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Frankenstein,
one of the darkest tales ever told,

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was born in a nightmare.

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From a 19-year-old girl whose life
was full of demons came a monster
who terrified generations to come.

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MALE VOICE
I am the fallen angel.

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Misery made me a fiend!

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Mary Shelley began Frankenstein
in Switzerland at
the beginning of the 19th century.

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Today her story is known
all over the world.

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Based on her own words
and the people who knew her,

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this is the real story
of Frankenstein's monster.

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MAN: It was a murderer,
fresh from the gallows at Newgate.

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He gave it an electrical shock.

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The jaw,
facial muscles contorted horribly.

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One eye actually opened.

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It seemed to everyone
it was being restored to life.

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Papa. Oh, Mary.

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What are you doing?
Come here, come here. Oh-h!

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What's the matter? Dead people,

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they don't come back to life,
do they? No. No, no, no.

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Mary Shelley lived in an age of
unprecedented scientific discovery.

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At the start of the 19th century,
biology was the new science

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at the very cutting edge
of intellectual inquiry.

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But people believed
that electricity and magnetism
could bring the dead back to life.

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As a child,
Mary had heard of experiments
to reanimate hanged convicts.

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The holy grail was
the source of life itself.

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It was an experiment, that's all.

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It was just an experiment.

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Go on.

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Mary adored her father,
the brilliant philosopher
William Godwin.

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She was born in 1797
and grew up in troubled times.

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After the mob stormed the Bastille
in Paris, Europe was unstable.

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In this country, there was social
unrest and talk of revolution.

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Godwin's book
about justice for everyone
became a bible to British radicals.

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Government
is the perpetual enemy of change.

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Its tendency is to perpetuate
abuse, but truth must always
be victorious over error.

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For truth is omnipotent.
And man is perfectible.

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Mary Shelley's intellectual
gene pool was a rich one.

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Both her parents were
revolutionary thinkers.

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Her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft,
the founder of feminism.

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Mary Wollstonecraft
was a unique woman,

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beautiful, fierce, independent.

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Before her marriage to Godwin,
she had already
travelled the world alone

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and had had
an illegitimate daughter.

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Her book, A Vindication
Of The Rights Of Woman,
is still taught in colleges today.

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Remember, this is years before
the Suffragette movement.

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Even by today's standards,
her philosophy is still radical.

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From the tyranny of man,

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I firmly believe the greater
number of female follies proceed.

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Let women share the rights and she
will emulate the virtues of man.

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For she must grow
more perfect when emancipated.

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Mary Wollstonecraft
was loved and respected by Godwin,
by her friends, by her followers.

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Mary, my love, here we are.
This will make you feel better.
It will cool you down.

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When Mary Shelley was born at home,
her mother tried to feed her,
but she was too weak.

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There we are, Mary.
There, there. Is that good?

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Is that good Mary-Mother?
(It's too cold. Take it away.)

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All right.

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BABY GRIZZLES

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Oh, dear! Mary, please let me
take her. ..Come on, baby.

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Come on. There, there.
It's for the best, Mary.

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There we are.

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I have her now. I can't bear this.

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I know, I can't bear it either,
my love.

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Dear Mary!

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When Mary Shelley
was just 11 days old,

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her mother died of puerperal fever,
the killer of so many women during
childbirth in the 19th century.

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She was 38.

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Mary always knew that,
however innocently, she had
caused her own mother's death.

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William Godwin was hugely admired,
even hero-worshipped,

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especially by his young disciples.

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One of the most outspoken
was the 21-year-old poet,
Percy Bysshe Shelley.

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He was the bad boy
of Oxford University.

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For some time, he had been
writing long letters to Godwin.

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I am young. I am ardent in the
cause of philanthropy and truth.

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Do not suppose that this is vanity.
I am convinced
that I could represent myself

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in such terms as to be thought
not wholly unworthy of friendship.

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Shelley, a very serious young man,
wanted to change the world.

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He spent his life protesting
against privilege, marriage, the
Church, inequality and everything.

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There is no God.

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Earth groans beneath religion's
Iron Age and priests dare
babble about a God of peace!

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Godwin had read out
Shelley's letters to his family.

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So Mary had heard about him
long before she ever met him.
And Shelley had heard about Mary.

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On the 5th of May 1814,
he visited Godwin's bookshop
in London's East End

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in the hope
that he might meet his hero's
beautiful 16-year-old daughter.

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Dante's Inferno.

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Is hell an interest of yours?
I am improving my Italian.

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Oh, you must have it back, then.

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You were at Oxford. Oxford(!)

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They threw me out. An independent
mind can be a dangerous thing.

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'Mary is singularly bold,
somewhat imperious,'

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and active of mind.

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Her desire of knowledge is great
and her perseverance
in everything she undertakes

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is almost invincible.

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Mary was Percy's soulmate.

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He took her almost as seriously
as he took himself.

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Percy hadn't just fallen for Mary,
but for her radical pedigree.

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She'd inherited her mother's mane
of golden hair and
her fierce intelligence as well.

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The memory of my mother has been
the pride and delight of my life.

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And the admiration of others for her

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has been the cause of most
of the happiness I have enjoyed.

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The meeting between Mary and Percy
set in motion a chain of events

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that brought great happiness
and terrible tragedy.

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Percy was already married, so their
love affair had to be a secret one,

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and all the more exciting for that.

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They met in St Pancras graveyard
in North London,

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at the grave of her mother,
the great radical
and advocate of free love.

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Always appear what you are,

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and you'll not pass through
existence without enjoying
its genuine blessings -

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love and respect.

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Let not... "..the Spring-tide
of existence pass away unenjoyed.

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"Gain experience

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"while experience..."
"..is worth it."

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This behaviour would be taboo
to most people, but not to Mary.

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She'd been nurtured on ideas more
familiar to hippies of the 1960s

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than to your average
19th-century youth.

