0:00:06 > 0:00:09Frankenstein, one of the darkest tales ever told,
0:00:09 > 0:00:12was born in a nightmare.
0:00:28 > 0:00:36From a 19-year-old girl whose life was full of demons came a monster who terrified generations to come.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39- MALE VOICE - I am the fallen angel.
0:00:40 > 0:00:43Misery made me a fiend!
0:00:46 > 0:00:52Mary Shelley began Frankenstein in Switzerland at the beginning of the 19th century.
0:00:52 > 0:00:57Today her story is known all over the world.
0:00:57 > 0:01:01Based on her own words and the people who knew her,
0:01:01 > 0:01:05this is the real story of Frankenstein's monster.
0:01:25 > 0:01:30- MAN:- It was a murderer, fresh from the gallows at Newgate.
0:01:30 > 0:01:33He gave it an electrical shock.
0:01:33 > 0:01:36The jaw, facial muscles contorted horribly.
0:01:38 > 0:01:40One eye actually opened.
0:01:40 > 0:01:45It seemed to everyone it was being restored to life.
0:01:45 > 0:01:47- Papa.- Oh, Mary.
0:01:47 > 0:01:52What are you doing? Come here, come here. Oh-h!
0:01:52 > 0:01:55- What's the matter?- Dead people,
0:01:55 > 0:01:59- they don't come back to life, do they?- No. No, no, no.
0:02:07 > 0:02:13Mary Shelley lived in an age of unprecedented scientific discovery.
0:02:13 > 0:02:17At the start of the 19th century, biology was the new science
0:02:17 > 0:02:21at the very cutting edge of intellectual inquiry.
0:02:21 > 0:02:27But people believed that electricity and magnetism could bring the dead back to life.
0:02:29 > 0:02:35As a child, Mary had heard of experiments to reanimate hanged convicts.
0:02:35 > 0:02:39The holy grail was the source of life itself.
0:02:42 > 0:02:45It was an experiment, that's all.
0:02:45 > 0:02:48It was just an experiment.
0:02:49 > 0:02:52Go on.
0:02:54 > 0:02:59Mary adored her father, the brilliant philosopher William Godwin.
0:03:01 > 0:03:06She was born in 1797 and grew up in troubled times.
0:03:08 > 0:03:14After the mob stormed the Bastille in Paris, Europe was unstable.
0:03:14 > 0:03:19In this country, there was social unrest and talk of revolution.
0:03:22 > 0:03:30Godwin's book about justice for everyone became a bible to British radicals.
0:03:30 > 0:03:33Government is the perpetual enemy of change.
0:03:33 > 0:03:40Its tendency is to perpetuate abuse, but truth must always be victorious over error.
0:03:40 > 0:03:47For truth is omnipotent. And man is perfectible.
0:03:49 > 0:03:54Mary Shelley's intellectual gene pool was a rich one.
0:03:54 > 0:03:57Both her parents were revolutionary thinkers.
0:03:57 > 0:04:02Her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft, the founder of feminism.
0:04:04 > 0:04:09Mary Wollstonecraft was a unique woman,
0:04:09 > 0:04:11beautiful, fierce, independent.
0:04:11 > 0:04:17Before her marriage to Godwin, she had already travelled the world alone
0:04:17 > 0:04:20and had had an illegitimate daughter.
0:04:20 > 0:04:26Her book, A Vindication Of The Rights Of Woman, is still taught in colleges today.
0:04:26 > 0:04:30Remember, this is years before the Suffragette movement.
0:04:32 > 0:04:36Even by today's standards, her philosophy is still radical.
0:04:36 > 0:04:38From the tyranny of man,
0:04:38 > 0:04:43I firmly believe the greater number of female follies proceed.
0:04:43 > 0:04:48Let women share the rights and she will emulate the virtues of man.
0:04:48 > 0:04:51For she must grow more perfect when emancipated.
0:04:54 > 0:05:02Mary Wollstonecraft was loved and respected by Godwin, by her friends, by her followers.
0:05:02 > 0:05:08Mary, my love, here we are. This will make you feel better. It will cool you down.
0:05:08 > 0:05:13When Mary Shelley was born at home, her mother tried to feed her, but she was too weak.
0:05:13 > 0:05:17There we are, Mary. There, there. Is that good?
0:05:17 > 0:05:20- Is that good Mary-Mother? - (It's too cold. Take it away.)
0:05:20 > 0:05:22All right.
0:05:22 > 0:05:24BABY GRIZZLES
0:05:24 > 0:05:29- Oh, dear!- Mary, please let me take her. ..Come on, baby.
0:05:29 > 0:05:33Come on. There, there. It's for the best, Mary.
0:05:33 > 0:05:35There we are.
0:05:35 > 0:05:38- I have her now.- I can't bear this.
0:05:38 > 0:05:41I know, I can't bear it either, my love.
0:05:41 > 0:05:43Dear Mary!
0:05:43 > 0:05:47When Mary Shelley was just 11 days old,
0:05:47 > 0:05:54her mother died of puerperal fever, the killer of so many women during childbirth in the 19th century.
0:05:56 > 0:05:58She was 38.
0:06:05 > 0:06:12Mary always knew that, however innocently, she had caused her own mother's death.
0:06:19 > 0:06:24William Godwin was hugely admired, even hero-worshipped,
0:06:24 > 0:06:26especially by his young disciples.
0:06:26 > 0:06:33One of the most outspoken was the 21-year-old poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
0:06:33 > 0:06:37He was the bad boy of Oxford University.
0:06:37 > 0:06:41For some time, he had been writing long letters to Godwin.
0:06:41 > 0:06:46I am young. I am ardent in the cause of philanthropy and truth.
0:06:46 > 0:06:51Do not suppose that this is vanity. I am convinced that I could represent myself
0:06:51 > 0:06:55in such terms as to be thought not wholly unworthy of friendship.
0:06:57 > 0:07:03Shelley, a very serious young man, wanted to change the world.
