Frankenstein Unbound (The Monster Trilogy) by Brian Aldiss

Author:Brian Aldiss [Brian Aldiss]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

12

Letter from Joseph Bodenland to Mary Godwin:

My dear Mary Godwin,

Your novel found many readers of whom you never knew.

This letter may never find you. But perhaps my compulsion to write in these circumstances is as strong as yours!

Nothing but disaster has attended me since I left your side. My one solace is that I was at your side. That is consolation enough for anything.

My hazy memory of your novel suggests that you were entirely too kind to Victor’s betrothed, Elizabeth, and more than entirely too kind to his friend, Henry Clerval. Between them, they have had me imprisoned, on the charge of having murdered Victor.

My release may come any day, since Victor has but to reappear among the living for the accusation to be proved false on all sides. However, you of all people know how erratic are his movements, moved as he is by guilt and persecution. To misquote you: ‘He is itinerant because he is miserable.’ Can you help me maybe, by discovering his whereabouts, and perhaps persuading him – through a third party if necessary – to return to his home, or to communicate with the prison officials here? He can bear me no malice.

How much time I have had to meditate on what transpired between us. I will pass in silence over my feelings for you, for they can mean little to you at present (though I am in some doubt as to when ‘at present’ is), though I assure you that what briefly flowered between us one morning is a flower that will not perish, however many mornings remain.

What I will write about is the world situation in which I find myself. I bless you that you are an intellectual girl, like your mother, in an age when such spirits are rare; in my age, they are less rare, but perhaps no more effectual because of their greater numbers, and because they operate in a world where the male principal has prevailed, even over the mentalities of many of your sex. (I’d say all this differently in the language of my time! Would you like to hear it? You are an early example of Women’s Lib, baby, just like your Mom. Your cause will grab more power as time passes, boosted by the media, who always go for a new slant on the sex thing. But most of those fighting girls have sold themselves out to the big operators, and work the male kick themselves, clitoris or no clitoris. End quote.)

I had put Victor down – and your poet too, I have to confess – as a liberal do-gooding trouble-maker. This troublesome wish to improve the world! ‘Look where it’s got us!’ – that was the assumption behind all I said at Diodati the other evening.

It was too easy an assumption. I can see that now, locked in this miserable cell with no particular guarantees that anything good is ever likely to happen to me again. When Justine Moritz was in this prison, the world outside had prejudged her before her trial.

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