Mary Shelley(full name - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (married name, née Godwin) - English writer, playwright, author of short stories, essays, biographies and travel accounts.
Mary Shelley was born in Somers Town, London. She was the second child of the feminist, philosopher, teacher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft and the first child of the philosopher, writer and journalist William Godwin, who achieved great fame with his socio-utopian Inquiry into Political Justice (1793). Mary's mother died ten days after her daughter was born from puerperal fever. Mary and her sister Fanny Imlay (Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter from her first marriage) were raised by their father.
Although Mary Godwin received no formal education, her father taught her in a wide range of subjects. As a child, she had a governess, a daily tutor, and read her father's children's books on Roman and Greek history in the original. Mary also attended boarding school in Ramsgate for six months in 1811.
In the spring of 1814 she met Percy Bysshe Shelley, who captured her imagination. In turn, the young poet found in her what he lacked in his wife Harriet: breadth of intellectual interests, freshness and depth of poetic feeling, disregard for “ladies’” concerns about social decency, fashion, and comfort. In the sublime image of Cytna, the heroine of the poem The Rise of Islam (1818), which Shelley dedicated to his young wife, her idealized image was fused with romantically transformed memories of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.
Because Mary's father did not approve of her relationship with Shelley, the couple, accompanied by Mary's half-sister Claire Clermont, secretly left for France on July 28, 1814, leaving Percy's pregnant wife behind in England. They traveled through war-ravaged France, visited Switzerland, went down the Rhine to the Dutch port of Massluis, and on September 13, 1814 they arrived in Gravesend, Kent.
Mary Shelley tried writing as a child. During her honeymoon in the summer of 1814, she began writing a novel under the gloomy title “Hatred,” the manuscript of which has not survived. Shelley had a high opinion of his wife's literary talent, believing that she should be particularly good at depicting the tragic. Sometimes they used the same notebook: a handwritten volume has been preserved, where sketches of Mary Shelley’s story “Matilda” are side by side with “Ode to Naples” and rough passages of “A Defense of Poetry” and “Prometheus Unbound”, inscribed in the poet’s hand. It is not surprising that Shelley's poetry is naturally incorporated into her narrative prose. Thus, Frankenstein, in chapter ten, quotes Shelley's early poem "Variability"; Often, both here and in Mary’s other books, individual images from the poet’s lyrics are woven into the fabric of the presentation.
Frankenstein was published anonymously in the spring of 1818, just as Shelley and his family left England for Italy. Victor Frankenstein, this "modern Prometheus", creates a humanoid creature - a giant endowed with extraordinary power, endurance and energy. But his creation cannot find a place for itself in human society and soon inevitably becomes a notorious enemy of people. Outcast, unfairly persecuted by people to whom this giant wanted to do only good, he becomes a victim of his own fatal loneliness. And the first victims of this crushing force “created” by Frankenstein are those who are dearest and closest to him.
Initially, the general public perceived it simply as an entertaining fantasy story. But already during the author’s lifetime, the image of Frankenstein began to acquire the meaning of a generalizing symbol. And it was “Frankenstein” that turned out to be the only one of Mary Shelley’s works of art that survived her and is constantly republished in our time. Today it can be argued that Frankenstein stands at the origins of the science fiction genre. Possessing a gloomy but unusually strong energy, the story about a scientist whose unique invention turned into a tragedy for him and those around him anticipated the pessimistic motives of a number of modern science fiction works. It is no coincidence that already in the 20th century many writers turned to this plot, and the name of Frankenstein himself, the man who created an evil force that he could not cope with, became a household name.
In the summer of 1822, fate dealt Mary its most severe blow: the yacht in which Shelley and two companions were returning home from Livorno was caught in a sudden squall; the bodies of the victims were found only a few days later. Now all her worries were given to her son Percy Florence, the only one left with her after she buried two children in Italy. Many years of conflicts began with Sir Timothy Shelley, who assigned his grandson a meager allowance, stipulating that Mary should not dare to write about Shelley or publish his manuscripts. When she risked violating this prohibition by publishing Shelley's Posthumous Poems, Sir Timothy immediately stopped paying money for the maintenance of his grandson; Most of the circulation had to be withdrawn from sale.
Mary dreamed of writing a biography of her husband; since this was forbidden to her, she got out of the situation by setting out her memories of Shelley and reflections on his work in the form of detailed “notes” to his works. To give her son a decent education, Mary Shelley tirelessly earned her living through literary work. She did editing, compiled biographical essays about foreign writers, translated, reviewed, most often anonymously. On the title pages of her novels, instead of her last name, it was written: “Author of Frankenstein.” However, by this time the secret of its authorship was already well known in literary circles.
