Listen to the episode here.

Join us as Theresa kicks off the spooky season by sharing the origins of her favorite book, Frankenstein. She takes us through all the scientific advancements leading to the creation of the favorite creature. From resuscitating drowning victims to using electricity to generate muscle spasms in corpses, science hinted that reanimating the dead was just around the corner.

Theresa also shares some of the darker parts of Mary Shelley’s life that added additional color to the horror and grief in the book.

This episode pairs well with:
The Casquette Girls of New Orleans

Transcript:

Theresa: Hi and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast. The podcast where two compulsive nut jobs became friends because one of them sent the other a very inappropriate meme and the other one has very questionable boundaries. And then we decided to come close, tell each other history stories we’ve only recently learned. I’m host one in appropriate meme share. I’m Teresa.

Angie: And that’s questionable boundaries. I’m questionable boundaries. I’m Angie. I was going to ask them to guess which one is which but you blew it.

Theresa: No I did. I have a feeling they know us well enough because I really think that had I known you this well I would not have sent the meme I sent. Give it a minute.

Angie: It worked, didn’t it? It did work. It did us why we became friends. I received a very sketchy text message and was like this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. Love this human. Friend. Yeah. So now you know how I picked my friends. Yep.

Theresa: If you two would like to make questionable choices that is Angie.badboundaries at unhinged.gov.

Angie: Dot gov. I love that. That’s yeah. Good. I like what you’re doing.

Theresa: I think whoever has that address is going to really hate me. God bless them. Thoughts and prayers. You know I should probably put my needlework down and look and see who goes first. I think it’s me.

Angie: You think it’s you? Yeah I have the doc. Let me I’ll just tell you for sure. I’m scrolling scrolling scrolling. I’m lying. I have a different doc up.

Theresa: I it’s me because you went first last week with Eliza Bowen Jumel and then I went and told you the story of Seidl Musashebo Benke.

Angie: So wouldn’t that mean I go first this week? You went first last week.

Theresa: Do you want to go first two weeks in a row?

Angie: I’ll I’ll fight you. I have a whole story.

Theresa: Like I have a whole hour story. I probably have a whole hour story too. So I guess I’ll just go then. Okay I’ll sit here and hang out. Okay I am going to tell you because we are now officially in spooky season I’m going to tell you the origins of Frankenstein.

Love this. Okay my sources the Science Museum blog the science behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein by Katie Croson. The Shawnee or Say Wonnie review volume 89 number one winner of 1981. The article is entitled Science Frankenstein and Myth by Theodore Zulkowski Oxford University they have a timeline on Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s life and the podcast entitled opinions about life and literature.

Mary Shelley is a dissenting voice Inga Pearson on Frankenstein and the age of science. Who buddy? That’s a lot. I had some fun. Frankenstein is one of my favorite books. I used to read it every year. I have I got myself down to one copy of Frankenstein because I would move not find it and go buy another one and then get all of my books unpacked and go oh look I’ve got three.

Angie: I think I have three copies of the hot one for red October.

Theresa: I have zero I’ve never read it. I’ve seen Sean Funnery play a Russian.

Angie: Yeah a scotch man with a list play a Russian and he killed it in the only way a B movie could be you know. Yeah yeah I only have three copies because my mom kept buying I’m thinking that I didn’t have the first one.

Theresa: I kind of like that that’s a very sweet move. Like what do you need for Christmas? Mom actually I’d love a copy of the hunt for red October. Wow that’s a great book. I’m surprised you don’t own a copy. I will get you one.

Angie: I also have multiple copies of Clive Cluster books because of that.

Theresa: You know what all of this checks all of this check. Okay so are you ready? Yes. First off we don’t necessarily recognize this in our timeline modern timeline because we are so there’s so much time between now and say 1797 we don’t recognize the literary rock stars that Mary Shelley’s parents were. Okay so we have her father William Godwin and her mother Mary Wulston Kraft Godwin.

They are both like the who’s who. Okay now August 1797 Mary Wulston Kraft Godwin she’s born in London. She is now okay Mary Wulston Kraft is an incredible feminist. That needs to be said.

