Mary Jane Clairmont Godwin
Mary Jane Clairmont Godwin, 1766-1841, mother of Charles and Claire Clairmont and the second wife of William Godwin. Little is known about her
early life before she and Godwin were married in December 1801. It is assumed from the
fact that they were married twice on the same day that she was never
legally married to Charles Gaulis Clairmont but had taken his name for the
sake of her children. His father had been a magistrate in Lausanne, Switzerland. Her maiden name, Vial, was
likewise tracable back to Geneva, and
she had been brought up on the continent speaking French. The numerous
connections that can thus be made to the environment and circumstances of
Frankenstein are offset by the cordial dislike in which Mary Shelley held her step-mother. If
there are coded references in the novel that either Godwin or his wife
would have discerned, they have never been deciphered by later
commentators.
Mary Jane Godwin's reputation has suffered at the hands of Mary's antipathy
and slighting remarks made by those of Godwin's friends who venerated his
first wife Mary Wollstonecraft. She
should, however, be recognized as occupying a singular professional
position, for, in the guise of M.J.Godwin & Co., operator of the Juvenile
Library, she was the only female publisher of substance in the London
literary world of the early 1800s. She was likewise a translator from the
French and, in her business acumen, something of a bulwark against the
financial improvidence of her husband. After thirty-five years of
marriage, she survived Godwin by five years.
