← The History of Literature
The History of Literature
744 Love, Sex, and Frankenstein (with Caroline Lea) | #10 Greatest Book of All Time | My Last Book with Geoffrey Turnovsky | A Letter from a Middle School Teacher and Mom
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Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hello everyone, it's Jack Wilson telling you that the History of Literature Podcast tour through Literary England is still accepting deposits and we'd love to have you join us. We will be visiting some of the greatest literary sites in history, including walks, tours, pub visits, visitors and leisure time activities, and with visits from scholars and other special guests as we experience the amazing cities of London, Oxford and Bath in a small group accompanied by yours truly. If you love literature and if you love life, you are not going to want to miss this. It's next year in May of 2026, but we need you to put down a deposit now so we can finalize the itinerary. 2026 is around the corner people. Give yourself something to look forward to next spring. You can find out more at John Shores Travel John S H O R S or you can find the links to the itinerary and signup page@historyofliterature.com hope to see you soon. This episode is brought to you by Marshalls, where you never have to compromise between quality and price. The buyers of Marshalls hustle hard working to bring you great deals on brand name and designer pieces because Marshalls believes everyone deserves access to the good stuff. Visit a Marshalls store near you or shop online@marshalls.com hello' I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out and then on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy half vital motion. Frightful it must be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. End quote. That's Mary Shelley talking about the chilling moments she experienced when she envisioned the the character she would call Frankenstein, the scientist who dared to mock God and the stirring creature who symbolizes Frankenstein's hubris and who has terrified countless millions since that first frightful moment in Mary Shelley's mind. Today on the podcast we'll talk to Caroline Lee, who has written a novel about that moment of creation. Who was Mary Shelley at that time? What had she endured? What was she still enduring? And how did she navigate a thicket of love affairs and doomed romances and creative sparks, geniuses and jealousies as she brought to life the great example of bringing to life? Plus, we reveal number 10 on the list of the greatest books of all time. Will you Be happy with the choice. If so, you'll be in good company. We'll hear from a listener with a recommendation that's right up our alley. And an expert in French medieval literature stops by to discuss his choice for the last book he will ever read. That's all coming up today on a Halloween edition of the History of Literature. Okay, here we go. Welcome to the podcast, everyone. I'm Jack Wilson. Oh boy, what a show. Jam packed with a lot of Halloween goodies. Reminds me of the little plastic pumpkin I used to carry around for my candies. Even as it would get jam packed. Even as my neighborhood friends just brought pillowcases to store their haul. They scoffed at my pumpkin. Nice theme and everything, Jack, but not big enough for our plans. They also those neighborhood kids dominated the Halloween scene with their hobo costumes. Get an old hat, put some water on your face, rub some coffee grounds on there for a nice five o' clock shadow. And Bob's your uncle. If your Uncle Bob is some guy who rides the rails and sleeps under a bridge. Other kids knew how to Halloween. I was in awe. Speaking of awe, I was in awe of a message that came in from a listener the other day. Let's hear the message and then I'll explain why. Hi Jack, it's been a while since I emailed you. I actually got to the Melville 24 hour read aloud last summer at Mystic Seaport with my son and daughter. It was wonderful. Currently, both my daughters and I are reading Anna Karenina together. Heart emoji. I listened to your recent episode in which you talked about Paul McCartney and his difficulty expressing feelings outside of music. The story you told about Paul buying John's letter, gifting it back to Cynthia made me cry. Have you heard his interview with Alan Alda on his podcast Clear and Vivid? He talks about how he writes music, the strong influence of literature, and the book that changed his life. It's such an inspiring interview. To think that an unnamed high school literature teacher helped a young man become the McCartney we know makes my job as a middle school teacher seem more meaningful to me. Here's the link. She passes it along. Then she says, again, thank you for the thoughtful and thought provoking work you do. Yours, Christine. Well, Christine is very nice to hear from you and here's why. I was in awe of the Met. Well, I'm in awe of a bunch of things in the message. I'm in awe of everyone who goes to the 24 hour Melville read on board the Charles W. Morgan ship. I think they still do it. There you'll remember our guest and super listener, Christine, AKA the classic slacker who first put us onto this annual event. She goes all the time, where you can go and participate in a full reading of Moby Dick, the entire novel read straight through in a very authentic setting right there on board the ship. Somewhere in the archives, we have an episode with Christine telling Mike and me all about it, if I recall correctly. Did I say Christine? I think I meant to say Christina. That's the classic slacker. Christine is the. Is the kind woman who just sent us the link to the Paul McCartney interview. And that's the other thing I'm in awe of, is that this was a Paul McCartney interview that I had not heard. People, I am a Beatles check. I hear just about everything related to the Beatles. That's just how I spend my time, okay? I go through waves where I kind of mix things up, but that's my happy place. No need to judge. And unfortunately, in all these interviews, Sir Paul, God bless him, he tends to repeat a lot. Repeat a lot of the same stories, which he's allowed. But the interviews do end up blurring together. And if you. If you see that he's appeared somewhere, like Jimmy Fallon, I don't know if it's worth the click on that link. If you've listened to a lot of interviews, it's unlikely that you're going to hear too much that you haven't heard before, which is fine if you're a casual fan, but the hardcore fans have heard these old chestnuts dozens of times. There are some exceptions, I will say. The James Corden carpool karaoke was kind of Paul at his most saintly, and the one with Rick Rubin covered some new territory and so on. I suppose all the interviews have at least a few moments, and they're all fun. But anyway, this interview with Alan Alda I had missed, and it was a delight. Alan Alda, oh, he's just a treasure. One of my favorite people in the world. And the two of them together have a really good chemistry and I enjoyed it. So thank you, Christine, and thank you for the work you do as a middle school teacher and a mom. What a great mom. Taking a son and daughter to listen to Moby Dick. Maybe reading a passage aloud as well, and. And reading Anna Karenina. Thank you for the kind words about the podcast. I hope that you and your daughters have been enjoying Anna Karenina. Speaking of which, right on c. The number 10 on our list of the greatest books of all time is. That's right, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Just when you think Mr. Dostoyevsky has surpassed the master, in comes the master to reassert his supremacy. For what else can one call the author of War and Peace? To paraphrase Virginia Woolf, There are only two authors who had books, who had two books in the top 25. One was Dostoevsky at number 19 and 11 for Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment. And the other is Leo Tolstoy, who comes in at number 13 with War and Peace, and now number 10 with Anna Karenina. I thought I would do something a little bit different now that we've reached the top 10. I'm going to keep them a surprise. I won't mention the book in the show notes. We'll save it for listeners to hear and be surprised by. And we'll do this. I will say one thing of interest about Anna Karenina, and then two things of interest about our number nine on our list, and three things of interest about number eight and on and so on until we get to the number one book and we'll have ten things of interest. That feels fair, right? Proportionate. So you won't hear us talk about the first line of Anna Karenina, though we alluded to it earlier, if you caught that in the intro. I think all happy families are alike. Every unhappy family is different in its own way, or whatever your preferred translation is. I think that intro made it into our top 10 list of greatest openings of all time, greatest first lines of novels of all time that Mike and I did in an episode a number of years ago. And we won't be talking about Faulkner's famous quote about the three greatest novels ever written being Anna Karenina, Anna Karenina and Anna Karenina. You won't hear that one either. We're going to offer something different and parenthetical. We've done an episode on Anna Karenina. If one thing of interest doesn't feel like enough, although it's a pretty big. That's a pretty big topic, which is, what is. What is Anna Karenina about? And what is the secret of. Of. Of life meaningful? What is the meaning of life as Tolstoy expounds upon it in Anna Karenina and in his own life? So that's. That's our one thing of interest. It's turned out to be kind of a bigger topic than I thought. I thought maybe I'd have a little trivia thing like, hey, look at this. It's 800 pages. No, we got a little carried away. Okay. But in Any case, if you want more about Anna Karenina, you can find our episode devoted to Anna Karenina in our archives. And another parenthetical is that we're getting close to Halloween and I was expecting to hear from one of our favorite October guests by now. Well, I wonder if that could be him knocking at the door. Oh. Scraping. Hello? Yes, this is Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar? Yes, Hello? That sound you hear. Bricks.
