Brides of Frankenstein

WHILE I SAT at the breakfast table, I felt the blood drain out of my face and into my stomach as I listened to her ramble. It wasn't the scattered content that made me so uncomfortable. The content itself was a disconnected diatribe of sy gossip and trivia, punctuated by misplaced maxims that in their popular form might have actually meant something. Despite the dogmatism, moral superiority, and intensity that was expressed through her tone and bodily gestures, I felt humiliated, embarrassed. Although outwardly there was nothing to be afraid of - I experienced dread. I looked sideways at my

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Marriage and Mary Shelley

I WAS SITTING in Merk's restaurant out on Pembina Highway with Bev in 1990 when I solemnly swore that if I were to do it again, I definitely would not want to be married. At the time I k that marriage left a very sour taste in my mouth. It wasn't only that I hadn't taken care of my marriage of seventeen years well enough to make it worthwhile, it was the whole idea of being married that irked me. I joked about marriage being a socio-economic relationship which was merely functional to get a mortgage

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Who Was Mary Shelley?

GIVEN HER FAMILY legacy, it seemed inevitable that Mary Shelley was to make a significant contribution to . Both her parents were influential authors and propagandists for their respective causes of feminism and radical liberalism. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was a leader in the early feminist movement and wrote a classic entitled A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792), still read in women's studies classes today. Mary's father, William Godwin, published a political treatise entitled Enquiry Concerning Political Justice in 1793. His goal was to translate the insights of the French Enlightenment into an English context. Mary

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