Of the five novels Mary Shelley published after Frankenstein, the most interesting are The Last Man (1826) and Lodore (1835). As in other works she wrote after Shelley's death, there is a lot of autobiography in them. While working on The Last Man, Mary noted in her diary that she projected her painful feelings of loneliness into the future depicted in this fantastic utopia. In the main characters of the novel it is easy to recognize the romantically transformed characters of Byron and Shelley. The future of humanity is depicted by Mary Shelley in gloomy colors. People will achieve expansion of their freedoms; new inventions will improve their lives (Mary describes, in particular, the “feathered” balloons on which her heroes fly from Italy to England, which takes them six days). In 2092, peace reigns everywhere. Another twelve months, and heaven will come on earth, Adrian dreams. But the forces of nature are taking up arms against people. The plague epidemic covers entire continents. The peoples are in panic. Famine begins in England. Added to this are unprecedented natural disasters: destructive hurricanes, earthquakes, floods. Gangs of fugitives from America are coming to England; robbing and devouring, like locusts, everything that comes their way, they go to storm London...
In Lodore, a completely realistic psychological novel set in what was then England, the portraits of the characters also reveal features of Byron and Shelley. Particularly interesting are the chapters describing the miserable life in London of the young Villiers couple. In depicting their ordeals in gloomy winter London, with its yellow fogs, crowds of indifferent passers-by, poor furnished rooms, bailiffs and a house of arrest, the writer clearly took advantage of the memories of the sad winter of 1814/15 - the first winter of her married life.
Also of interest is Shelley's story “The Mortal Immortal” (1883), in which the assistant of the occultist Cornelius Agrippa drinks the elixir of immortality made by his teacher. 300 years later he is unhappy, gloomy, almost insane, because... remains young, and his love died a long time ago. At the ideological level, the story has references to the novel by the writer’s father, William Godwin. "Saint Leon", and has been included more than 40 times in various genre anthologies.
Her stories “Valerius: The Reanimated Roman” (1819), “Metamorphosis” (1830), “The Dream” (1931), “The Invisible Girl” (1832) and “Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman” were also repeatedly included in genre anthologies. (1863).
Mary Shelley died on February 1, 1851 in Chester Square at the age of fifty-three, as her doctor considered, from a brain tumor.
Biography
Lake Geneva and Frankenstein
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley and their son traveled to Geneva with Claire Clairmont. They were planning to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, the result of Claire's relationship with whom she became pregnant. They arrived on May 14, 1816, and Byron did not join them until May 25, along with physician and writer John Williams Polidori. At this time, Mary Godwin asks to be addressed as Mrs. Shelley. In a village called Cologny, next to Lake Geneva, Byron rented a villa, and Percy Shelley rented a more modest house, but right on the shore. They spent their time creating art, boating, and late-night conversations.
“The summer was damp and cold,” Mary later recalled, “the incessant rain did not let us out of the house for days.” In addition to numerous topics of conversation, the conversation turned to the experiments of the philosopher and poet Erasmus Darwin, who lived in the 18th century. It was believed that he dealt with the issues of galvanization (at that time the term “galvanization” did not mean the creation of metal coatings by electroplating, but the application of electric current to a dead body, which caused muscle contraction and the appearance of revival), and the feasibility of returning a dead body or scattered remains back to life. There were even rumors that he was still able to revive dead matter. Sitting by the fireplace at Byron's villa, the company also amused itself by reading German ghost stories. This prompted Byron to propose that they each write a “supernatural” story. Shortly after this, Mary Godwin had the idea of writing in a dream. Frankenstein:
“I saw a pale scientist, a follower of the occult sciences, bending over the creature he was putting together. I saw a disgusting phantom in human form, and then, after turning on some powerful engine, signs of life appeared in it, its movements were constrained and devoid of strength. It was a terrifying sight; and the consequences of any attempt by man to deceive the perfect mechanism of the Creator will be extremely terrifying.”
Mary began work on a work that was originally supposed to be in the genre of a short story. Under the influence of the enthusiasm of Percy Shelley, the short story grew to the size of a novel, which became her first and was called "". This novel was published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the period “when I first stepped out of childhood into life.”