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Caroline Lee
Bricks.
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Jack Wilson
Bricks being placed one by one in a wall not six inches from my person. From your person. Bricks set by my enemy, Fortunato. I am to be entombed. It seems a pity, really. I have so much more to give. If only my savior, that noble whelp Jack Wilson, would come to my rescue. Here I am, Edgar. He's outside of Fortunato's castle attempting to bribe the footman. But I fear he lacks sufficient funds. Too true, too true. Oh, won't you help him, you hard hearted book lover? Won't you help him and me? Now, Edgar, is that any way to talk about our generous listeners calling them hard hearted book lovers? Well, I guess he's desperate. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Poor Edgar being entombed. Well, he certainly tortured enough characters in his day. But let's put that aside and try to help the poor man out. You can toss a few coins in the History of Literature coffers or the coffins if you prefer. Edgar will accept both. You can do that by signing up for our patreon account@patreon.com literature or make a one time donation@historyofliterature.com sl donate. Or if you're in the mood for going all in. As we start to head toward the end of the year 2025, we have got. If you're. If you're going all in, you want to push all your chips to the center of the table, you can join us on the very first History of Literature podcast tour which we are taking in May of 2026. We're going to England to visit the homes of Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and so many other wonderful offers, offers authors. It's an offer for you to travel to see these homes of these authors. We'll travel to Shakespeare's Globe Theater, a very special place. And we'll take some behind the scenes looks at some other sites like the famous Bodleian Library in Oxford. It's going to be grand with guests visiting us all along the way, so you'll get to meet some. Some pretty famous scholars and authors and other luminaries. Emma and I are both planning to be there and we would love to have you join us as well. Find out more at John Shorestravel, that's S H O R S with no e. Or@historyofliterature.com we still have a few spots, so let's make some dreams come true. Now on to our number 10 discussion. Anna Karenina. It's the great novel of happy and unhappy families. And a question that preoccupied Tolstoy throughout his long life. What does it mean to be happy? What is the purpose of life? Why do I exist? How can I find meaning in a seemingly meaningless world? He looked to science, he looked to philosophers, he looked to religion, he looked to love. And in this novel, it's been called a novel of unlove, Anna Karenina, because the people who look to love for happiness find a lot of disappointment there too. Tolstoy famously demanded, insisted that Sophia read his diaries early in their marriage. He wanted there to be no secrets between them. It was kind of a philosophy that he had. But he had written a lot about his past affairs with women serfs who lived on the property that he owned and so on. And Sophia was shocked and kind of horrified by the picture of her beloved that she found there. She loved Tolstoy. She was very clear about that in her mind. And she proved herself to be loyal to him throughout his life. And she was tireless and helping him with his novels and so on. But their marriage was incredibly tumultuous and full of bitterness and recriminations and his volatility and restlessness and her sense of betrayal and frustration, they stayed together somehow. But this is the backdrop for Anna Karenina, where the two people who seek happiness primarily through love, Anna herself and the Tolstoy stand in Levin, find that it's not what they had hoped. Once they get the love that they were striving for. Somewhat to their surprise, the relationships that they that held seem to have so much potential and promise soon go bad. How can this be? Why does this happen? There's a common charge levied against novels, which is that a marriage often is a way of wrapping things up to provide this happily ever after ending when we know in real life that isn't necessarily the case. Marriage can be hard work. It isn't the the end of the story, it's just the beginning. Well, that charge might be levied against other novels, but nobody would ever levy that charge against Anna Karenina. Happiness must come from some other sources. Before we get to the happiness, let's hear from Sophia. Tolstoy encouraged her to write diaries, a diary as well. And so she did. And so we get the a portrait of the marriage from her side, from her point of view. And that shows what a deep morass the two of them were in her natural Happiness and goodness were, it turns out, sources of strife because of how Tolstoy could not accept them for what they were. And Sophia fights back too. Here's the dilemma in her he loves to torment me and see me weep because he does not trust me. He wishes I had lived as evil a life as he so that I might more fully appreciate goodness. It instinctively irritates him that happiness has come so easily to me and that I accepted him without hesitation or remorse. But I have too much self respect to cry. I don't want him to see how I suffer. Let him think it's easy for me. Yesterday I went downstairs especially to see him and I was suddenly overwhelmed by an extraordinary feeling of love and strength. At that moment I loved him so much that I longed to go up to him. But then I felt the moment I touched him. I should not feel so happy, almost like a sacrilege. But I never shall or can let him know what is going on within me. I have so much foolish pride. The slightest hint that he misunderstands or mistrusts me throws me into despair. It makes me so angry. What is he doing to me? Little by little I shall withdraw completely from him and poison his life. Yet I feel so sorry for him at those times when he doesn't trust me. His eyes fill with tears and his face is so gentle and sad. I could smother him with love at those moments. And yet the thought haunts me. He doesn't trust me. He doesn't trust me. Today I began to feel that we were drifting further and further apart. I am creating my own sad world for myself and he is making himself a practical life filled with distrust. And I thought how vulgar this kind of relation was. And I began to distrust his love too. When he kisses me, I'm always thinking I am not the first woman he has loved. It hurts me so much that my love for him, the dearest thing in the world to me because it is my first and last love, should not be enough for him. I too have loved other men, but only in my imagination. Whereas he has loved and admired so many women who all so pretty and lively, all with different faces, characters and souls, just as he now loves and admires me. I know these thoughts are petty and vulgar, but I can't help it. It is his past that is to blame. I can't help it. I can't forgive God for so arranging things that people must sow their wild oats before they can become decent people. And I can't help feeling bitterly hurt that my husband should come into this common category of person. And then he thinks I don't love him. Why would I care so much about him if I didn't love him? Why else would I try to understand his past and his present? And what would be my interest in his future? It's a hopeless situation. How can a wife prove her love to a husband who tells her he married her only because he had to, even though she never loved him? As if I had ever for one moment regretted my past or could so much as dream of not loving him. It's unimaginable. Does he really enjoy seeing me cry? When I realize how difficult our relations are and how we shall gradually drift further and further apart spiritually. Toys for the cat are tears for the mouse. But this toy is fragile, and if he breaks it, it's. It will be he who cries. I cannot bear the way he is slowly wearing me down. Yet he is a wonderful and good person. He too loathes everything evil. He cannot bear it either. I used to love everything beautiful. My soul knew the meaning of ecstasy then. Now all that has died in me. No sooner am I happy, then he crushes me. End quote. What a roller coaster. He's wonderful, he's good. He's my only love. And my happiness torments him. And when I am happy, he crushes me. What a relationship. It's a kind of restless searching that Tolstoy would not escape for years if he ever truly did. So that's Tolstoy's personal life. The good news for us is that that kind of searching and that kind of, oh, agitation. Let's say it's like when you. It's like the old days when you used to have detergent and you'd have to start the washing machine and you did fill up with water and you'd pour the detergent in and then it would agitate and then you'd end up with a nice sudsiness. That's what this is kind of like, right? Tolstoy's agitating his life and what he winds up with is a working machine instead of a laundry machine. It's a novel writing machine. So how does this play out in Anna Karenina? This kind of quest to understand happiness and to maybe torment the person you love most? Because something deep in you believes that it might not be enough or there's something suspicious about happiness. But wait, before we talk about that, I want to share another thing first, which is how Tolstoy himself viewed