The Folly of Living, A Romantic Testament to Life: A Lady Monster (Or the Tale of One Mary Shelley)

“I collected the instruments of life around me, that I may infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet… his limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful, Beautiful!... I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate human body.”

                                                                                   Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, pg 50 

                                                                           
                                                                                         (Marlow, England, 1817)

Loud and boisterous was the mood of our drawing room. Percy had invited Mr. Hunt and Mr. Keats, Percy’s friends -who by extension, mine too- for tea and conversation. I sat in as the hostess, walking in and out of the room. The men had begun a literary discussion of the impassioned sort, I commenting on their thoughts occasionally, but still listening ardently all the while. 
“You see, I am of the mind that Paradise Lost is not, and was never meant to be taken as a religious text. Satan and God and so such are all simply meant to be comfortable stand-ins for kings and their subjects, it’s a criticism of the monarchy. God is uncaring and distant, he has to send Christ to do his work, the people of earth are his playthings. It is Statan who rouses the passion of his subjects, Satan who is the hero, not God.” Said Percy. 
“And you believe that Milton, a man alive in sixteen sixty-three, a time when Kings were considered akin to God, would have held those beliefs?” Said Hunt in a haughty tone. 

“Yes!” exclaimed Percy, “That’s what’s so revolutionary about the work! To directly voice such radical opinions in his day would have seen him hanged! Using Satan and God as a diversion and vessel for his true opinions is incompressible genius!” 

“I must think that Milton was not that deep.” replied Keats, “It’s an epic poem, no more than the Odyssey at least. Yes, I may admire his subversion of Satan, but at its core it’s a conventional message of morality. Satan is meant to represent the complex morals of human nature. He’s making the argument that human morality is generally evil by making humanity Satan, overdone really.”
I, who had been standing in the doorway answered “I think you are correct in that degree, Mr. Keats, and I find myself inclined to almost agree with you. In my understanding, Milton is not just expressing the idea of Satan representing humanity, but rather I find it more interesting that God must have purposely made him that way. Satan was created by God, but banished out of heaven for acting upon the nature given to him. For a God supposedly perfect, who would never make such a vile creature, I think that it suggests that God himself is human, he banished Lucifer because he feared himself.”  
“Well that is quite a great opinion, Mrs. Shelley! Where would you have heard such a thought?” said Hunt with an air of loftiness.
“Myself. I have been reflecting and rereading it very recently to incorporate it into some of my own writings.” 
“I had no idea that you were a writer, Mrs. Shelley.” asked Keats 
“I am indeed. ‘Tis been my great passion since girlhood.” said I, it felt so silly to say it aloud in a room of Percy’s friends, all already published authors themselves. So strange a sentence from my mouth, as if it were a lie, though I knew it true.  
“And what is it that you’ve been writing that would use such a complex material like Milton? Surely they do not publish such articles in women’s magazines.”said Hunt
“Mary is writing a novel. And if I’m not mistaken she has just recently finished it.” answered Percy
“And what is it about?” 

I opened my lips to speak, but my words felt meek and forgein, for I’d never told to anyone my idea but Percy “A college student who becomes obsessed with the unhallowed arts and assembles a corpse out of torn bits of other dead bodies which he animates back to life with the power of electricity.” Suddenly, it felt like a silly idea. Though I’d acted upon it for the past year. 

“Oh,” replied Hunt “And don’t you think that subject might be a bit heavy for an audience of lady readers?” inquired he with an air of slight surprise.
My expression fell, suddenly I felt much smaller and the men had noticed. Percy took up my words.
“Oh no, you mistake her Hunt. Mary means it to be read by both sexes. I assure you, while there are truely some horrific passages, it is quite more facinating and I am sure neither sex shall find the novel too shocking, isn’t that so, Mary?” 

I weakly nodded my head. 
“Well, I must commend you, Mary. For there are very few lady writers such as yourself. It is so impressive that you’ve found such time to write while you are mother and mistress of the household.” said Mr. Hunt, he raised his cup into the air “A toast, to Mrs. Shelley. Who though a woman, manages to be writer too.” 

