The Monsters (25 page)

We now come to the “dreary night of November.” The “dull yellow eye of the creature” opens, and after two years of work, Victor
sees the results of his labor and runs away. In doing so, he utterly fails in his role as the creator, the parent, of the
monster. Victor runs from his laboratory to his bedroom and throws himself on his bed, where he has a most disturbing dream.
“I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced
her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change,
and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the grave-worms
crawling in the folds of the flannel.” This image was directly inspired by one of the ghost stories Byron had read earlier,
but Mary heightened it to include the incestuous angle and the transformation of one’s beloved. Creation and death are linked
in Frankenstein’s dream, in Mary’s novel, and in Mary’s life. Her own birth accompanied the death of her mother, and her own
motherhood accompanied the death of her child.

In the novel, it is just at this moment that Victor opens his eyes and sees the creature holding up the curtain of the bed.
Here Mary was adapting an image that she could have seen often in her childhood, for the scene almost duplicates an illustration
that William Blake did for one of Mary Wollstonecraft’s children’s books. In Blake’s copperplate engraving, there are two
people lying on the bed—the children of the male figure who looks down on them. Living with him in debtor’s prison, they have
caught a fever and died. Earlier, the man’s wife and other children had also perished in morbid circumstances. In the engraving,
the man’s dog—his only remaining companion—licks at his hand. Later, the dog is shot by a passing gentleman whose horse was
frightened by it. It was not a happy story, and the illustration must have stuck in Mary’s mind.

Again Victor responds to the creature’s mute appeal for affection by running away. Ironically, at the culmination of his research,
the moment of his triumph, all Victor’s pleasure in life ends. He becomes sick and never again is gratified by anything. Instead
the product of his knowledge—his creation—leads to the deaths of those he loves. The monster disappears from Victor’s account
at this point in the story, and Victor tries to forget him, although of course the reader turns the pages waiting for his
return.

Victor is nursed back to health by his good friend Henry Clerval, also a student at Ingolstadt. Clerval, the better side of
Shelley, is generous and clear-eyed. “[H]is conversation was full of imagination,” Victor relates, “and very often, in imitation
of the Persian and Arabic writers, he invented tales of wonderful fancy and passion.” After several months of recovery, Victor
receives a letter from his cousin Elizabeth, who persuades him to return home to Geneva. Before he can do so, however, a letter
from his father informs him of the murder of Victor’s younger brother William, strangled in Plainpalais Park, the place where
revolutionaries had held executions in Geneva.

Readers must ask why Mary gave the first victim in her novel a name that had so many references for her. William was, first
of all, the name of her beloved father, her original teacher. It was the name she herself would have borne, had she been the
boy her parents expected. Later, that name went to her half-brother, the son her despised stepmother was able to give to Mary’s
father. Finally, and most astonishing, it was the name of Mary’s own baby, then nursing at her breast. The William in the
novel is even described as looking the same way Mary’s son looked: “with sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eye-lashes, and curling
hair. When he smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with health.” Which of these Williams did Mary
have in mind as she envisioned the monster’s huge, powerful hands closing around his throat, choking the life out of him?
Whatever the answer (and it may be all four), the fictional moment certainly reflects the intensity of Mary’s emotional conflicts.

Victor starts for home to grieve with his family. As he is approaching Geneva, flashes of lightning signal the onset of a
storm over the Jura mountains. “While I watched the storm,” Victor says,

so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped my hands,
and exclaimed aloud, “William, dear angel! this is thy funeral, this thy dirge!” As I said these words, I perceived in the
gloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood fixed, gazing intently; I could not be mistaken.
A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity
of its aspect, more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy daemon to whom
I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I shuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? No sooner did
that idea cross my imagination, than I was forced to lean against a tree for support. The figure passed me quickly, and I
lost it in the gloom. Nothing in human shape could have destroyed that fair child.
He
was the murderer! I could not doubt it.

Victor realizes something else too: he shared the guilt of murdering his innocent younger brother. “I considered the being
whom I had cast among mankind, and endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror, such as the deed which he
had now done, nearly in the light of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy all that
was dear to me.” With these words, Victor Frankenstein realizes that the creature is his doppelgänger—an insight that seems
to have extended to readers and audiences, for today the name “Frankenstein” is popularly applied not only to the creator,
but to the monster, who is never named in the book.

T
he full title of Mary’s novel was to be
Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus.
The figure of Prometheus, the rebellious Titan who stole fire to help humankind and then was punished by the gods, preoccupied
all the writers that summer in Geneva. One of the books the Godwins had published when Mary was a child was a collection of
classical myths; Mary’s favorite had been the Prometheus story, a variant of which had the Titan molding a man from clay and
using fire to breathe life into his creation. Shelley had been reading aloud from Aeschylus’s
Prometheus Bound,
translating from the Greek as he went along. Two years later, he would begin writing his continuation of the story,
Prometheus Unbound,
in which Prometheus—a figure Shelley identified with—is freed from the punishment to which Zeus has condemned him and is
hailed as the savior of the human race.

Byron’s much shorter poem, “Prometheus,” written in the summer of 1816, was probably inspired by Percy’s reading of the Aeschylus
play. His attitude is one of defiant resignation to fate:

Thou art a symbol and a sign

To Mortals of their fate and force;

Like thee, Man is in part divine,

A troubled stream from a pure source;

And Man in portions can foresee

His own funereal destiny;

His wretchedness, and his resistance,

And his sad unallied existence:

To which his Spirit may oppose

Itself—and equal to all woes,

And a firm will, and a deep sense,

Which even in torture can descry

Its own concenter’d recompense,

Triumphant where it dares defy,

And making Death a Victory.

