Department of English Language and Literature

Frankenstein as a Reflection of Mary Shelley’s Life

Bachelor Thesis 2021

Supervisor: Mgr. Zuzana Kršková, Ph.D Author: Lucie Lattenbergová

Prohlášení

Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty

Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů

(autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů.

V Brně 2021 …………………………….

Lucie Lattenbergová

Declaration

I hereby declare I have worked on this Bachelor Thesis on my own, using only the cited sources mentioned in the List of References at the end of the thesis.

Brno 2021 …………………………….

Lucie Lattenbergová

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to Mgr. Zuzana Kršková, PhD., for her supervision, helpful advice, and patience during my work on this thesis.

Abstract

The aim of the thesis is to analyse the novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, written by British author Mary Shelley. By analysing the similarities and the background of the characters and the plot of the novel, the thesis concentrates on the connections between Mary

Shelley’s personal life and the Frankenstein story. The first part of the thesis focuses on Mary

Shelley’s actual life and what is generally known about her first nineteen years of life, while the second part analyses the plot and the characters, their experiences, and the consequences of their choices in life. By comparing and contrasting the plotline and the actions of two main characters, Victor Frankenstein and the monster, this thesis is trying to show that the novel can be interpreted as a reflection of the life of Mary Shelley, connecting specific scenes and actions of characters with the author’s experiences, fears, and traumas, creating a story with autobiographical elements.

Key Words anxiety, depression, longing for love, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, motherhood, parental negligence, pregnancy, trauma

Anotace

Cílem této bakalářské práce je rozbor knihy Frankenstein neboli Moderní Prométheus od britské spisovatelky Mary Shelley. Detailním rozborem a analýzou podobností, prostředí a původu postav a děje v knize se tato práce zaměřuje na spojitost mezi životem Mary Shelley a dějem v knize. V první části práce se zaměřuji na všeobecný přehled prvních devatenáct let

života autorky. Druhá část je věnována analýze děje a postav, jejich zkušeností a následkům jejich činů. Zaměřením se na podobnosti mezi dějem a dvěma hlavními postavami, Viktora

Frankensteina a jeho monstra, tato práce poukazuje na fakt, že děj knihy může být interpretován jako odraz životních zkušeností, strachu a traumat, kterými si Mary Shelley musela projít v prvních devatenácti letech života.

Klíčová slova deprese, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, mateřství, rodičovské zanedbání, těhotenství, touha po lásce, trauma, úzkost Content

1. Introduction ...... 7

2. Mary Shelley, the young writer ...... 10

3. Connection between Frankenstein, the novel, and Mary Shelley’s life ...... 15

3.1 Mary’s life in general ...... 16

3.2 Percy Bysshe Shelley ...... 21

4. Shelley’s traumatic experiences reflected through Victor and his monster ...... 27

4.1 Longing for love ...... 28

4.2 Anxiety of motherhood ...... 31

4.3 Depression ...... 39

5. Conclusion ...... 47

6. List of References ...... 50

1. Introduction

Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, a novel written by Mary Shelley at the beginning of the nineteenth century, is even today highly acclaimed and researched literary work. There are not many people who never heard of some sort of an adaptation of this particular novel, either as a movie, book, or, for example, a graphic novel. The world is still fascinated with the tale Mary Shelley wrote for its terrifying story and originality, and the interest will surely not die anytime soon as the novel still provides a lot of material for analysis.

The gothic novel tells the story of a young man, Victor Frankenstein, who becomes fascinated with nature, science, and human life. He studies those topics at the university, ending up being obsessed with it and creating a human-like creature by putting together body parts of dead people. Victor then manages to bring the monster to life but is horrified by his own creation the moment it opens its eyes, and he immediately abandons it and runs away.

From that point on, Victor’s life turns darker as the monster chases him, taking several important people away from him. When they finally meet, the monster makes a special request, which Victor accepts but does not fulfill, resulting in another two murders of Victor’s loved ones, which breaks him, forces him to pursue revenge, slowly leading to his death.

The story is dark. Due to the topic and the writing style, many people then, and even in recent years, thought a man, namely Percy Bysshe Shelley, the author’s husband, wrote it, not believing a woman would be capable of writing such a dark tale. As Crook mentions in her article Frankenstein: The Book that Keeps on Throwing up Puzzles, “the question of the authorship of Frankenstein (was it really written by Percy Shelley? Should he be called a co- author?) has itself become a subject of analysis and dissection: it is part of Frankenstein’s

7 afterlife” (77).1 It is true Percy B. Shelley helped his wife with editing, correcting misspellings, and rewriting some of the simpler expressions and parts of the text to give it a more complex feeling, but the story itself is undoubtedly a work of Mary Shelley. The whole misunderstanding and unclarity around the novel’s authorship, however, probably helped the book in the eyes of the public as speculation of an author being a man could draw in more readers due to the patriarchal society and the attitude towards women, and despite the fact the reviews varied, some praising the novel and the idea behind it and some being very stern, criticizing it for being too dark and influenced by her father’s political activities,2 the novel sold quite well, slowly rising in popularity over the time, getting to the point which even the author herself most likely did not expect, with her book being still popular even after more than two hundred years since its first publication.

Mary Shelley herself once said that she did not understand how she was capable of imagining this horrific idea. With Shelley being only nineteen years old at the time she started to write the novel, and with the emotional struggles concerning her past traumas such as abandonment issues, death, or emotional negligence she carried everywhere with her, it is not hard to imagine she would project some of these aspects of her life into the story, whether consciously or completely unaware of the fact. This thesis focuses on bringing up similarities and parallels between Mary Shelley’s life, her experiences and deepest fears, and the feelings and actions of the characters she created in the Frankenstein novel.

1 The authorship was a widely discussed topic, and as noted by Baumann, „Mary Shelley was not definitely identified as the author of Frankenstein until the publication of the two-volume 1823 edition” (12). In fact, even nowadays, there are people who believe the true author was, indeed, Percy B. Shelley, one of them being John Lauritsen, who dedicated a whole book to his belief (The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, published 2007). 2 As written in one of the first reviews of Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, published in The Quarterly Review in 1818, “It is piously dedicated to Mr. Godwin, and is written in the spirit of his school” (392). William Godwin was best known for his radical political opinions and his book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness focused on them. He was of an opinion that government as the main institution to control people was wrong and people would be happier if they could run things by themselves. He advocated that people are rational beings who are capable of deciding what was the right decision on their own without the need of a higher being telling them what to do. In fact, Godwin can be considered a “founder of modern anarchists” (Kramnick 114). 8

By comparing the novel and Shelley’s life, the thesis shows that the nineteen-year-old author of Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus did not write simply a fictional story based on her imagination alone. The author, through the eyes of the two main characters, Victor

Frankenstein and his monster, projects the darkest moments of her life, her fears, and traumas she experienced since her early childhood and throughout her adolescent life, into the book, which results in a very realistic and vivid story full of raw human emotions. As Bakay states:

“Frankenstein reflected symbolically all her pent-up emotions and ideas; how she suffered as a motherless child with a distant father, married to the unpredictable Percy Shelley, as well as the deaths that surrounded her life” (104), which, perhaps, slowly led her to the point where all the stress and emotional struggles she went through turned into depression.

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2. Mary Shelley, the Young Writer Starting to work on the novel in 1816, Mary Shelly finished her first and most famous book, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, when she was barely twenty years old; a year after the main idea of the novel came to her. To fully understand and grasp the meaning behind the novel, and the connection between Mary Shelley’s life and the events, which take place in the novel, it is important to be familiar with the author’s life up until that point, as it was anything but easy and it influenced her existence in every possible way.

Born in 1797 in England to two well-known and quite controversial writers of the time, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley had the best disposition to follow in their steps. Granted, her heritage did not mean she would follow her parents’ path as a writer, but considering the time period, when children often times followed their parents career-wise, and the fact her father devoted a lot of time into her studies and her admiration towards her parents’ works, it was highly expected, and she eventually proved this by writing and later successfully publishing her debut novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.

Shelley’s life was not easy. Since her birth, she experienced many losses, which greatly affected her adult life as she was in constant emotional turmoil while growing up. She experienced her first loss, which affected her the most, when she was only a few-days-old child. Her mother died shortly after giving birth to her, which left her with only one parent, who was not strong enough to take care of her on his own. William Godwin, grieving his wife’s death, rather than taking care of his daughter himself, hired a caretaker, Louisa Jones.