Major works
- The story of a six week journey / History of Six Weeks" Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland, with Letters Descriptive of a Sail round the Lake of Geneva, and of the Glaciers of Chamouni (1817)
- Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus / Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
- Matilda / Mathilda (1819)
- Valperga, or the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca / Valperga; or, The Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca (1823)
- Last Man / The Last Man (1826)
- The fate of Perkin Warbeck / The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830)
- Lodore / Lodore (1835)
- Faulkner / Falkner (1837)
Film adaptations
- 2009 - The Last Man
- 2012 - Frankenstein Mary Shelley
Links
- Shelley, Mary on the website "Fiction Laboratory"
Categories:
- Personalities in alphabetical order
- Writers by alphabet
- Born on August 30
- Born in 1797
- Deaths on February 1
- Died in 1851
- Mary Shelley
- UK Science Fiction Writers
- Writers of Romanticism
- English women writers of the 19th century
- Died from brain cancer
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See what “Shelley, Mary” is in other dictionaries:
SHELLEY, MARY WOLSTONECRAFT (Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft) (1797 1851), English writer. Born 30 August 1797 in London. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was one of the founders of the movement for women's equality, her father, W. Godwin, a philosopher and... ... Collier's Encyclopedia
- (Shelley) (1797 1851), English writer. Wife of P. B. Shelley. Romantic disappointment in educational ideals was expressed in the novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818). * * * SHELLEY Mary SHELLEY Mary (née Godwin, ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
- (Wollstonecraft Shelley) English writer (1798 1851). The daughter of the famous English publicist and writer William Godwin and the writer Mary Godwin, née Wollstonecraft, at the age of 16 she became interested in the poet Percy Shelley, followed him to ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Ephron
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Date of birth: August 30, 1797 Place of birth: London Date of death: February 1, 1851 Place of death ... Wikipedia
Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft (30.8.1797, London, ‒ 1.2.1851, ibid.), English writer. Daughter of W. Godwin; wife of P. B. Shelley. The hero of her novel “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus” (1818, Russian translation 1965) creates an artificial “demon”... Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Shelley: Shelley, Percy Bysshe English poet, husband of Mary Shelley Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft English novelist, wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley Shelley, Adrienne (1966 2006) American actress Shelley Marsh character in the TV series “South Park” ... Wikipedia
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Date of birth: August 30, 1797 Place of birth: London Date of death: February 1, 1851 Place of death ... Wikipedia
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Date of birth: August 30, 1797 Place of birth: London Date of death: February 1, 1851 Place of death ... Wikipedia
In the 19th century, it was believed that the lot of women writers (if they dared to step on this path) was to talk about unrequited love for a handsome count or about the upcoming ball. But Mary Shelley, the author of the novel “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus,” refused to conform to men’s ideas about what place a girl should occupy, how she should spend her leisure time, and who she should love. The first woman in the history of science fiction wrote a work about an obsessed scientist who created a monster. The site wondered: what do you have to go through to write something like this?
On May 10, the film “Beauty for the Beast” will be released on Russian screens about the amazing and tragic fate of the writer and poet Mary Shelley, who wrote the famous novel “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.” Twenty-first century literary critics agree that Mary and her mother became the first feminists long before the feminist movement itself - they defended their rights to creativity and self-expression. It is also symbolic that the film was directed by Haifa Al-Mansor, the first female director from Saudi Arabia. “We wanted to portray a strong woman who is willing to break conventional rules and say what she thinks is right,” Haifa told The Hollywood Reporter. We will tell you about the tragic, but at the same time interesting life of Mary Shelley in this material.
Childhood
Mary Shelley was born in London on the thirtieth of August 1797 into an extremely advanced family by eighteenth-century standards. The girl's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was one of the first suffragettes - representatives of the fair sex who fought for equal rights with men. And although the suffragette movement itself arose only in the mid-nineteenth century, Mary already wrote more than one essay on the emancipation of women. By the way, she married Mary's father, having an illegitimate daughter Fanny in her arms - a blatant fact by the standards of Puritan England. Her beloved William Godwin was little concerned about this fact: he was one of the first supporters of anarchism and preached freedom of morals.
Wollstonecraft died of blood poisoning eleven days after giving birth to her second daughter. The doctor who delivered the baby did not wash his hands first. Even though Mary did not know her mother, her death affected the rest of her life. A portrait of her mother, from whom she inherited liberal views, always stood on her desk.
William Godwin, left with two daughters in his arms, chose to marry immediately. His second wife was a widow with children, Mary Jane Clairmont, who was far from being as educated as her predecessor. From her first marriage, the new Mrs. Godwin had a daughter, Claire, who became a close friend of the future author of Frankenstein.
