Meri-Jane Rochelson
Mary Shelley's Progeny
Anne K. Mellor. Mary
Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. NY: Methuen, 1988. xx +
276pp. illus. $25.00 (cloth); Routledge, 1989. $14.95 (paper).
Allene Stuart Phy. Mary
Shelley. Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1988. [Starmont Reader's
Guide No. 36.] 124pp. $17.95 (cloth); $9.95 (paper).
Mary K. Patterson Thornburg. The Monster in the Mirror: Gender and the Sentimental/Gothic Myth in Frankenstein.
Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1987. [Studies in Speculative Fiction,
No. 14.] ix + 154pp. $39.95.
The popular appeal of Frankenstein has a long history: the immediate success
of Mary Shelley's novel was followed in 1823 by a long-running theatrical adaptation, and
the numerous film versions of the book have given it the status of myth. Only in the last
20 years has scholarly interest caught up, but now writers concerned with feminism, the
Gothic, psychology, and myth itself have found much to discover and comment upon in a book
which, as Mary Thornburg notes (p. 9), "seems not only to invite but to support" myriad
interpretations. Thornburg's own study concentrates on placing Frankenstein in a
literary tradition based on social and psychological archetypes, while Anne Mellor and
Allene Phy variously consider it in the context of its author's life and career. Each of
these books in some way rewards our ongoing fascination with this SF novel (often thought
of as the first) and its author.
Of the three, Mellor's study is the most exciting, informative, and provocative. The
central thesis of her book is that Mary Shelley's life and writing career were spent
"in
search of a family" (the title of chapter 1), her fiction reflecting both an exaltation
of the bourgeois family and a recognition that such a patriarchal system can never provide
the kind of ideal nurturance Shelley would attribute to it. The book alternates biography
with literary criticism, leading to a somewhat unusual organization. After a detailed
chronology which could itself serve as an abbreviated sketch, Mellor examines Shelley's
history from before her birth--in the relationship of her parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and
William Godwin--to the "waking dream" in the summer of 1816 that became Frankenstein.
This lengthy and important section is followed by six chapters analyzing Frankenstein,
chapters in which the bounds of the thesis stretch to encompass a view of the novel as
anti-romantic and anti-scientific critique. Biography resumes, in a regrettably more
curtailed form, at the start of each of the subsequent chapters (8-10) as Mellor considers
The Last Man, the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, and Mathilda,
Lodore, and Falkner. Among the many minor works Mary Shelley produced,
Mellor finds these most relevant to her conclusion, that
[a]t the psychological as well as the ideological level,...Mary Shelley's fictions are
ruptured, broken apart by her contradictory desires: to find self-esteem and emotional
satisfaction as wife and mother within an egalitarian family on the one hand, and on the
other, to consummate her relentless desire for total absorption by the all-powerful
parent, whether the father or the (in her case forever lost) mother. (p. 218)
Apart from their fictional referents, the "monsters" of Mellor's title are identified
as the ideologies that deter men from nurturance and destroy women in roles of
self-abnegation (p. 217), and Mellor shows how Mary Shelley struggled with these monsters
throughout her life and work.
Although the book seems somewhat unbalanced by Mellor's organizational decisions--and
confounds the reader's desire for plot when biography is interrupted to resume one hundred
pages later--they seem on the whole justified when one considers Mellor's aims. Who,
exactly, was the Mary Shelley that wrote Frankenstein, and who was she later, as
she revised it and wrote her subsequent fiction? Discontents that were brewing in the
Shelley family before the 1818 publication of Frankenstein worsened afterward,
with the deaths of Mary's second and third children and what Mellor convincingly describes
as Percy's implication in them. By alternating biography and criticism, Mellor makes clear
just what can be considered as we relate Shelley's life to her work at each point, and
helps to establish plausible reasons for changes in Shelley's world-view over time. Though
the chronological organization makes Mellor's discussion of the sentimental literature
somewhat anti-climactic (it becomes clear that Frankenstein explores as fully and
variously as possible its author's preoccupations with domesticity and gender roles), the
later chapters reveal the persistence of the family theme in Shelley's work.