She took care of Shelley for a bit over three years but ended up abandoning her as well when she left with her lover. That was the second loss of a mother figure Mary Shelley experienced in such a short time span. The third blow came in form of a stepmother, Mary Jane

Clairemont, when her father remarried.

Barely four years old, Mary Shelley was very attached to her father as the only parent she had, and the fact he brought a new woman between them created a new barrier that was

10 not there before, which put even a bigger strain on her. Not only did she lack a mother, but she also started to lose her father to another woman, a stranger, and her kids. Moreover, the relationship with her stepmother was not good. The words Mary Shelley wrote to P. B.

Shelley in one of her letters, saying “I detest Mrs. Godwin”, suggest just how bad their relationship was (Marshall 97). Mary Jane Clairemont, later M. J. Godwin, had two children on her own and treated Shelley very distantly, with no warmth of a loving parent despite the fact Shelley was still only a child who needed a mother figure and someone to encourage her and help her find her way in life. What M. J. Clairemont did, though, was the bare minimum; in fact, Badalamenti states that “Mary’s stepmother showed little regard for young Mary’s gifts or for the breadth of her interests; what attention she gave Mary was sparing and often invasive” (421).

Growing up in this environment, missing a motherly figure and feeling disconnected from her father, who showed more interest towards her half-sister, Fanny, the first child her mother had with a different man before she got together with Godwin, it was very unlikely

Shelley would grow up without any lasting emotional issues. Lack of security and parental love has been subject of psychological research for years, showing different results with similar conclusions of children suffering.3 That being said, the novel Frankenstein would most likely not be the same without these experiences she went through as a child, as she very well understood what it was like to be robbed of a mother and neglected by her father, which suggest writing about these emotions would result in a very deep, emotional and believable descriptions.

Years later, living in these conditions, she met Percy Bysshe Shelley, her future husband. Knowing her past and lack of any kind of love in her life, it should not be surprising

3 As Bowlby says, “Long periods away in strange surroundings with no one person to attach himself to, can sometimes have very serious consequences. For instance, he may become an intensely anxious and difficult child or alternatively so hard-boiled that he is unable to give or receive love from other people” (11). 11 that she fell in love with him and completely devoted her love to him. Despite P. B. Shelley having a wife and a child on the way, and William Godwin’s disapproval of their relationship, they eloped together when Mary Shelley was barely seventeen years old. During that time, they traveled around the European continent in search of a safe place while running away from creditors as they had troubles with finances. When they returned to the United Kingdom,

Shelley’s father still refused to accept her relationship with Percy B. Shelley and acted according to his feelings, completely ignoring his daughter’s existence, causing even more damage to her already fragile emotional state. Shelley’s and her father’s relationship did not get better until she and Percy B. Shelley officially married in December 1816.

Probably the biggest tragedy struck Mary and Percy B. Shelley in 1815 when they had their first child. The little girl was born prematurely and died a few days after her birth.

Understandably, it left Mary Shelley devastated, to the point of dreaming about her dead daughter for several nights in a row. In one of her journal entries, as Marshal points out,

Shelley wrote she had a “dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived. Awake and find no baby” (10). What added to the trauma Mary Shelley was experiencing was her husband’s disconnection and lack of empathy, when he “immersed himself in his work” instead of being by Mary Shelley’s side and providing the emotional support she likely needed at that time (Bakay 107).

In 1816, Mary Shelley had to deal with another death in her close family, as her half- sister, Fanny Imlay, committed suicide. Fanny Imlay was Shelley’s older sister, and as such they were quite close as they grew up together. And while, during Mary Shelley’s dispute with her father when she eloped with P. B. Shelley, Imlay ended up stuck between both sides as she could not choose between her stepfather and her sister, she became a big support for

Mary Shelley when Shelley needed her the most. Fanny Imlay visited Shelley during the days after her first baby died and stayed behind to talk with her. Their close relationship could also

12 be seen through letters they sent to each other frequently, so Shelley being “profoundly miserable” after finding out the news about her suicide was understandable (Marshal 168). To add up more sorrow, only two months later, Shelley was struck once more when she and P. B.

Shelley learned Harriet Shelley, Percy B. Shelley’s first wife, also committed suicide.

Within a year after the death of their first child, the Shelley family grew by a son, and they started to travel the continent again, staying in Switzerland for some time. There, they met a poet Lord Byron. It was at Byron’s villa where the idea of the main theme of

Frankenstein was born. Shelley, together with her husband, Lord Byron, and his friend

Polidori spent a few summer days reading German ghost stories in Byron’s house. It was then

Byron proposed an idea that each of them would compose their own ghost story (Shelley viii), unaware of the fact that this spontaneous challenge between friends would lead to the creation of one of the most famous novels of all times, its originality and terrors fascinating several generations.

Dark, horror stories were quite popular in that era, as gothic literature was on its peak4 when Shelley starter to work on the Frankenstein and could, thus, provide Shelley enough inspiration material. Regardless of the amount of inspiration she could have drawn from, though, Mary Shelley struggled through the challenge until one day, she “had a terrifying waking dream, which gave her the germs of the idea of her story” (Shelley 194). The dream was about a student kneeling by a lifeless, deformed body of a man, who suddenly stirred and came alive through the power of some machine, his appearance so hideous the student ran away, petrified of his creation. The dream inspired the most important and powerful scene in the novel. It is also what made the story so unique. Shelley created a story where a man,

Victor Frankenstein, brought another being to life, rejecting the idea of God being some higher spiritual being, giving all the power to man. She followed on and started to write and,

4 Works such as The Mysteries of Udolpho or The Monk published at the end of 18th century were high in popularity, both prime examples of gothic tales full of dark topics and terrors. 13 having a husband who encouraged her to continue, managed to finish the novel in a year, publish it, and by doing so, giving the world a unique and terrifying tale, which have been fascinating thousands of people throughout two centuries.

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3. Connection between Frankenstein, the novel, and Mary Shelley’s life

As is generally known, Frankenstein is a story about a young man, Victor

Frankenstein, who becomes interested in science, nature, and the question of what exactly life and death are. His interest goes as far as an obsession at some point in his life, and he ends up creating a monster out of several human remains, which is later brought to life with a help of a special machine using electricity. The story then proceeds to show the readers what consequences such a deed has on a man and how do his decisions affect his creation.

With Frankenstein being written in the early nineteenth century, we can see obvious similarities between what was going on in Mary Shelley’s life and the plot in the novel. The genre of the novel, the social climate, as well as the topics of science, nature, questions of life and death and morality were highly discussed topics, and all of them are set in the novel in one way or another, reflecting the everyday life of the end of eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century in Britain. Not only that, but even the beginning of the story, when

Victor is still just a child, holds a lot of similarities and connections to the author’s early life and her childhood.

Taking into consideration the fact every author usually writes some of their thoughts or opinions into their stories, either consciously or unconsciously, it is not hard to recognize the same pattern in the writing of Mary Shelley and her novel, Frankenstein or the Modern

Prometheus.

This chapter concentrates on the analysis of the whole Frankenstein novel and compares and contrasts Mary Shelley’s life in general, since her childhood to the time when she published her first book, and the happenings, as well as characters, in the novel.

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3.1 Mary’s life in general The first thing a reader notices when reading the book is the representation of gender.

The plot of Frankenstein is led by male protagonists from the beginning to the end. Although there are few female characters who get some spotlight, they do not have as much space in the novel as men. Women in the novel are mostly passive, with little to no voice of their own and many of them die. The Britain at the beginning of the nineteenth century was identical. If we look at the state of Britain and its patriarchal rule, the death of those women, Victor’s mother,

Justine, and Elizabeth, might symbolize the silencing of women in the time period. Women back then had no power, no voice, and no social standing. In the patriarchal society of Great

Britain, men dominated every aspect of everyday life, and women were left to look after their homes and children.

The reflection of patriarchal society and male dominance in the novel could have been intensified by the fact Shelley was a very literate woman who spend a lot of her time reading.

Considering the patriarchy, the books she read were written mainly by men with men as main characters, be it academic work or fiction. Writing a gothic novel with woman as a main character was unthought of, and while Mary Shelley was the daughter of two controversial figures, one of them well-known feminist, she still grew up in such a society and it is more than probable she was influenced by it. Another factor, which might have been partly at fault for the male dominance in the novel is the fact she was surrounded by men her entire life.