Yes she is. Now when Mary’s 10 days old her mom passes away. Why? Because there’s a little bit of placenta lodged up in this woman’s uterus doesn’t quite pass causes a massive infection. Mary passes. Now Mary has an older sister half sibling named Francis Imlay and she’s known as Fannie. Fannie is from an illegitimate relationship that’s before William Godwin.

Angie: Oh okay so a legitimate relationship on mom’s side. Yeah yeah yeah.

Theresa: Yeah okay. Apparently both parents kind of believed in free love. I love this for them. Okay so this is kind of one of those little pens to put in the back of your brain because there’s like a lot of like later on one passing line where Fannie matters. This isn’t it but I need to introduce Fannie now so later on you can be like oh okay.

Got it. Okay so 1801 William Godwin Marys a widow named Mary Jane Claremont. There’s so many Marys in this story. Okay so William Marys Mary because he’s already got the towels embroidered you know why change a good thing and Mary.

Angie: He never has to learn a new name. That’s true. Ian told me once that he only dates girls whose names are Angie so he never messes it up.

Theresa: Okay so this is a side story for you. When my child was like three she looks at Mike and she says you’re my favorite dad and he looks back at her and he says well how many are there. He looks at me like I’m gonna catch you out. I’m gonna catch you out right now.

I’m gonna learn. And she goes I’ve got 11. You got 11 dads. What are their names? They’re all named Mike. And he looks at me like I’ve got a type. Mike’s? And so like that was hilarious so that is now family lore.

Speaker 4: Okay but anyhow I’ll wish the Mike’s to the Marys.

Theresa: They all start with them. They all start with them. Mary Jane Claremont moves in. She’s got two kiddos. She’s got Charles and Claire. Mary is going to have constant conflict with her stepmom.

Angie: Okay Mary Shelley not Mary stepmom. Oh my god.

Theresa: I know do you see? I know. Yep now she as she’s growing up she is brouaciously reading her mother’s works. And so like she is probably over indexing mom’s thoughts because mom’s not there.

Right. Okay now she also becomes aware that her mother was resuscitated after jumping into the Tames River and I am looking at you as I say it so you can hear the pronunciation in 1795. Now she’s resuscitated by the volunteers of the Royal Humane Society. Now this was a stab.

Angie: When you say that I’m assuming you are not meaning the dog group. I don’t believe so. Okay.

Theresa: I mean unless their mission changed it may have started one direction and went another. You know okay. Now the society is established by two doctors William Haas and Thomas Coggan Cognan Coggan and it’s that happened really like in 1774. It was originally named Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned. So apparently the Humane Society was just shorthand.

Angie: That’s a significantly easier name to remember. Yep. Like hey you’ve recently drowned. The whole society devoted to that. The Tames was a busy place. See any Phelanese I guess. You know. Honestly. Let this be a lesson.

Theresa: Now this was incredible because they had published information on how to resuscitate people with specially designed equipment. This equipment because we didn’t I don’t know if we really had CPR fully established at that point.

I don’t know. They pumped air into the lungs and they ended up so if you saved somebody you got a medal in Grave with Society’s motto. The motto was pre-adventure a little spark may yet lie hid. So the spark of life might still be there.

First of all carry on get it going. Now they have this weird machine. This machine might have been used to revive Mary Wollstonecraft. It had like a leather balloon and tubing. There’s also three stopper vials that contain brandy, a volatile alkali and these were presumably to be stimulants. Okay.

Okay. So they were really trying to do the things. Now Mary Wollstonecraft the daughter who would later go out to be Mary Shelley. She ends up growing up surrounded by all of these things that have happened in the past but there’s because her home is what it is she’s surrounded with the leading scientists, writers, politicians of the 18th century. This is her living room.

Okay. She takes a keen interest in science reading and attending lectures. She’s like really leaning into these cutting edge scientific theories today and it’s during these periods that there’s debates raging about the boundaries between life and death and whether these matters should be probed in the first place.

Angie: Okay. So we are still fighting this debate.

Theresa: Yep. But I mean imagine you’re coming in on it. Your mother is dead but you already know that she’s been revived. Right. Yeah. Okay. So she’s gone through the resuscitation process. So now you’re like okay. So this line is very blurry to you. It moves.

Angie: Yeah. Like how long do you have to be dead where it doesn’t work anymore?

