Dramatic Monologue: Mary Shelley

So, I used to write speeches and dramatic monologues for my friends in high school, for English and Drama. I was so desperate to show off that I could be clever, and my friends were often happy to exploit that. What I'm posting is The One piece which turned out leaps and bounds better than the rest, and was written in two days. For context, this was a Yr 13 Drama student (girl) who wanted to do a monologue in the guise of Mary Shelley (the author of Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus).

..

Dear Doctor

Am I a monster? For surely, if a monster is something that no one desires, then I am most certainly that. Doctor, you delivered my children and as they were in my arms, they were breathing, conscious creatures- I failed to make them beautiful, but they had form and grace. Neither was a boy, nor a girl, but they opened their eyes to see a paradise lost, and as I held each in my arm, I couldn't but think “it's alive! It's alive!”¹

Then, they weren't, and if my children aren't alive, then I have no purpose because it is a man's lot in life that if his wish is to give life then he is a madman! but it has always been that it is a woman's lot to prove that not only God can create life². There is something I must confess, I must- I think it will thrill you, it will shock you, it might even terrify you- but the two great mysteries of this, the region, the soil, the climb, in which the lost Arch-Angel fell, the two great mysteries are life and death³; life being the weaker- life is the absence of death. When I write to you I pour my soul, my life, and where from? These hands which hold a pen? This brain which cups my words? This heart which bleeds emotion?⁴ Life's easy- nature's way of keeping meat fresh, nothing to a man of science. We are not a single being, doctor; it is a lie- there is no contact where flesh stops and aether begins, only that we are made of many parts of all things precious, like a modern prometheus⁵- blood vessels and muscles act like wires and springs, and even after death, the wires sleep restlessly, waiting hopelessly for some sign to show that they have not been abandoned, cast away like used toys of time's predation.

There is death, one of the strangest tales ever told. Nothing to a blind man, who would hear the same of death as he would if he were lonely, and how he would feel that the world is quiet here. There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand.

I am so lonely. I had a lover, but he ran away, scared and repulsed. He showed me how to read, how to speak, how to act like a human being for all human beings want is to be in the company of their own likeness. Speaking, reading, thinking, not so much movements learned but movements...remembered. Learning from many people, many places, each part of my soul is a part of them. Who are these people from whom I am comprised? Good people, bad people?

Like a bolt of lightning in the darkest of nights, he left, terrified of his creature which he had made, scared of something which could speak and reason⁶.

"Begone! Believe me from the sight of your detested form"⁷

The world to me was a secret, which I desired to discover...

He gave me life, but what kind of life was it? He was a master, but a master has responsibilities. A master does not leave his student left for dead in the weary world of wild endeavour, so deformed and horrible am I. All I wanted was your love, every bird in the sky flies with another, ever deer has a mate, and I am the first and last and I am alone. Even Eve had Adam on her wedding night, a companion to survive an eternity in Eden, though she was cast out, while I did no wrong. When I see others, men and women, with their young, I feel the snake tell me to burn the Garden to the ground.

Doctor, forgive me. If I were, in your professional opinion, an abomination, a social experiment gone wrong, a woman with such intuition, if I were a monster then the monster was the best friend I ever had^8.

Dear Doctor Frankenstein, what shall I do? You are my doctor, and I am your monster.

Yours, truthfully, Mary Shelley

1From James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein film. Also, a reference to Shelley's children who died in infancy.

2Quote from 2004 film 'Van Helsing' featuring Frankenstein's Monster.

3A mash-up of quotes from Paradise Lost (featured prominently in Mary Shelley's novel, and the prologue to the 1931 film

4Inspired by a line from Kenneth Branagh's 1994 film 'Mary Shelley's Frankenstein'

5“Modern Prometheus” being the subtitle of the novel of Frankenstein

6An allusion to Percy Bysshe Shelley or Lord Byron (ambiguous nature of this allusion is intentional)

7Quote from the novel, but here used in the context of Percy/Byron to Mary Shelley

8A quote from Boris Karloff who was the first actor to portray Frankenstein's Monster in a film with audio.