Introduction

Mary Shelley’s waking and dreaming worlds conspire to create the most famously human “monster” in literature, giving the world a taste of what a woman could write and inventing a whole new genre in the process. Justifying her unconventional life and enduring personal tragedies, Mary follows in her feminist mother’s footsteps, as she contemplates a woman's place in literature and the world.

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Excerpt

24 June 1816The dismal weather continues unabated, which engendered the perfect setting for the reading of our stories. First, Byron narrated his story about a dying aristocrat. I wondered if perhaps he was referring to himself. What could he be hiding? Had his licentiousness finally caught up with him for good? I didn’t have long to ponder my speculation, because as soon as Byron finished his tale and poured himself a tumbler of wine, Shelley started to read his short tale about “ghost chasing” and stealing bodies in Highgate Cemetery. I was the only one who knew that his story was autobiographical and I wondered if anyone would try to connect Shelley’s tale to mine, which I was eager to read. I started to speak when Shelley laid down his manuscript but then Byron turned to Polidori and said, “John, please scare us silly. Shelley’s story did not make me quiver. I found it rather comedic with all of the gravediggers stealing corpses and then heading straight to the pub.” ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

1. Most people are familiar with the “monster” in the Frankenstein films. How does Mary’s creature, as portrayed in the novel, actually compare with the film versions? In what ways does Mary, like Victor in her story, assemble her creature?

2. Being motherless is a central theme of VINDICATED. How has Mary Wollstonecraft’s death affected young Mary Godwin? What do you make of the supernatural scenes where Mary’s mother appears to her?

3. Historically, women authors often had difficulty balancing motherhood and their need to write. Few nineteenth-century women authors had children. How does motherhood and the loss of four of her children affect Mary Shelley’s art?

4. Percy Shelley was one of the great Romantic poets but was he a great man, according to this historical fiction? What’s your reaction to the way he’s portrayed?

5. VINDICATED is imagined as Mary Shelley’s private journal. How does this choice of voice shape the details and telling of the story? In what ways does that approach deepen or limit the narrative?

6. The title VINDICATED is a reference to Mary Wollstonecraft’s most famous work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but what does vindication mean to Mary Shelley? Do you think she is vindicated by the end of the novel? If so, in what ways?

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