Theresa: And these are the thoughts that are going to be rattling around in the back of her brain. Now there is as these debates are taking place.

Angie: I think that’s the word you’re going for. Yes.

Theresa: There is something that’s happening. It’s like the life principle that debate is happening between William Apernethi and William Lawrence of Royal College of Surgeons. And this is about like what is the human life force? Like basically what is that animating principle? Now Apernethi he argues that there’s this vital spark that is super at its material body to animate it. Like this is the soul.

It’s kind of like the clock starts ticking after it’s been wound up. Okay. Okay. Now Lawrence is arguing that life just kind of exists. It’s through all of its functioning parts. So he says like part of the same whole trying to extricate life and the body is like trying extracting an egg from a baked cake. Like it’s just there. All right. Like I mean I don’t know if we have fully figured that out. I think we understand quite a bit but I think we get to a certain point we go. They just gave up the goat.

I agree. But I’m literally. I didn’t go to the medical school so who am I? So we have all this going on. Now I get to get into galvanism. Do you know what galvanism is?

Angie: I’ve heard it before but I’m going to tell you just explain it to me because I’m thinking I don’t. Okay.

Theresa: So there is this newly discovered force of electricity. Okay. And the experiments to test whether electricity itself can be what reanimates somebody. Right. Okay. Okay. We have Luigi Galvani. He’s a surgeon at the University of Bologna and he’s experimenting with animals and electricity in January of 1791. Okay. Yeah. Long story short. He’s dissecting a frog. He’s near a static electricity machine and touched a scalpel to the frog’s leg and the leg jerks. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Further experiments he’s convinced that the muscle tissue spasmed because it had direct content with the current. Now he doesn’t announce this discovery for 10 years until 1791 and he publishes an essay entitled De Virbius. I should have just put this all. I’m just going to say it in English because I’m going to butcher so much else.

The commentary on the effect of electricity of muscular motion. Okay. That’s what I should have just said and tried to skip that first chunk of Italian that was not Italian. Apologies to the ears I have offended. The essay argued that animal tissue contained an inherent force which is a form of electricity that flowed from nerves to muscle tissue and he named this force animal electricity.

Okay. And he creates what he calls a frog pistol. Which I love this is not a sentence I thought I would ever write down. It looks like a ray gun from some science steam punk movie.

Love this. And he uses it to try to start to animate tissue. Okay.

But where he stops his nephew starts because we have Giovanni Aldini and he took these experiments further by trying to animate human corpses. Previous. I love it. You see where my brain is going. Yeah. Okay. So he tours Europe with these demonstrations and he goes to the infamous Newgate prison in London in 1803. Now up until 1832 it’s illegal to procure human cadavers for dissection unless you’re using executed murderers.

Angie: So he’s got. Of course it does. That makes all the sense.

Theresa: I mean look you’re not going to dig up somebody’s ante and start using her to like a career man on.

Angie: That would be so weird if it actually worked. Danny and he showed up to tea tomorrow.

Theresa: You know it might make things a little bit questionable about what happened. Why is my tea set out? Why do you have my tea set? What are you doing? Yeah.

Angie: Warned you last week. Yeah. So okay.

Theresa: He has to go to Newgate for these experiments because it’s illegal to just experiment on anybody.

Angie: Right. You got to get the executed criminals. Yep. Now at one point. Which honestly if that works that seems like really counterproductive. We executed you the first time.

Theresa: We brought you back. You hung me until dead. I was dead. I’m not dead anymore. Ergo I have fulfilled my service.

Angie: Good bye. John knows exact reasoning. Good day to you sir. Right. Yeah.

Theresa: Well Aldini inserts Metal Rods into the corpse of George Foster and the Newgate calendar recounts that the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted and one eye was actually opened. I hate all of it. Could you imagine being there?

Angie: Honestly I don’t hate it as much as Terere.

Theresa: I’ll try harder because I’m too busy imagining this smell and a single eye opening and I’d be like nope I’m out.

Angie: I’m out. Deuce has unplugged me. Yeah.

Theresa: Like I know I’m on shift till three but I’m done. Yeah.

Angie: Good bye. My mom is calling. I gotta go.