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This was probably Mary's first
sexual experience, but Shelley
had been at it for quite some time.

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He was already married
to 18-year-old Harriet Westbrook.

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They had one child,
and another was on its way.

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All the more shocking
was that two weeks after
his wedding, he was writing...

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Marriage! It is as if
a dead and living body
had been linked together

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in loathsome and horrible
communion.

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Mary wasn't put off
by Percy's heartlessness.

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Whether she knew or cared about his
wife at this point, we don't know.

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This was, after all,
her first love.

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THUDS

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My God, Percy!

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Mary's father was furious.

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However radical Godwin was,
his daughter was only 16
and Shelley was married.

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He banned them
from seeing each other.

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Take this.

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What is it?

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Drink it.

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Together, Mary.

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No, Percy.

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Common sense got to Shelley
before the bullet did,
but he was distraught.

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Later that night,
he took an overdose of laudanum.

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His two suicide attempts
had failed.

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If he was going to live,
he had to be with his soulmate,
whatever the cost.

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It's a measure of how much Mary was
in love that she was now about to
defy her father so dramatically.

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Their relationship
would never be the same again.

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She loved Godwin dearly, but
personal freedom was at the heart
of Godwin's philosophy and hers.

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At first light,
Mary crept out of the house.

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Shelley was waiting for her.

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But, strangely, someone else also
crept out of the house that night.

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Percy! At last!

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Now we can live as we wish!

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And Clare.

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How happy we will be.
Yes, how happy!

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Godwin had remarried
when Mary was four years old.

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Her step-sister Clare Claremont
became a dubious friend

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and arch-rival for Shelley's
affections. Shelley had plans.

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Free love was an idea
that was being bandied around
at the time by radical thinkers,

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but Shelley didn't just want to
think about it, he wanted to do it.

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Love is free.

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To promise forever to love the same
woman is not less absurd than to
promise to believe the same creed.

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Shelley was planning to set up
a commune with as many women
as he could muster,

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including Mary, Clare
and his poor abandoned wife.

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Clare was usually game for
anything. For the next eight years,
she'd be a thorn in Mary's side.

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The three young romantics set off.

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This was a very dangerous thing
for Mary to do. She was risking
her reputation and her life.

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This recklessness and independence
which brought
Mary and Percy together

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would, in time, drive them apart...

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and bring out the very worst
in both of them.

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That evening, they set off
across the English Channel

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in a small fishing boat
manned by two sailors.

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Before daybreak, a huge storm rose.

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They feared for their lives
as the rolling waves
crashed into their boat.

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But, somehow,
they made it to Calais.

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The whole trip
was an adventure for them.

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Heading for a fashionable resort
in Switzerland,
they travelled along the Rhine,

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where they heard the strange story
of Konrad Dippel, an anatomist
who had dabbled in the dark arts.

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They say he used to steal bodies
out of graveyards and inject them
with a strange concoction -

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blood and bone, I believe -
to bring them back to life! It is
all legend, Mary! All nonsense.

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But the story struck a chord
in Mary's imagination.

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In English, the castle said to be
Konrad Dippel's birthplace
was the Rock of the Franks.

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In German,
that's Borg Frankenstein.

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Mary had found the name
for the story she would later write

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about the doctor
who brought the dead back to life.

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"Whence, I often ask myself,
did the principle of life proceed?

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"I beheld the corruption of death
succeed the brim of life.

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"I saw how the worm inherited
the wonders of eye and brain..."

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Konrad Dippel and the experiments
Mary had heard of as a child
haunted her imagination.

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The controversial anatomist
Luigi Galvani had performed
a famous public experiment

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which brought a new word
into the language.
To galvanise - to give life to.

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This is very much a dead frog.

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Those twitches aren't life. They're
just caused by the muscles moving

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as a result of the
electrical current to the nerves.

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But to a 19th-century audience,
this was life itself manipulated
at the hands of a scientist.

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Small wonder that Mary Shelley's
hero, Victor Frankenstein,

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was a doctor seeking
the ultimate truth about life.

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At the turn of the 19th century,
medicine was not the respected
profession it is today.

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Dissection was illegal, except
on the bodies of hanged murderers.

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As a result,
there weren't enough legal corpses
for anatomists to dissect.

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Grave-robbers often filled the gap.

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This gruesome trade in dead bodies
inspired Mary.

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And so she made her hero, Dr Victor
Frankenstein, an anatomist.

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"Who shall conceive
of the horrors of my secret toil

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"as I dabbled among
the unhallowed damps of the grave

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"or tortured the living animal
to animate lifeless clay?

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"I collected bones
from charnel houses

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"and disturbed with profane fingers
the tremendous secrets
of the human frame."

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When Mary returned to London
from her elopement in 1814,
she was pregnant.

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Godwin refused
to have anything to do with her.

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She wasn't able to understand
why her father was disappointed

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that his little girl was pregnant
by a married man.

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Why will he not follow the
obvious bent of his affections
and be reconciled to us?

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What am I to do?

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This was a terrible time for Mary.

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Still a child herself, at just 17
she gave birth to a baby girl
two months prematurely.

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The baby was to die
shortly afterwards.

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She was left with a haunting dream.

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I think about the little thing
all day.

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I dreamt that she came back to life,
that she was just cold...

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..and that, before the fire,
we rubbed her
and she came back to life again.

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Then I awoke and I found no baby.

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So young
and so much experience of death.

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You can see why this young woman
might need to dream
of bringing the dead back to life.

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All the circumstances in her own
life and in the world around her

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were preparing her
to write Frankenstein.

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00:20:10,440 --> 00:20:13,720
The triangle of Mary, Percy
and Clare

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00:20:13,720 --> 00:20:18,400
was becoming even more bizarre
now that Mary was in mourning.

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Percy seem to need Clare
as much as he needed Mary.