The first chapter of Mellor's study sets up the biographical context. Drawing from the
journals, letters, and biographies of most of the participants in the Godwin and Shelley
circles, Mellor details the family situations that led to feelings of deprivation and
longing and were to find reflection over and over again in Mary Shelley's fiction: the
close relationship between father and daughter in the four years after Mary
Wollstonecraft's death of childbed fever; Godwin's subsequent withdrawal after his
marriage to Mary Jane Clairmont; and finally, Percy Shelley's self-absorption that left
him "singularly unconcerned" (p. 32) at the death of Mary's first child and
apparently oblivious to the effects on his companion/wife of his frequent
flirtations and affairs with other women. In addition, Mellor's first chapter
gives the reader insights into Mary Shelley's literary beginnings that make
clear her integrity as an individual and writer beyond all her connections to
the great radical thinkers and writers of her time. Mellor details as far as
possible Shelley's early, in-home, education, and prints portions of "Mounseer Nongtongpaw," the capable and witty continuation of Charles Dibdin's ballad,
which Mary wrote and published at age ten (pp. 10-11). She discusses Mary's happiness
during an extended visit to Scotland in her youth--a visit which, according to Mellor,
gave her the "example of domestic affection and harmony" that would later influence her
writing (p. 16). Thus chapter 1 provides a detailed and basically sympathetic view of Mary
Shelley's early life, a useful corrective to such earlier characterizations as James Rieger's
"stiff, humorless and self-dramatizing woman" (p. xxiii). Mellor also makes
clear, however, in her account of Mary and Percy Shelley's travels, Mary's "deep aversion
to the lower classes" and a basic conservatism that informs her work (p. 25).
Indeed, Mellor rightly notes, in the subsequent chapters on the novel, that Shelley's
"ideal [in Frankenstein] is a balance, a golden mean between conflicting
demands" (p. 126). The immediate context for this statement is a discussion of Robert
Walton, who strives but turns back, recognizing a duty of care for his imperiled crew. At
several points (e.g., p. 125), Mellor makes explicit her debt to Carol Gilligan's notion
of the "ethic of care," found typically to characterize women's approach to
decision-making; and Mellor persuasively argues that Frankenstein upholds this
ethic in contrast to a Romantic model of male egotism. Fatally self-absorbed,
over-confident in the powers of his mind and imagination, and ignoring his
responsibilities to both his original family and his offspring (the "creature," as
Mellor sympathetically calls the monster), Victor Frankenstein reflects his author's
hostility towards Godwin and, especially, Percy Shelley. Mellor's discussion is especially
compelling in chapters 4 and 5, in which Mary Shelley is shown to reject both a (Percy) Shelleyan view of nature as the field for Promethean exploits and the traditional
scientific imaging of nature as a passive female to be tamed and penetrated by the
masculine mind.
One of the strengths of Mellor's study is its documentation of Mary Shelley's
familiarity with the works of Erasmus Darwin and Sir Humphry Davy and her demonstration of
Mary's preference for the egalitarian biological models of the first (p. 98) to the
"master-scientist" concept of the second (p. 93). Also persuasive is Mellor's discussion
of "Problems of Perception" (chapter 7). Since it is only those who see the creature who
run from him in fear, "Mary Shelley strikingly shows us that when we see nature as evil,
we make it evil" (p. 134). This, according to Mellor, is the author's "final critique of
the Romantic ideology" (p. 136) with its faith in the primacy of the imagination.
Mellor's discussion of Percy Shelley's revisions to Mary's manuscript of Frankenstein,
almost slipped into the critical analysis in chapter 3, may be the single most important
contribution of this book to future students of the novel. Drawing on careful study of the
manuscript in the Abinger Collection of the Bodleian Library, Mellor explains how Mary
Shelley routinely invited her husband's editorial emendations, some of which "distorted
the meaning of the text" in line with what Mellor perceives as a more sympathetic view of
Victor Frankenstein (pp. 62-63). A table of revisions (pp. 60-61) illustrates the large
extent to which Percy substituted formal-sounding, Latinate expressions for his wife's
often more direct and colloquial style. In all, we learn that he made approximately
"five
or six changes per manuscript page...[,] less numerous in the creature's narrative than
elsewhere" (p. 59)--information which makes one wonder just how much we can rely on
comparisons of diction in interpreting character in this work. In this chapter, Mellor
concentrates on the negative effects of Percy Shelley's revisions, while an appendix (less
tied to the thesis) details how he "genuinely improved the manuscript...in many small
ways" (p. 219). Mellor notes that the complete record of Percy Shelley's involvement will
be clear to the general reader only when a transcript of the manuscript is edited and
published (p. 224). What her own analysis makes clear is that although Mary Shelley was
perfectly willing to give extensive (though not entire) editorial license to her husband,
he was not the "minor collaborator" that Rieger (p. xviii) has suggested he was.