Theresa: Yeah. Yeah I think I left a fork in the microwave. I’ll see you tomorrow. The live loft test for best. So okay this as this is going on in a subsequent part the right hand raised and clenched and the legs and thighs were set in motion. I don’t know if that means that they I’m sure that just means that they jerked and not that they pedaled and like he was doing bicyclers like he was doing his ab workout.

Angie: Okay because I saw bicycling. That’s what I saw happening.

Theresa: I really I the way it reads is bicycling but I think what likely happened was simply the jerking and shaking. Movement.

Angie: Yes. Yeah yeah okay.

Theresa: Now the experiment obviously creates public sensation. Everyone’s talking about it. And there’s widespread reporting of it in all kinds of newspapers including the times. Now people thought that this start was that was the start of the technology that’s going to bring the dead fully back to life. And they’re looking at this as I think anybody would a troubling and shocking concept.

Which makes sense to me. Like these are the conversations you have when you realize test you babies are now a thing. We don’t even need to involve the act of procreation.

We can do it in the lab. Now what is the ethics? Are these babies going to be born with souls? Right.

You and I both know these babies will indeed be born with souls or whatever you know. But we’re close enough to that act that we can understand the conversations that happened. Yeah absolutely. Okay.

Angie: Some things. Now all of that.

Speaker 4: Where was I in my notes?

Theresa: This was indeed the closest men of science really had like so they’re thinking about all of this. They’re talking about bringing the dead back to life and this has a huge impact on young Mary Wolfe’s and Kraft’s child of Mary not step mom. Future Mary Shelley. I think that’s the easiest way to refer to her. Yeah. Agreed. And she keeps she latches on to the concept of electricity being the spark of being that Frankenstein would use to bring his creature to life. Okay. Now one friend of Mary Shelley’s father, a man named Humphrey Davy, he’s a famous chemist and he carried out tons of experimental work on electricity.

He’s lecturing and his lectures he’s doing are famous and there’s hundreds of people including many women and that part excited me who would cram themselves into lecture theaters to see him speak and demonstrate experiments.

Angie: Okay. That’s cool. Love this. So as always had a fascination with the macabre. I don’t care what anybody says. I mean.

Theresa: It’s I think to me it’s the most fascinating. Like I don’t want to deal with flower arranging. I want to know, ooh, what did that why? Why did that happen? You know, you ask questions with that as opposed to.

Angie: Oh, I arranged my flowers. I’m going to ask these questions. Yeah, exactly.

Theresa: Now there’s some debate between this next bit right like either between November of 1812 or March of 1814. Mary first meets Percy by Shelley. Now, okay. Percy’s a young poet. He admires Mary’s father. He’s five years older than Mary and he’s currently married to a woman named Harriet Westbrook.

Okay. Now, if it’s March 1814, Mary 16. If it’s 1812, she’s 14. Either way, we’re still a little young. So 18 versus 21 and Shelley is Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary.

Okay. Now that I’ve drummed that or beat that drum, Godwin, he is really kind of hurting for cash. And so he’s telling like, he’s like, okay, we want family, huddle up, huddle up family meeting time. We were going to have Percy come over. We want to make a good impression on him. We want him to stay coming over because he’s a young poet. And so we need to get alone as a baronette so we can sidestep this whole poverty motion that we’re in full swing.

So now we’ve established that. Let the man in, dress up, stand at the foot of the stairs. Now, okay. Be pretty.

Do the same. Yep. Now our dude, Percy Shelley, he has kind of a punk rock mindset as we would see him now. Right. It’s hard to think of that in the early 1800s.

Yeah, here we are. So if Shelley’s indeed 16 when they meet, it’s only a few months later that Shelley runs off with Percy. Mary Shelley runs off with Percy.

See what I mean? Like there’s too many Marys. This is now there’s two Shelleys.

There is no new names in this. Honestly, it’s a foresighted die and I’m just rolling it and just being like, well, I’m going to say Mary. I’m going to say Shelley. Godwin.

I got Godwin one time. Yeah. Well, technically everybody Mary’s in or is born at Godwin except for Percy. Anyhow, anyhow, carry on.

That’s true. So as Mary and Percy meet and run off to Europe after they, you know, fall in love, her step sister, Claire, goes with him, despite her mother’s rage and probably also incurring more step mom rage. Yeah, okay. Because Claire is just, you know what? You guys are going to go off and have a great time.

