Guest Post: What would Mary Shelley think about the new Victor Frankenstein movie?

Posted October 21, 2015 by Julie S. in Author Appearances / 2 Comments

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!

franken-interpretations
Images over the past 200 years.

  


Burdon_applecoverTitle: ALMOST INVINCIBLE 

A biographical novel of Mary Shelley

Author: Suzanne Burdon

Publisher: Published by Criteria Publishing
Blurb: “She is singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind. Her desire of knowledge is great, and her perseverance in everything else she undertakes, almost invincible.” Mary Shelley began Frankenstein in 1814, when she was eighteen. By then, she had been living for two years in a scandalous relationship with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married with children. The novel was conceived in a contest with him and Lord Byron to tell ghost stories. When she eloped with Shelley, Mary had been quite prepared to suffer condemnation from society. It was much harder to cope with her jealousy of Claire, her step-sister, who had run away with them and was also in love with Shelley. During the nine turbulent years Mary and Shelley were together, Claire was the ever-present third, whose manipulative behaviour often drove Mary to despair. Shelley was little help – his unconventional attitudes to love strained her devotion to its limits. They moved constantly throughout England, Switzerland and Italy, escaping creditors, censorious families and ill health. It was in Italy that they found their spiritual home, their ‘paradise of exiles’, but it was also there that the loss of her children nearly broke Mary’s spirit. Her writing became her grip on sanity, and Shelley never wavered from his belief in her creative genius – as she believed in his.

6f2ed-addtogoodreads

 

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.

 

 


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Posted October 21, 2015 by Julie S. in Author Appearances / 2 Comments

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2 responses to “Guest Post: What would Mary Shelley think about the new Victor Frankenstein movie?”