by John Kessel
Yes, and still what she had told them to do was the right thing, the practical thing, the just thing. She had been a voice speaking from outside the drama that took place inside their heads. She had given them good counsel. And why should a woman have to do that, prevent men from killing each other? The true idiocy of their tragedy was that it did not have to happen. Victor and Adam had constructed it by their own choices, out of their inability to believe in the existence of anyone but themselves. William, Justine, Henry, Elizabeth, Victor’s father. Eve. What about them? Hadn’t they deserved better?
Mary came to the seaside and walked along the Marine Parade, stiff-legged in her anger, paying no attention to the others who lingered there at the decline of the day. The green bathing machines had all been drawn away from the water and stood in a row on the sandy beach. A flock of boats lay at anchor, sails furled, within the embrace of the Cobb. She continued until she reached the great breakwall and climbed to its top. The limb of the orange sun was just about to touch the sea’s horizon, and its glare hit her full in the face.
In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun . . . . His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.
She held her hand up to shade her eyes and walked the sinuous masonry wall above the sea. She reached its end. Below her, waves broke on the rocks at the foot of the Cobb. The tide was running out: black algae and seaweed draped the wall’s exposed foundations. The chill air brought with it the odor of the recent catch, sea wrack, and salt, pungent to her nostrils.
At the same time King David had told how God’s truth was written in nature for men to read, he had also begged to be kept free from “the great transgression”: doing wrong when one believes one is doing right. How easy, when one followed the promptings of the traitorous heart, to convince oneself that pure selfishness is the ultimate selflessness, that desire is fate, that murder is self-sacrifice.
By now Mary was furious. She had never been more enraged. She clenched her fists and squinted into the sun and shouted, at the limits of her voice, “The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether!”
As soon as the words left her lips, the fury drained from her. Her heart raced. She looked back toward the town. Some people at the foot of the Cobb had turned toward her; they must have heard her shout, but they could not have heard what she had shouted. Behind them in the golden light of sunset the town rose from the harbor, streets twisting between homes and town houses where lights were coming on for the evening. In those homes young women excitedly prepared for the Assembly Ball. Worried about their dress, speculating about whether this lordling or that government minister’s cousin would be in attendance, and who would dance with whom. The judgments of the Lord were far from their minds.
Perhaps there was no Lord. Perhaps he had started the world and gone away, leaving human beings to make what they would of it.
Mary turned her back on the sunset and slowly retraced the Cobb toward the shore, then walked along the parade and up Coombe Street into town. By the time she reached Anning’s Fossil Depot, it was full night. The shop’s windows were dark, but through the opened cellar window Mary could see the lantern still alight over the workbench, and at it Mary Anning, intent over her notebook, Tray lying at her feet.
Mary Bennet came to the window and stuck her head inside. “Mary,” she said. “Must you waste good lamp oil over another of your ridiculous fossils? Too much learning makes a woman monstrous.”
Startled, Mary Anning looked up, saw it was her—and smiled.
It was the matter of a minute for her to climb up from the cellar and open the door to let Mary in.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In crossing these two novels, I have done my best not to alter the facts as we are given them in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but still it has been necessary for me to take many liberties. Chief among them is that I had to alter the chronology of the two novels to make them coincide.
Although the year in which Pride and Prejudice takes place is not stated in the novel, scholars have suggested that the most likely times for it are 1802 or 1811. I have chosen to assume that Austen’s novel takes place in 1802. My novel takes place thirteen years after Ms. Austen’s story, in 1815.
Frankenstein is set in the mid-1790s, but Mary Shelley herself must have been a little uncertain about this, since her characters refer to works of literature and social realities that did not exist until decades later. So I have pushed the events of Frankenstein forward twenty years.
In other regards I have striven to follow the chronology of Shelley’s novel, though even there I had to improvise: on one page Victor tells us he and Henry arrived in England “at the beginning of October,” although a page earlier he says, “It was on a clear morning, in the latter days of December, that I first saw the white cliffs of Britain.” I have also shortened Victor’s four-hundred-mile overnight sea voyage in a skiff from the Orkneys to Ireland so that he lands in northern Scotland instead.
I am comforted by the knowledge that adaptors of Austen and Shelley have taken the widest of liberties with these great novels, and the two seem to have emerged none the worse for wear. At least I hope Jane and Mary will forgive me my trespasses.
I have likewise rearranged a few genuine historical events, persons, and details of geography for the sake of my story.
I must acknowledge my debt to the great wealth of information that has been accumulated by readers and scholars of Jane Austen and Mary Shelley, including in particular Jane Austen’s World (janeaustensworld.wordpress.com), Regency Reader (regrom.com), Jane Austen Society of North America (jasna.org/austen), and Jane Austen in Vermont (janeausteninvermont.wordpress.com).
Portions of this novel were written during a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Thanks to Antony Harrison and the department of English at North Carolina State University for administrative and other support. I must thank my readers Wilton Barnhardt, Karen Joy Fowler, Therese Anne Fowler, Edward James, James Patrick Kelly, and the 2016 Sycamore Hill workshop for comments, corrections, and advice. Friends and colleagues Belle Boggs, Richard Butner, Dorianne Laux, John Morillo, Leila May, and Lewis Shiner helped me with information, suggestions, and moral support.
I owe a great debt of gratitude to F. Brett Cox for the title.
Thanks to my agent, John Silbersack, and editor, Joe Monti, and the staff at Simon & Schuster for their enthusiastic support of this project from the beginning, and to Joe for his editorial suggestions and general good sense.
It is not possible for me to say how grateful I am for the emotional and literary support that Therese has, as always, offered throughout the writing of this book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author photograph copyright © 2016 by John Pagliuca
JOHN KESSEL is a visionary American author and one of the most celebrated and revered speculative-fiction writers of his time. Kessel is the recipient of the most prestigious literary recognitions the speculative-fiction field has to offer, including two Nebula Awards, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, a James Tiptree Jr. Literary Award, and a Shirley Jackson Award.
Kessel, who was born in Buffalo, New York, is the author of the novels The Moon and the Other, Good News from Outer Space, and Corrupting Dr. Nice, and in collaboration with James Patrick Kelly, Freedom Beach. His short-story collections are Meeting in Infinity (a New York Times Notable Book), The Pure Product, and The Baum Plan for Financial Independence.
His play Faustfeathers won the Paul Green Playwrights Prize, and his story “A Clean Escape” was adapted as an episode of the ABC TV series Masters of Science Fiction.
Kessel holds a BA in physics and English and a PhD in American literature. He helped found the MFA program in creative writing at North Carolina State University, where he has taught since 1982, and served as its first director. He lives and works in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his family, an
d you can visit him at johnjosephkessel.wixsite.com/kessel-website.
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ALSO BY JOHN KESSEL
Freedom Beach (with James Patrick Kelly)
Good News from Outer Space
Meeting in Infinity
The Pure Product
Corrupting Dr. Nice
The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories
The Moon and the Other
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by John Kessel
Jacket illustration copyright © 2018 by Robert Hunt
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Jacket design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian; interior design by Irene Metaxatos
The text for this book was set in Cochin.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kessel, John, author.
Title: Pride and Prometheus / John Kessel.
Description: First edition. | New York : Saga Press, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017023614 (print) | ISBN 9781481481496 (eBook) | ISBN 9781481481472 (hardcover : acid-free paper)
Classification: LCC PS3561.E6675 P75 2018 (print) | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023614