Why shouldn’t I come? This sounds like a great bit. Now, I love this. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. She becomes pregnant almost immediately. Of course. And William Godwin, daddy dearest is furious. So furious he refuses to see his own daughter for two years. Well, okay. That is, those are some big feelings.

He’s entitled to them. I’m sure stepmom didn’t make things any better. Yeah, I would have that feeling. But it’s later, the year that they run off, that it’s in August, they run off in June, Mary and Percy run out of money after traveling in Europe. And Percy has to keep changing addresses to avoid debt collectors.

Angie: Oh, no.

Theresa: Okay. So, he’s that kind of guy and I think that makes it hilarious that Daddy Dearest wanted everyone to make, make nice so that he could get money out of them. When we come to find out, he’s just a good for nothing rate. Just as broke.

Yep. So, February of 1815, she gives birth to their first child, Clara. The baby’s premature and dies a few days later.

Mary’s diary recounts a dream that she has where the baby comes back to life when the baby’s warm by a fire. Which I find heartbreaking. Of course. Yeah.

January of 1816. So, 11 months later, she gives birth to their second child, William, nicknamed Willmouse. Okay. It’s kind of cute. It is adorable. It’s June of 1816.

She and Percy Shelley stayed with Lord Byron and his physician, John Polidori at Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva. This is my favorite part of the story. Because you know it’s coming?

Yeah. It is a wet, uncongenial summer, according to Mary. It’s got some long, unusually dark days. Unbeknownst to Lord Byron and his party, everybody else, the unseasonable weather. It’s the coldest in recorded history up to that point.

Okay. It was the year without summer. It’s caused by a volcanic eruption at Mount Taborra in Indonesia the previous year, which caused massive climate change. Now, we’re going to put a pen in that because I need to expand the timeline before I zoom back into the summer. Okay. October, 1816, Mary’s half-sister, Fanny Imley, who is older than her, commits suicide by loddenum overdose at age 22. I hate that for her. December, 1816, Shelly’s 21-year-old wife, Percy Shelly’s 21-year-old wife, Harriet Westbrook is found dead in London’s Serpentine River.

Angie: Oh, right, because he didn’t get a divorce. He just ran off with the C.R. Mistress. Exactly. Right, okay.

Theresa: She was pregnant with her third child, which was probably illegitimate.

Angie: Well, yeah, because she’s been gone. Yeah, he wasn’t there at the time. Yeah, okay. That’s sad. That made me sad. That made me sad, okay.

Theresa: 15 days after discovering Percy’s wife has died, Percy and Mary get married in London.

Angie: Okay. She super mourned her, didn’t he?

Theresa: You know what? Yeah, he mourned her from afar, and thank goodness he had somebody else to get under to get over her. By the time Percy and Mary get married, she’s pregnant with their third child. Well, okay. Percy was good at one thing.

They’re busy. No, it’s also about this time she reconciles with her dad. Oh, that’s good. Okay.

Okay. In May of 1817, she’d finished writing Frankenstein, so now that we know all of that, I’m going to zip back to the summer of 1816. So that really cold summer, Lake Geneva, there’s still snow on the cabin or on the mountain. They’d stayed in Byron’s cabin, and they were ecstatic because Milton had also stayed there. Like John Milton? Milton is in Paradise Lost. Yeah, that’s John Milton. Okay. I remember his first name, and I didn’t know him that well, so I was just like, I’m just going to fast forward.

Angie: We’ve only met. We’ve only just met. You know, I don’t call him Jack because we’re not that close. I don’t want to be too formal or too informal.

Theresa: So they’re all excited with this concept, right? Claire, the step-sister. She’s also on this trip. She’s absolutely thrilled because she is enthralled with Lord Byron.

Angie: Okay, because who’s not? Let’s be honest.

Theresa: I mean, you could either be with Shelly, who is a chump when he’s, I mean, he just, he sounds like a playboy. Byron, probably also a playboy, but I mean, he brought a bear at one point to some event. Like, you know what I mean? Like, this is the level of chaos they’re working with. Now, Byron’s personal physician, Dr. John Palladori, he is paid to secretly report on Byron to basically the modern or the previous days, the past days, like paparazzi. Like, that is the, he’s writing this and sending it out so everybody can keep it for the rest of the shenanigans.

