English dandies, opium and bets among friends: the tragic story of Mary Shelley, the mystery writer of “Frankenstein”?

Rock stars of the time

Summer 1816, near Geneva. This summer of 1816 was rainy and dreary. We also talk about A year without summer “. The fault of the Indonesian volcano Tambora, which had erupted the previous year, spewed a great deal of ash into the atmosphere and caused a global cooling of the climate. A small group of London friends with a sulphurous reputation settled in Switzerland, hoping to find a milder climate than the oppressive city of London. However, the weather was not good and Lake Geneva’s The shores present a chaotic atmosphere, and one is more at ease there than in oppressive London, where there are many of these. Dandies talk

Among these distinguished holiday artists we find the poet Lord Byron at work and in scandalous life, criticized for his radical stances and his taste. Immorality. With him is the young doctor John Politori, controversial for his friendship with Byrne and his self-destructive tendencies. The romantic poet Percy Shelley, an eccentric known for his extreme views, joins them. The young woman he dates with him is a certain Mary Godwin, an eighteen-year-old English girl with gray eyes and a weak figure. There is also Mary’s half-sister Clare, who is pregnant out of wedlock. It’s like the rock stars of the time: romantic dandies, brainy and drugged up to the eyes, on the fringes of right-thinking society.

A group of friends are terribly bored in their big villa in the rain. This is not the time to go on boat trips, so we drink, we read philosophy, politics and above all Ghost stories. The strange atmosphere of these long stormy days is apt to be feared. Byron presents a challenge. What if there was a competition to see who could write the scariest story? In this game we are not waiting for Mary. And yet, this dignified-looking petit bourgeois is actually a skilled knight.

regression

Mary was born in London in 1797 to famous writers and political thinkers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Does the bell ring? It is well known that his mother was the pioneer Feminism, author of the revolutionary work “La Défense des droits de la femme”. His father, William, was a pioneer of anarchist thought. William has always worked to make his daughter a free thinker, giving her free access to his library – enough to be noticed, that women of the time were not often given their freedom of reading … – Mary feels a certain attachment to this. His father took care of his education and encouraged him to write. However William’s openness has its limits when it comes to his family’s reputation. He discovers the relationship between Mary and Percy, and he strongly opposes it.

Percy is an aristocrat, married, with children and scandalously famous. Imagine young Percy expelled from Oxford University for publishing a pamphlet in favor of atheism! Godwin was interested in this subversive scent that surrounded the young man who advocated radical equality and free love. The family’s reputation had already been badly tarnished by the publication of the memoirs of Mary’s late mother, who died in childbirth days after birth. This free thinker participated in the French Revolution, was a feminist and had a child Extramarital affair. Raised by her father in the veneration of this dead mother, Mary acquires the habit of reading at her grave. Mary and Percy are said to have met in secret there to declare their love, where she lost her virginity. Very shocking!

A solitary creature who finds no place in society, like Mary, who seeks her place as an independent thinker in a world of men.

In 1814, they took Marie’s half-sister Claire and fled to live in France for love and fresh water. They spend their time reading and traveling and return to London, much to her disappointment. Mary’s father doesn’t want to hear from her, Percy is still married and is seeing other women, pushing her to move on. After giving birth to a stillborn child, Mary falls into a deep depression. The writer gives birth to a child named William a year later.

They decided to join Byron in Switzerland in the summer of 1816 when Claire became pregnant. Mary eagerly enters this horror story contest. First, it’s a blank page. One stormy evening, we discuss new scientific research and especially galvanism at the table. Electricity is supposed to bring the dead back to life… A small group of opium-addled friends go to bed. The night is restless for Mary, and she later has a waking dream “I saw a pale student of foul arts kneeling beside his creation. By the work of some mighty engine, I saw a man rise, show signs of life, and move about in a restless, half-motion.

Mary conceived the idea of ​​what would become one of the most legendary horror novels in literature, “Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus.” The author imagines a scientist named Victor Frankenstein, a creature made up of pieces of corpses, who considers himself above the laws of nature and rejects his creation the moment it comes to life. A solitary creature who finds no place in society, like Mary, who seeks her place as an independent thinker in a world of men. She also explores guilt over the deaths of her mother and her own children.