Looking at Mary Shelley’s life and surroundings when she started to write the novel, we can see three men present. It was at Lord Byron’s mansion, where she was together with her husband, Lord Byron, and Polidori, Byron’s doctor, when the idea for Frankenstein or the

Modern Prometheus was born. Her sister, Claire, was traveling with them, but her presence was not as strong as that of the three men around her. As expected, they were all very vocal and opinionated, as well as masters in their fields, and Mary Shelley, as the daughter of two prominent writers, enjoyed their presence. The fact Shelley spent so much time in the

16 presence of those men rather than women could have contributed to the reason why the male protagonists were in the majority in the book, as she was used to their presence and way of thinking. Looking at the reason for the male dominance in the novel from this angle, it is also important to mention the fact that while growing up, the only stable figure in her life was her father, William Godwin. With the women in her early life leaving or mostly ignoring her, she concentrated on her closest person who never left, her father, her relationship and dependence on him becoming almost unhealthy at some point. Shelley herself confessed later in her life that when she was still a child living with her family, what she felt towards her father was, as

Mellor mentions, “excessive & romantic attachment” (8). With this information in mind, I believe the constant presence of men in her life only highlighted the difference between the standing of men and women in the patriarchal Britain, and as such, she, perhaps, chose men as the main character because it seemed more natural in her days.

The Frankenstein novel itself begins with several letters from a man called Walton, who is traveling the world. Even here, we can sense the similarity with Mary Shelley’s life, as traveling was a big part of her entire life. Following the letters, the story of Victor

Frankenstein and the monster begins when Walton meets with Victor on his voyage and is told the horrific story of the creator and his monster.

The readers get to know Victor since the time he was just a child. As far as we know, the author first started to work on the novel in Switzerland, near Geneva, where she was staying with her husband and their friends. The location she was at, at that moment, is reflected from the utmost beginning of the main story in the opening line: “I am by birth a

Genevese; and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic” (Shelley 25).

When we take into consideration all the external aspects of the place where the story started, it is quite possible her surroundings had a lot of influence on her writing. It is not only the state and the city which are identical but also the company she was surrounded by. Spending a lot

17 of time with Lord Byron at his place, the social status of the main character, Victor

Frankenstein, who is described as a member of one of the most distinguished families in

Switzerland, mirrors that of Lord Byron. It is not hard to imagine Shelley’s surroundings would have so much influence on her writing. She herself was from a family who was pretty well-off, with two famous parents, so creating the main character from a similar environment was most likely natural to her.

As we know, Mary Shelley spent a lot of her life traveling around Europe, not only in her later years but also before and during her work on the novel. Reading the novel, the author takes the readers through many different countries, such as Germany, Switzerland, or France, which Shelley personally visited on her travels with her husband. The main character, Victor, as well as the monster in his pursue, also travels through several countries, from Switzerland,

Germany, to Italy and France. Shelley leads the characters through the countries she once visited, which might have been way for her to reminisce about the times she spent traveling. It was, after all, a huge part of her life, from childhood to the time she worked on the novel.

If we consider her life after the publication of Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus and all the travels they experienced, I believe Shelley might have also expressed her whishes through the eyes of the characters. At the beginning of the novel, Victor mentions he traveled a lot as a child, including Italy in the list. Shelley and her family left for Italy in 1818, two months after Frankenstein was officially published, which could very well indicate she wanted to go there while she was writing the novel, or the plan to move to Italy was already set for the future.

Continuing with the story, the readers soon find out Victor’s mother died when he was still very young, leaving him with only his father and brother. As we already know, Shelley’s mother died after giving birth to her, her caretaker left her side when she was still a child, and her stepmother treated her rather coldly. Thus, it should not be overly ambitious to assume

18 this childhood experience of growing up without a mother figure could be directly reflected in this specific aspect of Victor’s life. Shelley choosing to create a character who went through the same pain and experience as her could have been a way to show the others what it feels like when a person loses his or her mother. When I consider the following years and what

Victor Frankenstein did with his life, this motherless character might have also stand as an example of what could happen when the mother figure disappears so abruptly. We know

Shelley, while suffering emotionally, managed to go on and live her life quite well, and as such, Victor’s example could, perhaps, also symbolize that she was aware she could have ended up in a far worse situation.

Speaking about Shelley’s life influencing many acts in the novel, there is one specific action that could have been inspired by an external cause in her life and not her internal feelings and experiences. As the plot of Frankenstein proceeds, we get to the point where

Victor finds his wife, Elizabeth, dead in their bedroom, murdered. There are many speculations about this specific scene, and the majority of them5 work with the idea the scene was inspired by a picture The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. Not only was Henry Fuseli famous at the time of Shelley’s life, but he was a close acquaintance of her late mother, which was an important factor in Shelley’s life. As Maryanne C. Ward says in her A Painting of the

Unspeakable: Henry Fuseli's “The Nightmare” and the Creation of Mary Shelley's

“Frankenstein”, we can see “the strongest evidence” of Shelley using the picture as an inspiration for Elizabeth’s murder in Mary Shelley’s personal life and acquaintances (22). She did not hide the fact she was acquainted with many of the people her parents knew, and considering Fuseli was part of the same circle as her parents, it is highly unlikely she would not know him and his work.

5 See Rebecca Baumann’s Frankenstein 200: The Birth, Life, and Resurrection of Mary Shelley's Monster, p. 48, Sophia Andres’s Narrative Challenges to Visual, Gendered Boundaries: Mary Shelley and Henry Fuseli in the Journal of Narrative Theory, p.262 or Anne K. Mellor’s Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, p. 121. 19

The picture shows a pale woman dressed in white, lying on a bed, her head and arm hanging down the bed, with a monster sitting on her chest. Mary Shelley describes the scene of Elizabeth’s murder as follows: “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.

Everywhere I turn I see the same figure – her bloodless arms and relaxed form flung by the murderer on its bridal bier” (161).

When we look at the picture itself and compare it with the description of the murder scene in the book, the similarities are hard to ignore. It is not only the position and appearance of the woman. The little monster sitting on the chest of the woman in the picture can be compared to the fact it was the Frankenstein’s monster who killed his spouse, Elizabeth

(Ward 21). The dark horse hidden between the curtains, looming silently in the dark evokes the dread of what just happened. I believe the horse could symbolize either death itself or

Victor himself, as he, indirectly, caused her death by refusing to do what the monster demanded, becoming an accomplice in the crime. Seeing the resemblance and symbolism between the picture and the scene of Elizabeth’s murder, it makes it very possible Shelley drew inspiration, to some degree, from the picture.

Going further into the story, by the end of the book, Victor lost many people who were close to him. His mother, as was already mentioned, his brother, his best friend, his wife, and his father. Victor has been followed by death since he was a child, and his interests in the natural and scientific laws, as well as the question of death and life just deepened this when he managed to bring a mass of dead meat to life. In comparison to Victor’s suffering, Shelley’s life denotes similar losses.

Besides her mother and caretaker, she lost her first-born child, she also lost her father for some time due to her relationship with then still-married P. B. Shelley, as he did not agree with their relationship, and her half-sister, as well as the first wife of her husband committed

20 suicide. Considering Shelley’s age and the number of tragedies she went through, it is understandable she would be traumatized and in need to share her pain in one way or another.

Writing such a novel with so much pain and death present throughout the whole story, it surely was not only her imagination which she used to write the novel, but her experiences reflected directly in her writing.

3.2 Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mary Shelley met Percy B. Shelley when she was still a teenager. At almost seventeen, she ran away with him from home, and since then, they began their life as partners.

Despite being in love, Mary Shelley’s relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley was anything but ideal. As much as she loved him, there were moments when her husband would ignore her, his passions and interests being much more important to him than his wife. This cold and disinterest in P. B. Shelley was most likely due to the overall climate of patriarchal Britain of the nineteenth century, and the way women were seen back then, but nonetheless painful for

Shelley. Knowing this, if we look at the characters of Frankenstein, one of them resembles such behavior more than the rest, Victor Frankenstein. This resemblance of the character and

Shelley’s husband is even more believable because, as London notes, it „has been frequently noted, Mary gives Frankenstein Percy's pseudonym, Victor” (265). This fact on its own, together with other similarities between the two, suggests Mary Shelley did, indeed, include her experience with her husband in the story of Frankenstein. When we consider the novel and acts Victor Frankenstein did in the novel, the choice of P. B. Shelley’s pseudonym might have been a way for Mary Shelley to get revenge on her husband and try to make him realize his faults, as he was helping Shelley with the novel. Victor Frankenstein is a self-centered person, who cares mostly only about his own interests and hobbies, and as a result, neglects his family and close friends, and the moment something goes wrong, he ups and goes, running

21 away from his responsibilities in hopes they will simply disappear. All these traits are also visible in P. B. Shelley, and this chapter explores the similarities between the two characters and their relation to Mary Shelley.