From an early age, Mary strived for knowledge. As a child, she met the English poets William Wadsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who were frequent guests of her father. They largely determined her love for literature. Mr. Godwin gave his daughter an excellent education, which was rare for that time. “She has a brave, sometimes even despotic, active mind. She is characterized by a great thirst for knowledge, and the perseverance she demonstrates in everything she undertakes is truly insurmountable. “I find that she is not at all what is commonly called vices, and that she is endowed with significant talent,” Mr. Godwin spoke of Mary in a letter to one of his friends. The girl was truly very gifted. She spent her leisure time reading books, wrote several stories, and the first poem of the future poetess was published in a local newspaper in 1807.
Meanwhile, the atmosphere in the house was very tense: William’s new wife did not like her stepdaughters and did not care for them at all. The girls had to grow up in an environment of constant tension.
Intelligent companion
At the age of sixteen, Mary met the 21-year-old poet Percy Shelley. He was a classic "bad boy" and therefore girls really liked him. Percy was kicked out of Oxford for being a free thinker. He wrote and published the brochure “The Necessity of Atheism” and, after being expelled from the university, felt like a champion of truth and freedom.
At the time of his meeting with Mary, he was already married to 19-year-old Harriet Westbrook, a boarding friend of his sisters and the daughter of a wealthy innkeeper. Shelley dreamed of saving his beloved from her father's tyranny (she complained of his cruelty) and invited her to escape to Edinburgh to secretly marry. Percy's parents, outraged by such an unfavorable match, deprived him of his inheritance.
This did not upset the poet at all: he became even more convinced that he needed to serve the ideas of equality and freedom.
The testimony of cousin Charles has been preserved, to whom Shelley admitted that “he was giving himself to Harriet not out of love for her, but out of a chivalrous sense of self-sacrifice.”
So, in May 1814, Percy and Harriet visited the Godwin house. Shelley admired not only the freethinking worldview of William, but also the beauty and intelligence of his daughter Mary. Seeing a slender girl with a pale face, he instantly lost his head. Miss Godwin was not only pretty, but also equally capable of supporting a conversation on any topic, because she had read her father’s entire library.
Passionate Percy immediately began to court Mary, who, by the way, was not embarrassed by the fact that he had a wife. The girl made an appointment with her lover at her mother’s grave, where they discussed the works of thinkers. At some point, Shelley and Godwin got tired of hiding and decided to run away. The poet finally became disillusioned with his marriage to Harriet, who needed nothing but new clothes, and left her. In addition, he suspected his pregnant wife of cheating with an Irish officer, and therefore summoned her to a serious conversation and declared that he could no longer live with her.
The difficult fate of the poet's wife
On July 28, 1814, Percy and Mary escape to France, taking Claire Clairmont with them for company. The young people traveled around Europe for about six weeks. Some experts believe that Percy and Claire had an affair behind the back of the future poetess. Mary's older sister, 18-year-old Fanny, remained in England and, according to historians, fell into depression because she also fell in love with the fatal Percy. When the money ran out, the fugitives had to return home. There they were condemned by everyone, including William Godwin, who did not allow Mary to stay in his house. The girl, who at that time was pregnant with her first child, moved in with her lover. Meanwhile, Percy was still legally married.
In February 1815, Miss Godwin gave birth to a daughter, who died thirteen days after birth. To help the couple overcome their grief, Percy's friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg invited the lovers to stay at his estate. In modern terms, Thomas subjected Mary to sexual harassment, but she was categorically against it (he made a similar attempt with Hariette).
But Percy, according to historians, seemed not averse to sharing his beloved with a friend.
In the scientific work of one English specialist in the works of Mary Shelley, it is argued that Hogg actually had far from friendly feelings for Shelley and sublimated his desire by pursuing his passions...
In January 1816, Shelley and Godwin had a son, William. A few months after the baby was born, the couple went to Geneva in the company of Claire Clairmont. In Switzerland they met Lord Byron and his physician William Polidori. It was then that Mary asked everyone to address her as Mrs. Shelley. The company went boating on Lake Geneva, did creative work, and discussed recently published works.
“The summer was damp and cold. The incessant rain kept us in the house for days on end,” 18-year-old Mrs. Shelley wrote in her diary at the time. The future poetess also described their evening conversations, for example, about the philosopher and inventor Erasmus Darwin, who studied the effects of electric current on a dead organism. The discharge caused muscle contraction and the appearance of revival. There were even rumors that Darwin was still able to revive dead matter (which, in fact, is what Victor Frankenstein did in Mary’s novel). In addition, the company amused itself by reading German mystical stories.
All this gave Byron the idea that it would be nice to have a competition to see which of them could write the best “supernatural” story.