The beauty of Mellor's approach to Frankenstein is that it expands rather than
contracts the arena of interpretation. Recognizing (and revealing) Mary Shelley's
knowledge of the intellectual currents of her day, Mellor draws upon Kant and Edmund Burke
in examining the unknowability of the creature and its relation to the Romantic
enterprise. Close readings of the text allow for political as well as psychological
analysis, and the focus on the bourgeois family becomes the starting point, not the end,
of interpretations.
Still, in a study this rich there are points with which to take issue. According to
Mellor, Mary Shelley fully endorses Walton's decision to turn back from his quest, while
in fact her ambivalence towards Promethean striving is revealed at several points. Mellor
considers "as both authorial credo and moral touchstone" (p. 86) a passage in which
Frankenstein laments that the discovery of America was not "more gradual," but does not
lament the discovery itself. If Frankenstein represents his author there, then why not in
his dying words: "Seek happiness in tranquillity, and avoid ambition....Yet why do I say
this? I myself have been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed" (Rieger: 215;
the quotation appears in the 1831 Frankenstein as well)? This statement seems to
me only partly fraught with menace; along with the rather pale presentation of Robert
Walton himself, it seems to suggest that Mary Shelley's "golden mean" includes a
recognition of exploration's appeal and value.
Mellor also, I think, overstates her case as she emphasizes the differences between the
1818 and 1831 editions of the novel. According to Mellor, Mary Shelley's response to the
deaths of three of her children and her husband was an increased fatalism and a view of
nature in the later version as no longer "organic" and nurturant but "mechanistic" and
menacing (p. 172). While textual changes support these assertions, and while Shelley's
subsequent fiction, most notably The Last Man, reveals the persistence of this
more desolate world-view, they do not add up to a presentation of Victor as "less
responsible for his actions" (p. 173) and "more a victim of circumstances than...the
active author of evil" (p. 174). Nor do they diminish the significance of his failure to
care for the creature (p. 173). Whether one views Frankenstein as villain, victim, or
tragic hero is determined by the extent to which one chooses to find the creature's
narrative reliable. If one views the creature's history consistently as upholding the
ethic of care, as Mellor--I think rightly--does, then the differences that give the 1831
edition a more pessimistic tone are important biographically but do not radically affect
interpretation of the novel. Similarly, some of Percy Shelley's revisions are less
dramatic than Mellor insists. The conclusion of Frankenstein is just as ambiguous, I
believe, when the monster is "lost in darkness and distance" as when, in Mary's
manuscript version, he is more specifically "lost [to] sight" (p. 68).
There are, finally, some minor problems with this study as biography. Though ample and
detailed notes support most of Mellor's assertions, there are points at which the reader
seeks confirmation but is left simply with Mellor's word. A case in point is an
explanation of how Frankenstein reflects "elements of Percy Shelley's temperament and
character that had begun to trouble Mary Shelley" (p. 73). One is asked to accept that
Mary suspected her husband's actions and ideals of concealing "an emotional narcissism,
an unwillingness to confront the origins of his own desires or the impact of his demands
on those most dependent upon him," without Mary's statement of any such recognition. I
believe that Mellor could present the evidence, since elsewhere it is clear that she has
carefully read Mary Shelley's journals and letters; but at this point and a few others,
the reader would like to know, more explicitly, the degree of Mary's awareness. The
biography is also curtailed in the service of Mellor's thesis, and the reader is thus
somewhat shortchanged for the period after Percy's death. One would like to see more, for
example, concerning Mary Shelley's relationships with women friends, particularly since
Mellor's is a feminist study. She discusses Fanny Derham, a minor character in Lodore (1835),
who "represents the possibility of an entirely independent intellectual, self-reliant
woman who develops deep and enriching friendships with other women as well as with men"
(p. 207), noting that Mary Shelley presents her as a historically absent ideal. But when
Mellor swiftly alludes to Mary's betrayals and "desertions" by women in her widowed
years, we long for more of the story of these relationships.
