FOR THE FORSAKEN AND THE DAMNED

Oh, what a dreary day. How lonesome, how bleak for the deprived and forsaken. My heart it weeps as I mournfully drown my sorrows in the tragedy that is the life of one of the greatest minds of history. Young Mary, painfully misunderstood Mary, a genius whose work is recalled in almost every high school English class in America to this day. I would argue every one of those teachers should be fired. I too sat in the dim lit prison cells as my teacher would ramble endlessly regarding the parallels the “monster” had within the pages of dear Mary’s work Frankenstein. He would scoff and drawl on about the dangers of the overuse of science. My fingers would curl in rage as I would fight the urge to protest.

Frankenstein is often taught as a work of fiction, a wonderous Halloween tale of a horrifying creature. But shall we pause and consider another angle to this story? Shall we consider that maybe, just maybe Frankenstein is not a work of fantastical literature at all, and might we draw the conclusion that instead this masterpiece is a feat of humanities and sciences, woven together to create the most devastating biography in credited history?

Mary Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on August 30,1797 to two philosophers, was predestined to have a mind of torment for a woman of this time. Her mother, Mary Godwin, an English writer and women’s rights advocate who is most notably known for her work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), died only 11 days after her sweet daughter was born (Central Square Theater, n.d.). The first of many crimes of God against Mary. She believed that women should not be placed above a man and likewise a man to a woman. As human beings we are of equal creation and are adequate in both mind and spirit.

Women of that time were not educated, Mary’s father and step- mother however owned a publishing firm in London, a playground for a child of fervor and a renowned need for knowledge. If only that pure child knew the terrors of man, of the darkness that would infect her veins and pool within her shattered heart. Mary would not grow up to live a fairytale. Her wicked step- mother did not lead her to a prince, it thrust her into the arms of a devil. Evil took human form in the body of Percy Shelley.

Mary, still only a child herself met Shelley who would ask for her father’s mentorship. He was a poet. A man of riddles and blurred morals. He was a deceiver, for you see Shelley was very well married. He had gone through with sacred matrimony with another woman, and together, they had borne a child. Vows seemed to be of no mind to a man in seek of only pleasure and self-indulgence. Shelley, the liar, the cheat, and the murderer. What should a man worry of such virtue when a man is held to no moral standard? “No man choses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks” (Frankenstein, 1818).

Let us not forget that while Mary was only but a child, she was not completely without fault. When her father refused to marry her off to the wretched and shallow Mr. Percy, they escaped together. For who can relinquish the claws of love that tear into the flesh of the young and inspired?

For a while, for a momentary fit of passion, the couple lived in blissful ecstasy, without worry, without consequence. But what can truly be made of a love that resides purely within the realms of lust? Who can cure the need a man has for more? Percy and Mary would give life to a child prematurely, who would fall ill and die only two weeks later. Mary would come to learn loss as a dear and devastating friend. Throughout her lifetime, she would lose three more children, and her older half-sister who would fall at her own hand.

Grief is a wild and malicious beast. Mary’s sister Claire would become a mother while Mary mourned the loss of a daughter, but she would come to learn the devastation of grief, of betrayal, at the hands of man. The story goes that the sisters, along with Mr. Percy, would travel to the manor of Lord Byron, a romantic and raging lunatic of a poet in that era, also the father of Claire’s child. There they would be tasked on a stormy and devilish night to write a ghost story.

This the world is well acquainted with, the tale that Mary Shelley would write entitled Frankenstein in a lucid dream of loss and turmoil and would be so beloved by bibliophiles and scholars around the world. She would write a creature so fearsome, so vile that his story would go down in history as the first horror novel ever composed, no less by a woman. But is that not a woman’s lot in life? Are we not creatures of the ash put together by men who are so acquainted with abandonment, only to be mistreated and misused at the hand of man once more? Might I be so bold to claim that the creature is not a frivolous monster at all, but instead Mary wrote him as if she had come face to face with her own tormented soul and was then tasked to put pen to paper?

A man’s love is a fleeting and unreliable thing. Mary find’s that to be more than true when Percy admits he is unfaithful to her. He wishes to live for pleasure and for indulgence, under the assumption as the daughter of a scandal herself she would understand. She is cast out, rejected, forsaken by her husband and by God. Disowned by her father and scandalized by gossip. She lost her child and her humanity at the same moment, her husband along with her heart. “The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.” A quote so famously noted from within the pages of her novel Frankensten. How can it be said that the creature is not the very heart and soul of the young woman who penned him? She wishes for love and for comfort when she is met with loss and anger.

Just as her very own sister was cast away at the hands of man herself. Abandoned, him without consequence, her with nothing but sorrow and rage, and the combination of their love that resided in her womb. Just as young Dr. Frankenstein creates life, only to retreat in fear at the consequences of his own actions. Oh- how altogether morbid! Oh -how dehumanizing and infuriating! “I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and a rage like the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge in another” (Frankenstein, 1818).

Mary writes the chapters of the creature with such passion, with such yearning. There is a maternal touch to her words that is so gut wrenching, you almost feel sorry for the poor thing. He has been left behind; at the hands of man, he has known grief and rejection. He speaks of himself without flattery and instead with the cadence of a self-conscious child. He refers to himself as “daemon” and “devil,” his outward appearance so hideous he is revolted at the sight himself. “It is hardly surprising that women concentrate on the way they look instead of what is in their minds since not much is put into their minds to begin with.” Although never provided a specific time in which she was known to have made this statement, this quote is widely understood to have come from the late Mary Shelley and outlines how women are regarded in society and the weight associated with appearance.

Beauty, oh -how drawn out! Oh- how meaningless to life, yet the only way for a young woman to live! Mary writes the creature’s inner dialogue as if she herself is speaking, after knowing the way of a man discarding their damaged goods like trash. Even after the manuscript was completed, Mr. Shelley is known to have put a pressure on his wife to do as he wishes, for he “created her” as an author. What a coincidence! What a disgusting claim to stake on the creator of life herself! Are women not the trees that produce the fruit while a man is only the seed? Does not a woman bear life as easily as she ties her laces?

Mary Shelley, created and destroyed at the hands of man, built up and depleted. Mary who knew only of children’s fairytales but would learn of horror and haunting nightmares. “What terrified me will terrify others; and need only describe the specter which had haunted my midnight pillow” (Frankenstein, 1831). The creature was within her that night. Within the cavities of her depraved and wild mind. In her nightmares, come unto her as a vision. But are our nightmares not still very much a part of our inmost being? Are they not visions of a life only revealed to us in the darkest and most vulnerable moments that we may leave ourselves as targets? The creature, the monster, the demon, the devil, villainized for centuries, just as Eve. Witch, whore, harlot, harridan, are women not provided with labels of shame and evil as well? Perhaps Shelley reflects a memoire for women of generations to find relation and comfort. Dr. Frankenstein, the coward, the abandoner, the perpetrator, victimized by men who cry at the injustice of what is consequence for one’s own actions. Oh- the horror! Oh- the inequity! Oh, but perhaps the world might come to sympathize with the neglect and see the work of Shelley as a plea for understanding, a tale of anguish and misfortune for the forsaken and the damned.

Jessica Walters is a 19 year old student at Grand Canyon University. She has been writing for practically her whole life and is published in the Whatcom County Public Library poem book, A Forest of Words. She has also been awarded first place in the prestigious essay competition in Whatcom County with her essay entitled, What Makes Our Veterans Great? She currently works for the magazine HerCampus as a writer and has three articles published. She is a lover of literature with a passion for knowledge.