The Monsters (6 page)

I
n 1796, William Godwin, at forty, was at the height of his fame. William Hazlitt, a contemporary essayist and critic, wrote
that “he blazed as a sun in the firmament of reputation.” But he had little experience with women, although recently he had
shown some interest in two female writers, Elizabeth Inchbald and Amelia Alderson. Godwin feared that romantic involvement
would take away energy from his intellectual activity. In his mind, as expressed in his works, sexual relationships ranked
well below friendship, and of course marriage was actually “evil.” These ideas would be severely tested when he encountered
Mary Wollstonecraft in January 1796. The two were reacquainted at a dinner at the house of Mary Hays, another writer and a
great admirer of Wollstonecraft. Godwin expected, but did not find, the woman who had annoyed him in 1791, but Wollstonecraft
was now a mother and had gone through considerable emotional trauma since then. She did not dominate the conversation.

Godwin’s interest increased after he read Mary’s
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
He later wrote, “If ever there was a book calculated to make a man fall in love with its author, this appears to me to be
the book. She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, and dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time
that she displays a genius which commands all our admiration.” Godwin went to call on Mary but she was away. When she returned,
seeing his card, she paid a visit to him—a bold move, but one that was necessary to overcome Godwin’s shyness. A romance blossomed
that led to a love affair.

Godwin described his attachment to Mary in terms that were about as emotional as he ever got: “When we met again, we met with
new pleasure, and I may add, with a more decisive preference for each other. It was however three weeks longer, before the
sentiment which trembled upon the tongue, burst from the lips of either. There was . . . no period of throes. . . . It was
friendship melting into love. Previous to our mutual declaration, each felt half-assured, yet each felt a certain trembling
anxiety to have assurance complete.” Nobody wanted to make the first move.

For Mary, this would be the first time she had been able to enter a relationship that satisfied both her intellect and her
heart. She wrote to Godwin in September 1796, “When the heart and reason accord there is no flying from voluptuous sensations,
I . . . do what a woman can—Can a philosopher do more?”

It was a particularly modern relationship. They wrote countless notes to each other, sometimes several times a day, developing
a code to signal when it was a good time for sex. Godwin plotted Mary’s menstrual cycle, which they used as a form of birth
control. Mary assured William that he was free to see his other “Fairs”—there was to be no monopoly of affections. (Although
in Mary’s notes to him she referred to Elizabeth Inchbald as “Mrs. Perfection.”) Indeed, it appears that Godwin proposed to
Amelia Alderson in July 1796, but was turned down.

Wollstonecraft was more sexually experienced than Godwin but she was also emotionally fragile, and with the memory of Imlay
still fresh, she feared her own vulnerability. Shortly after they began having sexual relations, she wrote Godwin about her
doubts: “My imagination is for ever betraying me into fresh misery, and I perceive that I shall be a child to the end of the
chapter. You talk of the roses which grow profusely in every path of life—I catch at them; but only encounter the thorns .
. . Consider what has passed as a fever of your imagination; one of the slight mortal shakes to which you are liable—and I—will
become again a
Solitary Walker
.” (The italicized phrase, underlined in her letter, was from one of Rousseau’s autobiographical writings.)

Godwin responded: “Do not cast me off. Do not become again a
solitary walker
. . . . Be happy. Resolve to be happy. You deserve to be so. Every thing that interferes with it, is weakness & wandering:
& a woman, like you, can, must, shall, shake it off.” It was the first time that Mary had a lover who was emotionally supportive.
As the relationship deepened, Wollstonecraft felt secure enough to show Godwin her frank, honest, true self and to question
intimately his interest. “Can you solve this problem?” she asked in one letter. “I was endeavouring to discover last night,
in bed, what it is in me, of which you are afraid. I was hurt at perceiving that you were.” In November, she wrote, “You tell
me that ‘I spoil little attentions, by anticipation.’ Yet to have attention, I find, that it is necessary to demand it. My
faults are very inveterate—for I
did
expect you last night—But,
never mind it
. You coming would not have been worth any thing, if it must be requested.”

