AUTHORS | HORROR FICTION
Frankenstein’s Dad Had Nothing on His Mom
Exploring the fascinations of Author Mary Shelley
As a former camper and counselor-in-training in northern New Jersey, I liked most of the activities offered up to me. One in particular, though, stands out: overnight campfire — sleepovers and the ghost stories that went with it.
While they were always fun and I loved hearing and making up ghost stories, none of them compared to the classic TV horror movies I watched when growing up (think Svengoolie). My favorites were the Frankenstein movies, though Dracula and the Wolf Man caught my eye, too.
Then, I learned something about Frankenstein that endeared the movie (and later book) to me even more: the story was created by a young woman who wrote it after being challenged to write a ghost story. She was the only one in her circle who did — at the ripe old age of eighteen.
Her name: Mary Shelley. She was married to the poet Percy B. Shelley and had what seems to be a difficult, tempestuous marriage. When I first discovered one of the most enduring horror stories in the world had been created by Shelley, I wanted to learn everything I could about her — and can see I’m not alone here on Medium. Like many of you, I keep trying to figure out why she continues to pique my curiosity.
According to the McCarter Theater website, written for the company’s 2019 production of Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in 1797 to journalist/philosopher William Godwin and author Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote Vindication of the Rights of Woman during the eighteenth century.
Wollstonecraft is considered one of the mothers of the first wave of feminism, and it doesn’t surprise me that she was called a “hyena in a petticoat” by politician/writer Horace Walpole, while others accused her of being “unsexed,” unladylike and having no shame.
What happens to the daughter of a woman who wanted other women to be free of stereotypical blather and circumstance? I don’t know, but I would not have expected her to grow up and write one of the most popular and extraordinary horror stories of all time.
Why did Mary Shelley want to create the Frankenstein story? There are new books out that share their authors’ ideas about Shelley, and you may want to find them. I prefer to come up with my own theories.
One of my favorite TV series in the past decade (2014–2016, to be exact), was a show called Penny Dreadful. It managed to connect eighteenth-century horror fiction with the struggles women have always faced (including the ones we’re facing now). Penny Dreadful also kept updating classic horror stories like Frankenstein, which was (as far as I’m concerned) even more reason to love it.
Back to Mary Shelley, though: was she commenting on the world and times she lived in when she wrote the Frankenstein story? Many writers do, so it wouldn’t be a surprise. Or was she just driven to write a horror story, because of what she experienced throughout her life?
I don’t know, but the most interesting thing about the century she inhabited was that artists and writers were doing things that were completely forbidden, according to the conventions of the time. Many believed in “free love” or “open marriage,” including Shelley, who was hardly the “good girl” that her era demanded.
When Mary fell in love with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, she decided to elope with him, even though he was already married. Before that elopement, the couple had been meeting secretly at her mother’s grave.
Hold onto that thought. I bolded it for a reason.
Would Mary Shelley have been someone I would have liked? Probably, though at the same time, I wonder how much I would have trusted her, had she been a friend. Most readers who’ve done any research on this story know that Percy Shelley’s first wife was devastated when her husband left her and committed suicide a few months after Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein.
Of course, no one seems to blame Percy Shelley for what happened or how he treated his first wife.
Some months after the suicide, Mary and Percy Shelley were married. True to form, I guess, Percy continued to have relationships with other women in years to come, and to encourage his second wife to do the same. (And here I can’t resist saying, “Wow! What a guy!”)
Somehow, like the rest of us, they navigated their jealousies, passions, ambitions, tragedies and a multitude of losses due to illnesses and death. The Frankenstein story seems to have outlasted all of it. Shelley’s ghost story has given us an eternal look at a “Monster” who is in fact closer to than we think.
I say this because, while he is created essentially from revived dead matter, he is endlessly looking for love, friendship and acceptance. His creator Victor Frankenstein is guided by ambition and scientific vanity, while his Monster regrets his anger and the murderous actions he took because of it. He is clever and complex, and his story, while not pretty, seems to suggest he is capable of reflection, growth and change.
On the other hand, Victor Frankenstein could have helped his Monster to be a better person, taken care of him and loved him. He rejected him and tried to kill the Monster instead.
Is that what Mary Shelley wanted us to learn from this story — to respect life and practice compassion? I don’t know, but I’d like to believe that. What can we learn from her life and how she lived it? There’s no way to know if she was kind, though I did read that she was treated harshly by her stepmother as a child. Whatever sort of person she was, Shelley seemed loyal to her work and also seemed to believe deeply in the power of art.
Another telling moment strikes me as essential to Mary Shelley’s character. Her husband Percy drowned at the age of twenty nine. She was widowed at twenty five, with a toddler son and a few published books, including Frankenstein, which didn’t sell very well when published anonymously in 1818.
After her husband’s death, Mary Shelley made two interesting choices: she wrapped his burnt heart in her writing case after his cremation. She also decided to earn a living by publishing her own work and those of her deceased husband. Frankenstein was republished in 1822 and sales were better than they had been when the book first came out. Sometime later, the story was produced as a play.
What stands out here? Mary Shelley met her first lover at her mother’s grave. She wrapped his burnt heart in her writing case after he was cremated.
This woman was born to write horror stories.
Which brings me back to what continues to fascinate me about Mary Shelley. She wanted to write an unforgettable ghost story — and did. She taught us that love didn’t have to be pretty to make lasting impressions on us, that our souls were not simplistic, that the rich and spoiled (Percy? Victor?) may be the real monsters in our lives, instead of those who are unfortunate or lacking physical attractiveness or charm.
Mary Shelley also taught us that life itself is a horror story, and we have to be ready for it, or at least ready to deal with it. And while there is very little we can do about how life treats us, we can do a lot by writing stories that make us want to read more.
That’s why Mary Shelley will always be one of my favorite writers. And why I measure all the other horror stories I see by what she wrote.
