Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of my all-time favorite classic novels and ironically, none of my English teachers ever had us read this book. (Thank goodness the education system of TX has rectified that; my sophomore students read this novel. Most of them don't get it or think it is dumb. Most of them also get bummed when they realize it isn't scary in the way they imagine the story to be. A select few will understand the plot line and the behind the scenes story once we talk about the Industrial Revolution and advances in medicine and science in my class, but most will half-ass the book like they do everything else and move on with their lives. Ah well.... at least they are reading it.)
I find it strange because I had to read Crime and Punishment by crazy Dostoyevsky (which is another of my favorite classics!), but not Frankenstein. Anywho, I ended up reading this one day by myself during college and just fell in love with it! I was incredibly surprised as to "who" exactly the monster was, mostly because what you see on TV or in theaters does NOT portray the characters accurately. I was impressed too, at the themes with which a young girl back in the early 1800s choose to address.
So I found this book in the library this past weekend called The Lady and her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, real life Dr. Frankenstein's and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece by Roseanne Montillo. I picked it up and found it fascinating!! It is non-fiction, and basically goes behind the scenes of Shelley's book, explaining in great detail the scientific, medical, philosophical and social ideas of the 1600s-1800s in Europe. Here are a few things I learned...
1. Medicine was down-right scary before the invention of penicillin in the early 1920s!!!
2. Most of the time, the local Dr. was also the local Vet. Even more often, the man was more familiar with animals than he was humans; therefore, he treated humans the same way he did animals, assuming our bodies were built and functioned the same way. Ah.... that is a huge no! Animals and humans are similar but NOT identical. Can you imagine being a woman giving birth and having the Dr. come to see you with his hands dirty from animal waste and germs? And! He wants to put his hands all around or in your personal, private parts?? God forbid your baby is having trouble coming out or needs to be turned!!! No wonder soo many women died from childbirth! Yah, it is a difficult process (or so I'm told), but most of the time, it should not be that life-threatening. However, when a dude sticks his nasty human and animal germs actually into your bodily fluids, you bet you are going to get a fever and some other awful disease or bleeding you cannot control!! According to the book, over half of the women never even sent for the Dr and if you have to call for one, death was imminent . They preferred female friends or midwives which naturally caused resentment by the Dr. who could not believe a woman was more informed than him on any kind of medical practice. Hence, the idea that women who were midwives or skilled in herbs and medicine were witches or had power from the Devil. Stupid, but understandable when the population does not understand medicine, theory of germs,or give credence to the intelligence of women.
3. Frankenstein is the name of an actual family in southern Germany (Bavaria), starting around the 1300s. The Frankenstein family ironically had a major feud with the Dracula family of Transylvania (Vlad the Impaler aka Count Dracula).
Frankenstein Family Castle
4. One of the most famous men of the Frankenstein family was St. George.... St. George Frankenstein, who became legend when he supposedly slayed a huge dragon to rescue a princess. In the original legend, St. George does not survive because he is pierced by the tail of a dragon, but he does rescue the princess and save the land. Today, St. George lives most of the time.. hehe!
5. Mary Shelley spent a week touring the area around the Frankenstein family of Germany, listening to their folklore, legends and marveling at the beauty of Bavaria. Her and her husband, Percy Shelley, then traveled to Switzerland. Most of the novel takes place in these two countries. She wrote the book almost immediately after returning to England from their trip.
6. The power of electricity was enormously popular to Europe and the USA during this time period. It was actually called "Galvanization" back then, because of the man who was able to attach electrical currents to dead bodies, both animal and human, and cause them to "come back to life" from the electrical charge that stimulated the nervous system.
7. Almost 95% of the time, criminals were used as cadavers for the anatomy schools being created. Criminals greatly feared their body being used for dissection because they knew the body would be cut into pieces and not properly buried. Dismembered bodies that were not buried would not be granted entrance into Heaven and their soul would be forced to wander the Earth: very common religious and pagan belief during this time period.
8. Another scary thought: almost 50% of the criminal bodies were NOT actually dead after the hangings. Hangings were the most common form of death during this time period, with torture often accompanying the criminal before hand. The criminal would wake up when the a
natomist sliced open their stomach on the dissection table- OUCH!! After that, two things could happen. 1. The cuts were so deep the criminal would bleed to death on the table and the dissection could continue. 2. The anatomist sewed the criminal back up, took him back to the scaffold, had the man hung again and then started the dissection.
Either way, OUCH!
9. The hangings were public spectacles, greatly enjoyed by the townspeople... all of the townspeople. Social status did not factor into this, other than to determine how close you could be to the execution. Most of the time dissections were public as well. Medical students had first dibs, but other prominent men of the towns were allowed to and often wanted to observe.
"To examine the cause of life, we must have recourse to Death."
-Mary Shelley, Frankenstein-
10. Mt. Tambora erupted in 1815, killing thousands of inhabitants in the Indonesian islands. The ash and dust cloud would carry into China, causing many deaths of animals, rice fields. It also brought an excess of rain and diseases from the huge amount of standing, putrid water. Europe saw the effects of the eruption in 1816. Italy saw yellow-tinted "snow" fall during the summer. The summer and fall potato crop in Ireland died. Wheat and corn in both Germany and France also died that year. Even North America was affected because they saw frost covering the ground all the way into June that year. 1816 is called the "Year without a Summer." Shelley witnessed and heard of these events, many of which play into her novel.
11. Shelley had many mental and physical demons, as did her poet husband, Percy Shelley. They both suffered from what many today would call Manic Depression and Bipolar Disorders. Percy Shelley was always being compared to other poets, such as Lord Byron, never receiving the acclaim he believed he deserved. Mary Shelley fought the stigma of being female, as her mother, famous women's rights activist of the 1700s Mary Wollstonecraft, did. Mary suffered from miscarriages. She also watched her husband have an affair with her closest friend. As a child, her father encouraged her schooling and higher education; once she fell for Shelley, he cut her off from everything. Her book had to be published anonymously in the beginning, with everyone thinking a man wrote it. When the truth came out, she was ridiculed. She died alone, with little to show for her life at the time.
Percy, Shelley, Byron
"He who fights with monsters must take care, lest he become a monster. And if you gaze for long enough into the abyss; the abyss gazes also into you."
-Nietzsche-