0:07:03 > 0:07:10He spent his life protesting against privilege, marriage, the Church, inequality and everything.
0:07:12 > 0:07:15There is no God.
0:07:15 > 0:07:21Earth groans beneath religion's Iron Age and priests dare babble about a God of peace!
0:07:27 > 0:07:31Godwin had read out Shelley's letters to his family.
0:07:31 > 0:07:38So Mary had heard about him long before she ever met him. And Shelley had heard about Mary.
0:07:39 > 0:07:45On the 5th of May 1814, he visited Godwin's bookshop in London's East End
0:07:45 > 0:07:52in the hope that he might meet his hero's beautiful 16-year-old daughter.
0:07:58 > 0:08:00Dante's Inferno.
0:08:00 > 0:08:04- Is hell an interest of yours? - I am improving my Italian.
0:08:04 > 0:08:07Oh, you must have it back, then.
0:08:07 > 0:08:10- You were at Oxford.- Oxford(!)
0:08:11 > 0:08:16- They threw me out.- An independent mind can be a dangerous thing.
0:08:17 > 0:08:22'Mary is singularly bold, somewhat imperious,'
0:08:22 > 0:08:24and active of mind.
0:08:24 > 0:08:32Her desire of knowledge is great and her perseverance in everything she undertakes
0:08:32 > 0:08:34is almost invincible.
0:08:37 > 0:08:39Mary was Percy's soulmate.
0:08:39 > 0:08:43He took her almost as seriously as he took himself.
0:08:49 > 0:08:54Percy hadn't just fallen for Mary, but for her radical pedigree.
0:08:54 > 0:09:00She'd inherited her mother's mane of golden hair and her fierce intelligence as well.
0:09:03 > 0:09:08The memory of my mother has been the pride and delight of my life.
0:09:08 > 0:09:11And the admiration of others for her
0:09:11 > 0:09:16has been the cause of most of the happiness I have enjoyed.
0:09:19 > 0:09:23The meeting between Mary and Percy set in motion a chain of events
0:09:23 > 0:09:28that brought great happiness and terrible tragedy.
0:09:28 > 0:09:33Percy was already married, so their love affair had to be a secret one,
0:09:33 > 0:09:36and all the more exciting for that.
0:09:36 > 0:09:40They met in St Pancras graveyard in North London,
0:09:40 > 0:09:45at the grave of her mother, the great radical and advocate of free love.
0:09:47 > 0:09:49Always appear what you are,
0:09:49 > 0:09:54and you'll not pass through existence without enjoying its genuine blessings -
0:09:54 > 0:09:57love and respect.
0:09:59 > 0:10:04- Let not...- "..the Spring-tide of existence pass away unenjoyed.
0:10:04 > 0:10:07"Gain experience
0:10:07 > 0:10:10- "while experience..." - "..is worth it."
0:10:19 > 0:10:24This behaviour would be taboo to most people, but not to Mary.
0:10:24 > 0:10:28She'd been nurtured on ideas more familiar to hippies of the 1960s
0:10:28 > 0:10:32than to your average 19th-century youth.
0:10:34 > 0:10:41This was probably Mary's first sexual experience, but Shelley had been at it for quite some time.
0:10:41 > 0:10:45He was already married to 18-year-old Harriet Westbrook.
0:10:45 > 0:10:49They had one child, and another was on its way.
0:10:49 > 0:10:55All the more shocking was that two weeks after his wedding, he was writing...
0:10:55 > 0:11:00Marriage! It is as if a dead and living body had been linked together
0:11:00 > 0:11:03in loathsome and horrible communion.
0:11:04 > 0:11:07Mary wasn't put off by Percy's heartlessness.
0:11:07 > 0:11:12Whether she knew or cared about his wife at this point, we don't know.
0:11:14 > 0:11:17This was, after all, her first love.
0:11:17 > 0:11:19THUDS
0:11:22 > 0:11:24My God, Percy!
0:11:26 > 0:11:28Mary's father was furious.
0:11:28 > 0:11:33However radical Godwin was, his daughter was only 16 and Shelley was married.
0:11:33 > 0:11:37He banned them from seeing each other.
0:11:38 > 0:11:40Take this.
0:11:40 > 0:11:43What is it?
0:11:44 > 0:11:46Drink it.
0:11:51 > 0:11:54Together, Mary.
0:11:56 > 0:11:58No, Percy.
0:12:07 > 0:12:13Common sense got to Shelley before the bullet did, but he was distraught.
0:12:13 > 0:12:16Later that night, he took an overdose of laudanum.
0:12:16 > 0:12:19His two suicide attempts had failed.
0:12:19 > 0:12:26If he was going to live, he had to be with his soulmate, whatever the cost.
0:12:28 > 0:12:36It's a measure of how much Mary was in love that she was now about to defy her father so dramatically.
0:12:36 > 0:12:40Their relationship would never be the same again.
0:12:40 > 0:12:46She loved Godwin dearly, but personal freedom was at the heart of Godwin's philosophy and hers.
0:12:56 > 0:13:00At first light, Mary crept out of the house.
0:13:00 > 0:13:02Shelley was waiting for her.
0:13:02 > 0:13:07But, strangely, someone else also crept out of the house that night.
0:13:08 > 0:13:11- Percy!- At last!
0:13:12 > 0:13:15Now we can live as we wish!
0:13:15 > 0:13:17And Clare.
0:13:18 > 0:13:22- How happy we will be. - Yes, how happy!
0:13:27 > 0:13:31Godwin had remarried when Mary was four years old.
0:13:31 > 0:13:35Her step-sister Clare Claremont became a dubious friend
0:13:35 > 0:13:40and arch-rival for Shelley's affections. Shelley had plans.
0:13:41 > 0:13:47Free love was an idea that was being bandied around at the time by radical thinkers,
0:13:47 > 0:13:52but Shelley didn't just want to think about it, he wanted to do it.
0:13:52 > 0:13:55Love is free.
0:13:55 > 0:14:02To promise forever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed.
