Guest Post: What would Mary Shelley (who wrote Frankenstein) think about the new Victor Frankenstein movie?
It’s coming out in November, and it stars James McEvoy and Daniel Radcliffe. (Q and A with the stars.) It’s yet another interpretation of Mary’s famous story, that she wrote in 1816 at only eighteen. Since then there have been hundreds of performances and spin offs, many playing fast and loose with her original concept – from the 1931 Boris Karloff movie – (the one with the bolt through the monster’s neck) to the National Theatre’s in 2012 with Johnny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch alternating roles as the monster and the scientist.
Since I wrote my novel about her, Almost Invincible, Mary is my new best friend, and I think I know her well enough to think she would have enjoyed this current interpretation (even though she didn’t have a character called Igor (Daniel Radcliffe) in her book!). Mary was a strong woman with a sense of humour and a good nose for a commercial story. She was always trying to make her husband, the poet Shelley, write something more commercial, that would pay the bills. After he died, she made her living through writing.
She saw a stage production in 1823 called ‘Presumption, or the Fate of Frankenstein’ at the English Opera House. It was very successful, and although Mary thought they had taken liberties with the story, she found it amusing. As well, even 200 years ago new media exposure had benefits in reinvigorating her book sales!
Mary’s own life had more scandal than several seasons of Desperate Housewives. I think she would have enjoyed the various and varied performances on their merits!
Title: ALMOST INVINCIBLE
Author: Suzanne Burdon
About the Author
About me and my relationship with Mary…. I have an honours degree in Sociology with a major in Literature and a Trinity College London Licentiate in Effective Communication.
My day job is as a social and market researcher. My projects involve understanding the behaviour and motivation of a wide range of people in many different contexts often conducting interviews and focus groups where dialogue is a major contributor to understanding. I’ve tried to make good use of that insight in my writing. I have previously only published short stories, poetry and academic papers on research. This is my first novel.
An underlying thread of Almost Invincible is Mary’s damaging relationship with her stepsister, Claire and this sparked my curiosity and snowballed into an obsessive four years research.
Amongst the volumes of extant information and many biographies, I glimpsed a Mary who was a teenage rebel, a grieving mother, a determined author and a long suffering lover of a man well ahead of his time. It made me want to tell her story.
The research has been extensive and the book is factually based, but tries to fill in the emotions, conversations, and some of the mysteries surrounding her life.
Finding Mary has taken me to many of the places which were important to her life, and to libraries around the world.
Interesting thought… Hopefully, she’s not turning in her grave like poor Jane Austen over Pride and Prejudice and Zombies!
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It’s interesting to think about what an author would think about how their work is interpreted centuries later. Nice post!
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