The Lady and Her Monsters (29 page)

But despite her best intentions, the events that occurred so long ago were still as fresh as ever, and a mountaintop, a crumpled road, a lone tree, had the power to ignite those inner, fetid passions. Even a shadow, the sun moving across the horizon and peeking through a window, which then cast a light on an object on the table in her home, had the power to remind her of days gone by, of those whom she had loved. In those moments she found that her “nerves . . . [were] strung to their utmost tension by the endurance of pain, or the far severer infliction of mental anguish.” But she vowed to think only of the happiness of being in Italy.

She was certainly not surprised to find Venice as unappealing as she had years ago. The buildings, old and crumbling, did not charm her. As she stood by the windows of her room watching twilight fall over the city, the sun setting behind some nameless palazzo whose shadow melted into the murky canals, she had to steal a glance below at the narrow passageways, or farther away, toward the Rialto, and there, in those shadowy places, imagine her husband returning to her after a day spent with Lord Byron. The view had not changed in the least, she reasoned, “but as the Poet says—the difference is to me!”

It was in Rome that the full force of her past, and its losses, came to her. There were so many places where, she said, “the treasures of my youth lie buried.” She arrived there during Holy Week, a particularly austere time for Catholic Italy, and the solemnity of the city overwhelmed her. The mournful hymns sung in all the churches were “solemn, pathetic, religious,” though they seemed to echo her own deep-seated grief, elevating it to something like spiritual rapture. Sitting in those churches mourning the lost and the losses, she knew Percy Shelley would have understood.

Throughout the trip, Mary was faced with the memories of her lost youth and the lives that had gone with it. She became so overwhelmed she began having relentless headaches. They had started in 1839, and she had believed they were a part of the creative process—she had worked too hard, stressed too much over the publication of the poems; the pressure in her head would abate when the work ended. But as time passed, it became obvious that something more insidious was occurring.

From Rome, she wrote to Claire Clairmont: “It made me suffer in my head, as it were pressure in the brain, more than I had ever done before—& that accompanied by mingled agitation & depression of spirits.”

The pains continued when she returned to England: “My brain is so weak, that when a thought touches it, it absorbs it & deprives me of my reason,” she wrote again to Claire. Her headaches were having a strange effect. They were not only painful, but they took away the few pleasures she had always counted on in life: reading and writing.

As her physical pains increased, people also began to add to her suffering in ways she had not anticipated. Following Percy Shelley's death, those who had known him tried to capitalize on the poet's notoriety and scandalous lifestyle. One of them, the poet's cousin Thomas Medwin, decided to write Shelley's biography and wanted to include details on Shelley's custody battle with his first wife's family over the future of his children Ianthe and Charles. Medwin asked Mary for her help and attempted to bribe her for particulars, but she refused. “I vindicated the memory of my Shelley and spoke of him as he was,” she wrote to Medwin. “An angel among his fellow mortals—lifted far above this world—a celestial spirit and taken away, for we were none of us worthy of him—and his works are an immortal testament giving his name to posterity in a way more worthy of him than my feeble pen is capable of doing.”

She didn't want Shelley's name tainted by Medwin, or anyone else. Of course, as the years passed, Mary's memories of her husband had morphed and her guilt had grown, causing her to distort him to such a degree that in her mind he was an angel and not the man who had made her suffer. But she didn't care.

Edward John Trelawny, who had been a friend at Leghorn and taken care of the details when Shelley died, wrote a book titled
Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author
. He was so enraged by Mary's refusal to help that he described her in the book in ways that were painful to read: “Her capacity can be judged by the novels she wrote after Shelley's death, more than ordinarily commonplace and conventional. Whilst overshadowed by Shelley's greatness her faculties expanded; but when she had lost him they shrunk into their natural littleness. The memory of how often she had irritated and vexed him tormented her after existence, and she endeavored . . . to compensate for the past.”

By the mid-1840s, Mary was simply too tired and sore. “I continue very uncomfortable—unable to walk or make any exertion. The doctor declares it to be all Neuralgia,” she wrote to Jane Williams Hogg. “I am well in all respects except it is as if the spine were injured the nerves are all alive—it is as if the spine wd altogether give up the ghost.”