The first touches of P. B. Shelley’s life influencing the novel through the character of

Victor can be spotted right at the beginning of the novel. One of Shelley’s younger sisters was called Elizabeth. With them being siblings, they, of course, grew up together in the same house and, based on some sources such as Griswold’s Autobiography, Patriarchy, and

Motherlessness in Frankenstein, “shared a passionately loving attachment” (88). In the novel,

Victor Frankenstein meets his future wife, Elizabeth, who is an orphan, when his parents take her in when Victor is only five years old. They grow up together, close just like siblings, with

Elizabeth being, as May suggests, “the perfectly passive sister, waiting demurely at home for

Victor's return” (672). And while Victor marries Elizabeth in the novel, which, obviously, did not happen between P. B. Shelley and his sister, the relationship between the two characters began just like one between the big brother and younger sister. We can see the typical traits of such a relationship in the following extract:

On the evening previous to her being brought to my home, my mother had said

playfully, “I have a pretty present for my Victor – tomorrow he shall have it.” And

when, on the morrow, she presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with

childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally, and looked upon Elizabeth as

mine – mine to protect, love and cherish. (Shelley 29)

The whole scene evokes to me a picture of a mother telling her son he is going to be a big brother, who is then eagerly waiting to look after his little sister, ready to protect her from everyone and everything in the world. Moreover, we can see a feeling of possession and ownership in the extract, as Victor takes his mother’s words literally and thinks of Elizabeth as his, which could be, perhaps, considered as the reflection of Shelley’s feelings towards his

22 sister due to the nature of patriarchal society and the way women were perceived back then; as something fragile, not expected to partake in important matters and stay at home.

Following, when Victor Frankenstein gets older and attends the university, he becomes obsessed with his studies and his monster project, neglects his family and friends, does not write to them, or visits them, immersing himself in nothing but his research. Victor went through many different topics he was interested in during his studies and even before that, but once he came to the university, his interest developed into a more specific one. He became obsessed with natural science and the question of how life and death worked, directing his studies and interests to one specific field, which later led to the creation of the monster. As we know, to bring the monster to life, he used a special machine using electricity. This field of study and experiments Victor engaged in are very similar to what Percy Bysshe Shelley was fascinated with in the past. It was at the beginning of the nineteenth century when, as

Badalamenti states, “Galvani's experiments to reanimate expired life with electricity made sensational press in England” and “It was precisely in 1802 that Percy, then age 10, began a

10-year sequence of experiments in electrochemistry, a decade before meeting Mary” (428).

In fact, he used to experiment on “girls as subjects for experiments in curing their chilblains with electricity” (Mulhallen 11), and once, he also used electricity on a cat.

The experiments, as already mentioned, occupied Victor Frankenstein’s whole mind, not leaving any extra space, which resulted in his ignorance and negligence towards everything else in his life. As Victor himself says in Shelley’s novel, he was “engaged, heart and soul, in one pursuit” (44), fully aware he was obsessed with his interests. He is also well aware he was neglectful, as he reflects that “the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time” (45). There was nothing else for Victor but his

23 studies and his monstrous experiment. With this being said, I believe he shares these traits with Mary Shelley’s husband.

There was especially one moment in Mary Shelley’s life when she needed her husband the most, but he was not there for her, which had to be very traumatizing. When Shelley lost her firstborn baby a few days after the child was born, she needed her husband’s support and love. Instead of being there for his wife, though, Percy B. Shelley immersed himself in his work and neglected his wife and her feelings. Mary Shelley had to deal with the pain of losing the child mostly alone. While P. B. Shelley could have been dealing with the loss on his own terms by immersing himself in work to forget about the death of his child, from the woman’s point of view, letting his wife deal with such a tragedy on her own while he was gone doing his stuff, it had to leave deep scars deep within her, and as such, the use of Victor’s pseudonym and the way he was treated in the novel, as a failure of a parent who run away from his responsibility, seems justified.

With Victor running away from the monster he created right after seeing how hideous it was when it opened the eyes for the first time, the monster is left all alone to fend for itself.

Eventually, the monster goes after Victor and follows him across the world. From a superficial point of view, this development in the book could possibly reflect Mary Shelley’s travels with Percy B. Shelley, as they spent a lot of time traveling together, with Mary Shelley following her husband across Europe. However, when we look deeper into the problem of

Victor running away from the monster and the monster blindly following him overcame by anger towards its creator, there seems to be another reason for this. With P. B. Shelley ignoring his wife on more than one occasion, it is not hard to imagine there were moments

Mary Shelley hated him, which might have been the real reason for the hatred expressed by the monster in the novel. Mary Shelley simply needed to vent and doing so through her imagination was easy. We see the monster follow his creator desperately searching for

24 companion and affection, but all Victor does is reject the monster and run away the moment the monster gets close. This behavior causes the monster great suffering, and his desire to be with his creator slowly turns into anger and hatred as Victor’s selfishness is at fault of all his misery. He created life and refused to take care of his creation afterwards due to fear and disgust. Victor’s running away from his creation and the fact Percy Bysshe Shelley ran away from his grieving wife can also be seen as him running away from his responsibilities. Victor was responsible for his creation as well as Percy B. Shelley was responsible for his child and wife, and both of them failed greatly in their duty as parents. With this, I also believe it is possible Shelley used Victor’s failure as a parent to criticize the patriarchal society and the power men had, showing them that men themselves were not strong and capable enough to take care of their children on their own, pointing out women are important and have unique strength which men lack.

Continuing with the storyline of Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, we get to the fateful night after Victor and Elizabeth got married. The inspiration behind the murder scene of Victor’s wife has already been spoken about, but the scene alone might have a lot to do with a tragedy that struck Mary and Percy B. Shelley during their life before they got married.

If we look at Victor as Percy Shelley and the monster following him can be compared to Mary

Shelley traveling with him, Victor’s wife, Elizabeth, could symbolize Percy B. Shelley’s first wife, Harriet Shelley.

Percy and Mary Shelley got in a relationship while P. B. Shelley was still married to

Harriet Shelley, who was, coincidentally, also pregnant at that time with his child. In 1816,

Harriet committed suicide by drowning, which took a great toll on Mary Shelley and added another death to the list of deaths that affected her life. What might have amplified these feelings was the fact that because Harriet Shelley was dead, Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley could finally get married, which, considering what made their wedding possible, must have

25 made Mary Shelley feel even more guilty than she had already felt. Comparing this event to the acts in the Frankenstein novel, the scene, where the monster goes and kills Victor’s wife only proves this theory of enormous guilt Shelley had to feel. Controlled by this tremendous guilt, I believe she included this tragedy in her novel, comparing herself to the monster who killed Elizabeth.

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4. Shelley’s traumatic experiences reflected through Victor and his monster

As we already know, at the point in her life, when she started to write the novel

Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley experienced great pains and hardships, from losing her biological mother at childbirth to her complicated relationship with

Percy B. Shelley, or the tragedy of losing her first child. It is, thus, not hard to believe her life experiences and demons she had to face could be reflected in the novel, representing her most repressed fears and sorrows. Such similarities are predominantly noticeable in the characteristics and actions of the Frankenstein’s monster, as well as Victor Frankenstein himself, whose actions and desires expressed throughout the whole book lead me to believe the characters actually symbolize the internal suffering and anxieties Mary Shelley lived with, as well as her desires concerning her love deprivation. I believe that, in a figurative sense, the book Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus can be read as Mary Shelley’s personal journal she wrote to cope with her anxieties and unmet needs, as there was no one she could confide in as her closest person, her husband, was never around when she needed him the most despite them being in love.

Both of the characters, while most definitely representing more than one aspect of

Shelley’s life, as presented in this thesis, are very complex and lifelike, and the direction they take; their actions, feelings, and emotional expressions likely point towards the fact Mary

Shelley projected some of her inner struggles and desires into them, resulting in the characters showing characteristics distinctive to Shelley herself and her love and motherhood troubles.