0:14:03 > 0:14:09Shelley was planning to set up a commune with as many women as he could muster,
0:14:09 > 0:14:13including Mary, Clare and his poor abandoned wife.
0:14:13 > 0:14:18Clare was usually game for anything. For the next eight years, she'd be a thorn in Mary's side.
0:14:21 > 0:14:24The three young romantics set off.
0:14:24 > 0:14:30This was a very dangerous thing for Mary to do. She was risking her reputation and her life.
0:14:30 > 0:14:35This recklessness and independence which brought Mary and Percy together
0:14:35 > 0:14:38would, in time, drive them apart...
0:14:38 > 0:14:43and bring out the very worst in both of them.
0:14:52 > 0:14:56That evening, they set off across the English Channel
0:14:56 > 0:15:00in a small fishing boat manned by two sailors.
0:15:00 > 0:15:04Before daybreak, a huge storm rose.
0:15:04 > 0:15:09They feared for their lives as the rolling waves crashed into their boat.
0:15:12 > 0:15:15But, somehow, they made it to Calais.
0:15:15 > 0:15:18The whole trip was an adventure for them.
0:15:18 > 0:15:24Heading for a fashionable resort in Switzerland, they travelled along the Rhine,
0:15:24 > 0:15:31where they heard the strange story of Konrad Dippel, an anatomist who had dabbled in the dark arts.
0:15:31 > 0:15:36They say he used to steal bodies out of graveyards and inject them with a strange concoction -
0:15:36 > 0:15:43- blood and bone, I believe - to bring them back to life!- It is all legend, Mary! All nonsense.
0:15:43 > 0:15:47But the story struck a chord in Mary's imagination.
0:15:47 > 0:15:53In English, the castle said to be Konrad Dippel's birthplace was the Rock of the Franks.
0:15:53 > 0:15:57In German, that's Borg Frankenstein.
0:15:57 > 0:16:01Mary had found the name for the story she would later write
0:16:01 > 0:16:05about the doctor who brought the dead back to life.
0:16:09 > 0:16:14"Whence, I often ask myself, did the principle of life proceed?
0:16:15 > 0:16:21"I beheld the corruption of death succeed the brim of life.
0:16:21 > 0:16:25"I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of eye and brain..."
0:16:27 > 0:16:34Konrad Dippel and the experiments Mary had heard of as a child haunted her imagination.
0:16:34 > 0:16:39The controversial anatomist Luigi Galvani had performed a famous public experiment
0:16:39 > 0:16:46which brought a new word into the language. To galvanise - to give life to.
0:16:49 > 0:16:52This is very much a dead frog.
0:16:52 > 0:16:56Those twitches aren't life. They're just caused by the muscles moving
0:16:56 > 0:17:00as a result of the electrical current to the nerves.
0:17:00 > 0:17:07But to a 19th-century audience, this was life itself manipulated at the hands of a scientist.
0:17:08 > 0:17:12Small wonder that Mary Shelley's hero, Victor Frankenstein,
0:17:12 > 0:17:17was a doctor seeking the ultimate truth about life.
0:17:25 > 0:17:32At the turn of the 19th century, medicine was not the respected profession it is today.
0:17:32 > 0:17:37Dissection was illegal, except on the bodies of hanged murderers.
0:17:39 > 0:17:44As a result, there weren't enough legal corpses for anatomists to dissect.
0:17:44 > 0:17:47Grave-robbers often filled the gap.
0:17:50 > 0:17:54This gruesome trade in dead bodies inspired Mary.
0:17:55 > 0:18:01And so she made her hero, Dr Victor Frankenstein, an anatomist.
0:18:03 > 0:18:08"Who shall conceive of the horrors of my secret toil
0:18:08 > 0:18:12"as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave
0:18:12 > 0:18:16"or tortured the living animal to animate lifeless clay?
0:18:18 > 0:18:22"I collected bones from charnel houses
0:18:22 > 0:18:28"and disturbed with profane fingers the tremendous secrets of the human frame."
0:18:30 > 0:18:36When Mary returned to London from her elopement in 1814, she was pregnant.
0:18:36 > 0:18:40Godwin refused to have anything to do with her.
0:18:40 > 0:18:44She wasn't able to understand why her father was disappointed
0:18:44 > 0:18:48that his little girl was pregnant by a married man.
0:18:48 > 0:18:54Why will he not follow the obvious bent of his affections and be reconciled to us?
0:18:55 > 0:18:58What am I to do?
0:19:00 > 0:19:03This was a terrible time for Mary.
0:19:03 > 0:19:11Still a child herself, at just 17 she gave birth to a baby girl two months prematurely.
0:19:13 > 0:19:16The baby was to die shortly afterwards.
0:19:16 > 0:19:19She was left with a haunting dream.
0:19:20 > 0:19:23I think about the little thing all day.
0:19:26 > 0:19:31I dreamt that she came back to life, that she was just cold...
0:19:33 > 0:19:39..and that, before the fire, we rubbed her and she came back to life again.
0:19:42 > 0:19:45Then I awoke and I found no baby.
0:19:48 > 0:19:51So young and so much experience of death.
0:19:51 > 0:19:58You can see why this young woman might need to dream of bringing the dead back to life.
0:19:58 > 0:20:03All the circumstances in her own life and in the world around her
0:20:03 > 0:20:07were preparing her to write Frankenstein.
0:20:10 > 0:20:13The triangle of Mary, Percy and Clare
0:20:13 > 0:20:18was becoming even more bizarre now that Mary was in mourning.
0:20:18 > 0:20:22Percy seem to need Clare as much as he needed Mary.
0:20:22 > 0:20:26She was younger, more gullible, fun to tease.
0:20:26 > 0:20:29- Did you hear that?- What?!
0:20:29 > 0:20:32The silence.
0:20:33 > 0:20:37Percy was the son of a baronet but, after the elopement,
0:20:37 > 0:20:42his father withdrew his allowance, except for the occasional handout.
0:20:43 > 0:20:47Mary was feeling the strain of poverty and pregnancy.