What Mary called Godwin’s “chance medley system” of birth control did not work, and in December 1796 she realized that she
was pregnant. Both she and Godwin were philosophically against marriage, but Mary worried about having a second illegitimate
baby. Godwin agreed to marry her for the sake of their child. With Godwin’s school friend James Marshall as witness, the couple
wed at St. Pancras Church on March 29, 1797. For Fanny’s sake, Mary had been calling herself Mary Imlay, but she signed the
marriage certificate “Mary Wollstonecraft, spinster.” It was to be a fresh start.

Godwin did not even mention the wedding in his journal. One of his chief objections to marriage was “co-habitation,” the necessity
for husband and wife to live together, denying “peace and privacy” to both. The newlyweds avoided that by continuing to occupy
two residences. Though Mary and three-year-old Fanny, who called Godwin “Papa,” moved into his home, Godwin maintained a separate
office up the street where he could work privately during the day. Mary insisted that Godwin was still free to eat out with
anyone he chose and that she was free to raise her children as she wished. They continued to communicate frequently by letter.
Such was their answer to the problem of marriage “monopoly.”

Meanwhile the two looked forward to the baby; they were sure it would be a boy and planned to name him William. Mary regained
the enjoyment in motherhood and married life that she had experienced so briefly with Imlay. She wrote to Godwin in June 1797,
“I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot, which I do not wish to untie.
Men are spoilt by frankness, I believe, yet I must tell you that I love you better than I supposed I did, when I promised
to love you for ever.”

The weather during that summer of 1797 was freakish; the strange phenomena would not be equaled until 1816. England experienced
terrific storms that had been spawned by volcanic activity in the South American Andes. Unusually high tides struck the English
coast, flooding the low-lying areas. The land was plagued by storms in which the lightning was so severe it seemed “to threaten
the earth with universal conflagration.” On the night of August 14, a comet appeared over London, bathing the city with its
glow for the next eleven clear nights of calm weather. Mary and William called the comet their child’s friendly star.

Since Mary’s first pregnancy had gone well, she had no fears about this one. When she felt the onset of labor pains in the
early morning of August 30th, she called Mrs. Blenkinsop, the midwife in charge of the famous Westminster Lying-In Hospital.
She sent the first of several notes up the street to Godwin, informing him of her condition: “I have no doubt of seeing the
animal [as she referred to the baby] today; but must wait for Mrs. Blenkinsop to guess at the hour. . . . I wish I had a novel,
or some book of sheer amusement, to excite curiosity, and while away the time—Have you any thing of the kind?”

Mary’s final note to Godwin reads, “Mrs. Blenkinsop tells me that I am in the most natural state, and can promise me a safe
delivery—But that I must have a little patience”—it ends there, without a period at the end, or even her signature. Whether
Mary was aware she was quoting her mother’s last words, cannot be known. In any case, they were the last she herself would
ever put on paper.

Wollstonecraft had a slow and painful labor, but a baby girl was born late that night. At three in the morning of the next
day, William was told to find a doctor, for the placenta had not come out. When the doctor arrived, he had to take the placenta
out by hand, for it had broken into pieces. With no painkillers the pain was excruciating; Mrs. Blenkinsop had to hold Mary’s
shoulders while the doctor worked for hours. Because he did not sterilize his hands or equipment, the doctor’s treatment caused
an infection that would kill Mary eleven days later.

For the first few days, a weakened Mary nursed her newborn, determined that her child should receive the maternal nurturing
that she herself had not. By the end of a week Mary’s strength had further declined and she suffered a fit of shivers that
were so violent that the bed shook. When her condition worsened, the doctors believed that too much milk was the problem.
The baby and Fanny were put in the care of Maria Reveley, a neighbor. Puppies were applied to Mary’s breasts to draw off the
milk; the doctors hoped that this might stimulate her womb to contract so the rest of the placenta could be expelled. By the
time a surgeon came, hoping to remove the last parts of the placenta, Mary was too weak for surgery. Godwin stayed with her
in the final days, giving her wine to ease her pain. “Oh, Godwin, I am in heaven,” she murmured at one point. “You mean, my
dear,” he replied, “that your symptoms are a little easier.” He was at her bedside when she died September 10. He entered
in his diary only the words, “20 minutes before 8” followed by a long series of dashes. For once, words failed him.

