People & History 4, Mary Shelley and Frankenstein: The Birth of a Monster 人物与历史4, 玛丽·雪莱和弗兰肯斯坦：怪物的诞生
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The life of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley began in tragedy. Born in London, England, on August 30, 1797, Mary lost her mother, the famous feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, to an infection 11 days after her birth. Although her father, the noted philosopher and novelist William Godwin, doted on Mary, she sorely missed the presence of her mother as she was growing up. Despite such a lonely beginning in life, Mary, who, as one biographer wrote, "entered the world like the heroine of a Gothic tale," became a remarkable individual whose writing has had a lasting impact on the world.
Although she was not formally educated, Mary learned to read and write at a very young age. With access to her father’s great library, she quickly became an independent scholar and writer, which was highly unusual for girls at the time. She enjoyed reading about a broad range of subjects and even had one of her own short stories published by her father’s company when she was only eleven. Nevertheless, Mary’s home life was not happy. Her father remarried, and her new stepmother preferred her own children to Mary and was not kind or loving to her. At the age of fifteen, Mary was sent to live at the home of William Baxter, a family friend, in Dundee, Scotland. The Baxter home had a profound effect on Mary because it was her first experience living in a family with a loving mother and father.
On a visit home to London, Mary met a young poet named Percy Bysshe Shelley. Although Shelley was married and had a young daughter of his own, he became a frequent visitor at the Godwin family home during the next two years and struck up a deep friendship with Mary. They shared a passion for radical thinking and literature and a commitment to the ideals of freedom and democracy. In 1814, in a surprising turn of events, Shelley left his wife and daughter, eloping to France with Mary. Shocked and embarrassed, Mary’s father refused to speak to either of them for the next three years, until they were finally married on December 30, 1816, several months after Percy Shelley’s wife committed suicide.
Between their elopement and marriage, the young couple moved around Europe. Mary followed academic pursuits, easily learning French as well as Italian, and reading many of the poets whose works had inspired Shelley. When their money began to run low, Shelley, determined to spend his life writing, was forced to go into hiding from his creditors. In March 1815, Mary sank into a depression when their first child, a daughter named Clara, died when she was only a few weeks old. Percy Shelley, who was involved in his own desires and goals, became distant, spending more time with his friends and fellow poets than with his wife.
In 1816, however, things began to look up when Mary had a second child, a boy they called William, after her father. Shelley also began to have some success with his writing, which Mary often edited and prepared for publication. Oddly, it was during this happy time following William’s birth and the first major publication of Shelley’s poetry that Mary produced her bleak masterpiece.
It was the summer of 1816, and the couple, along with their second child, the infant William, and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont, went to Geneva to spend time with Lord Byron, an influential poet. They rented a house on the shores of Lake Geneva and spent the days boating and writing. Every evening, they would meet at the house and share their writings. The gatherings were inspiring to each of them.
That summer, Shelley wrote his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," a significant achievement, and Byron completed part of his "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." Clairmont also wrote several poems, but Mary seemed unable to get her thoughts onto paper.
Then, one evening, they were forced to stay inside because of a fierce storm. Byron suggested that they have a contest to see who could write the best horror story. Inspired by a dream in which she brought her baby back to life, Mary finally had a breakthrough. She began writing Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus, a short novel that became her masterpiece.
The story centers on Dr. Frankenstein, a scientist obsessed with solving the mysteries of nature and giving life to an inanimate body. He puts a man together out of body parts taken from a graveyard and uses science to bring him to life. But Frankenstein is appalled when his creation turns out to be hideous, not the beautiful man he had imagined. Dr. Frankenstein quickly abandons his beast, leaving him to fend for himself in the world. The lonely creature comes across a loving family who treat each other with kindness and respect, and envies their relationship. However, when the family rejects him because of his horrid appearance, the monster takes his revenge out on his creator, killing everyone the doctor loves. In the end, Dr. Frankenstein must take responsibility for his creation and chases him into the frigid Arctic, where he spends the rest of his life trying to catch his monster.
This tragedy is reflected in the title; Prometheus was a Greek god who gave fire to humans and was forever punished for it—just as Dr. Frankenstein tried to use technology to create life and suffered for his ambition. Many literature experts believe that Mary Shelley’s story is a warning against the blind pursuit of technology that characterized her era. (The early nineteenth century saw the growth of factories, and the invention of railways, gas lighting, and steam engines, as well as a new disregard for nature.) On the other hand, many other writers consider Frankenstein to be a reflection of 19-year-old Mary’s own loneliness and desire for a family. Like the monster she created, Mary Shelley searched for companionship and love but found them elusive.
By the time she was 25, Mary had witnessed the deaths of three of her four children (only one survived to adulthood) and her young husband, who drowned in a boating accident. After Percy Shelley’s death in 1822, Mary became a champion of his poetry, helping him achieve the great status that he has to this day. She also went on to write several more novels of her own.
When Mary Shelley died in 1851, her Frankenstein had already become a classic. The novel, which some see as a simple horror story and others acclaim as one of the first works of science fiction, continues to inspire writers and filmmakers around the world. Whether in the modern literary genre of science fiction or in a Hollywood monster movie, the tale of Mary Shelley’s monster lives on as one of the most recognizable narratives in English literature.