0:20:51 > 0:20:58Less than a year after she lost her first baby, her beloved son William was born when she was 18.
0:20:58 > 0:21:01He brought great joy to their lives,
0:21:01 > 0:21:05but the first flush of love had passed and tensions were mounting.
0:21:08 > 0:21:15In 1815, Clare had left the cramped little room she was sharing with Mary and Shelley
0:21:15 > 0:21:17and had gone to Devon.
0:21:17 > 0:21:22It's possible that she gave birth to Percy's baby there -
0:21:22 > 0:21:29it was quite common for women to disappear to the country to have illegitimate children.
0:21:29 > 0:21:35But Clare said nothing of it. She just noted in a letter that she was grateful to get away from...
0:21:35 > 0:21:43So much discontent, such violent scenes, such a turmoil of passion and hatred!
0:21:46 > 0:21:51Clare had her eyes on a much bigger prize than Percy Shelley.
0:21:51 > 0:21:56Famously described as "mad, bad and dangerous to know",
0:21:56 > 0:22:01he was Lord Byron, superstar poet and adventurer.
0:22:12 > 0:22:15One breast laid open were a school
0:22:15 > 0:22:20Which would unteach mankind the lust to shine...
0:22:20 > 0:22:23or rule...
0:22:23 > 0:22:29I waited for you for nearly a quarter of an hour last Thursday. In your draughty hall.
0:22:29 > 0:22:33..And their life A storm whereon they ride...
0:22:33 > 0:22:37I only did it because I love you so.
0:22:37 > 0:22:40..Melt into calm twilight
0:22:40 > 0:22:42And so die.
0:22:42 > 0:22:47Clare insinuated herself into Byron's affections for a while,
0:22:47 > 0:22:53but he was more interested in the infamous couple Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley.
0:22:55 > 0:23:02He invited them all to stay at his villa in Switzerland, and everywhere that Byron went,
0:23:02 > 0:23:06prying eyes, scandal and adoring women followed.
0:23:06 > 0:23:10This is the infamous Villa Diodati.
0:23:10 > 0:23:14Here, Byron was watched and talked about.
0:23:14 > 0:23:18Scandalous rumours about incest and orgies abounded.
0:23:18 > 0:23:22Tourists used to come and look at the villa through their telescopes!
0:23:22 > 0:23:28Byron's dangerous charisma worked its magic on the three young people.
0:23:28 > 0:23:33No matter how callous and dismissive he was to become in later years,
0:23:33 > 0:23:36they always came back for more.
0:23:36 > 0:23:43At the villa, he gathered them around the fire with his handsome young doctor, John Polidori.
0:23:43 > 0:23:47Opium and laudanum were the drugs of choice.
0:23:47 > 0:23:54For these impressionable young people, this was exciting and a little bit scary.
0:23:56 > 0:24:02Few moments in the history of literature have been more romanticised
0:24:02 > 0:24:09than the summer of 1816, when Lord Byron entertained his friends on the shores of Lake Geneva.
0:24:09 > 0:24:13They called it "the summer of darkness".
0:24:14 > 0:24:20Storms raged, and the surface of the lake shuddered with the force of the thunder.
0:24:20 > 0:24:23LOUD THUNDERCLAPS
0:24:28 > 0:24:30THUNDERCLAP
0:24:30 > 0:24:33It does FEEL ghostly here.
0:24:33 > 0:24:36To have a ghost, a man -
0:24:36 > 0:24:39or woman - must have a soul.
0:24:39 > 0:24:42You are not the only one here with a soul, Albe.
0:24:42 > 0:24:45< No...
0:24:45 > 0:24:49but you are the only person here without one.
0:24:49 > 0:24:50Percy...
0:24:57 > 0:25:02And then, one stormy night, Byron read aloud from Christabel,
0:25:02 > 0:25:07the Gothic horror poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
0:25:08 > 0:25:14"There she sees the damsel bright, Dressed in a silken robe of white,
0:25:14 > 0:25:18"That shadowy in the moonlight shone -
0:25:18 > 0:25:22"The neck that made the white robe wan...
0:25:25 > 0:25:28"..The vision of fear, the touch and pain!
0:25:28 > 0:25:32"She shrunk and shuddered and saw again...
0:25:33 > 0:25:37"..Why stare she with unsettled eye?
0:25:37 > 0:25:40"Can she the bodiless dead espy...?"
0:25:42 > 0:25:46It bores me, all this "bodily dead"
0:25:46 > 0:25:49and "shrunken, shuddering" superstition.
0:25:50 > 0:25:52Really?
0:25:55 > 0:25:59Could any of US write a more thrilling ghost story?
0:25:59 > 0:26:00Well?!
0:26:11 > 0:26:17Mary took the ghost-story challenge seriously. Probably, she was the only one that did.
0:26:17 > 0:26:23Here she was, just 18 years old, in the company of these two geniuses.
0:26:23 > 0:26:27At least, Shelley and Byron THOUGHT they were geniuses.
0:26:27 > 0:26:31So the story that she was to write had to be impressive,
0:26:31 > 0:26:35enough to make these two great men shiver with fear.
0:26:36 > 0:26:38I busied myself to think of a story
0:26:38 > 0:26:42that would speak to the mysterious fears of our natures,
0:26:42 > 0:26:47one to make the reader afraid to look around, to curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart.
0:26:47 > 0:26:52If it did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name.
0:26:54 > 0:26:59A few days after the ghost-story challenge, Mary was to have her famous dream.
0:27:01 > 0:27:07'When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep nor could I be said to think.
0:27:07 > 0:27:11'My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me.'
0:27:15 > 0:27:20I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.
0:27:20 > 0:27:24I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out,
0:27:24 > 0:27:29and then, upon the workings of some powerful engine, saw signs of life.
0:27:36 > 0:27:41The morning after her dream, Mary announced that she had thought of an idea.
0:27:41 > 0:27:44She started writing immediately.
0:27:44 > 0:27:48Frankenstein himself tells us about the monster's creation,
0:27:48 > 0:27:53beginning with one of the most famous lines in English literature.