According to Mary's diary, the idea for Frankenstein came to her in a dream: “I saw a pale scientist, a follower of the occult sciences, bending over the creature he was putting together. I saw a disgusting phantom in human form, and then, after turning on a certain powerful engine, signs of life appeared in it. It was a terrifying sight, and the consequences of any attempt by man to deceive the perfect mechanism of the Creator will be extremely terrifying.” It was then, in Geneva, that she began to write - contrary to Byron's opinion that "a woman is too stupid to create her own ideas."
A series of tragedies
The “hippies of the Romantic Age,” as modern literary scholars have dubbed this group, returned to England in the fall of 1816. Percy and Mary were greeted with sad news: the sister of the writer Fanny Godwin, who never recovered from her depression, committed suicide. She was twenty-two years old. Many researchers of Shelley's work have come to the conclusion that this happened because of unrequited love for the poet. In December of the same year, another tragedy occurred: Percy's wife Harriet also committed suicide. Her body was found in London's Hyde Park. Soon after the death of his wife, Shelley married his longtime lover. After this, Mary made peace with her father, with whom she had not spoken for several years. In September 1817, the couple had a daughter, Clara.
All this time, the writer continued to make sketches. At first Mrs. Shelley wanted to write a novella, but under the influence of her husband she abandoned this idea and decided to write a novel about an obsessed scientist who dreamed of creating a perfect being. Instead, the result was a monster capable only of revenge and murder. The writer finished the work in the spring of 1817, and in January 1818 it was published with a foreword by Percy Shelley. True, Mary did not sign her name and preferred to remain incognito.
The public believed that Percy wrote the novel, and his wife had to fight for copyright, proving to everyone that the book came from her pen.
However, Mary's contemporaries did not appreciate the book - the plot was too cruel. The public was even more shocked after learning that the work was written by a woman. During the author's lifetime, the novel went through two reprints. In the second of these, Mrs. Shelley made changes to bring the book into line with the “conservative ideals” of the time.
In 1818, Mary and Percy, along with their children William and Clara, decided to move to Italy, where they lived near La Spezia. There they wrote, saw the sights and generally had a good time. However, a series of dramas put an end to the happy life. Clara died when she was only a year old. This was followed by numerous infidelities by Shelley, of which his wife was well aware. In addition, he had an illegitimate daughter from a certain Italian. In June 1819, William died - he did not survive the cholera epidemic. A few months later, Percy and Mary's fourth child was born - a boy, Percy Florence. Despite all the hardships, the time spent in Italy became the most fruitful in the work of poets.
After Frankenstein
In 1822 the family moved to the village of San Terenzo, where they lived with Percy's friend Edward Williams and his wife Jane. At that time, the poet was bored with life with Mary, who was pregnant with her fifth child. He began to recklessly flirt with his friend’s wife and even dedicated several poems to her. Due to the stress caused by her husband's behavior, Mrs. Shelley suffered a miscarriage, which nearly killed her.
Mary's personal life, according to all the canons of romanticism, was beautiful, short and tragic. She became a widow at just twenty-four years old. Percy, returning home from Livorno on a schooner, was caught in a storm and drowned. His body was washed ashore only ten days later. He was identified by his tall, slender figure, a volume of Sophocles and a poem by Keats found in his pockets. Mary's grief knew no bounds. It seemed that the monster from her novel had become real and was pursuing her, taking away the people closest to her.
The body of her husband was burned, and the widow took his charred heart, sewed it into an amulet and carried it on her chest until her death.
“The eight years I spent with him,” Mary wrote a month after her husband’s death, “meant more than the usual full span of human existence.”
Mary devoted her subsequent life to caring for her only son, Percy Florence, and preserving the literary heritage of her late husband: she collected and published a collection of his poetry, and also wrote his biography. She did not forget to be creative, creating six more works, including Valperga and The Last Man. In addition, Shelley wrote a number of essays on women writers, in which she stated that “the imagination has no sex.” She did editing, wrote biographical sketches about foreign writers, translated, and reviewed. Mary Shelley died on February 1, 1851, at the age of fifty-three, from a brain tumor.
Unfortunately, almost all of the writer’s works were forgotten over time, but only the unrelenting popularity of “Frankenstein” prevented her from completely sinking into oblivion. And we come to the conclusion that her biography was as tragic and sometimes fantastic as the plot of the work that glorified her forever.
