Authors: Dorothy Hoobler
That was symbolic of the general mood, for two days earlier several things had happened that would cast a pall over the rest
of the summer. First, a letter arrived with the unwelcome news that Sir Timothy Shelley was making it difficult for his son
to receive money that Percy had expected as part of the settlement of his grandfather’s will. This meant Mary, Claire, and
Percy would soon have to return to England, instead of continuing on the extensive European tour they had planned.
The same day, Byron called Claire and Percy to a meeting at the Villa Diodati. It was made clear that Mary was not included
in the invitation, as noted in her journal. Byron’s purpose was to declare that his affair with Claire was over. He accused
her of not being sexually passionate and he appears also to have been annoyed by her Godwinian beliefs. These were obviously
pretexts; the truth was, he was tired of her and because, unlike Lady Caroline Lamb, Claire had no powerful friends, he could
dismiss her easily.
Except, of course, for the fact that she was carrying his child, and that was the topic of the discussion. Byron wanted to
put the child in someone else’s care—he suggested his half-sister Augusta, of all people—but Claire persuaded him to promise
to raise the child himself, implicitly acknowledging it as his own. Its birth was to remain secret so that Claire would escape
the disgrace. Particularly important to Claire was the need to conceal the illegitimate baby from her mother. Byron agreed
that the child should stay with him at least until it was seven. Claire could visit as the “aunt” of the child, which would
not hurt her reputation, but it was understood that Claire would never be part of the Byron household.
Percy and Claire could no longer keep the situation a secret from Mary, who could not have been pleased, for the new agreement
with Byron entrapped the others, as Claire could not be left alone during her pregnancy. Nevertheless, they decided to remain
at the lake a while longer before starting back to England. Mary took the opportunity to continue working on her novel. In
the evenings they still often went to Byron’s. On August 13, however, something happened to change that. Mary wrote in her
journal “. . . afterwards we all go up to Diodati,” and then underneath she added the single word “war.” She never again went
to Byron’s villa, though Shelley and Claire did. What happened is impossible to say, but there was clearly some argument that
alienated her.
Byron was expecting other guests. On the eighteenth, Shelley went to the villa and met Matthew Gregory Lewis, popularly known
as “Monk” from the title of his most famous novel.
The Monk,
written when the author was only nineteen, featured the sensational sexual adventures of a Capuchin monk, who initially loses
his virginity to a young novice, actually a woman disguised as a man. The book continues through rape, matricide, and incest,
until finally the monk sells his soul to the devil, who as usual gets the better of the bargain. Even for a Gothic novel,
The Monk
was unusually lurid; in one of its most famous scenes, the central character rapes a virgin who turns out to be his sister
while they are in a vault surrounded by rotting bodies.
Lewis was an heir to a West Indian fortune and traveled with a large retinue of Jamaican servants in livery. At times Byron
was less than charitable about him, characterizing him as “a good man—a clever man—but a bore.” Nevertheless, he had invited
Lewis to visit, partially because he was nearly as notorious as Byron himself, though he lacked Byron’s sublime talent.
At Diodati Lewis recited for them his own translation of portions of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s drama
Faust
. Shelley also recorded that he, Lewis, and Byron discussed ghosts, and whether they were real. Shelley was the only one who
believed in the spectral, though the other two pointed out to him “that none could believe in Ghosts without also believing
in God.” Shelley refused to recognize the conflict with his atheism. Lewis then told five ghost stories, which Shelley summarized
in the journal he and Mary were keeping. Though all were interesting tales, it does not appear that Mary drew inspiration
for her novel from them.