Five days later, he was still too distraught to go to her funeral. She was buried in the churchyard at St. Pancras, where
she had been married five months earlier. Godwin wrote to a close friend: “I firmly believe that there does not exist her
equal in the world. I know from experience we were formed to make each other happy. I have not the least expectation that
I can now ever know happiness again. Do not—if you can help it—exhort me or console me.”

The political and literary journals of the time noted the obvious irony that Mary Wollstonecraft, the advocate of equality
between the sexes, died as a result of giving birth. As the conservative
Anti-Jacobin Review
pointed out, her manner of death marked the differences between the sexes and pointed out the “destiny of woman.” This kind
of vicious reaction only underscored the effect Mary had wrought. She had challenged many of the prejudices of society in
her short but productive life—doing so at great cost to herself. Her life and courage would be a source of inspiration and
pride for her daughter, who would grow up with a name fraught with significance, reflecting both of her famous parents. The
daughter, like her mother, would challenge propriety and pay a high price. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was aware from childhood
that her birth was responsible for the death of her mother. This trauma and guilt would be one of the central factors in her
life, and would find an outlet in
Frankenstein
.

Reaching the cascade . . . my soul was hurried by the falls into a new train of reflections. The impetuous dashing of the
rebounding torrent from the dark cavities which mocked the exploring eye, produced an equal activity in my mind: my thoughts
darted from earth to heaven, and I asked myself why I was chained to life and its misery . . . my soul rose, with renewed
dignity, above its cares—grasping at immortality . . . I stretched out my hand to eternity, bounding over the dark speck of
life to come.”

—
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark,
Mary Wollstonecraft, 1796

M
ARY GODWIN WAS
the “dark speck of life to come.” She started life with a loss and it left her with an unsatisfied need for love, for her
father was incapable of that kind of nurturing. Instead, she learned in the most intimate manner that birth and creation can
be fraught with dire consequences.

From childhood, Mary turned inward to find consolation, as a way of dealing with the emotional chaos she often felt. The unspoken
fear that her birth had caused her mother’s death would give great urgency to Mary’s need to create a new, perfect human being
to take her place. Like Mary, both Victor Frankenstein and his monster would be motherless.

G
odwin’s background and temperament had not prepared him for being a parent, especially a single one, and he realized it. His
fears and doubts show in a letter to a friend, Anthony Carlisle: “One of my wife’s books now lies near me but I avoid opening
it. I took up a book on the education of children, but that impressed me too forcibly with my forlorn and disabled state with
respect to the two poor animals left under my protection, and I threw it aside. . . . If you have any . . . consolation in
store for me, be at pains to bestow it.”

The first act Godwin was able to perform with his newborn daughter was a scientific one—at least, in terms of the science
of the day. Before Mary was three weeks old, Godwin had her examined by a physiognomist named Nicholson, a practitioner of
the Lavater method. Mr. Nicholson reported from assessing Mary’s face that she “possessed considerable memory and intelligence”
and her eyes, forehead, and eyebrows showed a “quick sensibility, irritable, scarcely irascible.” Her mouth, which Mr. Nicholson
found “too much employed” (she was crying), did indicate “the outlines of intelligence. She was displeased, and it denoted
much more of resigned vexation than either scorn or rage.”

Godwin finally dealt with his wife’s death by deciding to recount her life story. This was the family way: write, write, write
in the face of adversity. The day after Wollstonecraft’s funeral, he began to sort through her papers. Before the end of the
month, Godwin had begun to write what he believed would be a loving and candid re-creation of his late wife’s life. He saw
it as an act of dedication to her memory that would also serve as an expression of his deepest feelings. Godwin was inspired
by the autobiography of a man both he and his wife had admired: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. But Rousseau’s famous
Confessions
was the brutally frank account of a man writing about his
own
life. Godwin was relating the life story of
another
person, and he would go farther than most readers thought he decently should have.