By the time of her death, Mary Shelley was the respected
author of seven novels, at least twenty-three short stories, and even some
children’s literature. She was also an accomplished biographer, poet and editor
of the works of her husband Percy, whose status as one of the major poets of
the Romantic period was largely assured by her efforts. Despite the
significance of works such as The Last
Man (1826), however, her full importance as a writer is only just beginning
to be understood: it’s interesting that, when her later work was more
critically acclaimed at the time, it has mostly been forgotten, while Frankenstein’s reputation continues to
grow.
It’s one of the most accomplished Gothic novels of the
period, borrowing heavily from the conventions pioneered by her father among
others, but at the same time its voice is unique. Mary’s own chequered personal
life provides themes and preoccupations which are not articulated as strongly
by anybody else – her insight into the traumas of childbirth and parenthood, as
well as her own struggle to live up to the reputations of her famous parents, shine
through in Victor Frankenstein’s struggles to create a human being and then to
make a man. The suggestion that the two are not the same is one of the keynotes
of the novel.
Science fiction as a genre in English largely owes its
existence to Frankenstein, which is probably the earliest and one of the most
influential examples. Even modern writers acknowledge its influence; elements
of Shelley’s work have been in detected in the shocking twist of Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory and Stephen King’s It. Perhaps most interesting is that
fact that science itself has been influenced by Mary’s thinking: the technology
she envisioned became an inspiration for real innovations.
There are as many reasons for the novel’s perpetual success
as there are readers, but the truth is that everyone who comes to Mary’s
masterpiece now brings with them certain expectations. The image of
Frankenstein’s Monster is burned into our cultural memory thanks to nearly two
hundred years of adaptation for stage and screen and even modern music: think
of Metallica’s ‘Some Kind of Monster’ or Alice Cooper’s ‘Feed My Frankenstein’.
The name has entered everyday use, and we all have our own idea of what it
means.
In fact, it’s often surprising to encounter the novel for
the first time and notice how it differs from the image we’ve inherited. The
‘monster’ isn’t green. There are no bolts through his neck. There are no
hysterical screams of “It’s alive!” and, most importantly, Frankenstein is the
name of the scientist and not his creation. Still, that the creature and his
maker are identified with each other would have pleased Mary: it supports her
argument that corrupt political systems make victims of the empowered and
disempowered alike.
It’s the politics that are often overlooked by Shelley
readers, mostly thanks to the Victorian habit of domesticating women’s writing
and relegating Mary’s work to the status of ‘romance’. In many ways, though,
the political element is what holds the rest together: questions of
responsibility, control and the abuse of power remain at Frankenstein’s core.
Over the intervening years, it has continued to strike a chord in the wake of
scientific as well as political progress – whether it’s the governing class or
the scientist in the laboratory, in the end, Frankenstein explores the
consequences of men playing God with the lives of others, and that theme never
dies.