In the end, however, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters is a
thought-provoking and illuminating book, a major contribution to our study of Frankenstein
and the forces behind much of Mary Shelley's fiction.
In contrast to Mellor's wide-ranging approach, Thornburg sticks close to her thesis
that "the source of Frankenstein's power is its delineation and merciless
exposure of the sentimental/Gothic myth, our culture's dominant world view at least until
the middle of the twentieth century" (p. 11). Her study is composed of three large
chapters: the first defines the myth and illustrates its persistence in British and
American literature in the 18th and 19th centuries; the second presents a detailed
analysis of Frankenstein in terms of the myth; and the third details the myth's survival
(and incipient transformation) in contemporary popular genres--the western, the romance,
and SF.
Thornburg's title derives from her characterization of the Gothic as a distortedly
revealing mirror image of the sentimental genre, with its insistence on neatly-defined
sex-roles, its docile and masochistically nurturant women and domestically "tamed"
Byronic men (pp. 23-34). The Gothic, which gives free play to the violence and sensuality
suppressed by sentimental fiction, denies its comfortable assurance "that
innocence and purity are blessed, that right and wrong are easily
distinguishable, that conformity to its code of social and moral behavior will
be rewarded" (p. 42). Thornburg views Frankenstein's creation and rejection of
the Monster (as she most frequently refers to the creature) in psychological and
generic terms, as an attempt--necessarily unsuccessful--to "creat[e] himself as the perfect sentimental man, carving away from himself the elements
that are unacceptable to that role" (p. 79). Thus in Thornburg's view Frankenstein is the
tragic hero of a novel that reveals the fatal inefficacy of the sentimental ideal, and his
creation, the recipient of excess passion, is, well, a monster.
Thornburg's thesis is compelling as she analyzes Frankenstein in the context
of literary sentimentalism. Like Mellor, Thornburg sees in Frankenstein's "disastrously
successful quest" Mary Shelley's critique of her husband's Romantic idealism (p. 94), and
the novel's critique of patriarchal social constructs is correctly perceived as promoting
a radical view of its own. Thornburg's placement of Frankenstein in the
sentimental/Gothic tradition should be of value to students of the novel, and she astutely
points out that the frequent assertions of "flaws" in the book (either vague or
extremely particular) are indications of critics' more general discomfort with an
unsettling work of fiction (pp. 9-10). But the greatest strength of Thornburg's study, its
exhaustive development of its thesis, is also its greatest weakness. Ultimately it tends
to flatten out the novel, creating a tidy explanation for Gothicism that is at odds with
the ambiguity of the Gothic enterprise itself.
In analyzing the split world-view of Frankenstein, Thornburg draws on the
doppelgänger
motif that has long been a staple of criticism on the novel. To introduce
the psychological interpretation she posits the monster as a projection of the
darker forces within Victor, without independent existence. The close reading
based on this assumption is compelling and ingenious, and disconcertingly
supplies plot details (such as the idea of an assignation between Justine and
Victor, for example, interrupted by young William and leading to his murder)
that make more plausible some of the otherwise highly coincidental events of the
novel (p. 86). But when Thornburg rightly notes that the novel compels us to
recognize the monster as a separate being, the psychological thesis is more
difficult to sustain. Would most readers agree that the monster's narrative "represent[s]
the endeavor of the monstrous part of the divided personality to achieve reintegration
with Victor's conscious self," or that the monster's "compassion [and] charity" (p. 87)
are among the qualities denied by both Victor and the sentimental tradition? At points
such as this, facts of the novel have to be stretched to fit the thesis, and the argument
becomes thin. Similarly, Thornburg accepts as given that the reader is "invited to
sympathize" with Frankenstein and that the monster is the "apparent antagonist, with
whom the reader is not free to sympathize openly" (p. 64). Perhaps so, if the novel is
viewed only from the sentimental perspective; but I would disagree with Thornburg that
Frankenstein "is not apparently antisentimental" (p. 64). The Gothic mirror hovers over
the novel and elicits a kind of double reading; the reader is in some sense always aware
of the disparity between the "apparent" and the actual. Thornburg acknowledges this
tension by stating that this doubleness "arouses and maintains the reader's anxiety and
never quite dispels it" (p. 64). But I would submit that the anti-sentimental critique
appears earlier in the reading experience--and more clearly--than Thornburg allows, its
agent being a persuasively sympathetic depiction of the creature.