Mary was interested in yet another interpretation of Prometheus—the myth as told by Ovid in his
Metamorphoses,
which she had read the year before. Prometheus here was a figure who brought humans into life:

Whether with particles of heavenly fire,

The God of Nature did his soul inspire;

Or Earth, but new divided from the sky,

And, pliant, still retain’d th’ ethereal energy;

Which wise Prometheus temper’d into paste,

And mix’t with living streams, the godlike image cast . . .

From such rude principles our form began;

And earth was metamorphosed into Man.

Here, Prometheus forms a man from clay and animal parts and stirs it into life with “particles of heavenly fire” he has stolen
from the chariot of the sun. In
Frankenstein,
Mary would employ the vocabulary of science, but the spark of life would effectively remain the same.

In late July, Mary, Percy, and Claire decided to go on a trip to Chamonix to view the spectacular scenery of mountains and
glaciers. (Byron turned down their invitation, apparently not wishing to give Claire the opportunity to put him in a compromising
position.) The trip had all the hallmarks of a Shelley brainstorm, because it was certain to be dangerous, and completely
unsuitable for the pregnant Claire to embark on. The rainy weather had swelled the Arve river, which they would cross, to
the point of flooding. Many of the roads in the region were washed out and there was an ever-present danger of avalanches
because of wide temperature swings. At dusk the local residents built bonfires to protect their crops because even though
it was late July, the nighttime temperature dropped close to freezing—all part of the odd weather that summer.

The threesome set out on July 21 on horseback. Baby William, at least, was spared the journey, remaining at home with his
nursemaid. Shelley wrote, “The day was cloudless & exceedingly hot, the Alps are perpetually in sight, & as we advance, the
mountains which form their outskirts closed in around us. We passed a bridge over a river which discharges itself into the
Arve. The Arve itself much swollen by the rains, flows constantly on the right of the road.” They passed through some little
towns and the scenery became more “savage” and “colossal.”

The next day they switched to mules, for they were heading into ever-higher regions. Mary wrote, “[T]his appeared the most
beautiful part of our journey—the river foamed far below & the rocks & glaciers towered above—the mighty pines filled the
vale & sometimes obstructed our view. We then entered the Valley of Chamounix [
sic
] which was much wider than that we had just left.” There, they had their first sight of a glacier, the Glacier des Bossons,
and Mary commented on the strange shapes the vast ice sheet took. “[A]s we went along,” she added, “we heard a sound like
the rolling of distant thunder & beheld an avelanche [
sic
] rush down the ravine of the rock.” Everything she was seeing would be both inspiration and material for the book she was
writing.

Signing the register at the inn where they stayed that night, Shelley wrote “atheist” in Greek after his name; for good measure,
he listed his destination as “l’enfer,” or hell. A later traveler, an English clergyman, noted this “horrid avowal of atheism,”
and mentioned it in a book he wrote about his trip through the region in the same month. Later yet, Byron was accused of having
written the damning identifications, and a literary hubbub ensued, with accusations and corrections filling the pages of English
magazines. People did not take such things lightly.

As they proceeded up the slopes of Montanvert (“Green Mountain,” something of a misnomer that summer), they saw signs of nature’s
destructive power. “Nothing can be more desolate than the ascent of this mountain,” wrote Mary. “[T]he trees in many places
have been torn away by avelanches [
sic
] and some half leaning over others intermingled with stones present the appearance of vast & dreadful desolation.” The rain
fell in torrents, soaking them to the skin, and they decided to turn back. On the way, Shelley fell, hurt his knee, and fainted.
Finally they managed to stagger back to the inn, where Mary took the opportunity to work on her novel. On July 24 she noted,
“I . . . write my story,” the first reference to
Frankenstein
in her journal.

The next day was even more fruitful for literary inspiration. They reached the summit of Montanvert, from which they looked
down on the Mer de Glace (“Sea of Ice”), an immense glacier. As Mary described it: “This is the most desolate place in the
world—iced mountains surround it—no sign of vegetation appears except on the place from which [we] view the scene—we went
on the ice—It is traversed by irregular crevices whose sides of ice appear blue while the surface is of a dirty white.” Mary
recorded that she was “pleased and astonish[ed]” by the lonely, barren spot. It matched her mood, for it was in this “world
of ice” that she would set the confrontation between Victor Frankenstein and his creature. Here the monster, as emotionally
desolate as the landscape, would force his creator to listen to the story of his struggle to become loved.

Heavy rains made the travelers decide to return to their lakeside villa. Two days later, on July 27, they reached the Villa
Diodati, talked till midnight with Byron, and then returned to their own cottage. Mary wrote, “kiss our babe & go to bed.”

The following day, Mary noted that it had been exactly two years “since Shelley’s & my union.” This anniversary may have prompted
Mary to add a detail that advanced the plot of her book and gave new insight into the monster: He demands that Victor Frankenstein
create a mate for him to end his isolation.

Mary also was getting ready for Percy’s birthday. On the first of August she made him a balloon, presumably from cloth or
paper. Shelley was fond of such toys; he and Harriet had once used small hot-air balloons to randomly distribute copies of
one of his revolutionary tracts. The next day, Mary went to Geneva with Percy to buy him another present, a telescope. On
August 4, Shelley turned twenty-four. He and Mary went out in the boat and she read to him the fourth book of Virgil’s
Aeneid
—an interesting choice, for it tells the story of Dido, whose love for Aeneas is doomed because he leaves her. A high wind
ruined the balloon launch; the source of the hot air that was intended to cause it to rise instead set the balloon on fire.