0:27:53 > 0:27:59"It was on a dreary night in November that I first beheld the accomplishment of my toils.
0:28:01 > 0:28:06"How could I describe my emotions at this...catastrophe?
0:28:32 > 0:28:37"I thought I had selected his features as beautiful.
0:28:42 > 0:28:44"Beautiful(!)
0:28:44 > 0:28:46"Good God!
0:28:59 > 0:29:04"His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath.
0:29:05 > 0:29:08"His watery eyes!
0:29:08 > 0:29:14"They seemed almost the same colour as the white sockets in which they were set.
0:29:27 > 0:29:31"Later, I started from my sleep with horror.
0:29:31 > 0:29:37"Cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered and every limb became convulsed."
0:30:17 > 0:30:23Mary was brought up by her parents to believe that all children must be loved and cherished,
0:30:23 > 0:30:26that the powerful must care for the weak.
0:30:26 > 0:30:32In this, the key moment of the book, Frankenstein's rejection of his creation
0:30:32 > 0:30:35is against love and reason.
0:30:35 > 0:30:38He comes into the world an innocent.
0:30:38 > 0:30:43At first, Mary describes him as a "creature", not a monster.
0:30:43 > 0:30:47It is loneliness and suffering which makes him wicked.
0:30:49 > 0:30:53"All night, I have been walking up and down in the greatest agitation,
0:30:53 > 0:30:58"listening, catching each sound as if it were to announce the approach
0:30:58 > 0:31:02"of the demonic corpse which I have so miserably given life."
0:31:02 > 0:31:04RATTLE >
0:31:12 > 0:31:19A great proportion of the misery that wanders in hideous form around the world is allowed to arise
0:31:19 > 0:31:21from the negligence of parents.
0:31:28 > 0:31:34What's really incredible is that Mary Shelley was so young when she wrote Frankenstein,
0:31:34 > 0:31:36just 19 years old.
0:31:36 > 0:31:39And the monster, lonely and desperate,
0:31:39 > 0:31:45in many ways is a nightmarish reflection of Mary's own turbulent life.
0:31:45 > 0:31:48CREATURE SCREAMS
0:32:01 > 0:32:05At the Villa Diodati, Mary found the heart of her novel
0:32:05 > 0:32:13but high in the Alps about 60 miles from Geneva, she found a place for the most horrific scene of all.
0:32:13 > 0:32:16Mary made the treacherous journey to come here.
0:32:16 > 0:32:22It's the Mer de Glace, one of the most dangerous places in the Alps.
0:32:22 > 0:32:26It's criss-crossed with crevasses and constantly prone to avalanche,
0:32:26 > 0:32:29but Mary was determined to come here.
0:32:29 > 0:32:33She called it "the most desolate place on earth".
0:32:35 > 0:32:39A perfect setting, then, for the most desolate creature on earth.
0:32:39 > 0:32:47The creature's tragedy is all wrapped up in the times Mary lived in, and her parents' philosophy.
0:32:48 > 0:32:54The French Revolution showed that if people are brutalised, they'll be brutal themselves.
0:32:54 > 0:32:57So it is with the creature.
0:33:01 > 0:33:05He is feared and loathed by everyone who sees him.
0:33:06 > 0:33:09His sadness turns to fury.
0:33:12 > 0:33:15"I am the fallen angel.
0:33:15 > 0:33:18"Where I see bliss, I am excluded.
0:33:20 > 0:33:22"I was benevolent and good.
0:33:22 > 0:33:25"Misery made me a fiend!"
0:33:30 > 0:33:37When she returned to London, Mary drew on her own life and fears as she wrote.
0:33:37 > 0:33:39William was still a baby.
0:33:39 > 0:33:45In her story, she gave Frankenstein a much-loved younger brother, also called William.
0:33:45 > 0:33:50But even this innocent child cannot abide to be near the monster.
0:33:50 > 0:33:54In a fury of revenge and despair, the monster kills him.
0:33:56 > 0:33:58The bloodbath has begun.
0:34:00 > 0:34:08He flees to the mountains for refuge, the only place he will be truly alone.
0:34:16 > 0:34:22"The desert mountains and dreary glaciers are my refuge.
0:34:24 > 0:34:28"The caves of ice are a dwelling to me.
0:34:28 > 0:34:31"These bleak skies I hail..."
0:34:37 > 0:34:42Back in London, tragedy was about to strike again.
0:34:42 > 0:34:49An unknown woman was found dead yesterday in the upstairs room of the Mackworth Arms in Swansea.
0:34:49 > 0:34:54An empty bottle of laudanum and a note were also found.
0:34:54 > 0:34:57Not Fanny! Not Fanny!
0:34:57 > 0:35:00- It seems so.- Oh, no!
0:35:00 > 0:35:02Oh, no, it IS her!
0:35:02 > 0:35:05I know it is her!
0:35:17 > 0:35:20Fanny was Mary's older half-sister,
0:35:20 > 0:35:25born illegitimately to Mary Wollstonecraft before she met Godwin.
0:35:25 > 0:35:29Fanny had always been in Mary's shadow.
0:35:29 > 0:35:33After her suicide, Mary was pained with guilt for neglecting her.
0:35:33 > 0:35:38She must have been thinking about Fanny as she wrote the monster's words...
0:35:42 > 0:35:45"But where are my friends and relations?
0:35:47 > 0:35:51"No father had watched my infant days,
0:35:51 > 0:35:56"no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses.
0:35:57 > 0:36:02"Or if they had, all my past life was now a blot,
0:36:02 > 0:36:04"a blind vacancy."
0:36:08 > 0:36:12Mary Wollstonecraft had tried to kill herself twice.
0:36:12 > 0:36:16Mary inherited her mother's melancholic streak
0:36:16 > 0:36:20but, to protect herself, often withdrew emotionally.
0:36:20 > 0:36:24The monster is Mary's misery made flesh.
0:36:25 > 0:36:29MARY: Loneliness has been the curse of my life.