The men rang out with a chorus of merry ‘here heres.’ though, I, feeling much less gay then the rest of them, fled the room with a sinking feeling. 
I knew it not to be true, but still my conscience stirred with doubt. A great dark force within me deeply felt their words. Stirring, like a dark bile in the pit of my stomach and turned my thoughts to rain. I pushed myself away from the men’s sights and went into the nearest room where I could be alone. “I shall always be a woman” I realized “A lady writer, but never a writer.” 
                                                                                                  -------------------------
It was on a dreary New Years night that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. There! Beneath my fingers, my novel! Tens upon hundreds of pages bound to the spine, forever tethered to the madness of my darkest nightmare. Printed words copied from my manuscript, written in the blood of ink by dreary fingers. The beautiful finished novel, my own testimate to terror, my precious child!  My own creation. Not Percy’s, nor any others. With only my own mortal hand had this tale been formed. 
I smoothed my fingers across the cover. I flipped through each death pale page; pondered on my favorite lines, reading with acute vision all that I writ down.‘Twas all I had wanted for, ‘twas all I had envisioned! Deep with the afterbirth of imagination, yet fresh with the blossom of intellect and question, ripened by sheer horror. My creativity, free at last from my mind’s prison, no longer to be burdened with wondering how much longer would be it’s incarceration. My liberation had come, no longer would I wander in shadow, no man could rip me from my courage. I finally had something to show for my intellectual achievements, my masterpiece! 
The story and all that it was, words, phrases, paragraphs, had been sewn and torn together only to be ripped apart again by my hand until it had reached my thought of perfection. Brought to life, through my own godlike will. 
At last, my mind had come alive! 
                                                                                                ---------------------------
My courage had been set ablaze, my soul a blue flame. My work and intellect would be respected. A month or so later Percy and I attended the salon of Mr. Thomas Love Peacock at my own insistence. I knew few, aside from the fact that many of them were rich, radical, well-educated intellectuals. And more of all, they were men. 
I moved about the groups, speaking at length with a variety of men, all, I knew, had at least 100 political essays to their name, had written several a volume of poetry, or at the least, had gone to University where they had been involved heavily in the sciences and literature, I was small again. Percy, as ever busy with his grand ideas, paid little mind to me. Each of us spoke about the room freely, though we met again in the middle of the room and found ourselves in conversation with one of these particular men whose name is lost on me now. 
“Mr. Shelley,” Said he. “I must congratulate you. I have recently read your Frankenstein and I was at first surprised to hear it was your work because it was so curiously different from your precious writings, but I was truly taken away by the novel’s sublime singularity!” 

“Actually, I wrote it.” replied I far too quickly, “I thank you most graciously for your compliment, sir.” 
He looked to Percy for confirmation, doing a double take, then turning back to me. 
“Why Madam, I did not think that a woman might write such a horrific tale.” he said with conviction
“Then you do not know women” my heart quivered in excited fear, somehow I just barely managed to school back my features. He then turned back to Percy

“Mr. Shelley, I am so very surprised you should give your wife permission to write such stories. You did not find it improper? Too graphic?” 
He moved his lips, but I took up his words “He did not give me permission. Nor do I need it to speak my mind’s desire. However, I find it funny that only moments ago my story did not need permission to exist when you were under the presumption it was written by a man.” 

His cheeks turned the rosy cue of copper, but continued on “I just find it curious that the novel is so mccabe, has experimented with such bold questions as weather man can play god.” 

“The questions brought up in my novel are human questions based in the realities of sciences that could come to be someday. We are on the brink of scientific revelation. Machines and engines can now do jobs that once took twenty men to accomplish. New inventions and discoveries are being made every day. It is quite possible that soon man will be able to manipulate life as we know it. I think that would make anyone wonder what is next. It takes only a human heart to wonder about the future of our species.” I stepped back slightly, hyper aware of the rage I felt within my breast after years spent pent in. 

“And you believe that women have the right to ask these questions?” 
“If only men such as you would give us a voice, sir.”

Now it was his turn to stand away. He looked to Percy again and said this “Mr. Shelley, I’d advise you to keep an eye on your wife’s writing habits. It seems to have given her a clever tongue.” He walked away, leaving only I and Percy. 
His tale of my ‘clever tongue” reached the rest of the Salon men. The rest of the circles I found myself in soon looked at me with an air of disdain, if not acknowledged. By the end of the hour I was shunned even by a few of them, apparently offended by my treatment of the man in question. Offended by my novel, as each question asked of me seems to have revolved around it. Suddenly, the “sublime singularity” of my story was dismissed as “Blasphemous” or “Indelicate” and so such. None would forget my name. 

Soon I would forget the fleeting shame I had felt at first in speaking. But always would I remember the look on that man’s face as I told him the novel was mine. Surprised, confused, scared. The feeling I held when picturing his frightened eyes underneath his cool countenance solicited such a feeling in me at it’s sheer remembrance, awakening something within me. Something deep, dark and powerful and as unstoppable as the rising sun that burned just as bright. 

When we arrived home, I was welcomed by all I knew to be normaI. My own furniture, the coat rack, our maid. I excused myself early that night to my rooms, feeling the day’s heaviness and the want of a book.  

As I closed the door, prepared to undress myself for bed, I caught a glance at myself in my chamber’s mirror, a chill ran through my spine. Then, there in the glass, I saw a vision (or was it a reflection?) of something horrific. Bursting and peeling away at my mortal skin. Revealing the red muscle and tissue winding away from my skull. The flesh rotting, mortal flesh that no longer served me, peeling away like birch bark from the tree. I then began to rip away the putrid and shallow flesh myself until all remained was the white bone beneath. My eyes melting away like water into the floor until all that was left were the empty, hollow holes. But the energy, nay, the calling of new found dominance within my breast was only ripened as I tore my human form away. 

I felt each atom grow and contract, swell and snap as I came to change into a new, greater being and making me all the more stronger because of it. My spine extends, my biceps harden. I had no fear, therefore extremely powerful. My mortal skin is replaced by a new, greater, thicker skin, slowly building it’s being upon me until a new more beautiful flesh was made, one disgusting to the world outside. My new soul stood there entirely before me. Frightful. Everything that an outside world would fear. A monster. 
    
 

eulusivepurplepanda

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