his existential despair. This is where he's on yet another attempt he makes to try to figure out how to be happy. And he looks around at his friends and acquaintances, and he says, basically, I've seen four solutions for dealing with the meaningless of life. Four things that people in my circle have adopted. Four strategies. He says, quote, I found that for people of my circle there were four ways out of the terrible position in which we are all placed. The first was that of ignorance. It consists in not knowing, not understanding that life is an evil and an absurdity from people of this sort. In this category, I had nothing to learn. One cannot cease to know what one does know. The second way out is epicureanism. It consists while knowing the hopelessness of life, in making use, meanwhile, of the advantages one has disregarding the dragon and the mice and licking the honey in the best way, especially if there is much of it within reach. That is the way in which the majority of people of our circle make life possible for themselves. Their circumstances furnish them with more of welfare than of hardship. And their moral dullness makes it possible for them to forget that the advantage of their position is accidental and that the accident that has today made me a Solomon, may tomorrow make me a Solomon slave. The dullness of these people's imagination enables them to forget the things that gave Buddha no peace. The inevitability of sickness or old age and death, which today or tomorrow will destroy all these pleasures. Okay, let's pause there. We've got two ways, right? He's looking around. He says, I'm not the only one who's dealing with meaningless. If the universe is meaningless for me, it's meaningless for everyone. So what are my friends doing? And he says, well, some people are just idiots and don't realize this. They just don't know. That doesn't help. And the second thing, he says, the second category is people who live it up, right? We're all wealthy. They just fill their lives with pleasures, and they kind of postpone the inevitable reckoning of old age, sickness, death. This isn't going to help him either. Let's hear the next two categories. The third escape, he says, is that of strength and energy. It consists in destroying life. When one has understood that it is an evil and an absurdity, a few exceptionally strong and consistent people act. So having understood the stupidity of the joke that has been played on them. And having understood that it is better to be dead than to be alive, and that is best of all not to exist, they act accordingly and promptly end this stupid joke. Since there are means, a rope round one's neck, water, a knife to stick into one's heart, or the trains on the railways. And the number of those in our circle who act in this way becomes greater and greater. And for the most part, they act so at the best time of their life, when the strength of their mind is in full bloom and few habits degrading to the mind have as yet been acquired. Okay, so third category. You kill yourself. The fourth way out, he says, is that of weakness. It consists in seeing the truth of the situation and yet clinging to life, knowing in advance that nothing can come of it. People of this kind know that death is better than life, but not having the strength to act rationally, to end the deception quickly and kill them, they seem to wait for something. This is the escape of weakness. For if I know what is best and it is within my power, why not yield to what is best? The fourth way was to live like Solomon and Schopenhauer, knowing that life is a stupid joke played upon us, and still to go on living, washing oneself, dressing, dining, talking, and even writing books. This was, to me, repulsive and tormenting. But I remained in that position. End quote. That's where Tolstoy's mind is. That's where Leaven is in the book, too. That's the dilemma for Leaven. First, he thinks he can escape this through a marriage to Kitty, and then he gets the marriage to Kitty and he's unhappy. And how can he find happiness when this marriage to Kitty, which he. He longed for, which he believed would unlock the secrets to a happy life. Well, what happens when that doesn't work? When you see a child and you think, I don't even really love this child. This holds nothing for me. What then? Well, Tolstoy did find something, and he put it into the book too. Let's take a look. For Tolstoy, the key becomes a commitment to life. He sees this in the peasants around him, the attitude that they have toward being alive, toward hard work, toward simplicity, toward a dignified existence, toward fulfillment, a sense of purpose. And maybe not thinking too much about it, but to. To possess a kind of gratitude for simple pleasures, the simplest and purest of which is a gratitude merely for being alive. In Tolstoy's words, in contrast with what I had seen in our circle, he means in Our circle of wealthy people where the whole of life is passed in idleness, amusement and dissatisfaction. I saw that the whole life of these people was passed in heavy labor and that they were content with life. In contradistinction to the way in which people of our circle oppose fate and complain of it on account of deprivations and sufferings. These people accepted illness and sorrow without any perplexity or opposition, and with a quiet and firm conviction that all is good in contradistinction to us who the wiser we are, the less we understand the meaning of life and see some evil irony in the fact that we suffer and die. These folk live and suffer, and they approach death and suffering with tranquility and in most cases, gladly. In complete contrast to my ignorance, they knew the meaning of life and death, labored quietly, endured deprivations and sufferings, and lived and died, seeing therein not vanity, but good. End quote. Think of all those billionaires. Oh, wait, there's a little more to the quote. Reopen the quote. I understood that if I wish to understand life and its meaning, I must not live the life of a parasite, but must live a real life and taking the meaning given to live by real humanity and merging myself in that life, verify it. End quote. Now think of all those billionaires who want to get on spaceships and travel to Mars, or want to, you know, want to sign up for cryogenics so they can live forever. What? What's going on there? I think it's pretty clear. They've achieved everything one could possibly hope to achieve in terms of material objects. They have anything they want. They have more money than they could spend. They can buy a fancy wedding, whatever car they want to drive, whatever house they want to live in, however they want to travel, wherever they want to go, whatever they want to do. And they're unhappy. They're empty, and it drives them crazy. How can I have all of this? How can I. How can I have this and feel this unhappy? What is it about life that does this to me? And this is what makes Anna Karenina so good. Anna, the character, doesn't quite find this. She almost does, but Leaven finds it. We see the nature of unlove or the risks of making something like marriage. The be all and end all of our existence. That's too ephemeral. It's too risky. It won't sustain us. Couples are. You can't depend on other people like that. Nothing is going to sustain us. Nothing can. Nothing material. Leaven agonizes about this throughout the novel. But then when he's outside in nature. He has an epiphany. But I looked for miracles. I was sorry that I'd never seen a miracle that would convince me. And here it is, the only possible miracle ever existing, surrounding me on all sides, and I never noticed it. Is it possible that I found the solution to everything? Is it possible that my sufferings are now over? End quote. The world. That's the meaning. The meaning is not in philosophy. It's in the universe as it is and our being present in it. It includes the wife and child that he surprisingly did not love as much as he thought he would. But they are part of his life, his glorious life. It's in the things that make no sense. It's in the moments, the small beauties of existence. In the last line of the book, Leaven affirms life as a vessel for the goodness he can put into it, which supplies the meaning he's been looking for. He says, I shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly. There will still be the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife. I shall still, still go on scolding her for my own terror and being remorseful for it. I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why. I pray and I shall still go on praying. But my life now, my whole life, apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless as it was before. But it has the positive meaning of goodness which I have the power to put into it. End quote. Now, Anna, who has a more tragic ending than Leaven, finds this too. She has a similar epiphany, only it comes a little too late for her. Spoiler alert. As she kneels on the train tracks about to take her own life. She makes the sign of the cross. And we hear the habitual gesture of making the sign of the cross called up in her soul a whole series of memories from childhood and girlhood. And suddenly the darkness that covered everything for her broke and life rose up before her momentarily with all its bright past joys. Yet she did not take her eyes from the wheels of the approaching second carriage. It's bright past joys. She reaches for religion, the sign of the cross. She gets religion plus nostalgia, a recalling of her childhood and girlhood. And there it is. It's bright past joys. It's there for us, those bright past joys and bright present joys and bright future joys too if we are able to let them in and value them and feel them, if we let ourselves experience life, the commitment to meaninglessness or the fear of meaningless, or the drag of meaninglessness, all that becomes itself meaningless. All happy families are alike not because their lives are identical, but because they have all found that the secret to happiness in life is not much of a secret. The secret to happiness in life is life. Okay, that's one big thing about Anna Karenina. 