0:36:29 > 0:36:35What should I have done if my imagination had not been my companion?
0:36:37 > 0:36:42I must have grovelled on the earth, I must have died -
0:36:42 > 0:36:45but my dreams,
0:36:45 > 0:36:49my darling, bright dreams.
0:36:56 > 0:37:03Just two months after Fanny's suicide, the couple were dealt another devastating blow.
0:37:03 > 0:37:10Harriet, Shelley's abandoned 21-year-old wife, was found in the Serpentine in Hyde Park.
0:37:10 > 0:37:15At eight months pregnant, she'd drowned herself.
0:37:15 > 0:37:19There were rumours. Was the unborn child Shelley's?
0:37:19 > 0:37:23It was certainly possible. But he had his own story.
0:37:27 > 0:37:34She was driven from her father's house, and she descended the steps of prostitution
0:37:34 > 0:37:37until she left with a groom of the name of Smith,
0:37:37 > 0:37:41until he deserted her.
0:37:42 > 0:37:44And she killed herself.
0:37:45 > 0:37:48Wherever Shelley went, children followed.
0:37:48 > 0:37:52There were his two motherless children by Harriet.
0:37:52 > 0:37:55With Mary, he had one surviving child, William.
0:37:55 > 0:37:59A third was on its way, and two more to come,
0:37:59 > 0:38:02and now Clare was pregnant.
0:38:02 > 0:38:07The father was almost certainly Byron. HE suspected it was Shelley.
0:38:07 > 0:38:10Free love certainly had its price.
0:38:14 > 0:38:18For all his heartlessness over Harriet's death,
0:38:18 > 0:38:22Shelley was keen to stand by his now motherless children,
0:38:22 > 0:38:29and Mary, barely able to support her own family, was happy to welcome them into her home.
0:38:29 > 0:38:33But there was something they would have to do first.
0:38:36 > 0:38:44Like many conscientious objectors to marriage, before and since, Mary and Percy tied the knot.
0:38:44 > 0:38:47Against all their commitment to free love,
0:38:47 > 0:38:51they recognised that his claim for custody of his two children
0:38:51 > 0:38:55would be all the stronger if he was married.
0:38:55 > 0:39:02Dancing in attendance was Mary's father, another champion of a woman's right not to marry.
0:39:02 > 0:39:05Marriage, as it is now understood,
0:39:05 > 0:39:08is a monopoly.
0:39:08 > 0:39:11And the worst of monopolies.
0:39:13 > 0:39:16Godwin may have objected to marriage in theory,
0:39:16 > 0:39:20but when it came to his daughter, it was a different story.
0:39:20 > 0:39:27He had not spoken to her since her elopement, but at her wedding, they were reconciled.
0:39:29 > 0:39:34Mary and Percy were still in love when they married in 1816.
0:39:34 > 0:39:38Here is another biographical connection to Frankenstein.
0:39:38 > 0:39:41Love is at the very heart of the book.
0:39:41 > 0:39:45The monster longs for it, as Mary did.
0:39:45 > 0:39:49In the Alps, he demands that Frankenstein makes him a bride.
0:39:51 > 0:39:57"I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be realised.
0:39:57 > 0:40:02"I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself.
0:40:05 > 0:40:10"Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless.
0:40:10 > 0:40:12"This, you alone can do."
0:40:16 > 0:40:21Frankenstein at first refuses to make the monster a mate,
0:40:21 > 0:40:25but he is threatened with the worst imaginable horror.
0:40:26 > 0:40:29"Do your duty towards me,
0:40:29 > 0:40:32"or I will fill the belly of Death
0:40:32 > 0:40:37"with the blood of your remaining friends."
0:40:38 > 0:40:42Terrified that the monster will slaughter his remaining loved ones,
0:40:42 > 0:40:48Frankenstein begins the awful process of making the female creature.
0:40:50 > 0:40:53"So I proceeded in my labour.
0:40:53 > 0:40:58"It became, every day, more horrible to me.
0:40:58 > 0:41:01"It was indeed a filthy process.
0:41:03 > 0:41:07"My heart sickened at the work of my hands.
0:41:14 > 0:41:20"Am I right for my own benefit to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?"
0:41:31 > 0:41:37Unable to contemplate the evil he will unleash if he continues, Frankenstein destroys the female.
0:41:42 > 0:41:46- CREATURE:- "You have destroyed the work that you began!
0:41:46 > 0:41:48"It is well,
0:41:48 > 0:41:51"but remember,
0:41:51 > 0:41:56"I shall be with you on YOUR wedding night."
0:41:58 > 0:42:01The monster is true to his word.
0:42:01 > 0:42:07On their wedding night, Frankenstein's young bride is strangled in her sleep.
0:42:07 > 0:42:13To stop the bloodbath, Frankenstein knows he must destroy the monster.
0:42:20 > 0:42:26It was almost impossible for women to get into print in the early 19th century.
0:42:26 > 0:42:34Shelley, posing as the writer, managed to get Frankenstein published anonymously in 1818.
0:42:37 > 0:42:43Only 500 copies were printed, but they were passed around the great and the good in literary London.
0:42:43 > 0:42:47What began as a playful challenge from Byron
0:42:47 > 0:42:51was about to become one of the most famous books in the world.
0:42:57 > 0:43:03Mary and Shelley were to look back at the summer they spent with Lord Byron on Lake Geneva
0:43:03 > 0:43:09as their own romantic idyll - the mountains, the lakes, the poetry and the conversations -
0:43:09 > 0:43:12but they were never able to recapture that.
0:43:12 > 0:43:19Mary had lost her mother, her first baby and her sister, but far worse was to come.
0:43:25 > 0:43:27BABY CRIES
0:43:31 > 0:43:36Mary and Percy's lives were becoming a soap opera of births, marriages and deaths,
0:43:36 > 0:43:38often involving Byron.
0:43:39 > 0:43:44They now had two children - William and a baby girl, Clara.
0:43:46 > 0:43:49Clare also had a baby, Byron's daughter.