In the following chapter, I chose to concentrate on Mary Shelley’s life in much more detail, directing my attention to three very connected themes, love, motherhood, and depression. While reading and analyzing the novel, these three themes, based on my understanding of the text, dominate the story and are recognizable in both, Victor

Frankenstein and his monster.

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4.1 Longing for Love

Since the first days of her life, Mary Shelley had to come to terms with losing loved ones while never having a real mother figure that would help her throughout her struggles in life. After her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died after childbirth, Mary experienced another loss not many years after, when her caretaker left her side, leaving her with only a father who gave the right to care for his daughter to his new spouse, he himself not giving Mary Shelley much attention except for home education. While her stepmother never abused her, she did not provide more than basic care with no display of any deeper emotions and love, contrary, she was cold and regarded Shelley as something she had to deal with in order to keep the family together. Furthermore, even after finding a partner she loved and could visualize having family and a happy life with, Shelley’s needs and desires were not fully satisfied as

Percy B. Shelley, on many occasions, was neglectful, not necessarily intentionally

(Badalamenti 429).

Reading the novel, there is one particular character, who is a direct depiction of desire for love and harmonic companionship. The monster, while violent and a murderer, is a pitiful individual who became what it was because of external causes which he could not avoid. The monster’s creator abandons him right after he opens his eyes for the first time, leaving it to its fate, which mirrors Shelley’s mother passing away and leaving her newborn daughter behind.

Throughout the whole book, the monster desperately follows his creator, Victor Frankenstein, as if in search of his parent. It was a natural, most likely instinctual response as Victor was the first person the monster saw when it opened its eyes. This desperate chase the monster goes through to find its creator, a parent, perhaps, reflects Shelley’s need for parental love she was never granted the way every child deserves. The monster finds itself abandoned, shunned and rejected on multiple occasions by everyone he meets on his way through life. While Shelley was not shunned and rejected by everyone in her life, her mother’s death, her caretaker’s

28 departure, her stepmother’s mistreatment, and her father’s abandonment after her relationship with P. B. Shelley was revealed, was likely more than enough to cause her inner turmoil and sadness, as well as bitterness.

The topic of parenting and lack of parental love is ever-present throughout the whole book, insinuating that Shelly most likely suffered the consequences of her chaotic and neglected childhood. Based on the writing of Claridge, “Mary Shelley began her writing with chapter 4, wherein we see the father rejecting the monster’s outstretched hand” (20), which suggests this theory is more than presumable. As a parent to a small boy herself at the time she was working on the novel, she had to be aware, more than ever before, of what she missed as a child without a loving mother and attentive father.

The loneliness Mary Shelley must have been very conscious of at that time is possibly reflected through the character of the monster, as it is left alone to take care of itself, without any knowledge of how the world works. The monster does not understand its existence and purpose, wandering around, meeting people who, for his appearance, are scared of him and shun him away, and is thus doomed to be alone until the end of his days. When he once comes across a family and has an opportunity to observe them from afar, reading books and learning about life while doing so, he starts to feel a desire for a companion, convinced having someone by his side, who would be as hideous as him, would rid him of his loneliness and pain, and grant him with love as the monster says in the novel:

For some days I haunted the spot where these scenes had taken place, sometimes

wishing to see you, sometimes resolved to quit the world and its miseries for ever. At

length I wandered towards these mountains, and have ranged through their immense

recesses, consumed by a burning passion which you alone can gratify. We may not

part until you have promised to comply with my requisition. I am alone and miserable;

man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not

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deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same

defects. This being you must create. (Shelley 118)

In the scene above, we can see the monster requesting a female companion as hideous as itself. Through this wish, as much as it seems the monster wishes for the bare minimum to not be alone anymore, it is likely Mary Shelley actually refers to her own deepest desires.

Mary Shelley, though in love with her husband, Percy B. Shelley, went through many hardships due to her husband’s often negligence and ignorance. He tended to overlook Mary

Shelley’s emotional state, not giving her enough comfort even in situations such as their daughter’s death. With their first daughter dying several months before Shelley started to write Frankenstein, and her grief still too fresh, her need for an equal companion, who would provide enough compassion and emotional support during hard times, was possibly represented through the story of the monster and his desires for equally hideous companion.

In context of Shelley and the death of her child, the phrase hideous companion might suggest a person of the same mind, scarred and devastated by similar tragedy, so the two partners could be on equal ground and fully understand each other.

As the novel proceeds and the monster finally unfolds its side of the story, we can see it is aware of the fact there is no one else like him and he is the only one of the species alive.

The monster also learns that while lonely and shunned, there might be a chance for him to have a different life with someone to talk to without having to be afraid of being rejected and condemned to a lifetime solitude. Such sentiments hint at the possibility that Mary Shelley believed love and companionship were very important in life and everyone would want to experience the closeness of other people in one way or another, however wrecked they were.

Perhaps, her craving for love and the sudden burst of feelings towards Percy Bysshe

Shelley when they met and got to know each other was directly caused by the obvious lack of parental love in her life. She did not hesitate when it came to P. B. Shelley and eloped with

30 him the moment there was an opportunity, not caring for anything else but her love for him.

The same naïve but desperate desire for love is also expressed through the character of the monster. When we get to the point, when the monster finally meets its creator and makes a specific demand, it voices a wish to have a compilation of the different sex, likely directly connected to Shelley’s feelings towards love and her partner,

I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small,

but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be monsters,

cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one

another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless, and free from the

misery I now feel. (Shelley 119)

The monster here is reconciled with the fact his creator, his parent, will never love him just like Mary Shelley came to terms with never experiencing real parental love.

Thus, instead of his father’s love, he directed all of his attention, desires, and hopes towards a different kind of love. The monster here craves a companion and is willing to do anything to get it, just like Shelley was willing to do anything for her newly acquired love, P. B. Shelley, going as far as eloping with him despite her father’s disapproval of their relationship.

4.2 Anxiety of Motherhood

Looking at the novel from the point of a young woman, who did not know what the relationship between mother and her child was supposed to be like as she never personally experienced it, and who had to bury her first child a few days after it was born, the topic focusing on motherhood and fears women have before and after having a baby most likely influenced some of her writing, as the focus of the novel itself is mainly directed towards creation and what happens when a creator abandons its creation. This chapter focuses on the topic of pregnancy and motherhood present in the novel as well as the dynamics between

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Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein and the monster, and the fact Mary Shelley’s worries and traumas regarding motherhood and pregnancy are expressed in both of the characters simultaneously.

As we already know, Mary Shelley grew up without the special bond children share with their mothers. Her first child died several days after it was born, she was nursing her newborn son while working on Frankenstein, who was born not long after her first child died, and became pregnant again while still working on the novel. Speaking about the tragic end of her first pregnancy, her suppressed grief for her dead daughter caused her recurring dreams of the child coming back to life, deepening her pain whenever she woke up and found out it was only a dream. These deeply engraved emotions of hope turned into despair, combined with the talks and readings of ghost stories she and her companions did, came back to her in a new dream after Byron’s writing challenge, giving birth to the Frankenstein’s novel central theme.6 Thus, I believe pregnancy as well as motherhood is one of the main themes in the novel. In fact, if we read the novel with this in mind, we can find references to pregnancy throughout the whole book, not only in the moment the monster is brought to life.

Victor’s use of “descriptive language of his creation myth”, such as conceive, creation, and labour when he describes his work on the monster suggests he speaks about the actual birth of the monster, not simply of his work (Gilbert 58). While these words surely have other meanings than those of birth and pregnancy, in contrast to what we already know of Shelley, it is probable the usage of the words is connected to her thoughts regarding pregnancy. Mary

Shelley, in sentences like this: “After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils” (42) or this:

“Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the

6 Mary Shelley dreamed about a student kneeling by a lifeless, deformed body of a man, who suddenly stirred and came alive through the power of some machine, his appearance so hideous the student ran away, petrified of his creation. The dream inspired the most important and powerful scene in the novel, when Victor finally finished his work and brought the monster to life. 32 reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour” (43), uses the word labour, which, in this context, seems to describe pregnancy directly. The phrase painful labour in the first sentence describes the painful work or ordeal Victor had to go through to achieve his desire, which was to bring the monster alive, basically giving birth as he is the one who created it. Apart from the word labour, what could also add more to this theory of reflected pregnancy are other expressions used in the first example sentence. The phrases “summit of my desires” and “gratifying consummation” can both be used not only to describe Victor’s hard work and results but also one’s sexual desires, pleasure, and the act of sex itself, as consummation also describes sexual intercourse. In the second example, where Victor laments there is still a lot of difficult work and labour remaining, I do not think the word labour means work in this context. What I get from the meaning is the fact that, despite women being able to conceive and give life, it requires a hard time of nine months, when the baby grows and develops so it can live once born. Having experienced one pregnancy of her own, which ended tragically as the child died during her first few days of life, and other two pregnancies followed before the Frankenstein novel was finished, this usage of words being a coincidence or a reflection of the language of the early nineteenth century seems to be less realistic than the theory she used these specific words due to her anxiety, fear and suppressed emotions.