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She was younger,
more gullible, fun to tease.

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Did you hear that? What?!

223
00:20:29,920 --> 00:20:32,120
The silence.

224
00:20:33,120 --> 00:20:37,760
Percy was the son of a baronet
but, after the elopement,

225
00:20:37,760 --> 00:20:42,800
his father withdrew his allowance,
except for the occasional handout.

226
00:20:43,320 --> 00:20:47,560
Mary was feeling the strain
of poverty and pregnancy.

227
00:20:51,200 --> 00:20:58,400
Less than a year after she lost
her first baby, her beloved son
William was born when she was 18.

228
00:20:58,400 --> 00:21:01,440
He brought great joy
to their lives,

229
00:21:01,440 --> 00:21:05,480
but the first flush of love had
passed and tensions were mounting.

230
00:21:08,760 --> 00:21:15,280
In 1815, Clare had left
the cramped little room she was
sharing with Mary and Shelley

231
00:21:15,280 --> 00:21:17,800
and had gone to Devon.

232
00:21:17,800 --> 00:21:22,840
It's possible that she gave birth
to Percy's baby there -

233
00:21:22,840 --> 00:21:29,040
it was quite common for women
to disappear to the country
to have illegitimate children.

234
00:21:29,040 --> 00:21:35,880
But Clare said nothing of it.
She just noted in a letter that she
was grateful to get away from...

235
00:21:35,880 --> 00:21:43,280
So much discontent,
such violent scenes, such a turmoil
of passion and hatred!

236
00:21:46,120 --> 00:21:51,000
Clare had her eyes on a much
bigger prize than Percy Shelley.

237
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:56,440
Famously described as
"mad, bad and dangerous to know",

238
00:21:56,440 --> 00:22:01,560
he was Lord Byron,
superstar poet and adventurer.

239
00:22:12,520 --> 00:22:15,520
One breast laid open were a school

240
00:22:15,520 --> 00:22:20,880
Which would unteach mankind
the lust to shine...

241
00:22:20,880 --> 00:22:23,120
or rule...

242
00:22:23,120 --> 00:22:29,600
I waited for you for nearly
a quarter of an hour last Thursday.
In your draughty hall.

243
00:22:29,600 --> 00:22:33,960
..And their life
A storm whereon they ride...

244
00:22:33,960 --> 00:22:37,480
I only did it
because I love you so.

245
00:22:37,480 --> 00:22:40,560
..Melt into calm twilight

246
00:22:40,560 --> 00:22:42,600
And so die.

247
00:22:42,600 --> 00:22:47,120
Clare insinuated herself into
Byron's affections for a while,

248
00:22:47,120 --> 00:22:53,200
but he was more interested
in the infamous couple
Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley.

249
00:22:55,400 --> 00:23:02,280
He invited them all to stay
at his villa in Switzerland,
and everywhere that Byron went,

250
00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:06,720
prying eyes, scandal
and adoring women followed.

251
00:23:06,720 --> 00:23:10,280
This is the infamous
Villa Diodati.

252
00:23:10,280 --> 00:23:14,200
Here, Byron was watched
and talked about.

253
00:23:14,200 --> 00:23:18,320
Scandalous rumours
about incest and orgies abounded.

254
00:23:18,320 --> 00:23:22,760
Tourists used to come and look at
the villa through their telescopes!

255
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:28,600
Byron's dangerous charisma
worked its magic
on the three young people.

256
00:23:28,600 --> 00:23:33,720
No matter
how callous and dismissive
he was to become in later years,

257
00:23:33,720 --> 00:23:36,520
they always came back for more.

258
00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:43,560
At the villa, he gathered them
around the fire with his handsome
young doctor, John Polidori.

259
00:23:43,560 --> 00:23:47,400
Opium and laudanum
were the drugs of choice.

260
00:23:47,400 --> 00:23:54,080
For these impressionable
young people, this was exciting
and a little bit scary.

261
00:23:56,960 --> 00:24:02,000
Few moments
in the history of literature
have been more romanticised

262
00:24:02,000 --> 00:24:09,280
than the summer of 1816, when
Lord Byron entertained his friends
on the shores of Lake Geneva.

263
00:24:09,280 --> 00:24:13,440
They called it
"the summer of darkness".

264
00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:20,800
Storms raged, and the surface
of the lake shuddered
with the force of the thunder.

265
00:24:20,800 --> 00:24:23,880
LOUD THUNDERCLAPS

266
00:24:28,840 --> 00:24:30,720
THUNDERCLAP

267
00:24:30,720 --> 00:24:33,560
It does FEEL ghostly here.

268
00:24:33,640 --> 00:24:36,760
To have a ghost, a man -

269
00:24:36,760 --> 00:24:39,360
or woman - must have a soul.

270
00:24:39,360 --> 00:24:42,960
You are not the only one here
with a soul, Albe.

271
00:24:42,960 --> 00:24:45,000
< No...

272
00:24:45,000 --> 00:24:49,040
but you are the only person here
without one.

273
00:24:49,040 --> 00:24:50,680
Percy...

274
00:24:57,280 --> 00:25:02,040
And then, one stormy night,
Byron read aloud from Christabel,

275
00:25:02,040 --> 00:25:07,360
the Gothic horror poem
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

276
00:25:08,560 --> 00:25:14,920
"There she sees the damsel bright,
Dressed in a silken robe of white,

277
00:25:14,920 --> 00:25:18,760
"That shadowy in the moonlight
shone -

278
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:22,320
"The neck that made
the white robe wan...

279
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:28,880
"..The vision of fear,
the touch and pain!

280
00:25:28,880 --> 00:25:32,480
"She shrunk and shuddered
and saw again...

281
00:25:33,520 --> 00:25:37,080
"..Why stare she
with unsettled eye?

282
00:25:37,080 --> 00:25:40,920
"Can she the bodiless dead espy...?"

