The book's opening Prologue is written in the voice of The Creature who tells the world that Mary Shelley created him as a way to expose the cruelty of the world.In Part I Exile, fourteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft is on the deck of the Osnaburgh, heading for Scotland. Mary is feeling sad and isolated, remembering that her father did not see her off; only her sisters Fanny and Claire were there. She reminisces about her childhood.
Mary was born the night Herschel's comet blazed across the London sky. Mary's father told her the story of the comet and its discovery by a woman, Caroline Herschel leading Mary to believe she could do anything in life. She was encouraged to read, to be independent and to use her imagination. But that changed in 1802 when her father married the Widow Clairmont, bringing into their family her daughter Claire Clairmont and a son named Charles.
In 1805 the family moved from their home in Somers Town to an abandoned shop in Holborn, a block from the gallows at Newgate Prison. Mary's stepmother hoped that her father would write and sell books from the shop and get them out of their financial troubles. But her father was more interested in political and social issues. At this time Mrs. Godwin convinced Mary's father to send her away. She lives with a widower name Baxter and his daughters.
Part II My Second Birth, covers the period from June 1812 to March 1814. Mary is living at Mr. Baxters home at Broughty Ferry with his daughters. She soon develops a close friendship with Isabella Baxter who has a passion for the French Revolution. The Baxter's library contains many books including those written by both Mary's father and mother. Reading her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft's novel, Maria, encourages Mary to take up her mother's ideals. Scotland becomes Mary's "Eyrie of Freedom".
Part III Return to Darkness March to April 1814. Mary returns to London to live with her family in the overwhelming stench and squalor of Holborn. Her stepsister Claire is now fifteen, her sister Fanny is thin and withdrawn. Fanny is Mary's half-sister: she has a different father, a married man who abandoned their mother. A young poet named Percy Bysshe Shelley has been corresponding with Mary's father.
Part IV The Poet May-July 1814. Twenty-one-year-old Percy Shelley begins visiting the Godwins almost every day. Well-born and in line to inherit a fortune, Percy has been abandoned by his wife Harriet who is pregnant. Mary finds herself attracted to Percy from their first encounter. Soon Mary and Percy, along with Claire go for long walks, talking about galvanism, alchemy, gravity and astronomy. Fanny reminds Mary however, that Shelley is still married, that his wife is due to give birth to their second child soon, and that Shelley cannot be trusted - just as the man that got their mother pregnant abandoned her. However, Mary believes that people in love should be together. In late June, Mary and Percy make love beside her mother's grave after Percy reveals his tormented soul. Mary believes he simply needs to be loved.
Her decision to live with Shelley angers her father and stepmother. Shelley has promised Mary they will live in Switzerland like other free thinkers. Claire who passes letters between Mary and Shelley begs Mary to take her with them. Mary's father refuses to allow her to leave but on July 28, 1814, Mary and Shelley along with Claire race to Dover and then cross over to Calais, France. For Mary it is the beginning of life on her own terms, one that will result in much pain and loneliness but which will result in the creation of a new literary genre and one of the most famous works of literature of all time.
Discussion
Lita Judge, an awarding winning children's author and illustrator was inspired to write Mary's Monster after contracting a virus that led to her developing an serious autoimmune illness. During the next two years as she convalesced, Judge found herself rereading a favourite novel, Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein or A Modern Prometheus". Judge was fascinated by the fact that Shelley had written her novel when she was only eighteen years old. As she delved deeper in Shelley's life by reading her journals, Judge found herself and this led Judge to want to tell Mary's story and how she came to write Frankenstein.
The widely accepted account of how Mary Shelley came to write Frankenstein is that the germ of the story resulted from a dream Mary had after nights of reading ghost stories at the villa of Lord Byron. However, Judge's belief is that Mary Shelley's troubled life, her experiences of being mistreated by her father's second wife, of being sent away to Scotland, of being abandoned by her father when she became pregnant by her married lover Percy Bysshe Shelley and her many other hardships, were in fact the genesis of Frankenstein. In her Author's Note at the back, Judge writes,
"The popular myth is that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was conceived spontaneously on a stormy night in answer to a dare to write a ghost story. That evening did occur, but countless events in Mary's life before and after that evening played a much greater role in the horror novel's creation. My story is an attempt to trace the many origins of her genius. It's a testament to a resilient girl whose imagination, forged by isolation, persecution, and loss, created a new form of storytelling as a means of connecting with the very society that had socially exiled her."
In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley explores the themes of pain, isolation and abandonment as Dr. Frankenstein rejects the creature he created. Her novel was also a commentary on the use of science in the early 1800's. During this time, many new discoveries were being made in science about the natural world. Mankind was on the cusp of the scientific age and hoped to tame the world through the use of science, especially the disciplines of alchemy and galvanism. Mary saw man's ambition to create life and to dominate nature as potentially destructive to the world and to man himself.
Like her father William Godwin, and mother Mary Wollenstonecraft, Mary also rebelled against the social norms of her day. Mary Wollstonecraft was a firm believer in the rights of women, believing that they were equal to men. She sets out her beliefs in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, written in 1792, probably her best known work. She had an affair with a married man, Gilbert Imlay, an American who ultimately abandoned her. Mary gave birth to a daughter, Fanny while in France where she was writing and studying the ongoing French Revolution. She attempted to restart her relationship with Imlay but he refused, resulting in two suicide attempts by Mary. Back in England Mary met William Godwin, an advocate for the abolition of marriage. Yet they married when Mary Wollstonecraft became pregnant. Mary died after giving birth to their daughter Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. William Godwin was a radical who had anarchist tendencies. His publication of his wife's biography after her death which acknowledged her affair with Imlay, her illegitimate child and her two suicide attempts brought him much criticism because all of these behaviours were seen as scandalous and immoral. Having read her father's biography of her mother and been exposed to his ideas, Mary attempted to live her life in accordance with those ideas but found the reality was much different. Her father did not approve of her relationship with Percy Shelley and when she became pregnant outside of marriage, she was shunned.
Judge accomplishes her goal with a brilliant retelling of Mary Shelley's life in nine parts, the number nine being significant because it is the number of months of pregnancy and Mary's Frankenstein was written over a period of nine months, while she was pregnant with her second daughter Clara. She considered her novel her creative progeny. Through Mary's story, readers learn of the events in her life that ultimately influenced her writing Frankenstein. By writing her story in free verse, Judge pares Mary's life down to the important essentials while still retaining the pain, loneliness and sense of betrayal that Mary must have felt. Judge's ink, watercolour and pencil illustrations capture the dark moods of Percy Shelley, the emotional and physical struggles Mary endured, and the pain of the creature. The author story-boarded much of the book before beginning the writing process. Her timeline of creating the novel can be found on her website page, Mary's Monster Timeline.Mary's Monster also includes an "Introduction" which introduces readers to both Mary Shelley and her novel Frankenstein. In her "Author's Note" at the back, Judge explains how she drew on a wealth of primary sources including Mary Shelley's journals, which events she excluded and provides an interesting exposition on parts of Mary's life. Her "What Became of Them" details the lives of family and several contemporaries of Mary Shelley. There is also a "What Were They Reading" section that lists what Mary and Percy were reading during their lives and a "Notes" that provides references for events in Mary's Monster.
Overall Mary's Monster is really quite an outstanding work and is a must read for fans of Frankenstein. Brilliantly conceived and masterfully executed.
Book Details:
Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created FRANKENSTEIN by Lita Judge
New York: Roaring Brook Press 2018
312 pp.
