The Lady and Her Monsters

As I've been immersing myself in a lot of Frankenstein lately, I thought it would be good to read The Lady and Her Monsters, by Roseanne Montillo, which is sort of a catch-all about the book, published by Mary Shelley in 1818. It is a biography of Mary, who was the daughter of the great thinkers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and later the wife of the great Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. It also takes a look at the science behind her novel, specifically the experiments of Giovanni Aldini.

Montillo covers a lot of ground in this book, and at times it's a bit scatter-shot, but all in all it's very informative. The notion of bringing dead tissue back to life dates back to the days of the alchemists, and to the the likes of Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa (Victor Frankenstein, in the novel, is a young fan of the writings of these two). Much later, Luigi Galvani would use frogs and electric sparks to show movement in dead tissue: "He was showing that the frogs' muscle contractions were the result of the vital fluid that circulated within their bodies. This fluid was then instigated to revitalize by a metallic arc that touched the crural nerves and muscles. The fluid then became excited, so to speak, which caused the movements in the frogs' limbs."

It was his nephew, Aldini, who took the experiments further. He had to go to England, because in Bologna, where he came from, executed prisoners were decapitated, which kind of eliminated any chance of them being re-animated. Montillo writes of a gruesome public display when Aldini hooks up electricity to a corpse, which makes its muscles, including those of the face, twitch. The corpse was not brought back to life, though--he could not restart the heart.

Mary knew about this. Percy, Montillo writes: "a poet, science aficionado, and fan of the macabre, was the one who introduced her to many of the scientific properties and theories exploding around her. He even went so far as the demonstrate certain experiments to her. Along with all of that, the literary publications of the time provided her with a good foundation."

Mary's mother, who was an early feminist, died in childbirth. She was brought up her father, who was a great reformer. Percy, who was already married, took a shine to her perhaps because of who her parents were. In any event, they eloped, which enraged Godwin. Her half-sister, Jane Claremont (who would later become known as Claire. Percy seems quite the cad--he later had an affair with Claire (and perhaps fathered a child by her). Percy's wife conveniently committed suicide, overwrought by his dreadful treatment of her.

The famous story of the birth of Frankenstein is also told here. In 1816 (the year without summer due to a volcanic eruption in Indonesia) the Shelleys, Claire, Lord Byron (who is described here as having the reputation of a "lascivious, shocking madman") and Byron's personal physician John Polidori vacationed on Lake Geneva together. Byron suggested a ghost story contest, and Mary had had a dream about a man who created life but came to regret it. Montillo shows evidence of certain aspects of the novel, such as the origin of the name of her main character: during a three-hour walk through the woods in Germany: "The real Frankenstein family had settled in a formidable castle overlooking the Darmstadt region, where their deeds, famous and infamous, began to be recorded in the annals of history."

It turns out that in the 1400s, the Castle Frankenstein would withstand an attack by none other than Vlad the Impaler, who inspired another major character of horror literature. Later there was an inhabitant named Johann Konrad Dippel, who was an alchemist. He had a laboratory where he used a "philosopher's stone" to attempt to turn metal into gold. The villagers, particularly the clergy, became quite upset: "How dare he fiddle with the mysteries of creation? they asked. How dare he believe himself a god, capable of prolonging life, or even creating it anew? And the villagers saw him as nothing than the devil's minion, someone whose soul had been sold in exchange for forbidden knowledge."

Montillo also includes a chapter on the history of grave robbers, focusing on the infamous Burke and Hare, who didn't rob graves but cut out the middle man by killing people and selling them to a Dr. Knox. These two operated years after the publication of Frankenstein, but because of the association with ghoulish behavior and the creation of the monster, it seems sort of appropriate.

The Lady and Her Monsters is informative for Frankenstein buffs, and not a bad introduction to those interested in the subject. Her prose is a bit dry, though the stuff about Percy and Mary's romance has elements of winking good fun, as when Montillo reveals that the two had trysts in the churchyard cemetery while Claire stood guard.