283
00:25:42,800 --> 00:25:46,000
It bores me, all this "bodily dead"

284
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:49,520
and "shrunken, shuddering"
superstition.

285
00:25:50,720 --> 00:25:52,280
Really?

286
00:25:55,120 --> 00:25:59,440
Could any of US write
a more thrilling ghost story?

287
00:25:59,440 --> 00:26:00,960
Well?!

288
00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:17,920
Mary took the ghost-story challenge
seriously. Probably,
she was the only one that did.

289
00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:23,200
Here she was, just 18 years old, in
the company of these two geniuses.

290
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:27,240
At least, Shelley and Byron
THOUGHT they were geniuses.

291
00:26:27,240 --> 00:26:31,280
So the story that she was to write
had to be impressive,

292
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:35,320
enough to make these two great men
shiver with fear.

293
00:26:36,360 --> 00:26:38,920
I busied myself to think of a story

294
00:26:38,920 --> 00:26:42,040
that would speak to
the mysterious fears of our natures,

295
00:26:42,040 --> 00:26:47,480
one to make the reader afraid to
look around, to curdle the blood and
quicken the beatings of the heart.

296
00:26:47,480 --> 00:26:52,760
If it did not accomplish
these things, my ghost story
would be unworthy of its name.

297
00:26:54,120 --> 00:26:59,520
A few days after
the ghost-story challenge,
Mary was to have her famous dream.

298
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:07,520
'When I placed my head on my pillow,
I did not sleep
nor could I be said to think.

299
00:27:07,520 --> 00:27:11,600
'My imagination, unbidden,
possessed and guided me.'

300
00:27:15,320 --> 00:27:20,680
I saw the pale student
of unhallowed arts kneeling beside
the thing he had put together.

301
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:24,720
I saw the hideous phantasm
of a man stretched out,

302
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:29,240
and then, upon the workings of some
powerful engine, saw signs of life.

303
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:41,600
The morning after her dream,
Mary announced
that she had thought of an idea.

304
00:27:41,600 --> 00:27:44,080
She started writing immediately.

305
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:48,800
Frankenstein himself tells us
about the monster's creation,

306
00:27:48,800 --> 00:27:53,480
beginning with one of the most
famous lines in English literature.

307
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:59,800
"It was on a dreary night
in November that I first beheld
the accomplishment of my toils.

308
00:28:01,640 --> 00:28:06,080
"How could I describe my emotions
at this...catastrophe?

309
00:28:32,280 --> 00:28:37,120
"I thought I had selected
his features as beautiful.

310
00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:44,680
"Beautiful(!)

311
00:28:44,680 --> 00:28:46,920
"Good God!

312
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:04,840
"His yellow skin scarcely covered
the work of muscles and arteries
beneath.

313
00:29:05,840 --> 00:29:08,280
"His watery eyes!

314
00:29:08,280 --> 00:29:14,640
"They seemed almost the same colour
as the white sockets
in which they were set.

315
00:29:27,280 --> 00:29:31,320
"Later, I started from my sleep
with horror.

316
00:29:31,320 --> 00:29:37,480
"Cold dew covered my forehead,
my teeth chattered
and every limb became convulsed."

317
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:23,800
Mary was brought up by her parents
to believe that all children
must be loved and cherished,

318
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:26,840
that the powerful
must care for the weak.

319
00:30:26,840 --> 00:30:32,760
In this, the key moment
of the book, Frankenstein's
rejection of his creation

320
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:35,320
is against love and reason.

321
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:38,400
He comes into the world
an innocent.

322
00:30:38,400 --> 00:30:43,240
At first, Mary describes him
as a "creature", not a monster.

323
00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:47,800
It is loneliness and suffering
which makes him wicked.

324
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:53,560
"All night, I have been walking up
and down in the greatest agitation,

325
00:30:53,560 --> 00:30:58,440
"listening, catching each sound as
if it were to announce the approach

326
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:02,680
"of the demonic corpse which
I have so miserably given life."

327
00:31:02,680 --> 00:31:04,720
RATTLE >

328
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:19,040
A great proportion of the misery
that wanders in hideous form around
the world is allowed to arise

329
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:21,480
from the negligence of parents.

330
00:31:28,440 --> 00:31:34,280
What's really incredible
is that Mary Shelley was so young
when she wrote Frankenstein,

331
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:36,640
just 19 years old.

332
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:39,680
And the monster,
lonely and desperate,

333
00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:45,760
in many ways is
a nightmarish reflection
of Mary's own turbulent life.

334
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:48,040
CREATURE SCREAMS

335
00:32:01,600 --> 00:32:05,640
At the Villa Diodati,
Mary found the heart of her novel

336
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:13,160
but high in the Alps about 60 miles
from Geneva, she found a place
for the most horrific scene of all.

337
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:16,280
Mary made the treacherous journey
to come here.

338
00:32:16,280 --> 00:32:22,520
It's the Mer de Glace, one of the
most dangerous places in the Alps.

339
00:32:22,520 --> 00:32:26,280
It's criss-crossed with crevasses
and constantly prone to avalanche,

340
00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:29,720
but Mary was determined
to come here.

341
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:33,680
She called it
"the most desolate place on earth".

342
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:39,880
A perfect setting, then, for the
most desolate creature on earth.

343
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:47,080
The creature's tragedy is all
wrapped up in the times Mary lived
in, and her parents' philosophy.

344
00:32:48,600 --> 00:32:54,840
The French Revolution showed
that if people are brutalised,
they'll be brutal themselves.

345
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:57,200
So it is with the creature.

346
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:05,680
He is feared and loathed
by everyone who sees him.

347
00:33:06,920 --> 00:33:09,640
His sadness turns to fury.

348
00:33:12,440 --> 00:33:15,280
"I am the fallen angel.

349
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:18,840
"Where I see bliss, I am excluded.

