. At the wedding follow the 1993 example and show him for the true violent villain he is. He brought her to the aisle before everyone and denounced her as a wanton, called her rotten. It is no accident that the real "villain", Don John says very little in this scene. It should not be dismissed that Claudio is set on publicly shaming Hero before he has seen proof of Don John's claims.

Yes, it is Don John's scheme, he is a villain too, but the point is how quick Claudio and Don Pedro are to turn, that they are not as good as they present themselves to be. I don't condone Don John's actions at all, but the point is he is exploiting those social inequalities, bringing to light what is already there. Imagine if there had been no plot, if Claudio and Don Pedro had witnessed Borachio and Margaret's weird roleplaying fantasy and jumped to conclusions. Would we still feel sympathetic to Claudio's "Sinned I not but in mistaking"?

I know it has been pointed out had Hero truly cheated on Claudio as he saw it then we would be rooting for him to shame her. It is a fair point, but public shaming is still cringe especially at a time when a woman's wellbeing hinged on a good reputation. Claudio acts like a man denied something, he ensured Hero's reputation would never recover. Hero had no choice in her marriage to Claudio, if she did love another then why would we not root for her as much as Romeo and Juliet against Paris, as Lysander and Hermia against Demetrius?

This emphasis on virginity is important at the time, but outdated now. So why not point at it and go "isn't this ridiculous". In fact, the ridiculousness placed on girls being virgins does prevail in today's society. Slut shaming is still a huge issue with fatal consequences. Leonato threatens to kill, maim his daughter should the accusations against her prove true. Honour killing still happens today. So make the audience uncomfortable, make them think "this is not right", because it's not.

As for Claudio's supposed repentance, how about a version of the play where like in the First Folio and Quarto (as cited by Cedric Watts: https://shakespeare.edel.univ-poitiers.fr/index.php?id=1486), Claudio does not even do the bare minimum of reading the plaque at Hero's funeral, but assigns this duty to an unnamed Lord. As he woos in proxy, so does he mourn in proxy.

How unjust it feels that after "murdering" Hero, he should be given "another" of her kinswomen, supposedly Leonato and Antonio's surviving heir (how fortune for Claudio). Do not show Hero happy to be reunited with Claudio, show her resigned. She must now marry this man who wronged her to save her reputation. It is not that I want Hero to suffer, but I think it is an insult to what she does suffer to dismiss it in an attempt to save Claudio's face.

Hero's marriage to Claudio is not love triumphing over evil, it is a tragedy. So play it that way. Show Claudio for what he is. And then let Beatrice eat his heart.

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

“I should be at the club” this “I should be at the club” that. Well for ME, I wish I were out of doors—I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy and free…and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? Why does my blood rush into a hell of a tumult at a few words? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

Byron’s surviving clothing part 1

Coat Lord Byron owned whilst fighting in Greece that originally belonged to his “friend” Edward John Trelawny. (Sorry for the bad image quality)

“He likewise coveted a green embroidered military jacket of mine; which as it was to small for me, I gave him; so I added considerably to his dignity”

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

succession + natasha, pierre, and the great comet of 1812

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

my dealer: got some straight gas 🔥😛 this strain is called “laudanum-dosed wine at the villa diodati on lake geneva in 1816” 😳 you’ll be zonked out of your gourd 💯

me: yeah whatever i don’t feel shit

5 minutes later: dude i swear i just saw mary shelley and claire clairmont talking about reanimation and vampires with lord byron

my buddy percy pacing: dr. john polidori is plotting against us and my wifes nipples have been replaced by eyeballs

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

Eleanor Vance should NOT have been at the club (she should have been at her little cottage with her white cat and her oleanders) (and her stone lions) (and her cup of stars)

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

you think the coquettes haven't ruined tumblr that much until you search up the sylvia plath tag

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

An excerpt from the end of a letter where Mary Shelley rejects the advances of her long-time friend Edward Trelawny, 26 July 1831:

"My name will never be Trelawny. I am not so young as I was when you first knew me, but I am as proud. I must have the entire affection, devotion, and, above all, the solicitous protection of any one who would win me. You belong to womenkind in general, and Mary Shelley will never be yours.

I write in haste, but I will write soon again, more at length. You shall have your copies the moment I receive them. Believe me, with all gratitude and affection,

Yours,

M. W. Shelley."

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

HAPPY ELEVEN YEARS

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

this morning the United Nations Human Rights Council voted on a resolution calling for a ban on arms sales to Israel and the resolution passed. two Israeli border points opened for aid routes (they were supposedly open? lmao), Biden is calling for an immediate ceasefire, last night was the first without air attacks on Gaza.. the killing of seven foreign aid workers shook the world apparently, but oh god how late. the journey to recognising genocide for some seems to avoid acknowledging the humanity of thousands of Palestinians who have been murdered

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

Angela Carter: Of Wolves & Women

[ijustreallylovemaryshelley]

The book Lolita is so utterly devastating. Vladimir Nabokov continuously calls attention to the fact that this is just a little girl who is having her innocence ripped away from her in ever more upsetting ways. I genuinely can’t understand people who read Lolita and come away with the impression that this book is anything other than heartbreaking.

“Lolita isn’t a perverse young girl. She’s a poor child who has been debauched and whose senses never stir under the caresses of the foul Humbert Humbert, whom she asks once, ‘how long did [he] think we were going to live in stuffy cabins, doing filthy things together…?’ But to reply to your question: no, its success doesn’t annoy me, I am not like Conan Doyle, who out of snobbery or simple stupidity preferred to be known as the author of “The Great Boer War,” which he thought superior to his Sherlock Holmes. It is equally interesting to dwell, as journalists say, on the problem of the inept degradation that the character of the nymphet Lolita, whom I invented in 1955, has undergone in the mind of the broad public. Not only has the perversity of this poor child been grotesquely exaggerated, but her physical appearance, her age, everything has been transformed by the illustrations in foreign publications. Girls of eighteen or more, sidewalk kittens, cheap models, or simple long-legged criminals, are baptized “nymphets” or “Lolitas” in news stories in magazines in Italy, France, Germany, etc; and the covers of translations, Turkish or Arab, reach the height of ineptitude when they feature a young woman with opulent contours and a blonde mane imagined by boobies who have never read my book. In reality Lolita is a little girl of twelve, whereas Humbert Humbert is a mature man, and it’s the abyss between his age and that of the little girl that produces the vacuum, the vertigo, the seduction of mortal danger. Secondly, it’s the imagination of the sad satyr that makes a magic creature of this little American schoolgirl, as banal and normal in her way as the poet manqué Humbert is in his. Outside the maniacal gaze of Humbert there is no nymphet. Lolita the nymphet exists only through the obsession that destroys Humbert. Herein an essential aspect of a unique book that has been betrayed by a factitious popularity.”

— Vladimir Nabokov (tr. Brian Boyd), Apostrophes (1975)