I’ve always been intrigued by the story of how ‘Frankenstein’ came into existence – the stormy summer of 1816 on the shores of Lake Geneva where Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori gathered to share their storytelling and pass the time. The rest, as they say, is history…
Except that Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s step-sister, was also there that summer and is often forgotten in the light of the bigger, badder and much more infamous characters around her. I only really knew about her from reading Jeanette Winterson’s ‘Frankissstein’, a reimagining of that crazy summer and a whole lot more (sexbots!) I’m always here for stories about women whose voices have been lost to history, so I approached this book with enthusiasm.
The story shifts between timelines as we see a young Claire in 1816 (obsessed with Byron and carrying his child), then as a governess in Russia, then as an independent woman embarking on an ill-advised affair in Paris, before a poignant farewell as she leaves the UK for good. All of this covers about 40 years in Claire’s life and it is clearly well-researched – there are lots of factual details that pop up within the narrative and its authenticity is discussed by the writer (along with a reading list) in notes at the end of the novel. I’ll admit that I found the shifting between timelines a little tricky to follow until I got used to the characters within each story.
I really wanted Claire Clairmont to be an intelligent, independent woman forging her own way despite the many setbacks in her life – and I now think this was an unrealistic expectation given the time period. The Georgian era wasn’t known for its liberal approach to unwed mothers, so Claire was on the back foot from the start. Add in her seemingly insatiable desires for Byron and many others, the lack of contraceptive options, her financial reliance on men, plus the horrific infant mortality rates of the period, and we’re left with a woman who lived freely but paid the price. I found myself feeling that Claire Clairmont was a tragic figure, but one that also really didn’t make good choices along the way.
Still, I did like the historical details and the insights into the Shelleys and Byron – even if they were all pretty terrible people in this telling. In the notes at the back of the novel, there is a snippet of a memoir that Claire Clairmont wrote in which she describes Shelley and Byron as ‘monsters of lying, meanness, cruelty and treachery’ and I’d agree wholeheartedly with this – although McDowell uses the word ‘astonishingly’ to describe this which I guess means we don’t see them quite the same! Byron, in particular, was awful and I’m not sure the unravelling of the whole story showed him in any better light. Similarly, I didn’t warm to either of the Shelleys, even though I wanted to love Mary for her literary genius against the odds.
This is an engaging and well-researched historical novel, although one that didn’t quite do what I wanted it to do. I think this is my fault for having unrealistic expectations about a figure on whom there is a reasonable amount of historical information – I’m not sure McDowell could have changed her character without deviating from her truth. Instead, we are shown the often sad life of a woman who was badly treated by some of the men around her, yet still managed to outlive them all and forge some independence within tight Georgian/Victorian parameters.
Header photo by Brandon Morgan on Unsplash