My review of this book turned out to be very long and ambiguous, so first I will give a brief summary. The idea is good, the execution is very poor. The descriptions are bad, the characters are cardboard templates, philosophical ideas are not revealed, the science fiction is not scientific. I have no desire to make allowances for the age, gender of the author and writing in one day (which is not true), I consider the book unfinished. It is, of course, far from the heights of literary disgrace, but I can’t even recognize it as a work of genius. All.
Those who have the courage to read the long text can proceed to the review.
Almost the most common debunking of book myths that I have encountered is related to this book. Every second person who feels involved in the knowledge of world literature hastens to report that Frankenstein is the name of the creator of the monster, and not the demon himself. And everyone (who has heard about it) knows for sure that the book is about a man-made demon.
Another detail that people like to savor in connection with this book is that the author is a nineteen-year-old girl, and she wrote the book on a bet in one night. After this, as a rule, people experience awe and admiration, and the book is raised to heaven. As always happens in such cases, everything is so, but not so. Although the girl was nineteen, she was already securely married, having previously, by the way, played a trick and beaten off someone else’s husband. That is, she cannot be suspected of lacking experience in communicating with men, or simply with different people. And by the way, since the girl came from a family of writers, she also had a very good idea about this craft. And this is not her first literary experience. Well, about one night, too, lies. One night they argued, another night she contemplated nightmares, inspired, by the way, by preliminary conversations in the living room (about man-made life, so they gave her the idea), and then she wrote something.
It’s somehow offensive, I think, when they make allowances for gender when assessing the result of mental work. A discount on age, by the way, is also often questionable, since the young mind is lively and inquisitive, and children, well, simply according to the laws of evolution, should be smarter than their parents. And I don’t want to make any discounts. And without the discounts, the book seemed extremely weak to me.
The points.
1. About the plan.
What did Mary Shelley want to say? I have three options: simply tell a horror story (as the argument intended), resolve some philosophical issues, or write a science fiction work. I have not seen any of these plans come to fruition. For a horror story, it's not scary. In general, the descriptive power of the book is weak, but more on that later. In terms of solving, and even discussing, philosophical issues, the book is very superficial. Questions are not really posed, you can guess about something, dream up something, but what was intended? There is no talk of developing these questions, of mental experimentation. Sorry, there is nothing science fiction in the book at all. Logic, reliability, detail, thoughtfulness - everything didn’t work out. More on this later too. The bottom line on this point is that for none of the three ideas that I managed to suspect in this book, I was not able to find a worthy implementation.
2. About implementation, texture, characters.
To convey his idea to the reader, the author can frighten, excite, surprise with beauty, suggest an idea, and, in the end, chew on this idea. And he has at his disposal such tools as plot, descriptions, dialogues and emotions, characters.
With the plot everything is quite acceptable. It was probably even fresh. True, I strongly disagree with Prometheus; it would be better if there was an allusion to the creators of the Golem. If only because things didn’t turn out so badly for Prometheus. And it was precisely that clay comrade who was man-made and terrible. But, nevertheless, both the idea itself and the plot are quite suitable. The backbone, so to speak, is strong. It is quite possible that it was he who was born during that notorious one night under the influence of inspiration. But, as the hackneyed saying goes, in a brilliant creation there is one percent inspiration, and the remaining ninety-nine is hard work. And as if hard work didn’t work out for sweet young Mary. Because all other components are weak.
The descriptions are terrible mediocrity. They are not visualized at all, they are composed of completely identical sentences and pompous phrases, and even with a distortion: the same lawn is described a bunch of times and verbosely, and, say, the harsh sea in which Frankenstein was dangling at some point - at some point - like two words. But to convey emotions to the reader - his horror and despair - the second would be useful. I immediately remembered the verbose Hugo, from whom you will feel, and smell, and taste, and freeze, and choke there along with the hero, so that you will have to save him.
Dialogues and emotions are formulaic. Everyone speaks in exactly the same phrases, with no personal touch. Read a random dialogue and you won’t guess who is with whom. Even the demon - and he was indistinguishable from, say, the framed hero (the author of the letter to his sister, who met Frankenstein and wrote down his story; by the way, it is not very clear who this multi-layered frame was needed for). The transfer of emotions in this book is done as in the alphabet: S-fear, L-love. That is, they called it stupidly. Moreover, putting it also in the mouths of the heroes. Something like “there was no person more unhappy than me,” “no one experienced horror stronger than mine,” and so on. Hmm-hmm. Clumsy, no?