0:43:49 > 0:43:54In a complicated conspiracy to unite father with child,
0:43:54 > 0:43:59they all travelled to Italy to be nearer to him.
0:43:59 > 0:44:02But in an act of astonishing cruelty,
0:44:02 > 0:44:07Byron wrote to say that a messenger would collect "the brat",
0:44:07 > 0:44:10and that Clare should never see her again.
0:44:10 > 0:44:13No, it's too cruel!
0:44:13 > 0:44:15No.
0:44:16 > 0:44:18Ignore it.
0:44:28 > 0:44:31Clare couldn't ignore Byron.
0:44:31 > 0:44:36The baby was taken from her and died five years later, alone, in a Catholic convent,
0:44:36 > 0:44:40consigned there by Byron himself.
0:44:51 > 0:44:56Despite his cruelty to Clare, Shelley didn't give up on Byron.
0:44:56 > 0:45:00He set off with Clare to stay in Byron's house near Padua.
0:45:02 > 0:45:05Mary's baby daughter was ill,
0:45:05 > 0:45:09but she made the long coach journey to join them.
0:45:28 > 0:45:31In the 19th century,
0:45:31 > 0:45:34dysentery was rife on the Continent.
0:45:35 > 0:45:40Three weeks after Mary's journey, Clara died of the disease.
0:45:49 > 0:45:51They buried her
0:45:51 > 0:45:54with a single flower
0:45:54 > 0:45:56on the beach near Venice.
0:45:56 > 0:45:59"There is not a tree
0:45:59 > 0:46:02"that I would not recognise
0:46:02 > 0:46:05"as a memorial of that moment...
0:46:05 > 0:46:08"when life and death hung in my arms."
0:46:16 > 0:46:24The irony was that, during this personal tragedy, the fortunes of her book were rising.
0:46:24 > 0:46:30Mary heard from a friend that Frankenstein was "universally known and read".
0:46:30 > 0:46:33She felt it was time to admit that she was the writer.
0:46:33 > 0:46:38Her fame and the fame of her tragic monster was growing.
0:46:41 > 0:46:45Are you all right, little Willmouse?
0:46:45 > 0:46:49In 1819, Mary's beloved son William -
0:46:49 > 0:46:53or Willmouse, as he was known - was everybody's darling.
0:46:55 > 0:46:57Here's your flower.
0:47:00 > 0:47:03Just a little longer. There now.
0:47:03 > 0:47:07Mary was concerned about the fever William was developing.
0:47:07 > 0:47:14Just three weeks after this portrait was painted, William also died of malaria.
0:47:14 > 0:47:17He was three years old.
0:47:19 > 0:47:21"He was so good,
0:47:21 > 0:47:24"so beautiful,
0:47:24 > 0:47:27"so entirely attached to me.
0:47:27 > 0:47:32"It should have been me that died. It should have been me!"
0:47:34 > 0:47:41Mary couldn't shake off the pain of William's death. To Percy, she was barely recognisable.
0:47:41 > 0:47:46In a poem addressed to her, he grieved at his loss.
0:47:46 > 0:47:50My dearest Wherefore hast thou gone?
0:47:53 > 0:47:57Thy form is here indeed, A lovely one.
0:47:57 > 0:48:00But thou art fled.
0:48:02 > 0:48:04Gone down the dreary road
0:48:04 > 0:48:08That leads to sorrow's Most obscure abode.
0:48:08 > 0:48:12For thine own sake, I cannot follow thee.
0:48:14 > 0:48:16'Do thou return for mine?'
0:48:18 > 0:48:22Mary could not forgive Percy for recovering so quickly.
0:48:22 > 0:48:28To her, it was a betrayal of their lost children and her love.
0:48:28 > 0:48:30"A cold heart.
0:48:30 > 0:48:32"Have I a cold heart?
0:48:32 > 0:48:35"God knows."
0:48:36 > 0:48:40Mary's life was unimaginably hard now.
0:48:40 > 0:48:43Too much death, too young.
0:48:43 > 0:48:48Some people noticed that she was becoming cold and unfeeling.
0:48:50 > 0:48:52"At least the tears are hot."
0:48:54 > 0:49:00Was she, like Frankenstein's creature, being hardened by suffering?
0:49:00 > 0:49:04The monster's words could describe Mary herself.
0:49:05 > 0:49:07"I am the fallen angel.
0:49:07 > 0:49:10"I was benevolent and good.
0:49:10 > 0:49:14"Misery made me a fiend!"
0:49:23 > 0:49:30The loneliness that Mary had imagined in Frankenstein was taking hold of her own life.
0:49:30 > 0:49:33At their new home, the desolate Villa Marini,
0:49:34 > 0:49:39the sea washed in under the arches and the wind howled around them.
0:49:39 > 0:49:41For Shelley, this was wonderful.
0:49:41 > 0:49:45He could indulge his life-long love of the sea.
0:49:45 > 0:49:47Mary hated it.
0:49:50 > 0:49:53Now, where did we get to, Percy?
0:49:53 > 0:49:55As the marriage disintegrated,
0:49:55 > 0:49:59all Mary's love was devoted to her fourth child,
0:49:59 > 0:50:04Percy, the only one who would survive into adulthood.
0:50:04 > 0:50:06One, two...
0:50:13 > 0:50:20"Mary feels no more remorse in torturing me than in torturing her own mind.
0:50:20 > 0:50:26"It is a curse of Tantalus that a person possessing such excellent powers and so pure a mind
0:50:26 > 0:50:29"can no longer excite my passions."
0:50:32 > 0:50:34Mary.
0:50:34 > 0:50:37I leave tomorrow.
0:50:37 > 0:50:40Percy, don't drip on the floor.
0:50:46 > 0:50:48Passion or no passion,
0:50:48 > 0:50:54Mary was sick, and miserably pregnant again for the fifth time.
0:50:54 > 0:50:58And still only 24 years old.
0:50:58 > 0:51:01A woman is not a field to be continually employed
0:51:01 > 0:51:05either in the bringing forth or the enlarging of grain.
