Their love is alive

The question of whether Mary alone wrote the novel,however,would not die. The answer matters,and not only because scholars who once regarded Frankenstein as merely a potboiler now consider it a progenitor of science fiction,a monument of Romantic literature,and a landmark text in gender studies. The answer matters because Frankenstein so beautifully explores the consequences of living and working in isolation. After cloistering himself to bring dead flesh to life,Victor Frankenstein condemns his creature to loneliness. The creature does the same to him in revenge. Solitude makes monsters of both.

Few people did more to promote the archetype of the independent Romantic hero than Percy Shelley. It turns out,though,that he was a conscientious helpmate. By examining Marys original drafts,Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson identified Percys contributions to Frankenstein and,in 1996,edited a reproduction of Marys notebooks. Now he has published The Original Frankenstein; or,The Modern Prometheus,by Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley. The first part of the new book highlights Percys edits and the second reveals Marys lone voice. The novel was conceived and mainly written by Mary Shelley, Robinson writes in his introduction,but he estimates that Percy wrote at least 4,000 to 5,000 words of the 72,000 total. Many of Percys fixes are minor. Some are good,some bad. Percy may have corrected Marys parallel constructions,but he also mucked up her more straightforward language. Smallness became minuteness. I did not despair became I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed.

Yet he also helped with some of the novels most moving lines: the monsters appeal to his creator for affection. Remember that I am thy creatureThy Adamor rather the fallen angel for every where I see bliss while I alome sic am irrecoverably wretched, Mary had written. Percy altered it: Remember that I am thy creatureI ought to be thy Adambut I am rather the fallen angel,whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed; everywhere I see bliss from which I alone am irrevocably excluded.

Mary Shelley knew something about loneliness and abandonment. Her mother,Mary Wollstonecraft,author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women,died giving birth to her,and her stepmother was a woman I shudder to think of, Mary wrote. At 16,Mary fell in love with Percy Shelley,an aristocrat by birth and atheist by declaration,a rebel at every chance. They ran off together. There was already a Mrs Shelley: Harriet,mother of Percys two-year-old daughter and pregnant again. The period of writing Frankenstein was typically chaotic. In the summer of 1816,Percy was again fleeing his creditors. In late December,Mary married Percy and was soon pregnantfor the third time in three years.

Frankenstein is commonly considered a parable about the dangers of scientific inquiry,mostly because film and stage adaptations tend to portray the scientist as an evil maniac and the monster as a dumb brute. The novel is much more complex. Its no accident that Frankenstein shares certain features with Percy Shelley. Frankenstein is a kind of artist,as well as a composite of the eras well-known scientists. But Mary also captured the fear surrounding scientific exploration: if man can manipulate nature like a machine,what becomes of the soul? Chemistry and biology must be only half the storyhalf the human,one might say. Frankenstein is an argument between reason and emotion,nature and civilisation,the divided self. Frankensteins radical suggestion is that it doesnt take God to heal the rift. It takes the loyalty and love of another person.

Years later,Mary called Frankenstein the offspring of happy days. Her happy days were soon overby the time she was 25,three of her four children were dead,and so was her husband. When she wrote Frankenstein,however,she was not alone. And neither was Percy Shelley.