The heroes are a different story. I assume that Mary decided to write on behalf of a man in order to untie his hands (both the first, the frame one, and Frankenstein, although about the first, as I said, it’s not at all clear why he needs it). However, ladies in her time were not so free in their activities and works. But the absolutely identical thoughts of all the heroes are more drawn to the lamentations of Frankenstein’s cousin-wife. And they don’t look at all like male travelers, male explorers, or men in general. I just can't see anything masculine behind them. People, of course, are different (which is not visible in this book), but, however, men are psychologically more inclined to activity than to emotionality. That is, the first reaction to anger is more likely to hit the table with your fist, rather than a long tirade into the night. And there, everyone looked like muslin young ladies who couldn’t even tighten their corsets themselves, but, having read novels, they theatrically raised their eyes to grief and talked and talked and talked.
Well, I especially want to take a ride through Frankenstein. What is the frame hero saying? He'd never met a better person or anything like that. Sorry? This weakling asshole? At first, the comrade did not use his head and followed the lead of his ambitions and did something there. The demon came out. Which, by the way, is also questionable whether the demon came out right away. What does Frankenstein do next? He faints and then just whines about repentance. That is, tearing the soft spot away from the bed and going to correct the damage done - no, that’s not what the “best people” do? In fact, he was simply scared, like a hare, and forgot to even think about his creation. Let's take a woman: she gave birth to a screaming zucchini, got scared and threw her into the forest. Fine? That's what Frankenstein did. Then he finds out that the “zucchini” survived, became, for some reason, “bad” (Think about it, why? Why?), and begins to talkatively and inactively repent. At this moment, he is well aware that his relatives are under attack. But, suddenly, after a while, having received a direct threat “he didn’t think about it.” No seriously? Maybe it was the opium he started taking for therapeutic purposes? Is this slobber still the best of men? And when everything goes wrong, he finally catches on and starts running after his creation with a pistol. If all the power of intellect was spent on the “birth”, and Frankenstein had none left to understand and develop his creation, and since he firmly decided to “rid the world of the demon”, he would immediately start running, heroically saving the world. But no, really only a selfish feeling of revenge could have motivated him to take action. A very dubious hero. His narcissism makes me nauseous. And the harmonious chorus of admiration for Frankenstein causes bewilderment: that is, Mary sincerely considers her resulting character a darling?
I won’t go through the demon, because there simply isn’t enough data. His “becoming” is generally shrouded in darkness. The motives are somehow also not clear, but is it necessary to say that this creature “with capabilities significantly superior to humans” is extremely contradictory? Either he would have been purely physically superior then (but as he explains it, after a short time of eavesdropping on people’s conversations! How he talks about his own rejection!), or he would have blinded himself to a girlfriend himself, since he had the urge. We drove on and were delayed for a while.
3. About philosophical issues.
Various thoughts came to my mind while reading, but I think that a good half would have caused great surprise to the author (oh, am I really there about this? How unexpectedly pleasant).
On the surface, in vulgar nakedness, lies a condemnation of man's appropriation of divine providence. There is no man-made life, you get a demon. Again, as with emotions. The thought is not revealed, it is stated. Because there are no clear explanations as to why, in fact, Frankenstein did such a bad job with this poor fellow.
The next thought that came to me was that this demon could be a symbol of Yin and Yang. Frankenstein remained the symbol of everything good and bright in man (although I cannot agree with this), and everything dark was embodied in the demon. Well, here we can continue to say that if these two components are separated, the result will be bad: the dark is busy, the light suffers. Integrity and harmony are our everything.
Next we are tempted to speculate about the responsibility of the creator for his creation. Responsibility of a parent for a child. Children's complexes, finally. The demon may have a trauma of rejection, and you want him to “grow up” prosperous and kind. Here, by the way, I sympathize with the demon a little. It's like a drunkard dad, outraged that his son grew up to be a criminal. His son, abandoned and abandoned to hungry and cold death. Like, well, yes, I drank, but it wasn’t me who robbed for food, because I’m good, and you, son, it’s not clear who’s so bad. Here, by the way, there is a very interesting topic to think about, purely psychological. After all, the topic of childhood trauma is very popular now. And here the uncle sits for about thirty years, does nothing and accuses his parents of poor upbringing. And it seems like you can’t argue, but it seems like your uncle is no longer a boy. Where does the responsibility of one end and the responsibility of the other begin? With the acquisition of legal capacity (I’m not talking about coming of age, the demon was “born” as a full-sized demon)? But where will he get all the qualities a virtuous person needs, just like that, at a click, if no one has developed them in him? It’s interesting, but in fact there’s nothing in the book about this, it’s just my thoughts racing.