If we view Victor Frankenstein not as a father, but as a mother of the monster, purely based on the fact he is the one who created it, it provides a new look into Mary Shelley’s deepest thoughts and worries. As Almond cites in her work, “Marie-Helene Huet, in her 1993 work Monstrous Imagination, elaborates how until the beginning of the nineteenth century the most persistent theory about the origins of monstrous progeny (birth defects) held that a

“disordered female imagination” was responsible” (52). Considering this fact, and the development of Victor’s feelings towards his creation before and after it was brought to life,

33 going from love to hate, the connection between the mentioned theory and the way Shelley might have felt seems to be probable, especially due to the fact she found out she was pregnant again while she was still actively working on the novel. Apart from this, her first child died due to being born prematurely. It is possible Shelley ended up blaming herself and her mind for the death of the baby, as it was born prematurely, resulting in the strong presence of this topic throughout the whole book. While premature birth is not a physical defect in the literal sense of the word, it can still be considered a fault as the child wasn’t developed enough to survive. Two months is a lot of time in the sense of development of an unborn child and as such, the deformity I see in this case is the not-fully developed child.

After Shelley’s firstborn died, she was left alone with her grief and thoughts. With her being surrounded by writers of all kinds and being the daughter of two renowned authors, the expectation of her becoming a professional writer had to be high. For that, and because of all the tragedies she went through, her imagination was surely quite wide and diverse even before the fateful evening back in Byron’s villa where they read the ghost stories which stimulated her imagination even more. After reading the stories and betting on who will write the best story of their own, she had to stimulate her imagination even more, consciously, which resulted in the fateful dream she had, which shows her imagination was, indeed quite disordered. If we consider all those factors and the fact Mary Shelley was an intelligent and very thoughtful person, the fact she went in this direction and entertained the idea that the boisterous imagination of a pregnant woman could influence the unborn child was likely true.

With a child on a way while still working on Frankenstein, her imagination, should she really believe the theory of monstrous imagination, could directly affect the unborn child and as such, the worries concerning the issue were possibly constantly on her mind.

Through the text of the novel, Almond’s theory of “disordered imagination” (52) as the reason for a deformity of a child is most visible in the form of Victor being obsessed with

34 his research and experiment, not caring whether what he was doing was morally good or not.

He neglected his family and friends and the only thing he thought about was the final product of his work, the monster coming to life. He was thinking of how to make his experiment work, stealing dead parts of bodies and as such, indulging in morally skewed activities, all while developing his monster. However, when that moment comes and the monster gains consciousness, Victor is horrified by its devious look, and is so scared and shocked, he ends up running away the moment the monster opens its eyes. Victor’s imagination, while the monster was still in the process of development, was going in all kinds of direction, which, based on the mentioned theory, had a direct effect on the monster, the child, and when it was

“born”, the mother, in our case Victor, saw what horrendous thing his mind and actions actually did.

Another possibility of what could have caused this fear of monster growing within

Shelley’s uterus is the social pressure on women back in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. While they were expected to have children and take care of them, women were still robbed of other rights and privileges men had due to nothing more but the fact they were men.

This difference in power and the way men and women were treated could very well cause women to feel as if having a female reproductive system was something that degraded them.

As Almond says, “mother’s fears of producing a monster child may relate to shame and anxiety about the meanings of being female, about the insides of her body and what that body may produce“ (56).

While the mother presented in the novel is man, I believe it could be so for a reason to criticize man for the inequality between the two genders. By giving Victor, a man, the power of having children even without the female reproductive system, and showing he still gave birth to a monster, I believe Shelley tried to get over the fear women’s insides were to be considered shameful and lesser than men’s by putting a man in the same position.

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The second fear the novel most likely deals with, is her fear and anxiety of being able to accept her child and love it unconditionally.7 Shelley presents Victor’s behavior after the monster is born as follows:

I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth

chattered, and every limb became convulsed – when, by the dim and yellow light of

the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch – the

miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes,

if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened and he muttered some

inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did

not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped, and

rushed downstairs. (47)

The short extract shows that Victor as the creator, detests his creation from the moment the monster opened his eyes. He is disgusted and terrified to the point of running away, never looking back to even reconsider his stance on this matter. The moment we see the monster following his creator, trying to talk and reach him with his outstretched hand, but all

Victor does is completely reject him is one of the most powerful scenes in the whole novel.

The incoherent speech and the outstretched hand of the monster can be considered an equivalent of a newborn baby babbling and reaching his or her tiny hands towards one of the parents, and as such, what this scene could symbolize is Victor, the mother, rejecting his newborn child who is desperate for his care. He runs as fast as possible, leaving the monster behind, robbing the still innocent creature of the possibility of some kind of a decent life and

7 Such fear is the most common among women, especially the young ones, who are expecting their very first child without any previous experience. Questions such as “What if my child is born deformed, a freak, a moron, a "hideous" thing? Could I still love it, or would I be horrified and wish it were dead again? What will happen if I can't love my child? Am I capable of raising a healthy, normal child? Will my child die (as my first baby did)? Could I wish my own child to die, to destroy itself? Could I kill it? Could it kill me (as I killed my mother, Mary Wollstonecraft)?” (Mellor, 41) ask many women, and considering Mary Shelley’s history and the time period, she more than likely was not an exception. 36 the chance to experience care and affection of a parent every newborn “child” deserves and should be provided in all cases. What Victor unintentionally caused by this behavior of his is sentencing the monster for the life of nothing but despair and loneliness, ultimately causing his turn into murderer who gives Victor back all the despair he caused him by killing people dear to him.

Now, if we look at the novel from the opposite side and try to find a resemblance between Shelley and the monster, there is one aspect leading me to believe monster’s story is a lot like Shelley’s life and her possible feelings regarding the question of parental love and love for her children. Almond observes that “sometimes women fear that they won’t be able to love a child because it is different from the fantasized child of pregnancy, in sex, appearance, or temperament” (53) and when I consider what happened with Victor and the monster, his child, I can see the correlation between what happened to them in the book and

Almond’s observation. Victor rejected the monster because of its horrific looks when it finally came to life despite loving it before he gave “birth” it. In this specific moment, where we see the change of behavior of the creator towards its creation, we could say that, possibly, Shelley herself could have thoughts about whether she would love her child if it looked somehow deformed or different from what she imagined. This specific doubt can be seen reflected in the novel at the moment Victor, for the first time, shows hesitation when it comes to his hatred towards the monster, as we can see in the following text, “his words has a strange effect upon me. I compassioned him, and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked at him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened, and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred” (Shelley 120). In this scene, Victor listens to the monster and his life story so far, seeing what his actions of bringing this creature to life and immediately abandoning it caused. We see Victor waver, feeling compassion towards the hardships the monster went through, but all of these feelings disappear the moment he takes a

37 notice of the monster’s appearance. By creating this dysfunctional parental relationship between Victor Frankenstein and the monster, and by developing it throughout the whole novel, where we see the creator hating the monster, but, at the same moment, seeing he can feel sympathy towards it after hearing its struggles, the question of whether a mother could love her child, would it look hideous or not, surfaces. The fact this particular theme is one of the main themes in the novel leads me to speculate Mary Shelley spent a lot of time and energy on these thoughts.

While going through the book, the readers also have the opportunity to see how the monster reacts to the terrible treatment of his creator and how he develops as a character on his own without anyone showing him how the world works. What more, after the monster finally finds his creator and speaks to Victor, he expresses his knowledge of how the world perceives him, completely aware he is not the norm:

All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all

living things! yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art

bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me.