The one thing that brought her pleasure was Percy Florence's marriage in 1848 to Jane Gibson St. John. Mary was delighted by this union because it provided her with the strong, solid female companionship for which she had yearned her whole life.

By January 1851, her headaches had become uncontrollable and often were accompanied by paralysis of the limbs. By the end of the month, her state became desperate, though doctors always assumed her case was not dire. On February 1, 1851, at twilight, Mary Shelley passed away in her home on Chester Square at the age of fifty-three. The doctors believed she died from a brain tumor.

Percy Florence quickly dispatched letters to family and acquaintances. “About a fortnight ago she had a succession of fits, which ended in a sort of stupor in which she remained for a week—without any sign of life but her breathing which gradually ceased without any pain,” he wrote to Mary's friend Isabella Baxter Booth. “And now she has left us most mournful and wretched.”

On February 15,
The Athenaeum
ran an article eulogizing Mary Shelley:

After having some years disappeared from the world of literary occupation, the daughter of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, the relict of the poet “Adonis,” died the other day—

Her first work—written during her residence abroad, and the only one, we believe, referable to the period of her married life—was “Frankenstein” which scared and startled the world by its preternatural power, promising further inspiration of a wild originality unknown in English fiction . . . That Mrs. Shelley would never equal her first effort in poetical fiction, might have been foreseen at the moment of the tragedy of her husband's frightful death—one of those visitations the traces of which one never to be affected, and which bereaved the survivor of guidance, companionship, incitement to emulate for ever—All of Mrs. Shelley's writings have a singular elegance of tone;—but all of them a pervading melancholy. Her tales of the world we live in are unreal in the excess of their sadness;—while in her more romantic creations . . . with all their beauty, there is blended a certain languor which becomes oppressive. Hence, most of her works of imagination are unfairly neglected,—whether, however, such neglect shall be reversed on a future day or not, her “Frankenstein” will always keep for her a particular place among the gifted women of England.

Copyright laws allowed other writers to use previously published works and to interpret them as they saw fit, and even before Mary died, Victor Frankenstein and his creature had successfully gone through several stage productions. Given the popularity of the plays in Europe and the notoriety of the 1831 edition of the book, it did not take long for the story to cross the Atlantic and make its way to America. Though many Americans initially became acquainted with the characters through the book, it was the 1931 release of Universal Studios'
Frankenstein
that truly galvanized its place in history and in the viewers' minds. Directed by James Whale, it turned a relatively unknown, middle-aged actor, Boris Karloff, into a movie star. But the movie did something else: it stripped down the book to its bare bones and turned Mary Shelley's moral tale into a basic horror story.

In the book, the creature is a conflicted, eloquent, sad entity searching for knowledge, acceptance, humanity, love, and a mate; basically he experiences all the human emotions. Nearly a third of the book is given over to him. We hear his thoughts, feel his pain and anguish; we sympathize with him even though we do not condone the actions he takes as the book rolls along. None of these fine nuances exist in the movie. The creature is simply an oversized and dimwitted batch of bones and skin, pale and long-limbed, grunting his way across villages intent on wreaking havoc on everything and everyone he runs into. His most endearing trait, language, is taken away from him.

From the beginning, viewers believe he can only cause harm. Readers of the book are aware that Victor had found his materials—bones, skin, and brain—in death houses and cemeteries; no one knew to whom those things had belonged. Victor could have taken them from a criminal or a priest, a man or a woman, someone rich or poor, a good person or bad. The creature begins with a clean slate, more or less, and it is up to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, and the world at large to make sure he is raised as a moral and decent individual. He becomes what and who he is through the knowledge and experience he gains from Dr. Frankenstein and the world that surrounds him.

The movie includes no such considerations. The creature is fitted with a criminal's brain (the “normal” brain was dropped on the floor by mistake), which means the creature is marked for criminal behavior from the start—in a sense, the movie's message being that predisposition trumps free will.

But viewers didn't go to see
Frankenstein
to embark on any deep philosophical debates. It was released during the Depression, so people lined up simply for some good old-fashioned entertainment, and the movie provided that.
Frankenstein
turned out to be one of the earliest blockbusters of the cinema era, and as expected, different takes on the tale soon appeared.
Bride of Frankenstein
(1935),
The Ghost of Frankenstein
(1942),
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf-Man
(1943), and
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
(1948) are just some of the few interpretations that followed the 1931 release, the creature by now a monstrous fiend who invaded nightmares with guttural sounds and long outstretched arms.

