by Mary Shelley
PENGUIN CLASSICS
FRANKENSTEIN
THE 1818 TEXT
MARY SHELLEY was born in London in 1797, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, famous radical writers of the day. Mary’s mother died tragically ten days after the birth. Under Godwin’s conscientious and expert tuition, Mary’s was an intellectually stimulating childhood, though she often felt misunderstood by her stepmother and neglected by her father. In 1814 she met and soon fell in love with the then unknown Percy Bysshe Shelley, and in July they eloped to the Continent. In December 1816, after Shelley’s first wife, Harriet, committed suicide, Mary and Percy married. Of the four children she bore Shelley, only Percy Florence survived. They lived in Italy from 1818 until 1822, when Shelley drowned following the sinking of his boat Ariel in a storm. Mary returned with Percy Florence to London, where she continued to live as a professional writer until her death in 1851.
The idea for Frankenstein came to Mary Godwin during a summer sojourn in 1816 with Percy Shelley on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Lord Byron was also staying. She was inspired to begin her unique tale after Byron suggested a ghost story competition. Byron himself produced “A Fragment,” which later inspired his physician John Polidori to write The Vampyre. Mary completed her short story back in England, and it was published as Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818. Among her other novels are The Last Man (1926), a dystopian story set in the twenty-first century, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837). As well as contributing many stories and essays to publications such as the Keepsake and the Westminster Review, she wrote numerous biographical essays for Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1835, 1838–39). Her other books include the first collected edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Poetical Works (4 vols., 1839) and a book based on the Continental travels she undertook with her son Percy Florence and his friends, Rambles in Germany and Italy (1844). Mary Shelley died in London on February 1, 1851.
CHARLOTTE GORDON is an award-winning author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Slate, and Washington Post, among other publications. Her latest book, Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley (2015), won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also published Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America’s First Poet (2005) and The Woman Who Named God: Abraham’s Dilemma and the Birth of Three Faiths (2009). She is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Endicott College.
CHARLES E. ROBINSON was a professor of English at the University of Delaware, frequently lectured on “The Ten Texts of Frankenstein,” and edited Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus: The Original Two-Volume Novel of 1816–1817 from the Bodleian Library Manuscripts, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (with Percy Bysshe Shelley) (2008), reprinted in paperback by Vintage Books (2009). His other books included Shelley and Byron: The Snake and Eagle Wreathed in Fight (1976); an edition of Mary Shelley: Collected Tales and Short Stories, with Original Engravings (1976); The Mary Shelley Reader (1990), coedited with Betty T. Bennett; an edition of Mary Shelley’s Mythological Dramas: Proserpine and Midas (1992); and the two-volume Frankenstein Notebooks (1996).
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published in Great Britain 1818
This edition with an introduction by Charlotte Gordon published in Penguin Books 2018
Introduction copyright © 2018 by Charlotte Gordon
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Chronology, “How to Read Frankenstein,” and Suggested Further Reading by Charles E. Robinson first appeared in slightly different form in Frankenstein, Penguin Enriched eBook Classic. Copyright © 2008 by Charles E. Robinson.
Ebook ISBN: 9781524705701
Cover illustration: Marci Washington
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Contents
About the Authors
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction by CHARLOTTE GORDON
Suggestions for Further Reading by CHARLOTTE GORDON
FRANKENSTEIN
THE 1818 TEXT
How to Read Frankenstein by Charles E. Robinson
Chronology by Charles E. Robinson
Suggested Further Reading by Charles E. Robinson
Introduction to Frankenstein, Third Edition (1831), by Mary Shelley
The Creation of Eve—Genesis 2:18–25, King James Bible
“Prometheus” by Lord Byron
Mary Shelley’s Letter I, Hôtel de Sécheron, Geneva, May 17, 1816
Excerpts from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Shelley’s Diary Entry, March 19, 1815
Introduction
When Frankenstein was first published in 1818, many readers were shocked. What could be more appalling than the tale of a mad scientist creating life? What kind of person would write such a terrible story? Critics believed the novel was hostile to religion, as it depicted a human being attempting to appropriate the role of God. One contemporary writer complained that the book was “horrible and disgusting.” He declared that the author must be “as mad as his hero.”1 He could not accuse anyone in particular, however, as no one knew the author’s identity. The book had been published anonymously, and when people discovered the author’s name, the truth seemed even more scandalous than the “horrible” story itself. The author was a woman, and her name was Mary Godwin Shelley.