He’s also the personal physician, as I said. Now, they’re all cooped up in this cold cabin on this supposedly summer day, talking about evolution, scientific discovery, what life is, and what is the animating principles if it’s not God? And Mary keeps dreaming about dead kids. That’s devastating.

It is, but I think this is just part of how she’s processing everything. You know that makes sense. So, as they’re all sitting by a fire, Byron proposes that every person in the party needs to write a ghost story. And Shelly would later recount in her 1831 introduction to Frankenstein how one evening, the group discussed the boundaries of life and death that perhaps a corpse could be reanimated. Galvanism had given token of such things. And when they were tired to bed, she recalls having a waking dream.

And, okay, every single podcast, every single article mentions this next bit. I saw the pale student of unhollowed arts kneeling beside the thing he put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out and then working on some powerful engine show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. That’s so good. That’s so good. Now, here’s where I take a little bit of a sidestep. Fun side story. As a student at Eaton, Percy Shelly had almost electrocuted himself in an attempt to reproduce Ben Franklin’s experiment with a kite.

Of course he did, because who wouldn’t? And why did it need to go in that part of the story? Unclear, but I needed to tell you that because it was in my brain, so it needs to live in yours.

Angie: Of course. I’m happy to hold space.

Theresa: As they’re putting together their ghost stories that they’re going to tell, John Pallidori, he writes a story about a vampire and that ends up selling pretty well during its time. So we all know Frankenstein, but there was a vampire myth that we all neglected to pick up because it wasn’t sitting on the shelf next to Frankenstein.

Where it should have been. I mean, I think that they should go together in some sort of side-by-side compendium. I don’t think it’s probably anywhere near as good, but I do kind of want to read what was happening right next to it. It’s good.

Angie: Can confirm. You’ve read it? Mm-hmm. Oh, my thesis paper was on Dracula. I have read everything.

Theresa: Okay. I am behind. So as we’re thinking about this, I think it’s important to recognize that we have a book written by Byron called Prometheus Unbound. Because if you look at the title of Frankenstein, it’s the modern Prometheus. Mm-hmm.

So she’s pulling all of these threads as she’s writing it. And as we’re thinking about this, I want to kind of sidestep and go into the psychology of the creature. So the podcast that I mentioned is out of Stanford. And they’re talking about how Frankenstein’s image is set in such a particular way that at the time, in the ethos of the lifestyle they’re living in, they’re operating like one of the prevailing thoughts that I didn’t go too deep into was Edmundsburg’s theory of beauty causing revulsion by the doctor.

Okay. Because there’s this theory of sublimity. Sublimity? Sublimity?

I can’t sit. Like how important landscape is. And when you read through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, you see the icy landscapes and how subliminal, that’s what I’m trying to get to, those are and how that impacts the psyche. But then there’s, he’s the same guy who talks about how the subliminal landscape works. He also has a theory about beauty. And we see this, this idea that his limbs are proportional. He’s got white teeth.

He’s described as having luxurious black hair, but his skin barely contained arteries and organic chaos. Right. So it is great up into a point. And then that one point is just not quite right. So the entire thing is so wrong. It’s this uncanny valley.

And yeah, okay. When the book describes Elizabeth’s eyes, their cloudless blue eyes, but the creature has a doll yellow eye. And when it opens, it’s got this watery nature that’s nearly the same color of the doll’s sockets, which they’re set inside. So the organic versus the manufactured and how that is so close yet so far. And all this is happening as they’re talking about what happens when God is excluded. And is it God that provides the soul or beauty? Or are you hoping that you’re just going to put all the pieces together, touch it with electricity and God will make it beautiful.

The electricity will, the animating feature will cause it to be seductive, alluring. Yeah. Now, as all of this is happening, Dr. Frankenstein is pursuing the creation of this ideal being. He’s selecting his features as beautiful, but he’s appalled by this monstrosity of his creation. Frankenstein, the creator, not the creation, overreaches in his scientific endeavor because he’s taking the role of creator which Shelley’s contemporaries believed is reserved for God and God alone. And by overstepping these bounds, this is where he’s truly f’d up.

