Quite unexpectedly, Anne Eekhout's Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein has turned out to be perhaps the darkest and most disturbing novel I've read this entire year (and this is the ninety-fourth, so that's saying something). Coming in, I thought I would be learning more about the group challenge that resulted in Mary Shelley writing her famous novel; how she, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron reacted to each other's efforts; and how naturally (or not) each of the writers took to the "scary story" genre they decided to play around with. What I got instead, was a darkly atmospheric look inside Mary's head as she struggled to accept fully the open marriage lifestyle she lived with Percy Shelley - a lifestyle that as often as not saw Percy in the bed of someone other than herself, including her stepsister Claire.
Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein focuses on two distinct periods in young Mary's life. Mary spent part of 1812 living with strangers in Scotland, sent there by her father in hope that a skin condition adversely affecting both arms would clear up while she was there. Segments from those months of 1812 are alternated with episodes from Mary, Claire, and Percy's 1816 visit to Geneva where they lived alongside Lord Byron and Dr. John Polidori in rented quarters. Keep in mind that in 1816 Mary was 19, Percy was 24, Claire was 18, Lord Byron was 28, and John was 21. Even so, Mary and Percy had already suffered the loss of a daughter conceived before their marriage, and they brought an infant son to Geneva with them.
While in Scotland, Mary becomes - at least in her own mind - romantically involved with Isabella, a girl her age (14 or 15) who is still deeply grieving the recent loss of her mother. The two girls have much in common, including loss of their mothers, and they both enjoy tales about "monsters" to such a degree that they begin seeing them everywhere, including in the person of the husband of Isabella's older sister. Their collective imaginings, whispers, and speculation, about the man and what he is up to in his hidden laboratory will still haunt Mary in Geneva four years later.
In Geneva, Mary feels like the outsider as she struggles with her relationship with the man she so dearly loves:
"And she is his great love. She does know that, but it is not easy. The fact that his philosophy is not quite hers - maybe in theory, yet not in practice - puts their love to the test again and again. Perhaps it is tolerable that, now and then, he loves another woman. Perhaps. But that it does not bother him, that he actually encourages her to share her bed with another man - that tortures her soul."
She cannot stop thinking about Percy's relationship with her stepsister or the death of her first child and what she could have done differently to save her daughter's life. Now she is gone, and Mary desperately wants her back.
Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein, as it turns out, is not so much about the birth of what has become a classic novel. It is really about the birth of Mary's personal "monster," a monster that she carried inside her head everywhere she went for the rest of her life. This is dark stuff, but it's not something I'm going to forget for a long, long time. I will, I suspect, never again see the novel or its author the way I used to see them.
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| Anne Eekhout jacket photo |
Anne Eekhout is a Dutch author, and her novel was beautifully translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson (who adds interesting insight into her translation process at the end of the novel).
I read a really good biography about Mary Shelley years ago and it was so eye-opening; her life certainly wasn't a happy one, but a very interesting one.
ReplyDeleteI knew only the basic bio of the Shelleys, so this was quite the eye-opener for me. I think that readers who were better informed about the two will react much differently to this novel than I did. My overall emotion while reading it was some kind of weird mixture of sympathy and shock that she would have put up with so poor of a husband.
DeleteShock and sympathy are two very good words to describe how you feel when you learn more about her life with her husband. (And it made me not like him as much.)
DeleteMe, too. All of my sympathy was directed her direction, so he naturally suffered the consequences of me feeling that way.
DeleteHi Sam, I am fascinated with the British Romantic generation. I'd even like to find out more about Dr John Polodori though he is a more minor character. But their lives were tragic. They all died so young. Mary lived on but I sense it was not a happy life. But she left behind a great masterpiece.
ReplyDeleteI would like to know more about Polodori, too. Throughout the novel, he struck me as the odd man out, especially with his infatuation with Mary and the way she responded to all of his hints about his feelings for her. I wonder if Frankenstein, masterpiece though it is, is also Mary's personal nightmare transcribed to the written page.
DeleteThis sounds like a challenging read. I know very little about Mary Shelley. Would it be better to know some more about her before reading this book? Since it is a novel, does it stray much from the facts of her life?
ReplyDeletePersonally, I did find it a little challenging. That may have been because all of the characters come across as pretty unlikable and narcissistic people, even Mary some of the time. I don't think you need to know much more than the bare bones of their bios going into this before beginning it because it's mostly about personalities, lifestyle, and relationships than anything else. It reads as if it could have been written at the time it was all happening, actually. According to the author, the basic facts, dates, characters are all factual but, of course, she had to imagine their day-to-day conversations and activity to make it all seem real.
DeleteYou might want to get your hands on a library copy or e-book sample to read a few pages for yourself. Even the prose style is a throwback to the era because Mary is the "voice" you are hearing.
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