Sad fate

What should have been a short story, a play becomes a great novel. A pioneer of science fiction, explores the anxieties of his time. Inspired by Gothic literature, Mary revolutionizes horror by incorporating the scientific advances of the time and adding a philosophical, political and autobiographical dimension. She realized the masterpiece was made up of different universes just as her being was made up of different pieces. In 1814, when Percy and Mary returned to England, they stopped in Germany. From the town of Gernsheim, they must have seen the “Frankenstein” castle on the left bank of the Rhine. Although it is unlikely that she visited it, Mary certainly heard of the castle-born alchemist and physicist Johann Konrad Tippel. The scientist was theorizing about transferring souls from one corpse to another using a funnel.

How can a woman write so much horror?

Shortly after their return to England, Percy’s wife Harriet was found dead in Hyde Park. She committed suicide. Mary married Percy and later took the name Mary Shelley. Her father attends the wedding and a family feud breaks out. Percy wrote and signed the foreword to “Frankenstein.” The novel was published in March 1818, but Mary Shelley’s name did not appear on the title page. The novel is anonymous, like the nameless monster. We think Percy is the teacher. How can a woman write so much horror? The couple leaves to live in Italy, where Mary develops an obsessive admiration for the Italian language and literature. In Naples he loses his son William and a little girl. Mary must still mourn her children and remain dark until the birth of her last and only son. Percy gets away from her and her depression and multiplies the victories.

Infernal solitude

In 1822, Percy, in a romantic and somewhat suicidal trance, takes a boat and dies at sea when friends try to stop him, his body washed ashore on an Italian beach. Byron and Mary attend the cremation and she retrieves his heart. When Mary dies, their son discovers his father’s heart hidden in a cloth among his personal possessions. William Godwin wrote a letter to his daughter after Percy’s death: “‘Frankenstein’ is the most wonderful work of twenty that I have ever heard of. You are now twenty-five. And, fortunately, you have pursued a journey as a reader, and have set your mind very well to make you a very successful writer.” Admirably brought up. If you can’t be independent, who can be?”

Independent, Mary would remain so until the end of her life. He became a prolific writer publishing seven novels, stories and biographical works. He is proud to have many adventures with men and women, but no one will ever replace Percy in his heart. Marie maintains the same independent spirit throughout her life, helping a pair of friends get a false passport and start life together in France as husband and wife.

In 1823, she published “Walperga,” a feminist historical novel set in the 14th century. Although long forgotten, this novel is a pioneer. It is a female character, Beatrice, a strong and independent woman who faces a dilemma between love and freedom. Mary uses this role to address issues of gender and power in a patriarchal society. All of Mary’s work is marked by theme Loneliness That she would endure for the rest of her life. His novel “The Last Man” is almost prophetic: a man finds himself alone in the world after a global pandemic. V.SDoes that remind you of anything?

Delayed recognition

Despite his prolific work, he was unable to publish under his own name until 1844 and the death of Percy’s father. All his works before that are signed: “By the Author of Frankenstein”. As the creature kills the creator, the creator is swallowed up. Mary did not survive her work, dying of brain failure in 1851.

The worst monsters we make are ourselves

If Frankenstein’s creature had become a myth, famous for its representation in cinema or pop culture, Mary Shelley’s name would have disappeared. Mary is obscured by the glory of her creature, and she remains unknown for many years. His works are very hard to find. It was not until his bicentenary that the British decided to republish all his works. When we talk about Mary, she was made into a woman under her influence: Percy Shelley’s after her illustrious parents. Even the authorship of his works is denied, going so far as to claim that Percy is the author.

In the mid-20th century, some feminist interpretations found an allegory in “Frankenstein.” Motherhood difficulties and a metaphor representing the whole species denied a place in the organism. A literary style and a life that defied all convention, Mary Shelley knew how to find her place in a suffocating England. If her horror work is what she still wants to write today, she wants to write “a story where the reader dares not look around him,” which is what she’s seen since the 19th century.^e A century in which the worst monsters we make are ourselves.