Angie: And it really kind of. He f’d around and found out. He pretty much, right?

Theresa: And so it really kind of made me think quite a bit about androids and the uncanny valley and dolls and their effects on us. And it is, you know, a very similar thing where it’s so close yet so it’s not right because it’s not quite there. We’re missing one piece. And then another part of the book that seemed to make sense and I kind of want to bring back as we think about Mary Shelley and how she wrote this. We have a character when Frankenstein goes, the creature goes into the mountains and he’s staying hidden in the shed that’s attached to the house that’s ran by the Delaysies, Delances. I should have written that down.

Angie: But the family that he. Yeah. Okay.

Theresa: Yeah. There’s a woman who woman’s safety who comes in to the picture and she is the young man’s love interest. She doesn’t know English. She is well educated. She is Arab. And so they are teaching her their culture, their language and through extension teaching the creature. Right.

Angie: That was actually my favorite part of the whole book.

Theresa: Mine too. Because you can kind of like it was a brilliant device to really show how all this would happen. In this case, how safety education educates the creature. It mirrors how Mary probably felt her education came to be because she got her education from her mother, but not through her mother directly. You know, that makes sense.

And so she’s getting this imparted and Mary, Mary’s mother is set to believe that motherhood required rational thought and they needed to be equal to that of their spouses and their partners. And that was not a prevailing thought at the time. Absolutely not.

Yeah. But she’s like to be a mom. You got to think critically because these little kids are going to try to kill themselves. You got to be five steps ahead of them.

Angie: Like all the time. Yeah.

Theresa: Now Mary, future Mary Shelley, she’s smart, but she’s never formally educated. She’s just kind of allowed to Montessori her way through life. Okay. To the point where as smart as she is, as well thought through as she does things, she requires Byron to help her because she doesn’t know how to where to put a comma. She’s never been taught.

Like she reads, she knows what a comma is, but as to where it goes, she needs the money. Right. Yeah.

She’s someone to come in behind her bill. Wow. You know, literally we put it here.

Yeah. And that part, like, so there’s a lot of debate, mostly based in chauvinism, where people think that Byron maybe did more than just say a little bit of editing because of, well, how would a woman write that? How would a woman create an entire genre? And it’s like, well, you know, when you look at your smart, apparently, but looking at like the iterations, like he changes some of the meaning because she has the tone of her writing is very straight. And matter of fact, she doesn’t build the lily.

Angie: She’s very direct. The whole time I was reading it, like we are just getting to the point. Right. Hey, yeah. Yeah. I did appreciate that for a lot of the other stuff that I’ve read that is just circling around the topic. Yep.

Theresa: Like, yeah. Okay. And whenever we see evidence of Byron’s editing, he tends to circumvent it a little bit. He tends to make the writing a bit more ambiguous, which is great.

But when you compare and contrast, you can see where his influence was as a result. Now. Right.

Okay. He as a person, as much as he loved screwing everything with two legs, he wants maybe even some with one. I mean, I really feel he probably wouldn’t discriminate.

Yeah. He believes in trying to liberate women and marry like Mary, particularly like, hey, I want you to be able to do everything you want to do. I want to make sure that you, because you are equal to me.

You’re smart. You know, so he really champions her there. He also wants to try to liberate his sisters and he tries to, but he fails at that before his wife dies. He invites them to live with Mary and him because he wants to make sure she feels liberated to. It’s weird, but I can appreciate it.

Angie: Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, no, I can see it because it kind of makes sense if you’ve been sort of mentoring this young lady along, right? And you kind of have this, for lack of a better word, you feel responsible to invite her into your home to continue that would make sense, especially at that time. And when you think about who Lord Byron is. Yeah.

Theresa: Well, yeah, no, I got him. So all of this, right? Now, I should have put this earlier. One of the things that I didn’t fully catch at the time that was mentioned in the podcast, when the creature is learning from safety’s education, he’s learning French, which is the cultured language at the time, even though we’re reading it in English, which would imply that at some time later he picks up English as well. And I hadn’t fully made that connection.

Angie: Neither did I until just now. Right. Because we read it in English, but I like I knew he was learning French. Yeah. Oh, how funny. Our unreliable narrator did not tell us. Amen. When you learn English.