20 minutes to convey the one big thing that's number 10 on our list of the greatest books of all time. It's a wonderful book. It's worth reading or rereading. If you haven't had the recent pleasure. Notice how much time you spend in the city when you're immersed in Anna Karenina. A lot of that book takes place in the cities, and in those passages there are almost no descriptions of the physical landscape. You're not on the streets looking at buildings, but then the book opens up in the countryside where the world is so vivid and alive that will make you want to change your life all on its own. We have another love story, another tormented love story coming up. Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley and their friend Byron and the story of Frankenstein after this. Foreign hey folks, the countdown is on. Holiday shopping season is officially here. Uncommon Goods takes the stress out of gifting with thousands of unique, high quality finds you won't see anywhere else. When you shop at Uncommon Goods, you're supporting artists and small independent businesses, but that means they can sell out. So shop now. 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- [39:06]
Caroline Lee
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move Being financially savvy Smart move. Another smart move having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [39:38]
Jack Wilson
Upgrade your laundry routine with a durable and reliable Maytag laundry pair at Lowes, like the new Maytag washer and dryer with performance enhanced stain fighting power designed to cut through serious dirt and grime. And what's great is this laundry pair is in stock and ready for delivery when you need it the most. Don't miss out. Shop Maytag in store or online today at Lowe's. Okay. Joining me now is Caroline Lee, who's written several books including the Glass Woman, a gothic thriller set during the Icelandic witch trials, and the Metal Heart, an epic Second World War love story. She's here today to discuss her new novel, Love, Sex and Frankenstein, which reimagines Mary Shelley and the writing of Frankenstein. Caroline Lee, welcome to the history of Literature.
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Caroline Lee
Hi, Jack. Thanks so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here.
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Jack Wilson
So I read that you grew up on the island of Jersey, which touts itself as the sunniest place in the British Isles. Was it the relentless sunniness that nudged you toward the storminess of Icelandic witch trials and gothic thrillers?
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Caroline Lee
Yeah, I just really wanted to kind of escape all that sunshine. It became too much for me. I don't remember all that much sunshine in Jersey. Tourism currently putting me on there. No fly list. I. I think I've always been drawn to islands or isolated places and that kind of claustrophobia and intensity. And so with the Icelandic witch trials that was provided very clearly both in Iceland and that, just the amazing landscape there and the very claustrophobic setting for the novel itself. And then in Love, Sex and Frankenstein, there's obviously the confined space of the house in Geneva and again, the kind of stormy atmosphere. And maybe that tells readers something about my childhood. It certainly tells my therapist plenty about my childhood.
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Jack Wilson
Well, it is true. And we'll get to it in a minute here. When we talk about the Shelleys and the trip in Geneva, they were sort of expecting a trip that was much different, I think a vacation that would probably have a lot more to do with the outdoors and being in wide open spaces and so on. And instead they wound up. It almost feels like an Agatha Christie setting or something where the power goes out and the doors are locked and you're all inside this home during a raging thunderstorm and that kind of thing. So I could see where growing up on an island, you maybe have a kind of natural affinity for that type of isolation.
- [42:33]
Caroline Lee
Yes, I think so. That kind of feeling of intensity and claustrophobia. And in a. I mean, I often joke about the experience of growing Up, I think, not just necessarily in an island, but any small community or beginning. Any confined space where you just feel like it's not that everyone knows your business, but they think they know your business, which is almost worse.
- [42:54]
Jack Wilson
Yeah.
- [42:55]
Caroline Lee
Because then you have. And this is something I tried to reflect in the novel. You. You end up with kind of this observer, which is also yourself, you know, kind of critiquing your actions and feeling like, I suppose, reflecting on whether you're doing things in the way that you should. And that's certainly something I wanted to build on in the novel, that idea that Mary kind of becomes almost her own kind of worst critic. And I think that's definitely something that I felt in that kind of island. Claustrophobia.
- [43:27]
Jack Wilson
You can feel that way when you're in the spotlight, as they were, and society suddenly seems small because everybody is gossiping about you and knowing your business. And you can also feel that way in a family where you feel. Especially with all of the, I guess, cross fertilization, I should say, maybe that's a little vulgar.
- [43:48]
Caroline Lee
I didn't mean it that way.
- [43:49]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. All the different relationships going on and different connections, it can feel like, well, I object to this, but where am I gonna go? This is my half sister, or this is somebody who is going to be part of my life no matter what. And, you know, that's. I think we can all kind of relate to that as well.
- [44:08]
Caroline Lee
Yes, absolutely. The kind of. The inescapability of one's family is definitely something that I feel like a lot of readers have related to and. Yeah. And that the complexity and nuance with. Within those relationships as well, where it's not as simple as just kind of escaping or cutting someone off. And especially for a woman in that time, no matter how free thinking you were, there's still that sense of confinement and dependence upon other people and dependence upon a wider community and the views that they might hold of you, how they might think of you.
- [44:45]
Jack Wilson
We'll see that when we talk about Mary and her relationship with her father. Okay, so what I wanted to ask you, though, is what your experience was with the novel Frankenstein. We all. I mean, I'm assuming that when you were growing up, you encountered a lot of the secondary sources, the films or the adaptations, or just the image of the green monster with the bolts on his neck and that kind of thing, Halloween costumes and so on. But did you ever read the novel Frankenstein? When did that come into the picture for you?
- [45:18]
Caroline Lee
Not until much later. And I understand that's probably not the. The Answer that. You know, I think I should probably say I was obsessed with the novel from.
- [45:25]
Jack Wilson
Right. I read it when I was 13 and it was.
- [45:29]
Caroline Lee
But, yeah, I didn't. I didn't come across the novel and realize the differences there were between Mary Shelley's novel and our kind of common conception of the Green Monster, this kind of horror film figure, until I was maybe in my very early twenties and teaching it at. I was a high school English teacher before I was a writer, and we were doing a module on Gothic literature for the kind of. For the A level, which I guess would be sort of. Yeah, just before. Just before university, just before college. And I was kind of blown away by the difference, both. The difference in the novel, because you've got that kind of story nested within a story and it's composed of all these letters and journals, this kind of chorus of voices, and you're never quite sure where the truth is. But also the difference in the monster itself. I mean, I hadn't really realized that it's such a pitiful creature and is so kind of abandoned and lonely. I had just imagined this vicious being from horror movies.
- [46:30]
Jack Wilson
A brute.
- [46:31]
Caroline Lee
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that, for me, made the novel and made Mary Shelley as a writer so much more interesting because not that kind of. The conception of this kind of horror monster wasn't fascinating, but the complexity of him and his vulnerability really just makes him so much more interesting and makes the idea of the writer who created that so much more interesting, I think, to me.