0:51:05 > 0:51:09I wish I could break my chains and leave this dungeon.
0:51:17 > 0:51:24On the 1st of July 1822, Shelley set off with a friend in his new boat, the Don Juan.
0:51:24 > 0:51:31He was visiting Byron in Livorno, a journey of some 65 miles around the north-western coast of Italy.
0:51:33 > 0:51:37Mary heard nothing for several days.
0:51:37 > 0:51:40She set off with Clare to Livorno and waited.
0:51:49 > 0:51:53A sudden summer storm had engulfed Shelley's boat.
0:51:56 > 0:52:00Three days later, two bodies were found.
0:52:01 > 0:52:07Shelley was identified by the copy of John Keats' poems still in his pocket.
0:52:07 > 0:52:10He was 29 years old.
0:52:19 > 0:52:25"For eight years, I communicated with freedom with one whose genius far transcended mine.
0:52:28 > 0:52:31"Now, I am alone.
0:52:33 > 0:52:36"Oh, how alone!
0:52:37 > 0:52:40"Oh, my beloved Shelley!"
0:52:44 > 0:52:48Shelley's body was burned on the beach near Livorno.
0:52:48 > 0:52:52There is a strange connection here with the book.
0:52:52 > 0:52:57At the end of Frankenstein, the monster imagines his own cremation.
0:52:57 > 0:53:00Mary wrote it years before,
0:53:00 > 0:53:04but it's as if the monster is crying out for Shelley.
0:53:05 > 0:53:10"Soon, these burning miseries will be extinct.
0:53:11 > 0:53:15"I shall ascend my funeral pyre triumphantly
0:53:15 > 0:53:19"and exult in the agony and the torture in flames.
0:53:21 > 0:53:25"The light, that conflagration, will fade away.
0:53:26 > 0:53:29"My ashes will be swept
0:53:29 > 0:53:31"into the sea."
0:53:37 > 0:53:43Frankenstein ends as if Mary didn't know how to resolve her epic horror.
0:53:43 > 0:53:47Vowing to destroy the monster after it kills his bride,
0:53:47 > 0:53:53Frankenstein pursues it to the frozen wastelands of the Arctic.
0:53:53 > 0:53:56There, he perishes mysteriously,
0:53:56 > 0:54:00and the monster disappears into the darkness.
0:54:05 > 0:54:08HOWLING-WIND EFFECT
0:54:08 > 0:54:10Oh, dear!
0:54:10 > 0:54:14- AUDIENCE LAUGH - You're frightened out of your wits!
0:54:14 > 0:54:18- WIND-HOWL EFFECT - What's that? What's that?
0:54:19 > 0:54:23At this, the lowest point of Mary's life,
0:54:23 > 0:54:27Frankenstein was at its most successful.
0:54:27 > 0:54:30Back in London, Presumption, Or The Fate Of Frankenstein
0:54:30 > 0:54:33played to huge audiences.
0:54:33 > 0:54:37But this monster was more farcical than tragic.
0:54:39 > 0:54:46The roots of the monster most people think of today are probably here rather than in Mary's tragedy.
0:54:46 > 0:54:51Behold, the horrid corpse to which I have given life!
0:54:52 > 0:54:57The story of Frankenstein had taken on a life of its own.
0:54:57 > 0:54:59But, despite this success,
0:54:59 > 0:55:04Mary couldn't escape the melancholy which plagued her for the rest of her life.
0:55:04 > 0:55:06Agh!
0:55:07 > 0:55:09AUDIENCE APPLAUD
0:55:09 > 0:55:15Feeling guilty that she had allowed Shelley to sail into that deadly storm, Mary transformed her life
0:55:15 > 0:55:18into an act of reparation.
0:55:18 > 0:55:23She struggled to get Shelley's work published and have his genius recognised.
0:55:25 > 0:55:29You mentioned Mr Keats in your verse, but you don't mention Percy.
0:55:29 > 0:55:31Don't I?
0:55:31 > 0:55:35- Well, Percy was the best, the least selfish man I ever knew.- But...
0:55:35 > 0:55:38as a poet?
0:55:38 > 0:55:40Let's go on, shall we?
0:55:43 > 0:55:48Byron never did mention Percy in his verse. But Mary persevered.
0:55:48 > 0:55:51Without her determination to establish him,
0:55:51 > 0:55:57it's possible we might not know the name or work of Percy Bysshe Shelley today.
0:56:02 > 0:56:08The fond memories of that fateful summer in the Villa Diodati never left Mary.
0:56:08 > 0:56:13She returned there 11 years before her own death. Everything had changed.
0:56:16 > 0:56:21Byron had died two years after Shelley, when he was 36.
0:56:21 > 0:56:26Clare was now living the uneventful life of a governess.
0:56:28 > 0:56:30Frankenstein, for all its horror,
0:56:30 > 0:56:35was a story born of youth and vitality.
0:56:36 > 0:56:39How far Mary had come!
0:56:42 > 0:56:45Mary went on to write other books,
0:56:45 > 0:56:49but none haunts the imagination like Frankenstein.
0:56:49 > 0:56:55This young woman, at the peak and fire of her youth, dared to break convention by writing a book
0:56:55 > 0:56:59that would strike fear into the heart.
0:57:02 > 0:57:07Mary dared to write about bringing the dead back to life,
0:57:07 > 0:57:11but she learnt the very hardest way that death is final.
0:57:12 > 0:57:18"The windows of the room were darkened, and I felt a kind of panic
0:57:18 > 0:57:21"on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon.
0:57:21 > 0:57:24"The shutters were thrown back
0:57:24 > 0:57:29"and, with horror, I saw at the window a figure most hideous and abhorrent."
0:57:31 > 0:57:35Mary Shelley died herself in 1851,
0:57:35 > 0:57:37aged 53.
0:58:11 > 0:58:15Subtitles by Elspeth Kane & Carla Rossi - BBC Broadcast 2003
0:58:15 > 0:58:19E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk