Posted by Cate Triola on Saturday, September 11, 2021 - 16:20

Mary describes Provins as "the first place that struck us with interest".

Harrison's post:

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley spent the first week of August, 1814, in Paris. One of the places she visited while she was there was the Cascade du Bois de Boulogne:

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley spent the first week of August, 1814, in Paris. One of the places she visited while she was there was the Porte Saint-Denis, which was, according to her, a "a beautiful piece of sculpture. I do not know how it may at present be disfigured by the Gothic barbarism of the conquerors of France, who were not contented with retaking the spoils of Napoleon, but with impotent malice, destroyed the monuments of their own defeat.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley spent the first week of August, 1814, in Paris. One of the places she visited while she was there was the Tuileries Garden:
"The heat of the weather was excessive, so that we were unable to walk except in the afternoon. On the first evening we walked to the gardens of the Thuilleries; they are formal, in the French fashion, the trees cut into shapes, and without grass."

As we read Mary's and Percy's letters in History of a Six Weeks' Tour and Percy's poem, "Mont Blanc," we realize why the sublime Mont Blanc is the place where Victor's encounter with the creature takes place. It's magnificent, terrifying, and almost supernatural, a perfect backdrop for this fateful pair's first meeting since the creation. 

Geneva has been associated with Jean-Jacques Rousseau. There are quite a few allusions to Rouseau and Rousseauvean ideals in the novel. Both Percy and Mary Shelley, as well as her mother (Mary Wollstonecraft) and father (William Godwin) were deeply influenced by Rousseau's ideas of freedom, passion, and sensibility. 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Rousseau_Geneve.JPG  (Rouseau's statue in Geneva)