This sickness was very common due to the unsanitary methods of doctors causing many women of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to die after childbirth. According to Anne Mellor, William Godwin was extremely disheartened by his wife's death, whom he had married only five months prior so their child would not be socially outcast. Both of Mary's parents had "principled opposition to the institution of marriage"(Mellor 2), but with the death of Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin lost that radical nature. He later remarried to Mary Jane Clairmont in 1801 who would become the nightmare and source of melancholy in Mary's childhood.
Godwin's marriage to Mary Jane Clairmont, although a plague to Mary, would provoke the strong themes in her profound works later on in her life. Mary then had two step siblings, Jane Clairmont, who was later called Claire, and Charles Clairmont in addition to her older half sister Fanny Imlay Godwin. Although Mary was considerably more advance in intelligence than her siblings, "the only formal teaching she received, however, was from Mr. Benson the music master who gave the children weekly half-hour lessons in singing and reading music"(11) Mellor states. Even with a poor formal education, Mary still was allowed to read books from her father's expansive library and published her first work in 1808 unparallel to the normal capabilities of an eleven year old girl. Her lengthened poem of a song called "Mounseer Nongtongpaw" by Charles Didbin was so popular it was republished twenty-two years later in an illustrated edition (Mellor 10). Mrs. Godwin, extremely jealous of Mary's superior intelligence over Mrs. Godwin's won educated children, bitterly stated ""Jane might be well educated, but Mary could stay at home and mend the stockings""(Mellor 13). Mary Jane's wicked torment and raging jealousy of Mary's relationship with Mary's own father compelled Mary Jane to put an end to the relationship.