How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine

towards you and the rest of mankind. (Shelley 81)

This passage explores the feelings of the cast-away child and how his awareness of the surroundings affected him. We can see the monster knows his creator wants to kill him just because it exists despite Victor himself bringing him to life. The similarity between the scene above showing monster’s knowledge and Shelley’s life lies, perhaps, in Shelley’s knowledge of what negligence does to children. Mary Shelley had to be well aware of how negligence and rejection towards a child could be harmful, and what it could do to a child who has not been exposed to love and proper nurture. Shelley, being affected by very similar negligence, was likely able to imagine what it could do with a little child should he or she be completely

38 rejected by the whole world without anyone ever providing him with the minimum of care and emotional support. With this knowledge and the ability to see the possible consequences of such actions, her doubts and anxiety concerning motherhood had to have a much bigger toll on her and her emotional state as she was either expecting or already a mother to little

William, who was born in 1816 during the time she started to write Frankenstein.

4.3 Depression

The core story of Frankenstein is a story of two characters. On one hand, there is

Victor Frankenstein, the creator, who could be considered the typical mad scientist, if we speak in terms of tropes used in literature. On the other hand, there is Victor’s creation, a hideous monster he runs away from the moment his sight falls on its awakened figure.

Reading the novel through the eyes of a random reader who looks for an escape and a good time in fictional stories, it might seem like a tragic story, in which the hero and villain are interchangeable, showing there is always more than one side to each story. If we, however, take into account everything we so far know about Mary Shelley’s life, her experiences, demons, and traumas, the hero and villain in this novel could represent the author herself and her fight with depression.

The analysis and comparison of Mary Shelley’s life so far focused on the story as a whole and on Victor and his monster in the roles of either Mary Shelley or her husband. This chapter addresses the possibility of Victor representing Mary Shelley herself and of the monster, who is created after Victor’s never-ending obsession and continues following him throughout his life, representing her depression.

When speaking about depression concerning Mary Shelley, it is important to consider the history of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft. It is no secret that Wollstonecraft, as much as she was a strong independent woman of the eighteenth century, had, as Temple says, a

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“tendency towards agitated depression leading to suicide attempts” (372). As is generally known, depression is known to run in families and to be partly hereditary. It is not only the genes, though, but the environment in which a person grows up, as well as “stressful life events and chronically stressful circumstances” have a big influence on the development of depression (Hammen 200). If we take this information and apply it to Mary Shelley’s life, there was a high probability for her to fall a victim to the demons of depression. The stress she had to deal with throughout her childhood and adolescence was on a high level and adding up to it problem in love life and the death of her child, it is almost certain she dealt with depression at some point in her life.

When we speak about the moment in the novel, where we encounter the first signs of something changing within the main protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, and which indicates the first symptoms and the start of the depression as a reflection of Shelley’s life, there is one specific scene when it is heavily hinted:

Sometimes I grew alarmed at the wreck I perceived that I had become; the energy of

my purpose alone sustained me: my labors would soon end, and I believed that

exercise and amusement would then drive away incipient disease; and I promised

myself both of these when my creation should be complete. (Shelley 46)

This scene appears at the end of chapter 4 of Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, right before Victor brings the monster to life. It is a short extract, but it says a lot, and the markers of depression are in every part of it. Victor is aware of his almost manic obsession with this project of his and how it ruins his life. He also thinks that exercising and having fun after he finally finishes will help him get better and heal this disease that was slowly creeping up on him and swallowing him up. Exercising and indulging in one’s hobbies can greatly help with depression, which was already known back in the beginning of the nineteenth century as people fighting the symptoms of depression, known as melancholia back then, were treated by

40 a new approach of “outdoor exercise, light employment, and social activities” instead of being permanently locked up in an asylum (Jassen 5). If we consider this the point where the depression makes its first appearance in the novel, the actual birth of the monster and the following consequences of the performance show the development of it and the power it has over the person in their lowest moments in life.

Taking the previous analysis of the text into consideration, the idea of the monster following Victor after it was brought to life comes across as a metaphor for depression, and as the story proceeds, this hypothesis seems more and more accurate as the readers are witnessing how the monster slowly ruins Victor’s life, which slowly leads to his death at the end of the novel.

As the story unfolds, and the similarities between Mary Shelley’s life and the plot occur rather simultaneously, the point where the monster comes to life and is seen for the first time offers an exact moment in Shelley’s life when the depression first appeared in its true and pure form. Going back, we know Shelley dreamed about her late baby girl coming back to life. Working with this knowledge, the awakening of the monster in the novel most likely represents the depression that fell upon her after her child’s death.8 When we look at Victor’s train of thoughts after he fled the scene of the monster’s birth, horrified by the hideousness of the creature, he reflects on the event and the text and words chosen for this specific scene hint that the author was reflecting her mental state in her writing:

But I was in reality very ill; and surely nothing but the unbounded and unremitting

attentions of my friend could have restored me to life. The form of the monster on

whom I had bestowed existence was forever before my eyes, and I raved incessantly

concerning him. Doubtless my words surprised Henry: he at first believed them to be

the wanderings of my disturbed imagination; but the pertinacity with which I

8 Postpartum depression is discussed in the second half of the chapter. 41

continually recurred to the same subject persuaded him that my disorder indeed owed

its origin to some uncommon and terrible event. (Shelley 50)

With Victor speaking about himself as very ill and addressing the events of the night when he brought the monster to life as a disorder, this scene can be understood as Shelley using her writing as a coping mechanism with the pain and trauma she was experiencing and experienced in the past. With her being only nineteen years old, writing something so dark and serious while choosing words like disease, illness, and how the act of the monster awakening will forever haunt the protagonist, the deeper meaning of the novel and these specific moments which are mentioned above lead me to believe the hypothesis about the depression is more than probable.

As the story proceeds from this point, the readers see how Victor deals with this darkness he created and how it affects his life. The monster kills his younger brother, his best friend, and his wife, which indirectly causes the death of his father as well. These three deaths caused by the hand of the monster could symbolize the fact untreated depression, in most cases, ruins one’s personal life and relationships and brings the patient even more despair.

At one point in the novel, Victor is confronted by the monster and after a long conversation reluctantly agrees to do what the monster wants. In sense of depression, this specific moment can be interpreted as a person succumbing to depression and losing the fight.

If we go with this specific interpretation and the hypothesis the Frankenstein novel is heavily influenced by the author’s emotional state, experiences, and life in general, the conclusion to this is that she could have been, at one point, very close to giving up in life. This, however, does not last long, and she gets back up and fights the depression, as we can see through the eyes of Victor.

After Victor agrees to the monster’s demands, he goes on and proceeds to start working on another monster, this time a female one, so his first creation can have a

42 companion and does not suffer from loneliness anymore. However, in the middle of his work, he realizes he does not want to give birth to another monster and disposes of everything he has done so far. Doing that, however, comes with consequences in the already mentioned deaths of Victor’s closest family and friends. I believe this behavior of his could symbolize

Mary Shelley’s will to fight the depression, her demons, and dark emotions even though she was well aware it was going to be hard and might cause her more pain and suffering in the future.

Despite all the grievances his decision not to help the monster caused, Victor decides to hunt the monster down and kill it himself, as the authorities he contacted did not believe him when he informed them about the monster’s existence. This particular moment, and the following journey when he continues to search for the monster, could be a representation of

Mary Shelley’s continuous fight with her depression despite all the tragedies that happened to her during her life.

By the end of the book, Victor dies, sickly and weakened, never giving up on his mission to kill the monster while the monster mourns its creator’s death and readies itself to die as well. For some, this kind of ending might evoke defeat, but in the context of depression and Mary Shelley’s life, I believe it actually represents hope rather than something negative.

As Shelley was still very much alive after Frankenstein was finished and published, this development of the story could be interpreted as her intention to keep on fighting her demons and traumas until the day she dies, never giving up in the process. Also, after the death of

Victor, the monster weeps and leaves with the promise of dying soon. This all connected together seems to me like the symbolism of the weak part of Shelley dying, taking the demons, or at least a part of them, with it to the grave.