350
00:33:20,360 --> 00:33:22,400
"I was benevolent and good.

351
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:25,600
"Misery made me a fiend!"

352
00:33:30,840 --> 00:33:37,120
When she returned to London,
Mary drew on her own life and fears
as she wrote.

353
00:33:37,120 --> 00:33:39,560
William was still a baby.

354
00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:45,400
In her story, she gave Frankenstein
a much-loved younger brother,
also called William.

355
00:33:45,400 --> 00:33:50,360
But even this innocent child cannot
abide to be near the monster.

356
00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:54,920
In a fury of revenge and despair,
the monster kills him.

357
00:33:56,440 --> 00:33:58,960
The bloodbath has begun.

358
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:08,160
He flees to the mountains
for refuge, the only place
he will be truly alone.

359
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:22,600
"The desert mountains
and dreary glaciers are my refuge.

360
00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:28,560
"The caves of ice
are a dwelling to me.

361
00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:31,400
"These bleak skies I hail..."

362
00:34:37,640 --> 00:34:42,360
Back in London,
tragedy was about to strike again.

363
00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:49,600
An unknown woman was found dead
yesterday in the upstairs room
of the Mackworth Arms in Swansea.

364
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:54,520
An empty bottle of laudanum
and a note were also found.

365
00:34:54,520 --> 00:34:57,320
Not Fanny! Not Fanny!

366
00:34:57,320 --> 00:35:00,040
It seems so. Oh, no!

367
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:02,680
Oh, no, it IS her!

368
00:35:02,680 --> 00:35:05,000
I know it is her!

369
00:35:17,520 --> 00:35:20,000
Fanny was Mary's older half-sister,

370
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:25,440
born illegitimately
to Mary Wollstonecraft
before she met Godwin.

371
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:29,000
Fanny had always been
in Mary's shadow.

372
00:35:29,000 --> 00:35:33,440
After her suicide, Mary was pained
with guilt for neglecting her.

373
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:38,680
She must have been thinking
about Fanny as she wrote
the monster's words...

374
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:45,720
"But where are my friends
and relations?

375
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:51,400
"No father had watched
my infant days,

376
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:56,000
"no mother had blessed me
with smiles and caresses.

377
00:35:57,520 --> 00:36:02,120
"Or if they had,
all my past life was now a blot,

378
00:36:02,120 --> 00:36:04,720
"a blind vacancy."

379
00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:12,960
Mary Wollstonecraft
had tried to kill herself twice.

380
00:36:12,960 --> 00:36:16,520
Mary inherited
her mother's melancholic streak

381
00:36:16,520 --> 00:36:20,560
but, to protect herself,
often withdrew emotionally.

382
00:36:20,560 --> 00:36:24,600
The monster
is Mary's misery made flesh.

383
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:29,720
MARY: Loneliness
has been the curse of my life.

384
00:36:29,720 --> 00:36:35,320
What should I have done
if my imagination had not
been my companion?

385
00:36:37,400 --> 00:36:42,000
I must have grovelled on the earth,
I must have died -

386
00:36:42,000 --> 00:36:45,520
but my dreams,

387
00:36:45,520 --> 00:36:49,000
my darling, bright dreams.

388
00:36:56,360 --> 00:37:03,440
Just two months after
Fanny's suicide, the couple were
dealt another devastating blow.

389
00:37:03,440 --> 00:37:10,560
Harriet, Shelley's abandoned
21-year-old wife, was found
in the Serpentine in Hyde Park.

390
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:15,040
At eight months pregnant,
she'd drowned herself.

391
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:19,320
There were rumours.
Was the unborn child Shelley's?

392
00:37:19,320 --> 00:37:23,640
It was certainly possible.
But he had his own story.

393
00:37:27,880 --> 00:37:34,080
She was driven from her father's
house, and she descended
the steps of prostitution

394
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:37,960
until she left with a groom
of the name of Smith,

395
00:37:37,960 --> 00:37:41,000
until he deserted her.

396
00:37:42,120 --> 00:37:44,640
And she killed herself.

397
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:48,880
Wherever Shelley went,
children followed.

398
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:52,160
There were his two
motherless children by Harriet.

399
00:37:52,160 --> 00:37:55,920
With Mary, he had one
surviving child, William.

400
00:37:55,920 --> 00:37:59,760
A third was on its way,
and two more to come,

401
00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:02,400
and now Clare was pregnant.

402
00:38:02,400 --> 00:38:07,120
The father was almost certainly
Byron. HE suspected it was Shelley.

403
00:38:07,120 --> 00:38:10,160
Free love certainly had its price.

404
00:38:14,520 --> 00:38:18,560
For all his heartlessness
over Harriet's death,

405
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:22,880
Shelley was keen to stand by
his now motherless children,

406
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:29,480
and Mary, barely able to support
her own family, was happy
to welcome them into her home.

407
00:38:29,480 --> 00:38:33,520
But there was something
they would have to do first.

408
00:38:36,600 --> 00:38:44,000
Like many conscientious objectors
to marriage, before and since,
Mary and Percy tied the knot.

409
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:47,560
Against all their commitment
to free love,

410
00:38:47,560 --> 00:38:51,800
they recognised that his claim
for custody of his two children

411
00:38:51,800 --> 00:38:55,000
would be all the stronger
if he was married.

412
00:38:55,000 --> 00:39:02,440
Dancing in attendance was
Mary's father, another champion
of a woman's right not to marry.

413
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:05,920
Marriage, as it is now understood,

414
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:08,360
is a monopoly.

415
00:39:08,360 --> 00:39:11,000
And the worst of monopolies.

416
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:16,640
Godwin may have objected
to marriage in theory,

417
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:20,760
but when it came to his daughter,
it was a different story.

418
00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:27,560
He had not spoken to her
since her elopement, but at
her wedding, they were reconciled.

419
00:39:29,520 --> 00:39:34,360
Mary and Percy were still in love
when they married in 1816.