Chapter 1 of The Monster in the Mirror is useful in itself as an exploration
of the sentimental/Gothic tradition, whose origins Thornburg locates in the rise of
Protestantism and capitalism. Brief illustrations of the myth and its variations as they
appear in Richardson, Austen, Alcott, Hawthorne, and others provide a useful and
illuminating context of "mainstream" literature in which to examine Mary Shelley's
contribution. The extended discussion of Dracula, however, while apt, seems
somewhat misplaced. It goes on far too long for its illustrative function, and the reader
has the sense of material thought "too good to waste," but which should have been cut
nevertheless. The same may be said about the detailed discussion of Shane in
chapter 3, which is followed by an almost too sparsely illustrated consideration of modern
romance novels. A curious fact about Thornburg's book is that, although it is scrupulously
documented in parenthetical page references, it contains not a single footnote. Wasn't
there anything Thornburg wanted to say that burst the bounds of her argument? At the very
least, some of the discussion of Dracula and Shane might have made for
provocative notes.
The final part of Thornburg's last chapter, however, is of particular interest to
readers of SF, as it examines how current SF reflects the sentimental/Gothic myth.
Thornburg sees SF, in fact, as very similar to Gothic in that both attempt "by the use of
metaphoric structure and movement, to repair the fault in human consciousness, to reveal
the relationship between what we are and what we think we are and wish to be" (p. 132).
Thus she places Frankenstein solidly in the SF tradition, and analyzes both
direct and indirect reworkings of its plot and themes. Thornburg ends by demonstrating
how, in the later 20th century, writers such as Ursula Le Guin have consciously
manipulated the divisions that fed the sentimental myths of the past so as to create works
that directly address, and warn of, the societal monstrosities which such divisions
create. This egalitarian tradition in recent SF is shown to be a worthy inheritor of the
genre that Frankenstein began.
While both Thornburg's and Mellor's books are written for a scholarly audience, Phy's Mary
Shelley is addressed to the general reader who, having read Frankenstein or
seen one of its many film versions, wants to know more. But depending upon which part of
the handbook one considers, this reader is getting either a great deal or very little.
Phy's sense of the importance of her subject, apparent in the extensive and interesting
discussion of even Mary Shelley's most minor work, is undermined often by a self-conscious
flippancy that suggests embarrassment with the entire project. As even Phy's own study
reveals, however, such embarrassment is needless.
Chapter 2, "The Problem of Mary Shelley," sets up the ambivalent tone. On the one
hand, Phy capably summarizes the "elusiveness" of her subject in the critical history
(p. 11), from early studies that saw her as only a minor figure, the daughter and wife of
notables, to recent feminist considerations that, according to Phy, "stress...the
courageous solitary woman, widowed early in life, who was seeking to earn a living, rear a
child, and establish her independence" (p. 12). On the other hand, there is little
further elaboration until chapter 3, which begins with discussions of the careers of
Shelley's parents and husband. Considerations of Frankenstein, here and
elsewhere, tend to slip into discussions of the various film versions, discussions which
are in themselves of interest. But at these points Phy shows surprisingly little concern
for where Mary Shelley's contributions begin and end, beyond the assertion that
"[o]ne
mark of Mary Shelley's power is...the ability of her writing to beget scenarios quite
unlike her book" (p. 13).