In the nineteenth century women weren’t supposed to write novels, let alone a novel like Frankenstein. Middle-class women were expected to confine themselves to being good wives, daughters, and mothers. For a woman to step outside of her proper domain was against all of society’s rules. Critics muttered that Mary Shelley must be as monstrous and immoral as her story. And yet when they met her, they were surprised to find that Mary was ladylike and reserved. One new acquaintance said that he had thought the author of Frankenstein would be “indiscreet and even extravagant,” but that he had found her “cool, quiet, feminine.” It was difficult for Mary’s contemporaries to square the boldness of her work with its creator. Instead of being “improper” or “masculine,” she appeared to embody their ideas of what womanhood should be.2
Sadly, these misogynistic principles were the accepted ideas of the time. Experts declared that women were inferior to men in all areas of human development and could not be educated beyond a certain rudimentary level. Whereas men possessed the capacity for reason and ethical rectitude, women were considered foolish, fickle, selfish, gullible, sly, untrustworthy, and childish. Wives could not own property or initiate divorces. Children were the father’s property. Not only was it legal for a husband to beat his wife, but men were encouraged to punish any woman they regarded as unruly. If a woman tried to escape from a cruel or violent husband, she was considered an outlaw, and her husband had the legal right to imprison her.3
This oppressive system began in childhood. Boys were taught that they were superior to girls. Girls were instructed to submit to their brothers, fathers, and husbands. The education of middle- and upper-class young women was confined to activities such as playing the piano, speaki
ng French, embroidering, and singing—decorative skills that would help them appear attractive to prospective husbands, but would not teach them to think for themselves. Any serious scholarship was strongly discouraged, as too much study seemed like a dangerous proposition, not so much for the world but for women themselves. Were their constitutions strong enough for such exertion? Should they learn more than basic skills, such as how to write their names, add and subtract, and read simple passages? Most people thought the answer was no; given their fragility, women should not be taxed too much. Besides, too much book learning could destroy a woman’s life and ruin her prospects for marriage. “If you happen to have any learning, keep it a profound secret,” warned one father.4
Even that great champion of liberty, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, could not conceive of girls possessing the same natural rights as boys. He argued that women were created to be the helpmates of men:
The education of women should always be relative to men. To please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young and take care of us when grown up, to advise, to console us, to render our lives easy and agreeable: these are the duties of women at all times and what they should be taught in their infancy.5
The irony is that even as the upper classes were discussing Rousseau’s ideas in their elegant salons, their daily needs were being met by the hard labor of their female servants. No one thought that the girl hauling the wood upstairs to the fire might be too fragile for such chores. Instead, the serving classes were generally treated as beasts of labor, women and men alike. Ultimately, this inequity would lead the working class to rise up and demand their rights. In 1789, the lower classes stormed the Bastille, the infamous prison in Paris, and started the French Revolution. English radicals supported the revolution’s goals. Many have connected the revolution with the birth of Romanticism, a movement that promoted the rights of the individual and freedom for all humanity, including women, slaves, and working men and women.
In England, however, there was a backlash against the excesses of the revolution. Although the English Romantic poets—Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats, and Shelley—were inspired by Romantic ideals, many people were afraid that too many “French” ideas would disrupt the stability of English life. And so instead of protesting the oppression of the working classes, or, for that matter, being outraged at the restrictions that women faced, the ordinary person accepted them as the standards of the day. Middle-class women cultivated their “delicacy,” regarding weakness as an asset in their search for husbands, at the same time that they were asserting their elevation over their maids. If a woman fainted easily, could not abide insects, feared thunderstorms, ghosts, and highwaymen, ate only tiny portions, collapsed after a brief walk, and wept when she had to add a column of numbers, she was considered the feminine ideal.6
Fortunately, the author of Frankenstein, Mary Godwin Shelley (1797–1851), had little patience with such notions. She was the proud daughter of the famous radical Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Although Wollstonecraft died ten days after giving birth to Mary, Mary was still profoundly influenced by her mother’s ideas. A large portrait of Wollstonecraft hung on the wall of Mary’s childhood home. The girl studied it, comparing herself to her mother and hoping to find similarities. Mary’s father, William Godwin (1756–1836), a noted political philosopher and novelist, held up Wollstonecraft as a paragon of virtue and love, praising her genius, bravery, intelligence, and originality. He even taught young Mary how to read by tracing the letters on her mother’s gravestone. Except for WOLLSTONECRAFT, her mother’s name was the same as hers: Mary Godwin.
As she grew older, Mary read and reread her mother’s Vindication and also studied Wollstonecraft’s other books, including her celebration of the French Revolution, often learning the words by heart.
Wollstonecraft scorned the idea that women were lesser beings than men. Women were not intrinsically less reasonable than men, she argued, nor were they lacking in moral fiber. For the sake of all humankind, women should receive serious educations and be encouraged to exercise their reasoning skills. “A revolution in female manners. . . [will] reform the world,” she declared.7
Steeped as she was in her mother’s ideas, and raised by a father who was grief-stricken by Wollstonecraft’s death, Mary tried to live according to her mother’s philosophical principles. Over the course of her life, she sought to reclaim Wollstonecraft from the grave, becoming, if not Wollstonecraft herself, her ideal daughter. When she wrote her own books, she reimagined the past and recast the future in a doomed effort to resurrect the dead, gazing back at what she could never regain but sought to duplicate in very different times. She knew it was impossible to be reunited with her mother, but still she yearned for her, and the best way she knew to be close to her was to live in accordance with her mother’s philosophy, even if this meant breaking time-honored traditions.8
This was a dangerous ambition, as Wollstonecraft’s ideas flew in the face of societal conventions. After the publication of Vindication, her enemies had called her a whore and a “hyena in petticoats.”9 When she died, her husband, Godwin, published a tell-all memoir that cataloged Wollstonecraft’s illicit sexual affairs, including the child she had out of wedlock before she met Godwin. Godwin declared that he was paying homage to his dead wife and was proud of Wollstonecraft’s unconventional life. The public deserved to know the details of her unorthodox life, he believed. But the consequences of his memoir were far-reaching and pernicious.
