Humanities

Books Mary Shelley’s milieu, brought to life

The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley’s Masterpiece Roseanne Montillo HarperCollins; 2013

oseanne Montillo’s T he Lady and Her Monsters tells R two tales: one interesting and fresh, the other a rehash of better bio- graphical offerings. Mary Shelley was a young literary prodigy, wife of renowned poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and author of Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. Montillo ex - plores Shelley’s life story, the social and scientific milieu in which she grew up, and the wellspring of her cre- HarperCollins ative urges. Mary was the issue of a famous force” that made up life; whoever mas- late 18th–century power couple. Her tered it would hold the key, not only to father, Charles Godwin, was an author reviving the dead but perhaps even to and political philosopher. Her mother, creating life. writer Mary Wollstonecraft, died Beyond describing this milieu, Mon- because of a retained placental frag- tillo explains how it was ultimately ment and subsequent sepsis two weeks acknowledged that Mary Shelley, rather after Mary’s delivery. than her then more accomplished hus- Montillo, an American professor of band, who actually authored the book literature, recalls Godwin’s Sunday — a fine twist of irony given her afternoon salon meetings of some of mother’s pioneering feminist bona fides. the most famous intellectuals of the Like Dr. Frankenstein bringing life day: poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge to dead flesh, Montillo tries to galvanize and William Wordsworth, the essayist her readers. Unfortunately, she only Charles Lamb and scientist Humphry partly succeeds. While the particular Davy, who not only dabbled in the recounting of the social and scientific effects of inhaling nitrous oxide but, context in which Frankenstein was writ- more importantly (at least for this ten is what this book does best, the story book), explored the chemistry of life, could have been recounted in a the concept of vitalism and the effect of medium-length magazine article. That the newly discovered force of gal- being said, I am now better acquainted vanism on both living and dead tissues. with the creative processes that went Mary listened in, and the rest is history. into Shelley’s masterpiece. After electricity was characterized scientifically, early in the 17th century, A. Mark Clarfield MD experiments were carried out in which Department of Geriatrics Soroka Hospital and Ben-Gurion this mysterious force was used in University of the Negev efforts to reanimate the dead — first Beersheba, Israel frogs, then humans. It was thought that electricity was, or was part of, the “vital CMAJ 2014. DOI:10.1503/cmaj.131388

374 CMAJ, March 18, 2014, 186(5)