420
00:39:34,360 --> 00:39:38,400
Here is another biographical
connection to Frankenstein.

421
00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:41,600
Love is at the very heart
of the book.

422
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:45,280
The monster longs for it,
as Mary did.

423
00:39:45,280 --> 00:39:49,880
In the Alps, he demands that
Frankenstein makes him a bride.

424
00:39:51,600 --> 00:39:57,360
"I now indulge in dreams of bliss
that cannot be realised.

425
00:39:57,360 --> 00:40:02,640
"I demand a creature of another
sex, but as hideous as myself.

426
00:40:05,200 --> 00:40:10,400
"Our lives will not be happy,
but they will be harmless.

427
00:40:10,400 --> 00:40:12,680
"This, you alone can do."

428
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:21,240
Frankenstein at first refuses
to make the monster a mate,

429
00:40:21,240 --> 00:40:25,400
but he is threatened
with the worst imaginable horror.

430
00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:29,440
"Do your duty towards me,

431
00:40:29,440 --> 00:40:32,360
"or I will fill the belly of Death

432
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:37,040
"with the blood
of your remaining friends."

433
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:42,760
Terrified that the monster will
slaughter his remaining loved ones,

434
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:48,000
Frankenstein begins
the awful process
of making the female creature.

435
00:40:50,840 --> 00:40:53,520
"So I proceeded in my labour.

436
00:40:53,520 --> 00:40:58,160
"It became, every day,
more horrible to me.

437
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:01,520
"It was indeed a filthy process.

438
00:41:03,680 --> 00:41:07,600
"My heart sickened
at the work of my hands.

439
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:20,960
"Am I right for my own benefit
to inflict this curse
upon everlasting generations?"

440
00:41:31,240 --> 00:41:37,760
Unable to contemplate the evil
he will unleash if he continues,
Frankenstein destroys the female.

441
00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:46,560
CREATURE: "You have destroyed
the work that you began!

442
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:48,920
"It is well,

443
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:51,320
"but remember,

444
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:56,080
"I shall be with you
on YOUR wedding night."

445
00:41:58,560 --> 00:42:01,120
The monster is true to his word.

446
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:07,640
On their wedding night,
Frankenstein's young bride
is strangled in her sleep.

447
00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:13,360
To stop the bloodbath, Frankenstein
knows he must destroy the monster.

448
00:42:20,840 --> 00:42:26,840
It was almost impossible
for women to get into print
in the early 19th century.

449
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:34,320
Shelley, posing as the writer,
managed to get Frankenstein
published anonymously in 1818.

450
00:42:37,120 --> 00:42:43,920
Only 500 copies were printed, but
they were passed around the great
and the good in literary London.

451
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:47,480
What began as a playful challenge
from Byron

452
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:51,840
was about to become one of
the most famous books in the world.

453
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:03,480
Mary and Shelley were to look back
at the summer they spent
with Lord Byron on Lake Geneva

454
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:09,120
as their own romantic idyll -
the mountains, the lakes,
the poetry and the conversations -

455
00:43:09,120 --> 00:43:12,160
but they were never able
to recapture that.

456
00:43:12,160 --> 00:43:19,720
Mary had lost her mother,
her first baby and her sister,
but far worse was to come.

457
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:27,040
BABY CRIES

458
00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:36,080
Mary and Percy's lives
were becoming a soap opera
of births, marriages and deaths,

459
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:38,320
often involving Byron.

460
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:44,480
They now had two children -
William and a baby girl, Clara.

461
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:49,720
Clare also had a baby,
Byron's daughter.

462
00:43:49,720 --> 00:43:54,440
In a complicated conspiracy
to unite father with child,

463
00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:59,000
they all travelled to Italy
to be nearer to him.

464
00:43:59,400 --> 00:44:02,760
But in an act
of astonishing cruelty,

465
00:44:02,760 --> 00:44:07,160
Byron wrote to say that a messenger
would collect "the brat",

466
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:10,680
and that Clare should never see her
again.

467
00:44:10,680 --> 00:44:13,600
No, it's too cruel!

468
00:44:13,600 --> 00:44:15,120
No.

469
00:44:16,600 --> 00:44:18,640
Ignore it.

470
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:31,000
Clare couldn't ignore Byron.

471
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:36,800
The baby was taken from her
and died five years later, alone,
in a Catholic convent,

472
00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:40,600
consigned there by Byron himself.

473
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:56,320
Despite his cruelty to Clare,
Shelley didn't give up on Byron.

474
00:44:56,320 --> 00:45:00,560
He set off with Clare to stay
in Byron's house near Padua.

475
00:45:02,800 --> 00:45:05,160
Mary's baby daughter was ill,

476
00:45:05,160 --> 00:45:09,200
but she made the long coach journey
to join them.

477
00:45:28,960 --> 00:45:31,040
In the 19th century,

478
00:45:31,040 --> 00:45:34,760
dysentery was rife
on the Continent.

479
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:40,440
Three weeks after Mary's journey,
Clara died of the disease.

480
00:45:49,440 --> 00:45:51,880
They buried her

481
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:54,240
with a single flower

482
00:45:54,240 --> 00:45:56,680
on the beach near Venice.

483
00:45:56,680 --> 00:45:59,920
"There is not a tree

484
00:45:59,920 --> 00:46:02,520
"that I would not recognise

485
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:05,360
"as a memorial of that moment...

486
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:08,960
"when life and death hung
in my arms."

487
00:46:16,960 --> 00:46:24,240
The irony was that, during
this personal tragedy, the fortunes
of her book were rising.

488
00:46:24,240 --> 00:46:30,240
Mary heard from a friend
that Frankenstein was
"universally known and read".

489
00:46:30,240 --> 00:46:33,720
She felt it was time
to admit that she was the writer.

