Mary’s Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley Created Frankenstein by Lita Judge

Mary’s Monster is a strange but beautiful graphic novel biography written in verse. The black and white illustrations are as haunting as the life of Mary Shelley herself.
Mary is barely sixteen when she falls in love with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. She runs away with the married (but supposedly separated) man and gives birth to a daughter who dies just days later. During this time, Shelley’s wife also gives birth to a child, and he begins an affair with Mary’s step-sister Claire.
Drama much?
Mary believes in free love but is jealous and hurt by Shelley’s additional relationships. They’ve been shunned by society for their unconventional lifestyle and while Percy Shelley is a talented poet, his work is overlooked and he is often mocked and ridiculed.
Mary, Percy, their newborn son, and Claire travel to Lake Geneva where they stay with the popular poet Lord Byron. While he’s known for scandalous behavior, he is held in high regard for his work. He agrees with the free love lifestyle and gets along well with his guests.
On a rainy night, the group begin to tell scary stories and a challenge is made by Byron for each guest to create a ghost story.
After listening to macabre discussions of animated corpses of animals and creating life, Mary has nightmares that set in motion the world’s most enduring horror story: Frankenstein.
Around this time, more drama begins.
Mary’s step-sister Claire has fallen in love with Lord Byron and is now pregnant with his child. Byron rejects Claire and decides he will take the baby once it’s born. There is nothing Mary or Claire can do to stop this since women have not even basic rights.
While awaiting the birth of Claire’s child, Mary is also once again pregnant. She receives a letter from her sister Fanny who has fallen into depression since the family name has been ruined by the actions of Mary and Claire.
Fanny commits suicide by opium overdose and their father tells everyone she has gone to visit friends abroad to save face.
Soon after, Shelley’s wife Harriet is found dead in the Thames River, considered a suicide. Rumors fly that she was pregnant with Shelley’s baby.
Mary blames herself for both the death of her sister and her lover’s wife.
Through all the scandal and drama, Mary continues to write Frankenstein. She has been rejected by her family, persecuted by society, abandoned in her time of need multiple times by the man she loves, and she uses all the hurt and anger to create a creature that will captivate readers for hundreds of years.
Frankenstein is published anonymously in 1818 and is condemned by reviewers for the atheistic views of the unknown author.
Percy Shelley’s new poem is ignored by critics and he is instead targeted once again for his lifestyle and accused of driving his wife to suicide.
They flee London under heavy scrutiny and soon lose their son and second daughter to malaria.
The couple settle in Italy and eventually have another son and both begin to write once again.
Percy Shelley is haunted by his demons and disillusioned with his writing. After sailing off into a storm, his body is found washed ashore ten days later.
At the age of twenty four, Mary Shelley has lost three babies and is now a widow. Estranged from her last relative, Claire, she returns to England with her son where she finds Frankenstein has been adapted into a play. Lord Byron publishes letters that prove Mary wrote the novel and she is somewhat redeemed in society though she chooses to have a small circle of friends away from gossip.
This is the bizarre true story of the life of Mary Shelley: full of scandal, abusive relationships, and passion that makes for a whole lot of drama. While most people during her lifetime were interested in her shocking lifestyle and the gossip it stirred up, today people are intrigued by the events that led to her enduring classic novel Frankenstein and her defiance of the period’s restrictions on women. She challenged ethical beliefs, the laws of nature, and women’s rights in both her writing and the life she led. It’s safe to say Mary Shelley was far ahead of her time.
This was a quick and interesting read written in verse and full of illustrations. I love that the author gave an accurate historical account of the life of Mary Shelley through poetry relying on emotion while also interpreting how the profound events shaped her creative masterpiece.
The graphic novel biography genre is relatively new but I’m already a fan of this unique style!