Theresa: Now, another thing that I found fascinating is we think of the creature opening its eyes. We think of how important eyes are in the story. The doll yellow eye. Mary knew about creatures opening their eyes for the first time. She’d witnessed babies being born. She’d experienced that moment. And that was fascinating to me to think about it through the eyes of a mom witnessing birth and life coming to be. And then seeing the scene of Victor being repulsed by his creature. Yeah. And how that is so counter to that moment.

Angie: Yeah, because as a mother, as soon as you see that creation, it’s like kind of the best thing ever. Yeah. Like you at that point, they can do no wrong, right? They’ve just come into existence and yeah, they’re perfect.

Theresa: They have that moment of absolute repelling this repellent like repulsion. Yeah. It’s just a very interesting thing. And yeah, it’s fascinating from the eyes of a mom. Now, we also think about Victor. He’s educated at Ingolstadt in STEM. They only do them. They’re not touching humanities. They’re not touching philosophy. He’s not getting any of that liberal arts education.

He’s learning. Here’s the mechanics. Right.

And here’s the math. She spent her time thinking about the why, the how, the and then what? Yeah. And so she’s coming at it from a very different angle, having interfaced with the scientists, having talked to those and sat in the lectures. Yeah. That’s interesting.

And that that really kind of like made me kind of go, oh, so it just showed how she viewed a purely STEM education as lacking. You’re not a well-rounded individual without thinking through to quote, Jurassic Park. You spend all this time. I can’t think about the first thing, but you never thought about if you should. Yeah.

Angie: You you spent so much time trying to figure out if you could. You didn’t think about whether or not you should. Yeah. Yeah.

Theresa: And I think that’s, you know, that kind of comes back here. Now Byron, when he wrote Prometheus Unbound, Prometheus is this hero. He’s a champion of liberty. But with Shelley, Prometheus is a failure because Prometheus here is Victor Frankenstein and his creation undermined his entire existence. Yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, yeah, seeing him as the modern Prometheus, that was that was an intentional set of wording.

Angie: That’s so good. Well done. Well done on her part.

Theresa: And it’s without recognizing she wrote it sitting next to or the idea germinated sitting next to the man who wrote Prometheus Unbound. That word Prometheus, that was an intentional poke. And then I’ll end it on the.

Angie: Something tells me he loved it though, because all attention is good attention.

Theresa: Oh, I can’t imagine that guy. You could slap him with a shovel and he’d probably be like, I liked it.

Angie: Do it again. This time with feeling.

Speaker 4: Other side. There you go.

Theresa: Yeah. Get my good side. But yeah, no, I mean, I, okay, so. I feel like I basically just rambled about the origins of Frankenstein because I’ve enjoyed it. And so it’s just like, and then there’s this and then there’s that and here’s this rabbit hole. But I mean, like there was there was a quote that came up that I wanted to end on and it was if Victor Frankenstein had not been overcome by his initial disgust. If he had responded to his creature with love and understanding, it might have become an instrument of good rather than evil.

Angie: Could easily have been all the creature wanted was a companion. Like he wanted something to love. Yeah, that was my main take from the entire book was like, I think that’s why I enjoyed the part where he was with the family in the shed or the walls or in the shed. Yeah.

Yeah. However, it’s described for some reason when I read it, I knew it was like this space attached to the house, but I kept thinking he was inside the wall. I was like, how did you fit in there? Like I knew I read it wrong, but that was the way my visuals for it worked.

Theresa: You didn’t have a shed attached to the house so you made it work in your brain and it was it was even more terrifying.

Angie: Yes. Like did you just pull the outer wall up and like lay in there? Okay. Creepy place this for you.

Theresa: Okay, but that is the story of the origins of Frankenstein as many rapid trails as that was loosely put into kind of a narrative format. It was me just kind of word dumping on where my brain wanted to go.

Angie: Live your truth, man. I’m here for word dumping on where your brain wants to go. Yeah.

Theresa: So if you’re, if you’ve enjoyed this, Mary Robb, you’re wondering if Angie’s going to tell a more cohesive story. Me too. But send this to your favorite would be mad scientist. And on that note, goodbye. Bye.

Theresa: You