This week MCI wants to celebrate the birth of Mary Shelley, the author of the book ‘Frankenstein’. Famously, the book was conceived during a holiday in Switzerland with friends. The story goes that the weather was very poor and had prevented them from leaving the house most days. The group of friends decided to pass the time by holding a competition – to think up an original ghost story. Each day passed and Mary had not come up with a single idea. After a conversation one evening about life and death, Mary wrote “perhaps a corpse would be re-animated” in her diary. After such grisly discussions and a very late night, it was little surprise that Mary couldn’t sleep and had a ‘waking dream’ about the ghost story that would become Frankenstein:
“I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.”
After such a terrible vision, she immediately set pen to paper and, with the help of her husband Percy Shelley, she wrote ‘Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus’. At the time that this book was published, Enlightenment and Romanticism with a gothic backdrop was all the rage. The book was an instant success. It was less of the monster thriller romp that many of the later films would portray. Instead, it looks at people who push against the societal norms and the mental and moral struggles of the scientist Victor Frankenstein.
If your machinery has lost the will to live, call MCI on 01324 611371 to give your machinery the vital spark to bring it back to life! Have a great weekend everyone!