Mary Shelley begins with a detailed "Canon and Chronology" that, like
Mellor's, essentially gives the life in brief. It is a valuable supplement to chapter 3,
"The Life and Achievements," and could almost stand in its place, though the brief
discussions of Wollstonecraft, Godwin, and Percy Shelley are useful. The biographical
summary is competent, but its brevity leads to a shortage of explanation and some
odd-sounding statements--e.g., "Mary Shelley was an admirable woman, but she was not a
saint" (p. 31). The attentive reader will find all the basics--certainly more than is
available in most introductions--but should go elsewhere for detailed discussion.
Phy's irreverent tone continues in the plot summary of Frankenstein (chapter
4): "Frankenstein, obviously not up to the task of nurturing the Monster (who quickly
develops a personality of his own), revealed himself to be a fragile man who easily faints
in a crisis" (p. 39). Thus it is a surprise to come upon the serious consideration of
themes and critical approaches that follows. Though overtly reluctant to take a feminist
approach, Phy implicitly criticizes the sentimentalized figures of Elizabeth Lavenza and
Caroline Frankenstein in her section on "Females and Feminism," and agrees with Mellor
in viewing Safie as the one female character who displays any independence (pp. 41-42).
Phy also interestingly notes the monster's "archaic linguistic mode of prayer and
supplication" used "in addressing his maker" (p. 45). Most of the discussion of
critical views is drawn from The Endurance of Frankenstein (1979), which is a
good place to begin and perhaps enough for the generalist. Still, although the book was
published in 1988, Phy does not refer to William Veeder's important 1986 study, nor does
she (or Thornburg, for that matter) discuss Gilbert and Gubar's influential chapter on Frankenstein
in The Madwoman in the Attic. On the whole, if one is looking for a critical
bibliography, I would recommend Mellor's as the most comprehensive; Phy's is rather
scanty.
The most valuable portions of this book, however, appear as Phy goes on to present
areas of Mary Shelley's career often ignored or dismissed by writers more interested in
pursuing a critical perspective. She focusses on the "sole survivor" motif of The
Last Man (noting correctly [p. 68] Mary Shelley's deficiencies as a futurist
prophet), and summarizes stories of immortality and reanimation of particular interest to
SF readers. In the chapters on "Other Writings, Largely Forgotten" and on Shelley's
biographical writings, letters, journals, and editions of her husband's works, Phy
performs a service to all readers whose only acquaintance with Mary Shelley is through Frankenstein.
Although Phy agrees with most commentators that there is little literary merit in such
works as the Keepsake stories, she points out that "Mary's short stories, like
her minor novels, provide the record of a literary life pursued seriously and
industriously" (p. 92). Discussion of many of these works was not essential in a handbook
for SF readers, and their inclusion, even as a catalogue, serves well to indicate the
range of Mary Shelley's career. Unfortunately, all three of these studies are marred by
errors (to some extent, but not entirely, typographical) or careless misspellings of
names; Thornburg even bases an analytical point on the spelling of Walton's sister's name
as "Seville" (p. 65). On such error in Phy's work could be misleading, for surely
"Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman" would be of great interest to readers of Frankenstein
if it had been completed in 1816, as noted on page 76; the correct date of
composition--1826--is suggested somewhat confusingly two pages later. Phy also mistakenly
distinguishes between the character Woodville and "a nameless poet" in Mathilda
(in fact the poet is not nameless, and they are the same character), leading one to
suspect similar errors of fact in other plot summaries. Finally, Phy notes in her
discussion of The Last Man that "[w]e no longer very much fear the extinction of
our kind through disease--though occasionally a science-fiction writer can still cause
shivers by importing a virus from outer space for which we have no immunities" (p. 67):
while literally correct, it's an oddly oblivious statement in the age of AIDS.
What all these new books affirm, however, is the persistence of Frankenstein's
power at all levels of appreciation, and an increased interest in understanding the life
and complete career of its author. They are valuable not only for the insights they
themselves provide, but for the questions they continue to raise and urge us to answer.
WORKS CITED
Gilbert, Sandra M. & Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer
and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven, 1979.
Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's
Development. Cambridge, MA: 1982.
Levine, George & U.C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein:
Essays on Mary Shelley's Novel. Berkeley, CA: 1979.
Rieger, James, ed. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus (The 1818 Text). Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1974.
Veeder, William. Mary Shelley and Frankenstein: The Fate of Androgyny. Chicago,
1986.
Back to Home