Kelso, Sylvia (2013) Spring in Geneva. [Creative Work]

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Abstract

Mary Shelley, a young banker's son, and William, an excessively tall man with a "lividly hued visage, watery eyes, and blackened lips within a straggling beard," pit their wits and derring-do against Lord Byron, master of steampunk technology, and his thuggish minions.

"...my beloved Percy s ardor bore him to lengths I could not go. There were plans, between him and Byron, that I could not condone. I nerved myself to protest: you may conceive how difficult, against such visions, such intellects. When protest failed, I forced myself to act." She took her hand quickly from my arm and drew out a handkerchief. I paced beside her, managing not to exceed my position as mere listener, until she recovered herself. "Then I was forced to depart, in haste, and to choose between discovery, outcry, wrath perhaps, retribution and my child."

Research Statement

Research Background	Originally read as a Gothic or Romantic novel, Frankenstein has become a foundation text in horror and SF. Since the '70s, following Ellen Moers' discernment of a birth myth, feminists like Anne Mellor have also found it condemning amoral science, and even questioning middle-class mores. Having researched the novel, Shelley's biography and the criticism for my PhD, I produced a story for an anthology based on the novum that Frankenstein recorded Byron and Percy Shelley's actual attempt to create an artificial person in Geneva in 1816.
Research Contribution	The novella, "Spring in Geneva," presents a fictional re-vision of Mary Shelley and the Monster which extends both feminist constructions of the novel, and Shelley's presentation of the Monster's subjectivity. Rather than many later Otherings of the Monster as grotesque and evil, my version appeared as well-read, articulate, and interacting with an unterrified narrator. Again, the original Monster laments over Frankenstein's corpse with mingled hate and grief. In "Geneva," Mary sketches her biography, and confesses to feeling toward Godwin much as the original Monster might toward Frankenstein, at once his creator and betrayer. The novella thus develops the thesis that feminists can also read Frankenstein as a father-daughter book, an equally important woman's relationship.
Research Significance	The novella was published in 2013 through Aqueduct, a respected feminist and women-oriented press, giving its thesis a wider distribution than might have been achieved solely by an academic publication on the much-traversed territory of Frankenstein.
Item ID:	36922
Item Type:	Creative Work (Original Work - Textual Work - NTRO)
ISBN:	9781--61976-044-8
Keywords:	science fiction; Mary Shelley; adventure; fantasy; north Queensland author; Australian author
Related URLs:	Publisher
Date Deposited:	21 May 2015 04:51
FoR Codes:	19 STUDIES IN CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING > 1999 Other Studies in Creative Arts and Writing > 199999 Studies in Creative Arts and Writing not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes:	95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9502 Communication > 950203 Languages and Literature @ 100%
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