Revolutionary Mothers

Someday, hopefully by the end of 2026 as I continue working to overcome my “mother wound,” I’ll finish reading Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence by Carol Berkin. The book survived the purge-fest of my bookshelves in 2024 because of its historical subject matter — just like I survived my childhood struggle for freedom from the tyranny of my mother.  

Love & Other Monsters

It took me a long time (two weeks) to get into Love & Other Monsters by Emily Franklin, but once I did I was spellbound. My experience was similar with The Lioness of Boston, another book written by Franklin whose unique writing style reflects the old-fashioned flourish of the time periods about which she writes. It takes a while for me to warm up to the language and manners of these bygone eras, even when the subject matter is so captivating. Lioness chronicles the fascinating and unconventional life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, known for assembling a vast collection of art at a museum she founded in Boston. Franklin's novel thrusts the reader into the larger-than-life world of old money, arts patrons, and high society.

Likewise in this book, Franklin plunges us into a maelstrom of dark Victorian culture where the intimate trappings of polite society intersect with new advances in medicine and Gothic horror. I had no idea what a complete dumpster fire Mary Shelley’s life was when my obsession with Frankenstein began. I learned that much has been documented about the complicated lives of Mary and her contemporaries.

Love & Other Monsters examines the complex dynamics in play in 1816 when Frankenstein was conceived in Geneva, Switzerland during what became known as The Year Without Summer. The story is told from the perspective of Mary’s half-sister Claire Clairmont who is oft-forgotten and eliminated from the narrative completely, despite the fact that she herself left behind copious letters and journals of her long life.

On the famous occasion in 1816, Mary Shelley, her fiancé Percy Shelley, their young son William, and Claire were summering next-door to celebrity poet Lord Byron and his personal physician, John Polidori. Shenanigans ensued between and amongst these strong personalities in the rented mansion Villa Diodati. 

It was here that Byron sought refuge from the relentless press seeking gossip about his romantic pursuits. Claire, who had initiated an affair with Byron, actually arranged for her and the Shelleys to be present. Polidori was secretly providing details of the comings and goings of the group, while Claire’s relationships with Mary and Percy and Polidori were unorthodox, to say the least. Co-dependence, competition, and controversy defined all of the connections that fateful summer. Vast research and analysis of historical documents are the hallmarks of Franklin's work in historical fiction. Using material from primary sources such as letters, calendars, journals, and manuscripts, she weaves together the interactions between this illustrious cast of characters, spotlighting the inner thoughts of Claire as she navigates the heartbreak and drama of the times. 

Forthcoming and introspective, Claire described herself as “silly and serious, insistent and hungry.” These traits are on display in this observation she makes about her dalliance with Byron. “All of this made me wish I had stayed home—far safer to be there with the fantasy of the man rather than in close proximity to the real one, smelling poorly.” Here she describes more flatteringly her infatuation with the poet, who was ten years her senior.

"That he was handsome was not opinion, only fact. Documented time and again from his youth to present, twenty-eight years of age and still youthful of face. He was a slippery sort of beauty, and that very transient quality only urged his appeal."

Tragically, the love affair between Claire and Byron, though short and unhappy, produced a daughter who died at the age of five. Byron's own life was cut short at age 36 from complications of his participation in the Greek War for Independence. Claire was the only one present that summer to live to old-age. She died at 80 years old in Florence, Italy, having led a quiet but reflective life of travel, working as a governess and housekeeper. 

In the Epilogue of Love & Other Monsters, Claire ponders her relationship with her famous sister. 

"What is my story and what is Mary's ? Impossible to know whom I would have been without her. And she can never know whom she might've been without me, without the ghosts that clung to her from birth. Is my lack of singularity my great tragedy or great Fortune? Does a woman have to be extraordinary to be remembered?"

Here are some of my thoughts after being immersed in the tangled web of alliances in Love & Other Monsters. Certainly the fame Mary Shelley enjoyed for the success of Frankenstein could not have been worth the heartache, scandal, grief, and controversy she experienced in life! Can the human quest for fame and recognition be a dangerous thing? Or were other factors at play in the lives of these people?

On this last point, I wholeheartedly agree with Claire on the power of the written expression. 

"I write the truth down, and then it does not have power over me. I am free."