Poetic Reflections: Maddy Mikinski on why Mary Shelley thinks you should give up

Poetic Reflections is a new K-SAA blog series which focuses on the ways in which we interpret Romantic poetry and fiction in the twenty-first century. We welcome contributions, so please do get in touch if you’d like to get involved and share your ideas with us and our members. In this reflective blog, Maddy Mikinski details how Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has helped her through the pandemic.

Virginia Woolf was probably mocking me when she concluded, ‘A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction’. For most of this year, quarantining with five members of my family (three human, two feline), my entire life has filtered through one 13.5 x 10 foot room. Specifically, my childhood bedroom, where the pink walls are decorated with high school graduation regalia, and the stratified dust under my bed is older than most elementary schoolers. Most of that small space is taken up by a wide, white Pottery Barn desk—defaced by a decade and a half of nail polish remover spills—which was ground zero for much of my teen angst.  More recently, my desk was the site of one of my favorite annual rituals: setting my reading goal. Every January 1, I log in to my Goodreads and peruse last year’s conquests; pat myself on the back for the good ones, grimace at the bad ones; then set a new goal for myself. (Lighting a balsam candle during this process is not required but still encouraged.) I’m competitive and goal-oriented, so having a number I can stare at when I’m feeling unmotivated helps push me into action. Last year I averaged a book a week, a point of pride. This year, I set another ambitious goal, confident I would meet it well before 2020 ended.  But, then, January was a completely different world.  –––  When the pandemic struck the U.S., Twitter was awash with “quarantine goals”, ranging from workout routines to sourdough starters. ‘Shakespeare wrote Lear in quarantine’, was the resounding call to action—and I listened. But days, weeks, months passed and my ‘to-read’ piles grew bigger rather than smaller. As the world continued to bear down on us, it seemed to be sapping my ability to read, think, and focus. My reading goal jumped miles ahead of me. Deadlines—the one for this piece, for instance—grew ever nearer, but I was left only able to sit on my bed for hours watching TikTok compilations with titles like ‘Wholesome TikToks guaranteed to spare you the mortifying ordeal of being known’. I knew I was slipping behind on this year’s to-do list, and it gave me anxiety to no end, but still a general malaise prevented me from doing anything productive.  Commuting from my duvet to my desk, I would will myself to come up with something, anything. But that same p-word chyroned across my mind throughout the day. I had a room of my own— why couldn’t I do anything with it? During the hours — which now must amount to days — at my desk, my eyes wandered the rows of books to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a text I hadn’t opened since the particularly cold and dark winter of my master’s degree. Later, as I struggled to come up with an idea — something, anything — for this post, I finally picked it up and found some unexpected validation. 

The summer of 1816 now carries the weight of myth. Shelley’s months in Geneva with her husband, Percy; Lord Byron; Claire Clairmont; and John Polidori have been adapted, for better or worse, to screens and novels, all with the same gist: Despite living with the lake in their backyard and beneath the blue shadow of the Alps, the party has been driven inside by a ‘wet, ungenial summer’. To pass the time, they read German ghost stories, and Byron eventually challenges them all to come up with a spooky story of their own. Percy, Byron, and Polidori all strike out with theirs, leaving Shelley the last man standing.  In her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Shelley recalls her uncooperative mind and the pressure she felt: ‘I busied myself to think of a story—a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror…’. She assigns a high price to failure, writing that if she ‘did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name. I thought and pondered—vainly’.  Shelley’s housemates also put pressure on her: ‘Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative’.  Her struggles felt all too familiar to me. I, too, woke up in the morning annoyed by my own inactivity, feeling like most things I wanted to achieve were just out of reach. Every night as I went to bed, I would ask myself, “Now, what have you accomplished today?” The answer was always disappointing. The specter of productivity isn’t a real ghost, but it kept me up at night, nonetheless.  Like most people who feel alone in a particularly negative emotion, I was, in actuality, not. A Kaiser foundation survey in mid-July found 53% of American adults noticed their mental health had been negatively affected by the pandemic, up from 32% in March. I don’t need a survey to intuit this. Many of my friends have reported similar issues: Some are finding it hard to focus, even on things they love, like reading. Many more feel a general unease. However, this is by no means a universal experience. Some respondents to a Washington Post study on pandemic reading trends reported they’ve been able to read more books than usual this summer. A lucky few probably are writing their Lears right now. And the thought of that is what stifled me. 

Back in Geneva, Shelley’s lack of productivity eats at her until one late night when she listens in on a conversation between Byron and Percy. The conversation focuses on Darwin and ‘the nature of the principal of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated’. The conversation carries on into the early hours of the morning, and afterwards Shelley is unable to rest: ‘When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, giving the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie’.  Shelley later recalls, ‘Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke in upon me. “I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow”. On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words, It was on a dreary night of November, making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream’.  Shelley’s epiphany seems a happy accident; it occurs when she isn’t looking for it. And it drives her, not the other way around.  –––  I have not written another Frankenstein in quarantine—and probably will not—but reading Shelley’s account of her own struggle is a consolation. Pressure chokes productivity, even when you’re under a mandatory stay-at-home order.  Lately I’ve stopped cataloging the litany of “failures” in my day. Instead I focus on the things I did do. Though I still fall into the productivity pit from time to time, I now realize that waking up in the morning, making my bed, and getting through a 10-hour workday during a pandemic, chaotic election year, and relentless severe climate events can be accomplishments in their own right.  At the time of writing, Goodreads tells me I’m 7 books behind schedule. Mere weeks ago, this would have been enough to trigger a moderate spiral. But today I can close my laptop, go for a walk, and feel some semblance of peace. I’m not going to meet my reading goal this year, and I’m okay with that. 

Maddy Mikinski

Maddy Mikinski is a Kansas-based journalist and writer. She graduated from the University of Kansas with bachelor’s degrees in journalism and English. Maddy earned a Master of Letters in Romantic and Victorian Studies from the University of St Andrews. She currently works as a copy editor.