Mary was hard at work, now creating her monster, one of the loneliest characters in literature. Not long after the publication
of
Frankenstein,
a stage production of the story appeared in London. Setting a precedent that most have followed in adapting it for stage
and screen since then, the monster is given no lines. He never speaks. In the novel, however, he is one of the three narrators
who tell parts of the story from their own viewpoints, a complex structure that foreshadows modern artistic experiments. The
monster has a chance to explain himself in the way Mary knew best: with words. That such a young writer could construct such
a sophisticated narrative was, in retrospect, unsurprising. Copying Byron’s manuscripts, though a tedious chore, had brought
Mary very close to the elements that he forged into great poetry, and the poem that was Byron’s primary focus—the third canto
of
Childe Harold
—was one of his finest works. Mary also brought to her own writing an enormous body of reading and contacts with some of the
leading minds of the British Isles. Her active life since eloping with Shelley two years earlier had stimulated her intellectually
while raising deep questions and insecurities in her psyche. Her writing gained power and maturity in the process.
And of course, though by nature quiet and retiring, Mary brought to her work a ferocious ambition to succeed. She had known
for a long time that she wanted to be a writer like her parents. Shelley, whatever else his faults, had encouraged her in
that goal; as Mary wrote, Shelley “was, from the first, very anxious that I should prove myself worthy of my parentage, and
enrol myself on the page of fame.”
The novel’s power stems from the monster’s ability to make the reader understand and sympathize with its plight. Mary knew
its feelings well, for its life story parallels her own. First, the creature has no mother. Victor has eliminated women from
the creation process, substituting the forces of science. The creature’s first experience is thus not the tender touch and
nurturing breast of a mother, but instead Victor’s horror and rejection. Born with an adult body but the mind of an infant,
the creature resembles Rousseau’s natural man—he is naturally good. He commits evil acts because of bad nurturing, just as
in Godwin’s analysis of society. Now, Mary is saying through her fiction what she could not possibly have said to her father:
she
was a victim of bad nurturing as well. Abandoned at birth, the creature says, “No father had watched my infant days, no mother
had blessed me with smiles and caresses.” Through her creation, the monster, Mary is expressing her own fears and rages.
In the novel, the monster educates himself by hiding in a shed attached to a cabin in Germany, where a French-speaking family
named De Lacey is living—a blind man and his two grown children, Felix and Agatha. The monster learns to speak and even to
read from watching and listening to the De Laceys through cracks in the wall. In the same way, Mary had learned by listening
to the intellectual conversations in her father’s house. Later, Percy read whole books to her. Listening became her style
of learning; most recently she had employed it when sitting quietly while Shelley and Byron talked.
The monster, from his hiding place, discovers the power of speech: it can produce emotions—happiness, joy, love. The emotions
were positive ones, because the De Laceys were a happy family, despite their poverty. In much the same way, Mary had witnessed
a secure and happy home life during the two years when she visited the Baxters in Scotland, also as an outsider.
One day, a new person enters the scene: Safie, an Arabian woman who is apparently to become Felix’s wife. Felix teaches her
to speak French, increasing the monster’s verbal skills at the same time. He reads and explains to her the Comte de Volney’s
The Ruins of Empires,
a kind of world tour of civilization. Profoundly antireligious, Volney’s work had been a major influence on Shelley’s composition
of
Queen Mab
. (Godwin, for some reason, disliked the book.) By chance, the monster finds in the woods a case containing three other books:
Plutarch’s
Lives,
Milton’s
Paradise Lost,
and Goethe’s
The Sorrows of Young Werther
. The creature reads them, learning about civilization, sentiment, and morality from books. These are crucial texts, for they
had a vital influence on Romanticism, on Mary, and on the monster himself. The creature admits later that he believed
Paradise Lost,
Milton’s great poem (some, including Byron, ranked it above Shakespeare’s plays) to be “a true history.” He comprehends that
he was intended to be like Milton’s Adam, “but his state,” he says, “was far different from mine. . . . He had come forth
from the hands of God a perfect creature . . . but I was wretched, helpless, and alone.” Instead, he turns to Satan, “for
often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose in me.”