490
00:46:33,720 --> 00:46:38,160
Her fame and the fame
of her tragic monster was growing.

491
00:46:41,320 --> 00:46:45,480
Are you all right,
little Willmouse?

492
00:46:45,480 --> 00:46:49,040
In 1819,
Mary's beloved son William -

493
00:46:49,040 --> 00:46:53,840
or Willmouse, as he was known -
was everybody's darling.

494
00:46:55,520 --> 00:46:57,840
Here's your flower.

495
00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:03,000
Just a little longer. There now.

496
00:47:03,000 --> 00:47:07,200
Mary was concerned about the fever
William was developing.

497
00:47:07,200 --> 00:47:14,440
Just three weeks
after this portrait was painted,
William also died of malaria.

498
00:47:14,440 --> 00:47:17,080
He was three years old.

499
00:47:19,080 --> 00:47:21,400
"He was so good,

500
00:47:21,400 --> 00:47:24,120
"so beautiful,

501
00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,000
"so entirely attached to me.

502
00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:32,280
"It should have been me that died.
It should have been me!"

503
00:47:34,240 --> 00:47:41,840
Mary couldn't shake off the pain
of William's death. To Percy,
she was barely recognisable.

504
00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:46,320
In a poem addressed to her,
he grieved at his loss.

505
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:50,920
My dearest
Wherefore hast thou gone?

506
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:57,960
Thy form is here indeed,
A lovely one.

507
00:47:57,960 --> 00:48:00,840
But thou art fled.

508
00:48:02,000 --> 00:48:04,520
Gone down the dreary road

509
00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:08,400
That leads to sorrow's
Most obscure abode.

510
00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:12,880
For thine own sake,
I cannot follow thee.

511
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:16,840
'Do thou return for mine?'

512
00:48:18,360 --> 00:48:22,520
Mary could not forgive Percy
for recovering so quickly.

513
00:48:22,520 --> 00:48:28,480
To her, it was a betrayal of
their lost children and her love.

514
00:48:28,480 --> 00:48:30,800
"A cold heart.

515
00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:32,720
"Have I a cold heart?

516
00:48:32,720 --> 00:48:35,120
"God knows."

517
00:48:36,840 --> 00:48:40,360
Mary's life was
unimaginably hard now.

518
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:43,480
Too much death, too young.

519
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:48,080
Some people noticed that she was
becoming cold and unfeeling.

520
00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:52,600
"At least the tears are hot."

521
00:48:54,560 --> 00:49:00,280
Was she,
like Frankenstein's creature,
being hardened by suffering?

522
00:49:00,280 --> 00:49:04,200
The monster's words
could describe Mary herself.

523
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:07,920
"I am the fallen angel.

524
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:10,920
"I was benevolent and good.

525
00:49:10,920 --> 00:49:14,480
"Misery made me a fiend!"

526
00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:30,320
The loneliness that Mary
had imagined in Frankenstein
was taking hold of her own life.

527
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:33,600
At their new home,
the desolate Villa Marini,

528
00:49:34,600 --> 00:49:39,280
the sea washed in under the arches
and the wind howled around them.

529
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:41,720
For Shelley, this was wonderful.

530
00:49:41,720 --> 00:49:45,160
He could indulge
his life-long love of the sea.

531
00:49:45,160 --> 00:49:47,440
Mary hated it.

532
00:49:50,080 --> 00:49:53,240
Now, where did we get to, Percy?

533
00:49:53,240 --> 00:49:55,680
As the marriage disintegrated,

534
00:49:55,680 --> 00:49:59,040
all Mary's love was devoted
to her fourth child,

535
00:49:59,040 --> 00:50:04,360
Percy, the only one
who would survive into adulthood.

536
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:06,720
One, two...

537
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:20,040
"Mary feels no more remorse
in torturing me
than in torturing her own mind.

538
00:50:20,040 --> 00:50:26,640
"It is a curse of Tantalus that
a person possessing such excellent
powers and so pure a mind

539
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:29,200
"can no longer excite my passions."

540
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:34,520
Mary.

541
00:50:34,520 --> 00:50:37,680
I leave tomorrow.

542
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:40,360
Percy, don't drip on the floor.

543
00:50:46,400 --> 00:50:48,800
Passion or no passion,

544
00:50:48,800 --> 00:50:54,000
Mary was sick, and miserably
pregnant again for the fifth time.

545
00:50:54,000 --> 00:50:58,440
And still only 24 years old.

546
00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:01,840
A woman is not a field
to be continually employed

547
00:51:01,840 --> 00:51:05,600
either in the bringing forth
or the enlarging of grain.

548
00:51:05,600 --> 00:51:09,360
I wish I could break my chains
and leave this dungeon.

549
00:51:17,160 --> 00:51:24,960
On the 1st of July 1822,
Shelley set off with a friend
in his new boat, the Don Juan.

550
00:51:24,960 --> 00:51:31,840
He was visiting Byron in Livorno,
a journey of some 65 miles around
the north-western coast of Italy.

551
00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:37,000
Mary heard nothing
for several days.

552
00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:40,520
She set off with Clare to Livorno
and waited.

553
00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:53,320
A sudden summer storm
had engulfed Shelley's boat.

554
00:51:56,400 --> 00:52:00,480
Three days later,
two bodies were found.

555
00:52:01,720 --> 00:52:07,920
Shelley was identified
by the copy of John Keats' poems
still in his pocket.

556
00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:10,200
He was 29 years old.

557
00:52:19,080 --> 00:52:25,600
"For eight years,
I communicated with freedom with one
whose genius far transcended mine.

558
00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:31,440
"Now, I am alone.

559
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:36,200
"Oh, how alone!

560
00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:40,120
"Oh, my beloved Shelley!"

561
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:48,400
Shelley's body was burned
on the beach near Livorno.

562
00:52:48,400 --> 00:52:52,400
There is a strange
connection here with the book.