If we look much deeper into the problem of depression and narrow it down based on the knowledge of Mary Shelley’s life and the terminology and division of types of

43 depressions, we can say that, apart from regular depression, she was fighting a specific type of depression after her first child died and another one was born soon after. Postpartum depression occurs in women after they give birth, and, instead of feelings of happiness and love, women find themselves, as stated by Bateman, “labile moods or mood swings, feelings of inadequacy and inability to cope with the baby, anxiety about the baby, irritability and fatigue” (58). Just as Johnson claims, it is not surprising that “having lived through an unwanted pregnancy from a man married to someone else only to see that baby die, followed by a second baby named William—which is the name of the monster’s first murder victim—

Mary Shelley, at the age of only eighteen, must have had excruciatingly divided emotions”

(21). Postpartum depression strikes unexpectedly, and even to that moment happy, healthy women who never had any kind of traumatic experience can find themselves under its influence. Mary Shelley, emotionally strained and exhausted from her already hard life, was very likely one of the “10 and 20 percent of women” who fall victim to depression after childbirth (Bateman 57).

In Mary Shelley’s case, the birth of her first two children most likely intensified her already depressive disorder, and as such, her emotional state could have heavily influenced the world of Frankenstein, giving it the depth and dark atmosphere it has. When we look for an indication of specifically the postpartum depression in the novel itself, we find it easily at the moment the monster is brought to life. Coincidentally, it happens in chapter 4, which is the first chapter Shelley worked on. The previous chapters and Walton’s letters were written later. As such, the fourth chapter, while possibly written first for its intensity, importance for the novel and its disturbing content, Shelley’s emotions most likely affected the way she wrote it and gave the scene much more intensity, emotion and power. To that point, Victor has been excited about his project finishing and was looking forward to awakening his creation. The moment he does it, though, he becomes disgusted and repulsed by the monster,

44 rejecting its entire existence and abandoning it completely. As I stated above, Shelley is very specific and detailed in the description of Victor’s feelings after he escapes from the monster:

I passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly that I

felt the palpitation of every artery; at others I nearly sank to the ground through

languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of

disappointment; dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space

were now become a hell to me; and that change was so rapid, the overthrow so

complete. (47)

In this short scene, we can see how reality and the idea of giving birth can differ.

Despite the fact Victor was beyond himself when he was finishing his project and was about to bring the monster to life, he ends up horrified and disappointed the moment the monster opens its eyes and moves. The sudden realization of what this new life means for him, and how it could change everything in his life he has fought for up until that point, together with the appearance of the monster, is too much for Victor to process and his mind just closes up and is able to focus only on the negative sides of this, what should have been a happy moment. Similar feelings can be traced among women who experienced postpartum depression.

Another symptom of postpartum depression reflected in the novel was the loss of interest and hobbies. Victor, together with the monster, abandons his passions and studies in which he had engaged for several years, as he “experiences a mental barrier that keeps him from enjoying his pursuits of natural philosophy after his creature comes to life” (Bird 120).

Furthermore, when Victor runs away and encounters his friend Henry, he falls sick for months, during which time Henry looks after him. Eventually, Victor recovers and starts to recognize the smallest pleasures of life again. By Victor’s own words written by Shelley: “I

45 felt also sentiments of joy and affection revive in my bosom; my gloom disappeared, and in a short time I became as cheerful as before I was attacked by the fatal passion” (51).

All in all, in this whole process, where we see Victor excited about his creation being brought to life just for him to be disappointed and horrified by it the moment it opens its eyes, followed by Victor falling sick for several months, and recovering, later on, we can clearly see the symptoms of postpartum depression in this, as mothers usually got through the same.

Every mother looks forward to having a child unless we speak about exceptions with different circumstances, but then, when the time comes and the baby is born, the mothers experience feelings of anxiety, anger, and sadness. They can feel like this for different periods of time, sometimes it takes only several days, sometimes months or even longer, and, with the right treatment, they eventually recover and can enjoy their new experience as mothers. The accuracy with which this particular life experience is described and put together in the right order can be a sign that, as suggested by Ashby, “Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein as a way of putting her depression into coherent thoughts and ideas” (64).

As was presented through this chapter, Shelley’s traumatic experiences slowly added up, and together with her predisposition for depressive episodes after her mother, it is likely that the point where her mental state shattered was after the death of her baby, followed by the death of her half-sister and the wife of P. B. Shelley. All three deaths occurred, coincidentally, right before or during her work on Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, which suggests the emotions and issues reflected in the novel were so well put due to her emotional state.

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5. Conclusion

As stated at the beginning of this work, the aim of this thesis was to analyze the text of the novel Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, compare it to the life of the author, Mary

Shelley, and focus on the similarities between the two main characters, Victor Frankenstein and his monster, and Shelley’s reality to see how much of her writing was influenced by her traumatic experiences leading to depression, her fears and life changes she went through in her first nineteen years of living in this world.

After several detailed readings of the novel and going through different texts telling her and P. B. Shelley’s life story, I came to the conclusion that the author reflected her life in the novel in much more detail and frequency than noticeable at first sight. When we study

Mary Shelley’s life since her birth until the year 1818 when the novel Frankenstein or the

Modern Prometheus was published for the first time, and then go on and read the story of

Victor and his monster, the similarities between her life and the lives of the characters are too obvious to overlook and write it off to a coincidence.

As presented in the thesis, we can find resemblances of every part of Shelley’s life in

Frankenstein. She includes the current topics of the early nineteenth century, her family problems, her love troubles, and even her deepest worries and fears concerning motherhood and pregnancy itself, as well as her emotional state. Her anxiety about pregnancy and whether she would be able to become a good mother or not did, in fact, dominate the text and was noticeable the most while reading. After all, the main idea of the novel itself focuses on the creation of new life and what happens when the creator, the mother, fails in his role as a parent.

What is fascinating about this specific reflection of hers is the fact Mary Shelley reflected her fears concerning pregnancy and motherhood, two things only women can understand fully, through the eyes and experiences of men. As I already mentioned at the

47 beginning of the thesis, Mary Shelley had been surrounded mainly by men her whole life. She did not know her mother or any other mother figure whom she could ask for help whenever she felt anxious or worried about her potential pregnancy and, later on, her role as a mother, and all she was left with were men everywhere. Thus, the fact Shelley used men as the main characters should not be that surprising. However, the author, at the same time, was not the prime example of a proper woman representing the patriarchal times in Britain, so there was likely another reason as to why she used men instead of women, and that was to criticize the patriarchy.

Having two very controversial figures as parents, Shelley had different opportunities than other women had back in the day. He father, despite neglecting to take care of her in the sense of emotional support and general care, made sure she was well educated. While, as

Brackett says, “meaningful education of girls was not considered necessary or desirable during this period” (6), Shelley’s father was adamant about giving the best education she could have despite being a girl. She had access to different kinds of books and spent a lot of time reading them, not wasting this opportunity. Knowing this, together with the fact Britain was the typical patriarchal society at the beginning of the nineteenth century, where men had the power and women were supposed to be home, taking care of their household and children, leads me to think Mary Shelley did not only reflect her general life, her fears and hidden emotions in the novel. As Marsh says in one of her articles regarding the gender roles, “The gender history of 19th-century Britain can be read in two ways: as an overarching patriarchal model which reserved power and privilege for men; or as a process of determined but gradual female challenge to their exclusion”.

If we look at the letter part of the quote and at how Victor Frankenstein dealt with his role as a parent to his creation, I believe we can consider Frankenstein or the Modern

Prometheus not only as a reflection of Mary Shelley’s life as a whole but also as a sort of

48 criticism of the patriarchal society and the roles people were assigned at their birth based on their gender.

The truth is, Victor Frankenstein, being a man, failed as a parent. He abandoned his creation, run away, and faced the consequences of his actions. By writing this, Shelley pinpointed the fact that if men were left alone to fend for themselves and their children, they would most likely fail, showing the power women have while being repressed by society and told they are the weaker a lesser gender of the two. We can see this failure of men not only through the eyes of a character, Victor Frankenstein but also in real people in Shelley’s life.

William Godwin, her father, failed to properly take care of Mary Shelley when her mother died, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, her husband, showed little to no interest in the fact his firstborn daughter died, leaving Mary Shelley to deal with it alone. While neither of these men was the typical representation of men in patriarchal Britain, they were still not women and thus, could not understand fully what it meant to draw the shorter part of the stick without having the opportunity to draw themselves.

To conclude and finish, I am firmly convinced the thesis shows Mary Shelley’s experiences throughout her life, as well as her inner emotions and thoughts, have been included and properly reflected in her first novel, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, and while we cannot say whether it was intentional or not, the similarities, sometimes almost identical with what was going on in Shelley’s life, suggest the novel is, in fact, a reflection of the author’s life.

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