Frankenstein is a testament to the influence of Shelley the poet, as well as Shelley the man. Though the character of Victor possesses some of Godwin’s traits and some of Mary’s own creative anxieties, he is most obviously modeled on Percy Shelley (and the similarity grows as Mary revises her text in 1831). The poet shares the scientist’s creativity, intensity, and passion; significantly, both were also self-absorbed partners who maintained dominant roles in their relationships and were capable of putting their love second to other interests. In Frankenstein, Elizabeth suffers separation anxiety from Victor, writes him letters that are never returned, hints of her jealousy of other women (Justine, she writes, was “a great favorite of yours”; (p. 58), and eventually dies because Victor’s attentions are focused elsewhere. Despite Mary’s apparent openness to her husband’s ideas of free love and multiple partners, she reacted strongly to rumors of his affairs; for example, she was “shocked beyond all measure” after hearing of Shelley and Claire Clairmont’s alleged love child in 1821 (Letters, vol. 1, p. 204). Percy also disappointed Mary in his lack of interest in their children. “I fancy your affection will encrease [sic] for [William] when he has a nursery to himself and only comes to you just dressed and in good humor,” she writes to him during one of their several separations in 1816 (Letters, vol. 1, p. 23). Significantly, Percy seems to have been oblivious to his faults as an ego-driven lover and neglectful parent and did not even recognize these flaws in Victor’s character. Instead, Victor is described as “the victim” —not the perpetrator—of evil in his review of Frankenstein, published posthumously in the Athenaeum in November 1832.

“… listen to me, Frankenstein …”

Was Mary herself conscious of how much of herself and her experience she was using to create Frankenstein? The careful “Chinese box” construction of the narratives would suggest so. As we read further into the story, we must unfold several protective outer layers to get to the heart of Frankenstein and to Shelley herself. We first meet the quiet, receptive Margaret Saville, a representation of Mary Shelley’s most public persona; we are then prepared to encounter her at a more profound level, in the loneliness of Walton; when we get to Victor’s narrative, we are reading about Mary’s deep-rooted questions regarding herself as creator. In revealing these levels of her personality, Shelley prepares us—and herself—for the revelation of her “core:” the guilt-ridden, affection-craving creature who desperately seeks an acceptance it does not seem to find.

Mary consciously obscured her presence in the text in another way: She asked her husband for help with editorial revisions. With Percy assisting in the final draft and also in the publication of Frankenstein, it is no wonder that many thought that he had written the work. Since the cover and title page of the 1818 text did not include an author’s name, only the dedication to Godwin—and the literary grapevine—helped indicate possible authorship. In his lengthy review for Blackwoods in late 1818, Sir Walter Scott quotes from Shelley’s poem “Mutability” to demonstrate that “the author possesses the same facility in expressing himself in verse as in prose.” Even into the twentieth century, critics have continued to assume Percy’s importance in the shaping of this text: James Rieger’s 1982 introduction to Frankenstein concludes with the claim that Percy Shelley’s “assistance at every point in the book’s manufacture was so extensive that one hardly knows whether to regard him as editor or minor collaborator” (p. xviii).

Shelley purposefully hid her own voice behind her husband’s linguistic persona; bringing it forward again has been a long and arduous critical task. Even after her status as the author of Frankenstein was confirmed, many critics had a hard time taking her seriously as an artist in her own right. In the 1964 entry to Masterplots, the only critique that many students of the novel would read in the decade 1965—1975, the anonymous contributor describes Frankenstein as a “wholly incredible story told with little skill.” He also contends that “Mary Shelley would be remembered if she had written nothing, for she was the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley under romantic and scandalous circumstances.” More recently, Brendan Hennessey wrote in The Gothic Novel: “The power and vitality of Frankenstein derive partly from the fact that Mary Shelley did not quite know what she was doing” (p. 21). It has been the job of Shelley’s recent critics to establish that she did. Some have even established that her famous husband is responsible for some of the text’s weaknesses, as Anne Mellor details in Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (pp. 58- 68, 219-224).

“… with what interest and sympathy shall I read it in some future day!”

When Mary edited Frankenstein for republication in Colburn and Bentley’s Standard Novels Series in 1831, she seems to have caught and altered many of the self-revealing details in the text. To avoid the suggestion of incest, the new Elizabeth is changed from Victor’s blood cousin to an aristocratic Milanese foundling, rescued by Caroline Beaufort from a poverty-stricken life. (It is interesting that Elizabeth and Victor continue to use the term “cousin” as an endearment in the 1831 text). The descriptions of Elizabeth in 1831 are also more generic and idealized than those of 1818, when Elizabeth was more closely modeled on Mary’s own physical features and qualities.