Mary Shelley, why do you write?

One day someone will ask you what special interest in the world causes you to write in the manner that you do. You will reply “the way a person's role in the world can be cataclysmically altered either by an internal emotional upheaval, or by some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism”

I found Frankenstein’s womb fascinating especially in the way that it explores how the novel Frankenstein came to be the way it is. When the graphic novel Mary is quoting things that her father wrote and said, one can see how she found inspiration in his ideas, but also how she interrogated those ideas to come to the conclusions that she does in Frankenstein. There is the line that says, “There is nothing that human imagination can figure brilliant and enviable, that human genius and skill do not aspire to realize.” One can imagine this line being at the forefront of Mary Shelley’s mind as she began to create the character as Victor Frankenstein. He is driven by this idea that he can give life to something that he creates and believes that science and his intelligence will create this being. 

Referring back to the quote at the start of this post, I think it’s interesting to imagine how this encounter with the nameless creature in the graphic novel might have had an effect on how Mary Shelley wrote the novel. I’m thinking specifically about how “some supernatural occurrence that mirrors an internal schism”. The author of the graphic novel is positioning this encounter as the inspiration for Shelley’s Frankenstein, so what is he saying about Mary Shelley’s creative process? We’ve noted several times about how Mary Shelley’s life story feeds into her work, so how would the story in this graphic novel feed into Frankenstein?