A little bit on Labor Day for the upcoming holiday on Monday. Plus, Mary Shelley’s birthday and her day of labor over Frankenstein.
The date is August 30th, Friday, and today I’m traveling from Portland, OR to Los Angeles, CA.
In honor of Labor Day on Monday, today we’re taking a look at how we got Labor Day.
No one is sure who exactly the first person to propose the idea was, but anyone who has worked has probably, at one point, had the idea that everyone that works should have a day off.
The first recorded group to hold a specifically Labor Day picnic in honor of all their workers was the Central Labor Union in New York City. They chose Tuesday September 5th in 1882 and 1883.
As the idea and practice spread among Labor Unions, the holiday was celebrated in increasing numbers in towns and cities. By 1887 Oregon was the first state to pass the holiday into law, with the majority of states having adopted the day on their own by 1894. Later that same year Congress passed Labor Day into law, declaring it a national holiday.
And today is the birthday of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, English writer.
Mary was born in 1797 “20 minutes after 11 at night” (according to her father’s journal). Ten days later, her mother, feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, died of a bacterial infection, leaving Mary to be raised by her father political philosopher William Godwin.
Godwin was devoted to his daughter’s education. He gave her full access to his extensive library and often took her, her siblings and step-siblings out on “field trips.” He encouraged Mary to read her late mother’s work, particularly, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. (This and her father’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice would be doctrines she tried to live by.)
Mary maintained a solid relationship with her father and there was a definite adoration between the two. However, when 16-year-old Mary began a relationship with the already married 22-year-old Percy Shelley, her father did not approve. When Mary and Percy ran off together and eloped (Percy was still married), Mary’s father essentially disowned her.
Mary and Shelley lived together for the next two years and encouraged each other’s writing. Though Shelley was often unfaithful to Mary, she stuck with him, claiming to believe in the concept of “free love,” though she did not practice it herself until later in life. The two married in December 1816 after the suicide of Shelley’s first wife. Mary was 19.
Mary Shelley’s most iconic and influential novel Frankenstein, (or A Modern Prometheus,) was famously first drafted during a rainy summer spent at Lake Geneva in the company of Lord Byron. Mary and Percy did not stay at Lord Byron’s rented villa, but their close proximity and tendency toward political chatter saw them quickly develop friendship. It was during one of the rainy stretches that Lord Byron suggested the party each come up with a ghost story. Mary at first was self-conscious that she wouldn’t be able to come up with anything. (At 18 she was the youngest of the group, and her anxiety over the “challenge” is completely understandable, especially being surrounded by two already established writers, and having to compete with her step-sister for Percy’s wandering eye.) But after a day of musing and brainstorming, she came up with Frankenstein. What she originally thought would be a short story developed over the next few years into a full-length novel.
Frankenstein was first published anonymously, and was well-received, with critics speculating Percy Shelley as the author. It appeared to dip in popularity with critics when Mary Shelley was revealed as the true author. However, Frankenstein has since become part of the English canon and is sometimes credited as the first English science-fiction book.
Mary and her father’s relationship was mended with her marriage to Percy. Godwin lauded praises on his daughter’s work – his opinion was perhaps the one she valued most after Percy. Godwin once wrote to his beloved daughter:
“[Frankenstein] is the most wonderful work to have been written at twenty years of age that I ever heard of….you have pursued a course of reading, and cultivated your mind in a manner…most admirably adapted to make you a great and successful author. If you cannot be independent, who should be?”
Stanzas (“Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!”)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Oh, come to me in dreams, my love!
I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.
’Twas thus, as ancient fables tell,
Love visited a Grecian maid,
Till she disturbed the sacred spell,
And woke to find her hopes betrayed.
But gentle sleep shall veil my sight,
And Psyche’s lamp shall darkling be,
When, in the visions of the night,
Thou dost renew thy vows to me.
Then come to me in dreams, my love,
I will not ask a dearer bliss;
Come with the starry beams, my love,
And press mine eyelids with thy kiss.