Mary, for her part, wanted to write
a story that “would speak to the myste-
rious fears of our nature, and awaken
thrilling horror—one to make the
reader dread to look round, to curdle
the blood, and quicken the beatings of
the heart,” she wrote.
There was only one problem: She
couldn’t think of an idea. “I thought
and pondered—vainly,” she wrote.
“Have you thought of a story? I was
asked each morning, and each morn-
ing I was forced to reply with a mor-
tifying negative,” she wrote. But a
late-night conversation between
Byron and Shelley would soon inspire
the creation of Frankenstein.M
ary Godwin was born in 1797 to
two of the era’s most radical think-
ers: Mary Wollstonecraft, the fem-
inist author of A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman (1792), and William
Godwin, a political philosopher, anar-
chist, and author of The Adventures of
Caleb Williams (1794), an early mystery
novel. Despite her advantages, Mary
Godwin’s life was marked by tragedy:
Just after she was born, her mother
died of an infection she contracted dur-
ing labor and was buried at St. Pancras
Church, near the Godwin house.
Though Mary would never know
a mother’s love, her intellect was nur-
tured by her father, who called her “sin-
gularly bold, somewhat imperious, and
active of mind. Her desire of knowledge
is great, and her perseverance in every-
thing she undertakes almost invin-
cible.” Not surprisingly, she also had a
literary bent. “My favorite pastime, dur-
ing the hours given to me for recreation,
was to ‘write stories,’ ” she wrote.
At the time, the Godwin household
consisted of William, Mary, and her
older half sister, Fanny Imlay, the ille-
gitimate issue of Wollstonecraft’s affair
with an American entrepreneur. In 1801,
William married Mary Jane Clairmont,
which introduced a son, Charles, and
yet another illegitimate daughter, Clara
Mary Jane (known as Jane), into the
mix. Since Mary and her stepmother
did not get along, Mary was briefly sentHENRY FUSELI’S PAINTING
The Nightmare (1781) may have
influenced Mary’s description
of the death of Victor
Frankenstein’s wife: “She was
there, lifeless and inanimate,
thrown across the bed, her
head hanging down, and her
pale and distorted features half
covered by her hair.”14 LIFE FRANKENSTEINDETROIT^ INSTITUTE^OFARTS/BRIDGEMANIMAGES^