Maurice (Shelley)
The story is narrated in a melancholy tone from several points of view and focuses on the theme of loss, particularly the separation of parents and children.
Shelley explored this partly autobiographical theme in other works written at the same time, including her novel Mathilda and her play Proserpine.
The story's straightforward language reflects that of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth, whose works Shelley was reading while she composed "Maurice".
[3] The couple had two children, Anna Laura Georgiana (called Laurette) and Nerina, who quickly became attached to Mary and Claire.
[4] After traveling to Florence, Mary Shelley wrote to Lady Mountcashell, praising Laurette's "simplicity and frankness".
In the summer, the group moved again, from Pisa to Livorno, and Mary Shelley began researching her historical novel Valperga.
[8] Shelley's journal for that day notes: "Thursday 10—Write a story for Laurette—Walk on the mountain—Le Buche delle Fate [fairy grottoes or caves]—The weather is warm & delightful".
[10] Shelley suggested that her father, philosopher William Godwin, publish Maurice as part of his Juvenile Library, but he refused.
[14] She was looking through a box of old papers, searching for "something interesting" to add to an exhibit about the winter of 1827–28 when the poet Giacomo Leopardi had visited and met Lady Mountcashell and her daughter.
[16] One year later, Percy Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft biographer Claire Tomalin published the entire story, along with a lengthy introduction and a typescript of the manuscript.
He also tells the traveller of his poor family and how he does not want to be a bother to them, revealing that his father used to beat him because he did not believe Maurice was really ill.
Hearing this story, Maurice reveals himself to be the traveller's son; he had changed his name to avoid the person he believed to be his cruel father.
[18] However, in her review of the Tomalin edition in The New York Times, Marina Warner writes that the story "contains little of the seething originality, moral complexity or sinister Gothic speculativeness of Frankenstein".
Tomalin has argued that "Wordsworth does seem to preside over Maurice, with its clear, straightforward language, and its setting among simple people and poor labourers, and against elemental backgrounds of rocks and trees, cliffs and seashore".
Unlike Shelley's Frankenstein, which suggests that environment determines a person's morality, Maurice assumes that people can be innately good.
In contrast with other children's stories of its day, it lacks didacticism and draws no clear distinctions between virtue and vice.
[18] The overarching themes of the story are Romantic, according to Tomalin: "the vulnerability of childhood, and of parenthood; displacement, loss, pain, death and rehabilitation; delight in the natural world; and the power of time both to heal and to destroy".
[24] A court had ruled Percy Bysshe Shelley unfit to raise the children from his marriage to his deceased first wife and placed them in the care of a court-appointed guardian.
[17] Markley explains that Maurice is a reworking of Mathilda, "in which a long deferred reunion of father and child is orchestrated with happy rather than tragic results".
[25] This theme is also explored in Mary Shelley's short stories "The Mourner", "The Evil Eye", and "The Pilgrims", as well as her novel Lodore (1835).
[16] She explained this occurred because Mary Shelley is now considered a significant Romantic writer, her works have become increasingly accessible to the public, and her authorship of Frankenstein is often mentioned in the popular press.