In similar fashion, he learns about such concepts as honor, justice, and correct behavior from Plutarch’s
Lives
—a series of biographies of great figures from Greece and Rome. Finally, the monster arrives at his understanding of passion
and emotion from
The Sorrows of Young Werther,
Goethe’s wildly popular 1774 novel that inspired a wave of suicides by young people, emulating the book’s hero, who shoots
himself because of a tragic love affair. The books fire the monster with certainty that he knows how life should be lived,
but as he proceeds through the world he finds that these ideals do not always conform with reality. Books alone were not adequate
preparation for life—as Mary was herself discovering. And by pointing this out, she was pointing a finger at those, like her
father and Shelley, who sometimes insisted otherwise.
Mary used a quote from
Paradise Lost
as the epigraph of the novel, a question that Adam asks God in Milton’s poem; implicitly, Victor’s creature asks it of
his
creator in Mary’s novel:
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?
On the next page, Mary wrote “To William Godwin.”
The monster now reads some notes he took from Victor’s laboratory when he left Ingolstadt. They describe the process of his
creation and the monstrous nature of his looks. He is filled with hatred for his creator —“the minutest description of my
odious and loathsome person is given, in language which painted your own horrors. . . . I sickened as I read. ‘Hateful day
when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. ‘Cursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from
me in disgust?’” As a child, Mary too had read her father’s memorial to her mother, and thus knew much about their courtship
and perhaps even her own conception—intimate, personal details that are kept from most children. In portraying the monster’s
anger, she made the same judgment that critics of Godwin’s intended tribute did: some things are better kept secret.
When the three younger members of the De Lacey household go out for a walk, the monster decides to attempt human contact.
He knows that he is ugly, but since the father of the De Lacey family cannot see, that will not matter. Given this handicap,
the old man experiences the “real” monster, the one who is a thinking, sensitive being. They converse, and the monster tries
to convey his secret. Unfortunately, the three sighted members of the household return and drive him away because they are
horrified by the way he looks. Mary knew that her identity as the child of Godwin and Wollstonecraft had also often masked
her individuality. Even Shelley, she must have suspected, loved her not for who she was but for who her parents were.
Shattered, the monster returns to his creator with a demand: he wants Victor to make him a female counterpart, someone who
will love and cherish him. Victor begins the project, but before he finishes, thinks better of it and destroys the female
creature. He hears the sound of footsteps where he is working and the monster appears. He threatens Victor: “Remember, I shall
be with you on your wedding night.” Egocentric Victor imagines this to be a threat against himself.
The monster gets his revenge by killing those Victor loves—just as Victor has destroyed the female that the monster would
have loved. First he brings about the death of Victor’s friend, Henry Clerval. Victor now makes the mistake of thinking that
he will be the creature’s next target. On his wedding night, he leaves his bride Elizabeth alone while he searches for the
monster. He misses the obvious: that Elizabeth is the intended victim. He hears her scream, and rushes back to their room:
“She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features
half covered by her hair. Every where I turn I see the same figure—her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer
on its bridal bier.”
Victor faints (as Shelley was in the habit of doing in times of stress), but then recovers to see a new, horrifying vision:
While I still hung over her in the agony of despair, I happened to look up. The windows of the room had before been darkened;
and I felt a kind of panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the chamber. The shutters had been thrown
back; and with a sensation of horror not to be described, I saw at the open window a figure of the most hideous and abhorred.
A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my
wife.
The scene strongly recalls
Nightmare,
the painting by Henry Fuseli, Mary’s mother’s lover, with the creature playing the role the horse had in the picture.
Victor now devotes himself to the destruction of the monster he has created. In some ways, the rest of Mary’s story resembles
Godwin’s own, most famous, novel,
Caleb Williams
. In that book two men, master and servant, alternately pursue and flee each other in a life-and-death struggle. At the core
of the conflict in
Frankenstein
is a cri de coeur by the monster. “All men hate the wretched,” he says, “how then must I be hated, who are miserable beyond
all living things! Yet you my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature.” As William Godwin was currently spurning his daughter.