ABSTRACT
At once nurturing and threatening to creativity, associated with both healing and contagion, sympathy, Mary Shelley suggests, is nonetheless crucial for narrative expression. In her invocation of contagion and sympathy, Mary Shelley explores the human interactions that encourage and support creative expression. Romantic-era medical sources argue both that sympathy can spread contagion and also that disease and deformity can destroy individuals' sympathetic responses to one another. Mary Shelley invites the reader to compare this description of her creative vision with that of her character Victor, who also creates in solitude. He assembles the first creature alone in his lab, keeping his experiment a secret. She chooses to emphasize her invisibility, Mary Shelley situates her creative vision in a physical context that pointedly contrasts with Victor's solipsistic gaze. Neither Smith nor Mary Shelley endorses Romantic solitude. Instead, both authors nourish their creativity with the desire for a sympathetic response to their suffering and their art.
