Lake Union Publishing, September 29, 2015.
Four Stars
The Determined Heart is the story of Mary Shelley, best known as daughter to philosopher William Godwin and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and wife to poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. In this novel, Mary Shelley is finally given her own spotlight, as the author highlights Mary’s own literary achievements amidst the many struggles she faced.
Mary’s melodramatic childhood would be unbelievable if it wasn’t based on fact: her mother died shortly after her birth, soon to be replaced by an evil stepmother and demanding stepsister. Her father was moody and unreliable, constantly using his friends to pay his debts, and her older sister Fanny was virtually ignored, eventually choosing suicide over spinsterhood. The drama carries forward into her adult life, when she runs away with a married man who will ultimately be unfaithful to her as well. Her love story with Bysshe, as she called him, was complicated by his ideals of free love, much of which involved him sleeping with Mary’s stepsister, Claire. Meanwhile, Claire was carrying on a relationship with – and eventually carrying the child of – the infamous Lord Byron, which resulted in yet more scandal.
All of these multi-layered plot points would have been way too much if they hadn’t actually happened – and this novel is very well-researched, rich with historical details. My only complaint is that some of these issues were skipped over without a lot of emotional content. I especially wished for more depth to the love story between Mary and Bysshe – it happened so suddenly, and there was a lot of telling us how they felt, instead of showing how their love progressed.
I didn’t find either of the main characters to be sympathetic, until Mary began to focus more on her creative life. Living in the shadow of the literary Shelley, Mary epitomizes her mother’s famous work: A Vindication of the Rights of Women. It was interesting to see the moments in Mary’s life that inspired her to write her most famous work, Frankenstein. She had a great interest in the advances of science at the time, including the new “electric machines.” The story of a man resurrected from the dead had more meaning to Mary as she lost several of her children and wished for nothing more than to bring them back. She dreamed of finding a means to “not only create life but sustain it.” (loc. 3913) Finally, Lord Byron’s challenge to his friends on a dark and stormy night to write a ghost story led to Mary writing her novel, which has now surpassed even her husband’s literary achievements.
The circumstances in which Mary and Bysshe lived would be shocking even today – a married man living with two sisters, he was ostracized from his contemporaries, along with Mary. Posthumously, Mary realizes that Bysshe was a “cad” who cared about himself above all; however, she was able to objectively view the genius of his work, preserving it as a legacy for their son. After Bysshe’s death, Mary was “free to be her own creation” (loc. 5963) and pursue her own dreams.
In this novel, the author brings factual events vividly to life – it is perhaps the resurrection that Mary dreamed of. The characters are very well-formed, with men we think of as brilliant literary giants (Godwin, Byron, Shelley) shown with all their human flaws. The Determined Heart focuses on Mary’s years conceiving Frankenstein, but in the process she created a life for herself as well, and her determination would have made her feminist mother proud.
I received this book for free from Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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