From Pleasure To Plague: The Misfortunes Of Mary Shelley And Victor Frankenstein

The famous movie director and producer Cecil B. DeMille once stated, "Creation is a drug that I can't do without" (Knowles 967). Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her fictitious Victor Frankenstein both apparently shared this passion for creation. In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, one can draw many parallels between Shelley and Frankenstein in their attitudes towards and relationships with their creations. To begin with, they both find meaning in creation: for Shelley, wonderful stories and characters, and for Frankenstein, an actual human being. Their additional similarities can be demonstrated by the effect their works had on both of their lives and the transformation of their creations from pleasure to plague.

Mary Shelley experienced great grief after working on the novel, while Victor Frankenstein lost many loved ones, and along with them, any hope for happiness, after creating his monster. In the "Author's Introduction" of Frankenstein, Shelley talks of how her novel reminds her of times when she was happy and content: " I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words which found no true echo in my heart" (xxvi). After she had written Frankenstein, Shelley suffered four miscarriages and the loss of her husband. She was still very young at the time, and she never fully recovered from her grief. In her novel on Mary Shelley, Anne Mellor writes, "Her frequent brushes with death-- the losses of four children, of her husband, and of [friends]-- left her fatalistic and chronically depressed, excessively anxious for [her son's] health and welfare, and prone to an intense loneliness which she felt unable to alleviate" (Mellor 183). In a way, this work is so central to her life because she produced it when she was in the prime of her life. She was in love, doing her best writing, and simply enjoying life. However, it is bittersweet for Shelley, because it also reminds her of everything that she has lost. Victor is very much the same. After he creates his monster, his life is never the same. He eventually loses everybody that ever meant anything to him. Sadly, he is fully aware of his role in this tragedy, and says, "I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be--a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself" (288). This quotation from Frankenstein is evidence of the devastation that he has caused himself by the creation of his monster. When he says that "the bolt has entered my soul", he means that he has created his monster, and he now has to "survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be--a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity." Frankenstein perceives his survival as his punishment for his actions, and understands that he is to suffer for what he has done.

Both Shelley and Frankenstein feed off of creation and construction. Mary Shelley wanted her writing to impact her literary genre, while Victor hoped to change the world of science as he knew it. In her introduction of Frankenstein, Shelley mentions the competition from which Frankenstein was born. Whilst vacationing in Switzerland with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley they contended to create the best ghost story, and Shelley soon became serious about the mission. She says, "I busied myself to think of a story--a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror--one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart" (xxiii-xxiv). Mary's zeal for writing the perfect ghost story was just the beginning. At this point, she was exhilarated to be formulating her own brand and style of prose. No longer would she be forgotten amongst her Romantic peers. Says Mellor, "She felt a compulsion to write, a compulsion that was as much external as internal. When Byron proposed that they each write a ghost story for their common amusement, no one but Mary Shelley took him terribly seriously" (Mellor 53). Victor Frankenstein was even more intense in his aspirations. When he is telling his story to Walton, he recounts his youthful enthusiasm and professes, "Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into