563
00:52:52,400 --> 00:52:57,040
At the end of Frankenstein, the
monster imagines his own cremation.

564
00:52:57,040 --> 00:53:00,000
Mary wrote it years before,

565
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:04,200
but it's as if the monster
is crying out for Shelley.

566
00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:10,240
"Soon, these burning miseries
will be extinct.

567
00:53:11,680 --> 00:53:15,400
"I shall ascend my funeral pyre
triumphantly

568
00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:19,560
"and exult in the agony
and the torture in flames.

569
00:53:21,240 --> 00:53:25,760
"The light, that conflagration,
will fade away.

570
00:53:26,880 --> 00:53:29,800
"My ashes will be swept

571
00:53:29,800 --> 00:53:31,440
"into the sea."

572
00:53:37,600 --> 00:53:43,800
Frankenstein ends
as if Mary didn't know
how to resolve her epic horror.

573
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:47,880
Vowing to destroy the monster
after it kills his bride,

574
00:53:47,880 --> 00:53:53,120
Frankenstein pursues it to the
frozen wastelands of the Arctic.

575
00:53:53,120 --> 00:53:56,280
There, he perishes mysteriously,

576
00:53:56,280 --> 00:54:00,840
and the monster disappears
into the darkness.

577
00:54:05,640 --> 00:54:08,240
HOWLING-WIND EFFECT

578
00:54:08,640 --> 00:54:10,560
Oh, dear!

579
00:54:10,560 --> 00:54:14,720
AUDIENCE LAUGH
You're frightened out of your wits!

580
00:54:14,720 --> 00:54:18,560
WIND-HOWL EFFECT 
What's that? What's that?

581
00:54:19,960 --> 00:54:23,440
At this, the lowest point
of Mary's life,

582
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:27,080
Frankenstein
was at its most successful.

583
00:54:27,080 --> 00:54:30,520
Back in London, Presumption,
Or The Fate Of Frankenstein

584
00:54:30,520 --> 00:54:33,040
played to huge audiences.

585
00:54:33,040 --> 00:54:37,520
But this monster
was more farcical than tragic.

586
00:54:39,440 --> 00:54:46,360
The roots of the monster most
people think of today are probably
here rather than in Mary's tragedy.

587
00:54:46,360 --> 00:54:51,080
Behold, the horrid corpse
to which I have given life!

588
00:54:52,320 --> 00:54:57,200
The story of Frankenstein
had taken on a life of its own.

589
00:54:57,480 --> 00:54:59,560
But, despite this success,

590
00:54:59,560 --> 00:55:04,760
Mary couldn't escape the melancholy
which plagued her
for the rest of her life.

591
00:55:04,760 --> 00:55:06,360
Agh!

592
00:55:07,360 --> 00:55:09,400
AUDIENCE APPLAUD

593
00:55:09,400 --> 00:55:15,440
Feeling guilty that she had allowed
Shelley to sail into that deadly
storm, Mary transformed her life

594
00:55:15,440 --> 00:55:18,000
into an act of reparation.

595
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:23,720
She struggled
to get Shelley's work published
and have his genius recognised.

596
00:55:25,080 --> 00:55:29,600
You mentioned Mr Keats in your
verse, but you don't mention Percy.

597
00:55:29,600 --> 00:55:31,120
Don't I?

598
00:55:31,120 --> 00:55:35,880
Well, Percy was the best, the least
selfish man I ever knew. But...

599
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:38,040
as a poet?

600
00:55:38,040 --> 00:55:40,400
Let's go on, shall we?

601
00:55:43,440 --> 00:55:48,280
Byron never did mention Percy
in his verse. But Mary persevered.

602
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:51,360
Without her determination
to establish him,

603
00:55:51,360 --> 00:55:57,280
it's possible we might not know
the name or work
of Percy Bysshe Shelley today.

604
00:56:02,200 --> 00:56:08,240
The fond memories
of that fateful summer in
the Villa Diodati never left Mary.

605
00:56:08,240 --> 00:56:13,840
She returned there
11 years before her own death.
Everything had changed.

606
00:56:16,440 --> 00:56:21,120
Byron had died two years
after Shelley, when he was 36.

607
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:26,080
Clare was now living
the uneventful life of a governess.

608
00:56:28,000 --> 00:56:30,840
Frankenstein, for all its horror,

609
00:56:30,840 --> 00:56:35,120
was a story born
of youth and vitality.

610
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:39,240
How far Mary had come!

611
00:56:42,440 --> 00:56:45,360
Mary went on to write other books,

612
00:56:45,360 --> 00:56:49,400
but none haunts the imagination
like Frankenstein.

613
00:56:49,400 --> 00:56:55,440
This young woman, at the peak and
fire of her youth, dared to break
convention by writing a book

614
00:56:55,440 --> 00:56:59,080
that would strike fear
into the heart.

615
00:57:02,480 --> 00:57:07,280
Mary dared to write about
bringing the dead back to life,

616
00:57:07,280 --> 00:57:11,560
but she learnt the very hardest way
that death is final.

617
00:57:12,640 --> 00:57:18,160
"The windows of the room
were darkened,
and I felt a kind of panic

618
00:57:18,160 --> 00:57:21,520
"on seeing the pale yellow light
of the moon.

619
00:57:21,840 --> 00:57:24,120
"The shutters were thrown back

620
00:57:24,120 --> 00:57:29,680
"and, with horror,
I saw at the window a figure
most hideous and abhorrent."

621
00:57:31,520 --> 00:57:35,200
Mary Shelley died herself in 1851,

622
00:57:35,200 --> 00:57:37,520
aged 53.

623
00:58:11,920 --> 00:58:15,960
Subtitles by Elspeth Kane
& Carla Rossi - BBC Broadcast 2003

624
00:58:15,960 --> 00:58:19,000
E-mail us at subtitling@bbc.co.uk