- [46:56]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. Well, let's talk about the writer. When did you become aware of her and her story? I mean, did you come at this from, you know, you read the novel and then you learned more about Mary Shelley or were you. Was Mary Shelley intriguing to you? And so you picked up the novel?
- [47:15]
Caroline Lee
So I think it was around the same time, because I was, you know, I was teaching the novel. And at that point, you have to kind of more detail and look at the context from which it was drawn and look at kind of the social anxieties around that time to do with the way that the world was changing. And, you know, I mean, there are so many connections to draw between kind of nowadays and the rise of kind of artificial intelligence and the idea of, like, technology taking over compared to sort of 200 years ago in electricity and the way the world was changing. But for me, yeah, Mary as a figure became fascinating then. And I remember watching a lecture and I wish I could remember the lecturer's name, but she was brilliant and so inspirational. Talk Talking about Mary and what she'd been through, and particularly was focusing on the loss of the children that she'd experienced. And then her creation of this story and the idea of her kind of birthing this story, and I mean, sort of was that 20 years ago, revealing my age, that I. That I listened to that lecture, and I think that had always stuck with me. So then when I returned to the story and thought about writing about Mary, writing this story, that was really one of my starting points. The idea of kind of bringing forth this novel, bringing forth this creature and kind of everything that had gone on for that young woman in order to enable her at such a young age, she was 18, to create something that was so profoundly moving and terrifying and has remained with us. I don't think it's been out of print, actually. Frankenstein in 200 years and, as you said, has spawned so many kind of cultural references and films and so many different explorations. So it felt like a really exciting starting point for me.
- [49:10]
Jack Wilson
Childbirth and motherhood seems like such an underrated part of this, because, as you say, she was 18 years old, she had already given birth twice, and her own mother, I mean, it's hard to imagine that she, you know, her mother so famous, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died 11 days after she was born. So she has this, you know, she grows up with this drama of basically her birth leading to the death of this revered philosopher and, you know, this central figure. And with women these days tending to have childbirth later, in their 30s or something, there's a lot of life that happens between the age of 15 and 30, and there's time to kind of grow accustomed to things and to see other people go through experiences. But to think about Mary being 16 and having a baby girl who's born prematurely and dying and then getting pregnant again, and all the while in this kind of unconventional relationship, and her father disapproving of her relationship with Percy Shelley and so on, you can just imagine what a fraught and intense time this is for her to be thinking and to be thinking that these pregnancies could very well kill her as well. It's like the stakes are really ratcheted up for her.
- [50:46]
Caroline Lee
Absolutely. That idea of how tenuous life was and kind of, I suppose, kind of living alongside death in that way. And as you said for Mary, she was aware of that from such young age. She was aware of how her mother had died. I mean, it's potentially apocryphal, but as a story. But she visited her mother's grave, really Often and allegedly learned to write her own name through tracing the letters of her mother's name on her gravestone. I mean, it does. It gives you chills, doesn't it?
- [51:19]
Jack Wilson
And she and Percy used to meet there at the mother's grave. And there is another potentially apocryphal story that that's where they consummated their relationship. But even just meeting there frequently is something that, you know, is. It's so strange. That's the tone here.
- [51:39]
Caroline Lee
It really does. It really does. And, I mean, I think that's some hardcore Goth behavior, really. But, yeah, that kind of constant presence of death and the fact that she lived so close to her mother's grave and was so aware of the shadow of death. And like you said, the idea for women at that point that every pregnancy was kind of a risk to life was something that I really wanted to kind of draw on in the novel, the idea of. Of how tenuous life is and how profoundly affected Mary was by the death of her first baby girl. Because, again, as you said, it was a really chaotic time. They were moving backwards and forwards from different places. Mary's father had refused to see her. They'd initially eloped to France. Mary and Percy Shelley, along with Claire Clairmont, her half sister, which is. I mean, there are so many decisions where I just think, how on earth did that happen? I mean, I can't imagine eloping, age 16, and then being sort of happy to take along my half sister, who I didn't necessarily get along with very well. But that idea of kind of the chaos and being able to endure that. I think the stoicism of Mary really appealed because she must have been terrified at so many points. But in her journals, and she was a kind of. She was quite a diligent keeper of journals. You don't necessarily see that she's quite matter of fact, you know, kind of went rowing on the lake, read some Herodotus, traveled to St. Pancras today, and you don't necessarily get the danger and sense of chaos and all the feelings behind that. That must have been very real. And I would imagine, incredibly sort of. Well, again, it's that sense of claustrophobia which I found so fascinating.
- [53:38]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. Okay. So Mary Shelley, It's May of 1816. She's 18 years old. She's with her lover, Percy Shelley, who's still married to another woman and will be until December of that year when that woman, Harriet, dies. And then Percy and Mary will get married a few weeks later. But for now, they've had Two children together. One has died in March of the year before, and then she's pregnant again. They have a boy, and she's traveling to Geneva with Percy. Who's she traveling with and why were they going to Geneva?
- [54:19]
Caroline Lee
So they'd had a bit of a difficult reception on coming back to England from their kind of initial elopement to France.
- [54:27]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, they came back in poverty. Right. They ran out of money and they came back and the society was not real thrilled with them as a couple.
- [54:38]
Caroline Lee
Exactly, exactly. Which was an enormous surprise for Mary, who had grown up, you know, she'd been brought up to be very free thinking by her father. Her father and Percy had sort of had been great friends, actually. So even though Percy was married, there's a sense we get that Mary was surprised and, I mean, obviously very wounded, but her father's total rejection of her and of her relationship with Percy was really unexpected. So they'd reached a point just before they went to Geneva, where they were essentially living separately. So Mary had this young baby, William, they called Wilmous of a few months old, and was living with her half sister, Claire, while debt collectors were trying to kind of find Percy. And essentially they decided to go to Geneva because Claire Claremont, who. Yeah, Mary's half sister, had fallen madly in love with Byron, who was, I suppose, the celebrity poet of the time, had been described as mad, bad and dangerous to know, I think is the famous quote that Caroline Lamb said about him. But he was. And he was something of a. Kind of a menace in terms of his, you know, he. He spent freely. He slept with lots of different people. Yeah. He was kind of fairly irresponsible, I suppose, in. In that way. But also massively adored and very. And admired. But he'd had a very brief relationship with Claire Claremont, and then she had sort of imagined that she had been invited to Geneva, essentially. There was mention of him being in Geneva, but she'd kind of. When they got to Geneva and then Byron arrived shortly afterwards, he was incredibly unimpressed to find that she had, I think, from his perspective, kind of stalked him across several countries.
- [56:32]
Jack Wilson
But wasn't she pregnant with his child?
- [56:35]
Caroline Lee
Yes, she was pregnant with his child, which she didn't know at the point that she left. And that kind of. That's something that comes out halfway through the novel, as I've placed it. But yes.
- [56:45]
Jack Wilson
So I would say one man's stalking might be another man's search for child support.
- [56:50]
Caroline Lee
Exactly, exactly. That's the thing. So Byron treated Claire appallingly and. Yeah. And even after he found out that she was carrying his child. He was alleged to have said, is the brat mine? Yeah.
- [57:06]
Jack Wilson
And meanwhile, from Mary's perspective, Claire was probably also having an affair with Percy or had had an affair with Percy. Yeah. And so it's sort of. You know, there's a feeling that the emotions here and the ties are potentially kind of spinning out of control.
- [57:28]
Caroline Lee
Absolutely. And then to kind of take those intense relationships and various. I don't know, it's not even triangulation. There are so many different. Different vagaries and different relationships. And then to put all those people into a confined environment with a. With a storm just felt like an author's dream. And also, to add to that, we have Byron's Dr. John Polidori.
- [57:52]
Jack Wilson
Right. Let's not forget him. He comes through.
- [57:58]
Caroline Lee
So Polidori wrote what is kind of thought of potentially probably, as the first kind of vampire story. Initially, it was attributed to or published under Byron's name or was thought to be something written by Byron, and it said the ghost story, which led to Mary producing Frankenstein. I'm aware I'm kind of jumping ahead, but I'm also assuming that people will have some knowledge of the starting point. So the ghost story challenge led to Polidori in that house, also writing what has given us our current conception, really, of vampires as these kind of wealthy, magnetic, kind of amoral creatures who feed on other people's blood. And potentially Polidori's sort of inspiration for that was the figure of Byron himself, who kind of sucked the blood or soul out of everyone around him and then discarded them. And I've kind of. I've always loved that as an idea that this experience in the house led to these two creatures. We've got. You've got Frankenstein's monster and you. You've got the vampire in there. Two of kind of gothic fiction's most recognizable creations.
- [59:15]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, it's incredible. It's almost like a sports team, maybe a basketball team, where you have a couple of stars, and then all of a sudden you get these role players who toss in a game of 40 points or something, and you think, oh, wow, what an embarrassment of riches for this roster that they, you know, here's. Here's these people. So they meet and you start your book at this wonderful moment. I don't think I'm spoiling it, because it's on the first page or two that they get to Geneva expecting to spend this summer on the lake, and instead it starts to snow, and then it's rainy, and they end up Inside. I think it's Byron's idea to challenge them. Let's all write a ghost story. And you would think that, you know, you've got Byron and Shelley there, two of already @ that point, practically canonical English poets, and you would think that one of those two might come up with the best story. And instead we get Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and maybe the first vampire story by John Polidori. I mean, what a group. And what an incredible moment.
- [60:22]
Caroline Lee
Yeah. Isn't it brilliant that it does work that way around that it isn't Byron and Shelley who produce these. These great works, although obviously, you know, their reputations have. Have endured as well. Although Shelley's reputation has very possibly endured because Mary invested, after his death, quite a lot of time and energy in republishing his poems. Yes, that's sort of an aside, but I love the fact that Byron and Shelley are. I don't know if they kind of. They can't really work under the constraints. They both. They both certainly get very frustrated and sort of discard their stories quite early on, whereas I think it's the two more beleaguered characters, really. I wonder if there's something to be said for really intensely feeling that sense of claustrophobia and confinement.
- [61:08]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, right. Lack of power, almost like a desperation that they pour into this story. And to Byron and Shelley's. Percy Shelley's credit, they were very encouraging and excited about these, about what they were hearing. So it's not as if they were kind of saying, you know, as if they were jealous or trying to tamp this down or dismiss it. They were helpful and, you know, keep going.
- [61:36]
Caroline Lee
Right, yes, yes, yes, definitely. And I know that there's been some sort of discussion that, oh, Percy Shelley wrote enormous amounts of Frankenstein, but actually they've done some studies into where they can see where Percy's made suggestions and they reckon sort of around the 5,000 word mark, which is potentially around the sort of the place where a modern editor, although they wouldn't add words, might kind of make that sort of impact on a writer's novel at the moment. And actually there are some cases where Shelley's made suggestions and because his language is so much more poetic and flirting, flowery, I suppose, whereas Mary's language is not quite so much, so her more direct speech actually works kind of far, far better, I think, in many cases.
- [62:28]
Jack Wilson
Okay, so I want to get to our break, but before we do that, I want to put this quote on the table because it's Mary Shelley and here she is at the moment. She's recalling it later and she says, quote, I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out. And then on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy half vital motion. Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the creator of the world. End quote. And that's what started the whole thing. So let's take a quick break and come back with more from Caroline Lee. So good, so good, so good.
- [63:25]
Caroline Lee
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Jack Wilson
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Caroline Lee
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Jack Wilson
When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com okay, we're back. So, Caroline, your book begins as I said. They're sort of. They arrive in Geneva, but then you jump back in time a couple of spots. We go back to three weeks before, and then we jump back two years. So what was important about filling in their backstory in order to set the stage for what they were facing in Geneva?
- [64:51]
Caroline Lee
So I think it's so important to understand the space that Mary was in herself at that point. I mean, we spent some time kind of, I suppose, filling listeners in on the background and context by the time they get to Geneva, because I think it's so key to understanding for me where this book comes from, where Mary is both as a writer and as a woman in a relationship as a young mother. And understanding that the chaos, both practical and emotional, that must have placed her in kind of. Or, yeah, that must have kind of been weighing on her, I think, when she got to Geneva. So you're right. I go into her childhood because her father, after her mother died, her father remarried, obviously. She has a half sister, Claire Claremont, and Claire's mother, Mary Jane Claremont. And Mary did not get on. I think that's putting it lightly. Mary was sort of sent away to Scotland as a young teenager, sort of aged 14, very probably because she and Mary Jane Claremont had had a falling out. Although one of the reasons it's given for it is that she has to recuperate because she's got a skin condition on her arm. But certainly Mary found that reprieve from that house and from her stepmother to be kind of a balm and loved that time that she spent in Scotland. And again, that kind of the wildness of that place, although I haven't really included it in my novel and there are some excellent non fiction novels that talk about that and I know there's another fictional sort of account of Mary Shelley that looks at that experience in Scotland as inspiration for the creature and kind of maybe the wildness of nature there. But I think it's important for us to kind of, to understand the place that Mary's in at that point.
- [66:44]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. So what kind of relationship does she have with Shelley? Because the Shelley relationship triggered this disapproval by her father. And as we said, her mother had died and you just said her, her stepmother was not someone she was close with. She, she seems like she could be kind of unmoored at that point. Did she latch onto Shelley as kind of a life raft or did she have a strong enough sense of self that she didn't need to, you know, that she, she was already independent.
- [67:15]
Caroline Lee
So I have in, in my novel, certainly the perspective that I've taken is that she and Shelley fall so madly in love partly because of her age and because she idealizes this wonderful poet who seems to be the object of her father's approval and that she is kind of swept up in his. He was a kind of deeply political writer at the time, as well as being a poet and was quite performative, a little bit preening. And to Mary, the idea of that of this character who seemed to embody so many of the free thinking ideals, both that her father had instructed her in when she was young, but also, as we said, her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and had produced this kind of work of proto feminist literature on the rights of women, which talked about women being free thinking and independent and not kind of bound to their husbands. So in terms of kind of young Mary, the position I've taken is that initially she thinks that she's making a choice which allows her to be kind of. I mean, it does sound like a freeing choice to elope and to leave everything behind and to run away with this man who embodies so many free thinking ideals. But that actually then when everything is removed from her, she's entirely dependent. And particularly when they return to England after she's had a baby who's died and then she's pregnant and has another child, she's entirely beholden to this man who is kind of unreliable and a little bit self absorbed and selfish. Sorry for the Shelley fans out there, but he's very concerned, as is Byron, very concerned with their own interests and forging their own path. So when Mary goes to Geneva, it's not necessarily that it's her idea, it's that Claire wants to go. Thus, potentially Shelley wants to go because it's exciting and Mary in the book is sort of has to choose to make the decision anyway. So that's kind of the position that she's in where it's not that she's entirely disempowered in terms of the way that she thinks of herself, but that she's been forced to. Yeah, forced to be dependent, I think. And so what I wanted to look at in the novel is how. And it's a perennially important question, like how you balance those multiple poles of creativity and motherhood and independence and dependence and relationships and responsibility. And I think one of the reasons why some, why readers have responded so well to it, I think, has been just that idea that it's still a question that so many people are struggling with today because it's really difficult to balance this stuff.
- [70:16]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, right, right. It's almost like, I mean, a conventional marriage and monogamy, you enter into this contract basically, and then it basically takes a lot of options off of the table and you have boundaries and rules and limits to follow and you know that you and your partner are presumably on the same page and you know you've committed to one another and that's going to be that. And if there's a disruption that might happen in the future, but like you'll deal with that if it becomes disrupted. But it seems like with a relationship like the one Mary had with Percy, the page could, could change every day. And you might be on the same page one day, but maybe that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have the same understanding tomorrow and the next day could be different and then, but then you have a child together and you can understand why, you know, that's something new you have to work out. Well, what does this mean now that we're parents together? And does this Strengthen our commitment, or are we still devoted to the idea of free love and not tying one another down and so on? And it just seems like it's a lot to kind of manage. And in some ways, her journals probably were a great source of helping her manage that. But also maybe you can see a lot of that anxiety and kind of working out of ideas being poured into the novel Frankenstein.
- [71:56]
Caroline Lee
Yeah, absolutely. That idea of. And it's something that. That I really wanted to explore. The almost the concept of Mary herself feeling, I suppose, monstrous. This idea that someone has in some way created you or created a conception of you, which is what I think both Shelley did and Mary's father did, that idea that they projected so much onto her in terms of the way they wanted her to be. Because when Shelley encountered Mary, he knew about her already. She was kind of the famed Godwin Wollstonecraft progeny.
- [72:32]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [72:33]
Caroline Lee
And so the idea to have all these things projected onto you and then to feel like you've fallen short, which is the way that Mary's, you know, Frankenstein's creature.
- [72:42]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, right.
- [72:43]
Caroline Lee
This. That he's being created and then abandoned because he doesn't quite match up. And I found this sort of the tension between that both relatable and sort of. And deeply moving, because isn't. I mean, I know not all of us are stuck in a house in Geneva, and thankfully, none of us are remotely involved with Percy Shelley. But, you know, there is that feeling of constantly wanting. Don't we all want to kind of measure up to something or some ideal that someone has projected onto us? And that feeling of falling short is devastating, and for Mary, deeply enraging.
- [73:20]
Jack Wilson
And she's also been surprised by the idea that she's fallen short in the eyes of her father, who's another potential Dr. Frankenstein here. You know, parents have this relationship toward the children that is kind of a lot like Frankenstein's monster. You could say, from the point of view of a child, of, well, aren't I supposed to be my own thing? Why did you. Why did you give me life if you didn't want me to be free and independent? And from the parents point of view, it's kind of like, well, look, I own you, I control you. You wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me, and I need to take care of you and you need to be dependent on me. And for someone who's 15, 16, 18, this is kind of the peak period for having to wrestle with that relationship.
- [74:14]
Caroline Lee
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that. That idea of. Of trying to Forge an independent self is so hard. And for Mary, I think she doesn't necessarily really have a chance to do that. She's. She's gone straight from her father's house sort of to being with Shelley and then being in this. In this place of. Of such emotional turmoil where she's not sure of any one of her relationships. And so a lot of the novel that I've written focuses really on her finding herself and finding her voice and using writing as a way of expressing her. Yeah. Articulating her rage and finding a sense of autonomy, I suppose, which I think is what creativity does for a lot of people. That idea of being able to create something and write something which belongs to you and which is your own. Although obviously within that, you know, she's writing in the novel, she's writing directly into that space of trying to break free. So in some sense, she's still dependent on that. But, yeah, I mean, the creature in the novel sort of says that misery, misery made me a fiend. And that kind of, I found, really felt like something that might apply to Mary as well. That idea of kind of that. That rage that you feel and rejection you feel has turned you into something monstrous.
- [75:44]
Jack Wilson
Do you think she came to view the manuscript and the writing of the novel as being kind of her creature and her monster?
- [75:55]
Caroline Lee
Yes. She called it like her hideous progeny, and I think was actually kind of surprised by the way that it captured. Captured the imagination of so many people. She, you know, within a couple of years, it had that, you know, it already spawned its own little mini creatures in terms of a stage version that she went to see and kind of said she was. I can't remember if she was. It was something like amused by or some other kind of 19th century kind of underwhelmed vocabulary. But the idea that it sort of took on a life of its own. And although she continued to write, she didn't ever write anything that had the same heft. And I mean, how could you really. You know, she's created something that's so singular in Frankenstein, But I always. I wonder as well, what that must have been like to write, you know, to have your first novel so young and to be such an outrageous success. And also to. I mean, it appalled people who were, you know, didn't believe it could have been written by a woman. How could. Firstly, how could anyone write anything so monstrous? But how could a woman write something so appalling and amoral, but to write something that has that kind of impact and then to continue to write but not be able to kind of reach that space again? I. It's not something I touch on, really, in the novel, but it's something that. That I do wonder about. That must have been hard.
- [77:23]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. I'm a fan of wings and Paul McCartney, but, you know, they'll say, like, you know, does it bother you that they're. And he was just like, come on, it was the Beatles. Like, you think we're going to top that? Yeah. Well, do you think that was part of it? I mean, did she have a sense that she didn't. That she didn't need to write another book? You know, that. That Frankenstein was kind of a runaway train and, you know, she would write prefaces for it and. And new publications, you know, new editions of it and so on, but. Or do you think she. Was she trying to recreate the magic and not finding it possible?
- [78:06]
Caroline Lee
Yeah, I mean, she certainly did. She wrote a number of novels afterwards that kind of. That didn't come close. So I kind of get the sense that she was trying to, you know, continually trying to reach that. Although she did, you're right, she did write the preface to later editions, but it wasn't. If we transpose this to today's world and that kind of runaway commercial success, Mary would have been, I don't know, happily writing from her yacht, presumably.
- [78:34]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, Right.
- [78:35]
Caroline Lee
But she wasn't fantastically wealthy. After Shelley died, Mary was kind of sole parent for their one surviving child, Percy Florence. And there was some dispute over the inheritance that Percy Shelley's father didn't want Mary to have anything to do with, or, you know, didn't. Didn't want her to get, as he saw it, her kind of grubby, adulterous mitts on. So, yeah, Mary wasn't in kind of a position of financial privilege, really, certainly not to the scale that one would imagine, given the enormous success of Frankenstein. And more than that, potentially the idea of trying to creatively reach the heights of her first novel. I get the sense that nothing afterwards sort of came close and that must have felt quite frustrating.
- [79:28]
Jack Wilson
My last question. It's easy to forget just how young these people were, because they seem so mature and they wrote such great things. But if you could travel back in time and offer the teenaged Mary some friendly advice, what age would she be when you visit her, and what would you tell her? Or would you be afraid to tell her anything for fear of disrupting the course of history? Oh.
- [79:55]
Caroline Lee
Oh, that's an enormous. That's an enormous question. Yeah. I mean, time travel mechanics Everyone knows. Everyone knows you.