You can continue to wash the sand in the hope of mining gold. For example, you can dig up the problem of choosing between the real well-being of loved ones and the mythical well-being of the world. Or the problem of killing for good. Or the problem of sacrifices in the name of science and progress. Or about the rejection of those who are different and persecution for appearance. If you try really hard, you can wash something off. But, to be honest, I believe that none of this has been revealed, it is unlikely that it was the author’s intention, and in general, these are, say, hallucinations from persistent examination through a magnifying glass of a work in which one must find genius. At that moment I had a normal deja vu of a futile search for meaning in school essays on topics that were just made up from thin air. I repeat, the author would be at all surprised to learn that subsequent generations find in his works the threat of a bad grade in literature.
4. And lastly. About science fiction.
She's not here. Everything that could be related to science was left behind the scenes. Frankenstein studied something abstract - and voila. Not a hint about what was taken as a basis, what prompted the idea, how to do it, and so on. Even with fantastic additions, the work had to be described somehow. Science fiction is exactly that. And the emergence of a magical creature from thin air is fantasy. And then, good fantasy must have a logical backbone. Everything is very bad with him here. The development of the demon occurs in some jumps, it is not clear how or why. Its initial capabilities and where they came from are not really clear. By the way, about the original. This one, like a huge demon, got into the clothes that he stole from Frankenstein? And why did he even steal them on the first night, being completely unconscious? Further. Let him learn to speak by eavesdropping, and read by spying. Well, genius. But where does the beautiful talk about good intentions and abandonment come from? Even if it was all deceit (which the ending contradicts), where did he get these techniques from? And with these evil machinations of his it is also unclear. Just the reverse of that force that always wants evil and does good. And the final nail in the scientific coffin in the book came from completely unreliable descriptions of the Arctic sea voyage. True, they are at the beginning of the book, but they still seem to me like the cherry on the cake called “If you don’t know, don’t write.” They were completely unnecessary there! This frame with a traveler-lover of the epistolary genre was absolutely useless. And they made a lot of mistakes in it. The girl’s idea of it is like a boat trip in uncomfortable weather, in fact...
Well, that's all. For the idea and relative novelty of the genre and theme, let there be six points. And if you wish, you can find a reason to think about all sorts of complex and philosophical topics in a tabloid newspaper. This book has no depth, no.
For several decades in a row, the story of Frankenstein has not lost its popularity. Film directors often turn to this image. But few people know that the author of the story about the revived monster was a fragile, sophisticated 19-year-old girl Mary Shelley. Her work was written as a bet and marked the beginning of a new literary genre - the Gothic novel. The writer “put” into the hero’s head her thoughts and experiences that arose as a result of her difficult life ups and downs.
The future creator of the story about a terrible monster was born in London in 1797. Her mother died 11 days after Mary was born, so her older sister Fanny essentially raised the girl. When Mary was 16 years old, she met the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Despite the fact that Percy was married, he fell in love with a young girl and persuaded her to run away from her father's house to France. Soon the money ran out and the lovers had to return home. Mary's father was outraged by his daughter's actions.
To complicate matters, Mary was pregnant. Percy Shelley, in turn, had no intention of getting a divorce, which is why the 17-year-old girl became the object of caustic attacks from society. Due to her worries, she had a miscarriage. At first, Mary and Percy lived in love and harmony, but the girl was very offended by the “liberal” views of her common-law husband, namely his love affairs.
In 1817, the wife of the legitimate poet drowned in a pond. After this, Percy and Mary officially got married. The children Mary gave birth to died one after another, driving the woman into despair. Only one son survived. Disappointment in family life gave rise to feelings such as loneliness and despair in Mary Shelley. Her monster hero will then experience the same thing, desperately in need of understanding from those around her.
Percy Shelley was friends with the more famous poet George Byron. One day, Mary Shelley, her husband and Lord Byron, gathered around the fireplace on a rainy evening, talking about literary topics. They ended up arguing over who could write the best story about something supernatural. From that moment on, Mary began to create a story about a monster, which became the world's first Gothic novel.
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus was first published anonymously in 1818 because editors and readers were prejudiced against women writers. It was not until 1831 that Mary Shelley signed her name to the novel. Mary's husband and George Byron were delighted with the woman's work, and she won the argument.
Modern films about the living monster have created confusion about who Frankenstein was called. This was not the name of the monster, but of its creator, Dr. Victor Frankenstein. He managed to resurrect the dead body, and then, frightened by his creation, fled the city. The monster himself with a terrible face tried to find understanding among those around him, but society never accepted him.
Despite the fact that Mary Shelley is considered the author of the novel, there are skeptics who