Michael Eberle-Sinatra, ed. Mary Shelley's Fictions: from "Frankenstein" to "Falkner.".(Book Review)

Publication: Studies in Romanticism

Publication Date: 22-DEC-03

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2003 Boston University

New York: St. Martin's Press/Palgrave, 2000. Pp. xxvi + 250. $75.00.

A recent electronic exchange on a romanticism list-server illustrates some of the difficulties and prejudices still encountered when discussing the other Mary Shelley, not just "the author of Frankenstein" but also of five other novels, one novella, two verse-dramas and various minor texts. In response to a young professor's appeal for advice on teaching Valperga and The Last Man, a more seasoned colleague recommended focusing on the novels' biographical contexts or on humanistic themes rather than on sociology or popular culture. Part of the problem, the professor hinted, was the lumbering quality of Shelley's prose in these two mid-career novels. This anecdote, all too common in English departments, reveals how, behind scholars' questioning of Mary Shelley's fiction, an uncertainty about the author's artistry still lurks.

Readily accessible, thanks to the splendidly edited Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley published by Picketing and Chatto, Shelley's prolific work is richly allusive and often highly erudite, representing over thirty years of professional writing and a wealth of reading. But readability does not always make up for these texts' difficulty, and many of the ambiguities introduced in Frankenstein, including Shelley's views on power and on gender roles, or her relationship to her parents and husband, are not easily glossed by the rest of her writing. While some excellent criticism published in the 1990s helps us better understand these lesser known works, including two important collections of essays, The Other Mary Shelley (1993) and Iconoclastic Departures (1997), many romanticists today remain unsure how to approach, let alone teach Shelley's fiction as a coherent body of texts. Critics' insistence on reading Shelley according to overly rigid categories has arguably hindered this interpretive effort. In particular, the view made popular by Mary Poovey and Anne Mellor that Mary Shelley becomes increasingly conservative,...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.