Wollstonecraft’s reputation as a political philosopher was now overshadowed by her sexual improprieties. Instead of being regarded as an important contributor to the public discourse, she was regarded as a “whore” and a sexual renegade. Her writing was largely neglected until the 1970s and she almost disappeared from our historical memory. Her illegitimate little girl, Fanny Imlay Godwin, became the most notorious bastard of the era. Godwin had attempted to protect Fanny from social ostracism, adopting her when he married Wollstonecraft. But though she and Mary were raised in the same household, which included Godwin’s second wife, Mary Jane Clairmont, and her two children, Jane and Charles, Fanny never recovered from the loss of her beloved mother. She would spend the rest of her life feeling unwanted and unloved, the odd child out in this household where none of the five children shared the same set of parents.
Undaunted by the furor caused by her father’s memoir, Mary was determined not only to write books like her mother, but also to live with the same kind of freedom. She too would break the rules of society. She too would live the life of an independent woman. Her first opportunity to follow in her mother’s footsteps came when she met the twenty-one-year-old poet Percy Shelley.
To sixteen-year-old Mary, Shelley seemed the very essence of a Romantic poet, with windblown hair and brooding eyes. His friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg described him as “wild, intellectual, unearthly; like a spirit that had just descended from the sky; like a demon risen at that moment out of the ground.”10
As for Shelley, he was immediately struck by Mary’s dramatic appearance. Pale, with a blaze of reddish-gold hair, Mary was quiet, but when she spoke, her frequent literary allusions and quotations revealed her erudition. Shelley was thunderstruck. He had never met anyone like Mary Godwin.
Unfortunately, Percy was already married, and there were few greater taboos than a liaison with a married man. But Mary did not let social conventions restrict her. She declared she loved him and threw herself into his arms. As Shelley remembered it, Mary was inspired “by a spirit that sees into the truth of things.”11
Impatient with the restrictions they faced, Mary and Shelley ran away together to Europe. Oddly, they brought along her stepsister Jane, who changed her name to Claire and never returned to the bourgeois life her mother had tried to enforce back in London. Both Mary and Percy believed they were acting in accordance with the highest of moral pri
nciples: if two people were in love, nothing should stand in their way. After all, this was one of the governing principles of Wollstonecraft’s final novel, Maria; or, The Wrongs of Woman, and it was a foundational point in Godwin’s famous tome Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. The legalized “possession of a woman” in marriage is “odious selfishness,” Godwin intoned.12
Given his criticism of marriage, the happy couple assumed that Godwin would support their relationship, but when they returned, Godwin refused to speak to his daughter—a blow for Mary, as Godwin was the person she most loved and admired on earth. Society was merciless. Mary was called a whore, Percy a scoundrel. Old friends turned their backs. Mary’s stepmother followed Godwin’s lead and refused to speak to her, even after she lost her first child, a baby girl who died at three days old. Fanny, Wollstonecraft’s other daughter, did manage to sneak out and see her half sister, but her visits were few and far between. Claire Clairmont remained true to them, but her presence was a mixed blessing, as Claire and Shelley had grown too close for Mary’s comfort. She suspected they had become romantically involved, and she wanted Shelley for herself.
Throughout this tumultuous time, Mary followed a rigorous schedule of reading and writing. She wanted to live up to the legacy of her mother and write important books, but she was not yet sure what her themes should be. In January 1816, she gave birth to a healthy boy, William, who she guarded carefully, fearing that he might be taken from her as well. It was a wet spring, and William developed a stubborn cough. At Claire’s urging, Mary and Percy decided to vacation in Geneva, where the air was supposed to be healthy. There was also the benefit of being near the poet Lord Byron, with whom Claire was having an affair.
Byron was the most notorious poet of the era. His poems were famous for their frank descriptions of illicit love affairs and their exotic settings. Like the Shelleys, he had been rejected by London society for his scandalous behavior, including an incestuous relationship with his half sister. Byron had rented a grand home, the Villa Diodati, and the Shelleys took a smaller house nearby. When the press got wind of this, they labeled the little band the “League of Incest.”13 But far away from England, Mary, Percy, and Byron felt safe from their critics, and were inspired and excited to be together.