- [80:06]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, the prime directive.
- [80:07]
Caroline Lee
Exactly. However, I mean, part of me wants to go back and just tell 16 year old Mary Shelley to, you know, leave or don't go to France, but at that point I've just unwritten Frankenstein and my own novel, therefore, so I'm not going to do that. And by her later life, she was apparently quite cantankerous, which I know might sound off putting, but that kind of appeals to me. I think Mary could probably give me some advice, actually. Kind of mid-40s Mary having kind of been through quite a lot of different experiences, maybe she could impart some wisdom to me. Yeah. Or maybe I'd just give her the idea of writing the next kind of. I don't know, what other monster could she write about? I'm trying to think something really witchy she could have created. Imagine here.
- [81:09]
Jack Wilson
Or how about you could say, Mary, you might try writing about a young wizard who's on his way to a place called Hogwarts. That's the one.
- [81:19]
Caroline Lee
That's what I'm gonna do. That's it. Let's pretend I said that. That's a great answer.
- [81:25]
Jack Wilson
Okay, well, the book is called Love's Sex and Frankenstein. Caroline Lee, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.
- [81:31]
Caroline Lee
Thank you so much. It's been wonderful.
- [81:35]
Jack Wilson
And finally today we wrap things up with our friend Jeffrey Ternofsky. After he and I discussed the print culture of early modern France in episode 639, I asked him a special question. Okay. Joining me now is Jeffrey Ternofsky, associate professor of French at the University of Washington and the author of Rich Reading Typographically Immersed in Print in Early Modern France. Jeffrey, this question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.
- [82:17]
Jeffrey Ternofsky
Thank you. So I do not have a good answer to this question, but my relationship to books is such that I don't think I can really name a particular title. But there's something a little unsettling about this question, which made me think of a couple of references that I thought were interesting to evoke in this context. And one is this story by Jorge Luis Borges, the Tower of Babel. I don't know if you know it, but it's a kind of fantasy about a library that contains every possible permutation of books of 410 pages, with, I think it's kind of 22 characters in all sorts of different orders. So it's kind of this infinite. Actually, I don't think it's infinite. You know, it's finite, but it's so large that these librarians get lost in this library and they. They can't find anything. So they can't. You know, it's the challenge of. Among all books that have ever been written and will ever be written or could ever be written, of picking one. Yeah, it's a. I think, a significant reflection because I know, especially with digitization, thinking about Google Books, you know, there was this sort of ambition to create this sort of universal library. Every book that's ever been written is going to be there. And these things sound great in the abstract, but when you really start thinking through these sort of fantasies of total plenitude can quickly become kind of dystopic. The other reference I thought about is something else, you probably know, this Twilight Zone episode, and I'm trying to remember.
- [83:45]
Jack Wilson
It, but it's with Burgess Meredith.
- [83:47]
Jeffrey Ternofsky
Burgess Meredith, exactly. Obsessed with reading and to the point where he's constantly being destroyed. He's always wanting to read, but the sort of. The demands of life are constantly getting in his way and preventing him from reading, and vice versa. He's reading when he should be working and so forth, or interacting with others. And then there's a hydrogen bomb explosion. You know, there's a sort of nuclear war. This is, of course, a story from the 50s and the only survivor. And of course, he's very depressed initially, but then he realizes the library's still there, it's still intact. And he goes into the library and he's suddenly happy because now he can read without any distraction. But then, of course, his glasses. He drops his glasses and they break and he can't. So of course, it's this incredibly horrific ending, but another sort of representation of somebody who's read his last book. Yeah, so these were the sort of references that came to my mind with that question, which is probably not, I don't think, where you're. Your listener wanted us to go with this question, but.
- [84:50]
Jack Wilson
Well, it's interesting that those popped into your mind because you. You really did. A lot of people kind of grumble about the question a little bit where they'll say, you know, geez, a little morbid, but you seem to have really taken it as well. That is a dystopic idea that I would only have one book left and. Exactly.
- [85:14]
Jeffrey Ternofsky
Dystophic. Just because there's a certain morbidity to it, I guess. That's your last book. And also the idea of selecting among so many books out there.
- [85:24]
Jack Wilson
Right. And that it. I mean, I have been struggling with this question myself, and that is kind of part of it, that reading. There is something about reading that you want it to be not your last book. That it's.
- [85:38]
Jeffrey Ternofsky
Oh, yes, exactly.
- [85:40]
Jack Wilson
You know that it's going to just lead you to the next one and that you're going to have another. It may be just perfect for that moment or that mood, but then you're going to have another moment or mood and a different book will be perfect for that period of your life.
- [85:54]
Jeffrey Ternofsky
Absolutely. Exactly.
- [85:58]
Jack Wilson
Okay, well, maybe we have to retire the question. You might have ended it. Jeffrey, this is.
- [86:02]
Jeffrey Ternofsky
Oh, no, I did not mean to do that.
- [86:06]
Jack Wilson
I'm kidding. I'll keep asking it. Jeffrey Tardofsky, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.
- [86:13]
Jeffrey Ternofsky
Thank you so much.
- [86:18]
Jack Wilson
Okay, that's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. I hope you enjoyed it. My thanks to Jeffrey Ternofsky and Caroline Lee and our listener, Christine for their stellar contributions. Love, Sex and Frankenstein. And Love Sex and Leo Tolstoy's Search for the Meaning of Life. What a combination. Where else would you get this? Only here at the History of Literature podcast, folks, with a little Twilight Zone thrown in. And the only History of Literature podcast tour in 2026, anyway, at least on the current schedule, will be in Literary England, and we would love to have you join us for it. So please do check out that itinerary and consider signing up. We're doing our best to make this work, this whole podcasting thing, but we're trying to do it without signing away our souls. And this tour is part of the plan, but we need your help. Some other things are in the works too, which we will announce in due time. Speaking of due time, it's due time for the farewells. I can hear that our theme song is running out like those songs in the jukebox and me without another quarter. Or like those batteries in the boombox. Those things drained like my friend's car, which took more oil than gas. So, yes, the 80s. What a time to be alive. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time. What does it mean to live for the common good? Introducing the Garrison Institute presents the Common Good, the brand new podcast from the Garrison Institute, a leading, not for profit organization exploring the intersection of contemplation and engaged action in the world. Hosted by me, Jonathan F.P. rose, a CO founder of the Garrison Institute. The series dives into the threads that bind us all. First, you'll discover the interdependent nature of life with environmental entrepreneur Paul Hawken and trailblazing plant intelligence researcher Monica Gagliano. Next, we unlock the mysteries of the mind with renowned psychiatrist Dan Siegel and Pulitzer Prize winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee. Finally, we experience compassion in action with social justice activist Conda Mason and environmental leader Bill McKibben. We invite you to listen, reflect and join us in acting for the common good. Follow the Garrison Institute presents the Common Good on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are listening.
- [88:49]
Caroline Lee
The town of Milton may seem normal at first glance, but the shadows are.
- [88:52]
Jack Wilson
Cursed and the expansive woods surrounding town are forbidden. They call it the void and nobody comes back alive. You're headed straight for the void. Milton lives suspended in time, trapped by a darkness that seems to be creeping closer and closer. It's safe.
- [89:06]
Caroline Lee
The void is kept at bay.
- [89:07]
Jack Wilson
Is it though? Join three friends as they embark on an epic journey into the heart of darkness. The Void Wherever you get your podcasts, this is just the beginning.