It took comedian Mel Brooks to add some softness to the creature in 1974, when
Young Frankenstein,
a blend of music and comedy, was released. Since then, the story has remained popular not only in the movies, but in books for children and adults; comic books; music; Halloween costumes, of course; and even cereals.

While Mary Shelley did not anticipate the impact her story would have on society,
Frankenstein,
and most especially its creature, bridges the gap between the early doings of the body snatchers and the experiments in galvanism, and today's attempts to meddle with nature, also serving as a warning. Are scientists ready for what they might create or uncover?

Acknowledgments

F
rom the very beginning, everyone I talked to seemed amused and intrigued by Mary Shelley's writing of
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus,
and the darker story of galvanism and the resurrection men that lurked behind the real one. Many people I contacted—researchers, scientists, writers, and archivists—were more than happy to lend their time and knowledge, and many of them had not only heard of, but in some way or another delved into the topics themselves.

A generous debt of gratitude for conversations on Mary Shelley, galvanism, body snatching, and the 1800s goes to Elizabeth Rettleback, Peter McGowren, Roger Hall, Erik Midelfort, Radu Florescu, Helen Macdonald, Malcolm Archibald, Giuliano Pancaldi, William Eamon, Seamus Perry, Miranda Seymour, Vita Fortunati, Graham Allen, Carlo Ginzburg, Adriano Prosperi, Raffaela Simili, Graeme Gooday, Anne M. Stiles, Marco Bresadola, Andre Parent, Chris Smith, Stanley Finger, Sheldon Glashow, Sherry Ginn, Fabio Bevilaqua, Paula Feldman, Stefani Englestein, Iwan Rhys Morus, Elizabeth Ihrig, Allison Faichney, Paula Bertucci, Anne K. Mellor, Paolo Mazzarello, Charles Robinson, Tom Hoobler, Jan Andrew Henderson, and Amak Mayer.

Many interesting and somewhat disturbing conversations were had on the current trade of cadavers, and for those times and their willingness to share I wish to thank Wendy Kogut, Tiffany Milius, Patricia McNeill, Gil Hedley, Susan Cooke Kittredge, John Gentile, Mario Gallucci, and Todd Olson.

Particular thanks to Kathy Flynn, at the Phillips Library in Salem, Massachusetts; the staff at the Morgan Library and Museum; the Bodleian Library; Louise King, archivist at the Royal College of Surgeons of England; Richard Keenan and Julianne Simpson at the Wellcome Library; the staff at the Archivio di Stato di Bologna; Giacomo Nerozzi at the Biblioteca Comunale Dell'Archiginnasio; Lucia Maranni at the Comune di Bologna Archivio Storico; Antonio Campigotto at the Museo del Patrimonio Industriale; the University of Bologna; Maryon Liscinky at the FDA Office of Public Affairs; Natalie Rosset, research assistant at the University of Dundee; David McClay at the John Murray Collection, and the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland; Sue Hodson, curator of Literary Manuscripts, the Huntington Library; Bruce Barker-Benfield, senior assistant librarian, Bodleian Library; Oxford University Press; and Harvard University Press.

Jake Bauman read the proposal and became interested in it right away, working with diligence and passion to bring it to the eye of the right publisher; for his humor, dedication, and friendship I will always be grateful. And to Rob Weisbach, for taking over where Jake left off and with gusto spiriting it forward.

I am grateful to have found in Henry Ferris at William Morrow a wonderful, compassionate, and passionate editor who saw the merits of the story right away and pointed to its flaws with kindness and generosity, devoting more time to me than I could have wished for or dreamed of. I am deeply grateful to him for the opportunity, and to everyone at William Morrow for making me feel at home.

My thanks to everyone at Emerson College, especially Richard Zauft, who hired me to teach a particular class where
Frankenstein
took center stage in the Institute for Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies; to Amy Ansell for keeping me on; to everyone in the department for listening to too much talk about body snatchers and such; and to all of my students, past and present, who have been inspiring, fun, and always a source of creativity.

And to my family, here and abroad, for believing this could be done.