“Frankenstein’s Frankenstein”: Mary Shelley’s Creativity and Maternal Responsibility in Lochhead’s Blood and Ice

This paper explores Mary Shelley’s creativity and maternal responsibility as depicted in Liz Lochhead’s Blood and Ice. Lochhead portrays Mary Shelley as a woman writer striving to sustain herself and her son through her literary pursuits, while bearing the legacies of her parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and the ideals of revolutionary thinkers. In contrast to her husband, the Romantic poet Percy Shelley, who embraces free love and focuses on his own literary endeavors, Mary Shelley assumes sole parental responsibility after the deaths of several of their children, which deeply affects her. The hideous creature in her Frankenstein, demanding accountability from its creator, parallels her own struggles with responsibility in the play. Unlike Frankenstein, who recoils from his monstrous creation in horror, Mary Shelley confronts both her intellectual and biological progeny. I argue that Lochhead’s portrayal underscores the cliché equating the pain of creation with labor pains, emphasizing the dual burdens faced by women writers. Mary Shelley responds to the creature’s existential questions not through abandonment, but by enduring personal hardship and loneliness, persevering in her writing. Ultimately, Mary Shelley’s commitment to avoid repeating Frankenstein’s tragedy becomes both her inspiration for creation and a testament to her resilience in life.