Elle Fanning is Mary Shelley in this new trailer that shows the story of the woman responsible for one of the most macabre monster stories ever conceived. When you think of a writer you must often think of why they are the way they are, what kind of inspiration they’ve gained throughout their life and just what has happened to them to create the images that they pain so accurately on the page. Mary Shelley did not lead the easiest of lives simply because she was a woman in a time when being a woman meant that they were seen to be ladies and little else. An imaginative writer was not thought to be female, ever, nor were they expected to do much more than simply be the ladies that society wanted.
Shelley had a lot to put up with in that case, and more than enough motivation to pen the script that would eventually become something that would inspire millions and scare the wits out of even more as time went on. The story of Frankenstein is known to so many in this day and age that the legend has had to change and be altered more than once in order to fully encapsulate the cultures to which it has traveled. The very name of Mary Shelley has been immortalized as one of the greatest authors in all of history for this one story alone since she dared to bring forth something from the dark that some had theorized about but no one had ever seen before. The reanimation of a dead person was something that had been toyed with in her time but this, coupled with the ideas that were rolling around in her head at the time, came to define a legend so great that it has yet to fade from the minds of those that read it.
Her prose back in that day is a bit hard to read at this time but it is still easy enough to understand so that a reader can divine the story and the madness therein. While the monster and the man that made it have been deemed the stars Shelley is by far more important since without her touch it would never have become what it is now. As the creator of this legend she was by far the more important aspect and the one that has garnered the most attention. While those that don’t know the legend any deeper than the monster and his creator might never know her name, those who grew up reading her story and that had the wherewithal to research her a little more thoroughly will understand that she did not exist in a time when women were given a fair chance. The madness within the story is not something she necessarily made up, but was able to bear witness to in her own life in several ways.
Because of this she became a better writer, albeit a troubled one. Madness is after all one of the key components to writing. Few sane people ever remain unchanged once they start down this path.
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