HEART POUNDING AGAINST RIBS
Cold sweat drips down my spine
and I am seized by a wakeful dream.
I see a pale student of unhallowed arts
kneeling beside the thing
he has put together.
A hideous phantasm of a man
with watery eyes and blackened lips
stirs with motion.
Happy serendipity: I had the urge to read Frankenstein this week, and right beside it on the library shelf was Mary's Monster; a YA graphic novel/free verse biography of Mary Shelley. Despite that sort of thing not normally catching my fancy, this book's gorgeous and haunting cover called out to me – and I couldn't be more delighted to have followed up the classic novel with this inspired account of its author. From the black ink wash illustrations that so perfectly capture the moody material to the just-enough biographical information to fill in Shelley's life and literary inspiration, author/illustrator Lita Judge has created something very special here.
Mary Shelley's mother died soon after giving birth to her, and although her father had once been a loving soul, his second marriage to a neighbourhood scold turned Mary's formerly happy home into a miserable one. And despite both of her parents notoriously having been promoters of free love, when the sixteen-year-old Mary began an affair with the married Percy Bysshe Shelley, her father utterly disowned her. The book recounts the couple's dead babies, fickle Percy's affairs, Mary's need to be constantly supporting her partner's art (while neglecting her own), and various family squabbles and tragedies along the way. When Lord Byron famously challenged the members of their group to each write a truly scary tale, the seed was planted for Mary to make something out of the men's discussions on galvanism and reanimation; a writing process that took months to complete. When she did finally finish her manuscript for Frankenstein, every bit of it was informed by her personal struggles:
In an author's note at the end, Judge writes, “I represented the details of Mary's life by weaving the actual events (as documented in her journals, copious letters, and later biographies) with the themes she and Shelley wrote about in their creative work”. With an extensive bibliography and pages of footnotes linked with her illustrations, I have no doubt that Judge has crafted a careful biography in so seemingly simple a format. Further, I was struck by Judge's endnote that Mary had been dismayed by talk of scientists attempting to create life in the lab, “She had seen fathers reject their children, and to her it suggested that evil will reign in a world where life is created by men alone.” I didn't pick up on the fact that Frankenstein's monster was motherless (as Mary herself was), and from the text of the novel, I didn't get this as a major theme:
Science gives us the ability to pull back the skin of lifeA few illustrations and quotes don't really do justice to the informative and moving biography that Lita Judge has crafted here; I enjoyed every bit of it. And especially in tandem with reading Frankenstein itself, this was an utterly fascinating experience.
and reveal the truth of things. It allows us to understand
the mysteries of mountain-making and falling stars.
But knowledge isn't meant to be held as a weapon
in a battle to defy our fates and manipulate life over death.
Evil lodges too easily in men's hearts.
What will happen if they assume the power
to create life?
