by Molly McGill
Trigger warnings: Pregnancy/childbirth/infant death, Sexual harassment/threat of sexual assault, Harm to minors/threat of harm against minors, Racism, Cruelty to animals, Drug use, Gun violence.
The first review of ‘Our Hideous Progeny’ I heard simply stated; “If you would like to read a book that is so beautifully written, it feels like it has carved out a piece of your heart and handed it to you, then I have a recommendation.” I thought this to be an exaggeration as a Book Tok creator said it. This turned out to be a hauntingly accurate description of C.E McGill’s (No relation) wonderful queer, feminist, revisit of the classic Frankenstein. As McGill themselves say;
This one goes out to you: the angry women, the threatening women, the solitary and the abhorred; women with cold hearts and sharp tongues, who play with fire and fall in love with monsters; women who love women, women who didn’t know they were women at first but know better now, those who thought they were women at first but know better now. We shall be monsters, you and I.
‘Our Hideous Progeny’ follows the life and career of Victor Frankenstein’s great-niece, Mary Elizabeth Sutherland. Originally imagined as a seven-thousand-word short story, this book with its beautifully surreal premise could not be contained, and thus, this book was created. I for one am very delighted that it did, as it is one of the most beautiful pieces of fiction I have had the pleasure of reading.
Furthermore, the representation in this book feels very natural to the narrative, and at no point did I believe it was just checking things off a list to appeal to a wider audience, Our Hideous Progeny instead uses the accurate perceptions of the time to address prejudices that the characters face in their everyday lives, without retracting from the science fiction elements that still get their time to shine. This book tackles Sexism, chronic illness, racism and homophobia through the characters.
Mary and her husband Henry Sutherland were paleontologists in the 1850’s, Although, only Henry got recognition. Fossils and dinosaurs captured the imagination of the public and the scientific community. The book references historically accurate disputes on certain dinosaurs’ appearance with a science fiction twist. Mary is named, not only for Mary Shelley, but also for Mary Anning, a famous fossil dealer and paleontologist born in 1847, and Mary Sommerville, a Scottish scientist, writer, and polymath. Both women are also referenced in the book more overtly as Mary Sutherland’s idols and inspiration.
The book begins with a police interview with Mary Sutherland, a man has died under mysterious circumstances and through Mary’s internal dialogue, the reader knows that she is hiding something from the Inspector. Mary then lets the inspector know that she will be going by her maiden name if he wishes to follow up with her in the future.
‘Frankenstein,’ I replied. ‘Mary Elizabeth Frankenstein.’
After news of Henry’s father’s death and the couple’s subsequent journey to Inverness in Scotland where John Sutherland had lived with Henry’s sister Margaret (Maisie), we come to learn quite quickly that Mary and Henry are still struggling with the sudden death of their baby a year ago. It also comes to light that during that year, Henry had both lost his job and accumulated extensive gambling debts. His father had paid off the debts in his will, and everything else was left to Maisie.
‘This past year, while I was trapped in the house in my black lace, mourning the death of our child’…All those times, you were actually out playing cards?’
Eventually, Mary finds the answer to their money struggles, hidden away in the seam of a briefcase belonging to her grandfather. The story of her great uncle Victor Frankenstein and his creation, as recounted in a letter from Captain Robert Walton to Ernest Frankenstein, Victor’s brother. Mary decides not to bring life to a man, but to create a dinosaur.
Hours later, I shook Henry awake. ‘I have it,’ I said, shivering with excitement. ‘Our something.’
‘Our Hideous Progeny’ is a gripping tale from beginning to end, one that I finished in one day as I couldn’t physically bring myself to set it down. When it was done, I mourned that I had read it so quickly.
SPOILERS AHEAD
McGill weaves the theme of ‘otherness’ and ‘monsters’ into the narrative in various ways. Through the ‘Creature’ that Mary and her cohort create, but also Mary herself. Mary struggles with the expectations placed on her by her gender and social class, often unable to stop herself from calling out injustices that she comes across, particularly in scientific circles. Mary often describes herself as something unnatural and inhuman due to how she resists gender stereotypes.
The difference between a proper young lady and a beastly little thing was that ladies were never angry; they took their moods and wove them into lace, stuffed them into pillows. They learned to hold their tongue. But I have always been a beastly little thing at heart, it seems.
Mary also fights against her sexuality, scared that other women would be disgusted if they knew. She marries Henry because he did not openly mock her love of science and tries to repress her growing affection towards his sister, Maisie. McGill tells us early on that Mary was rejected by her only friend in childhood because Mary kissed her, establishing early on why she feels so disgusted by her attraction towards women.
She leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek, as friends do. As girls do. As the French very often do. And then I ruined our friendship entirely.
Mary bonds with Maisie, who is unsocialised and awkward after years of illness have kept her locked up in her house and away from her peers. Maisie has an unspecified chronic illness that has caused Henry to wrongfully resent her. She is another character who is treated as less than human by society. This becomes more blatant when Maisie’s doctor cuts off her access to her medicine after she rejects his marriage proposal. The doctor does not see Maisie as a person, but as something he can discard when it no longer benefits him. Henry constantly demonises Maisie for ‘dwindling the family fortune’ with her poor health, not caring that she is suffering and her father always babied her, not letting her leave the house.
“It’s the sometimes of it that no one understands. Father and Henry, they always acted as though if I climbed the stairs too quickly, I’d die, or else I should be able to do it again the next day or it was proof I’d been pretending, but it’s not like that, it’s not like … a missing leg or something of that sort, where I’d need to go about with my wooden one all the time. It’s more like … the weather.”
Mary’s mentor, Mr. Jamsetjee faces racism within the scientific circles despite his accomplishments in the field. Mr. Jamsetjee knows that if he were to fight back, he would confirm the societal prejudices that follow him through life, that he is a savage. It goes without saying that there is a long history of people of colour being dehumanised by society, in the case of Mr. Jamsetjee, it is particularly blatant as he is both accomplished and intelligent, yet openly disrespected.
‘This country … this empire … is a ship, Miss Brown. It is hard enough to stage a mutiny from the deck, but if one starts in the water, well … One cannot afford principles, if one is trying not to drown.’
Through these characters, McGill postulates a question of monsters. The mentioned characters have a trait that appears in monster fiction; Women, sexuality, disability and race, anything outside of the cultural norm. Mary particularly sees herself as monstrous and therefore, accepts the creature she creates into her heart. Victor Frankenstein tried to make a perfect human, and rejected it when he failed, Mary knew she was creating a monster and loved it for its bestial nature.
I loved it. From the moment I first met its strange and terrible eyes, I loved it… As I sat and felt the thrum of its frantic heart beneath my fingers, the weight of its life in my hands, I nearly wept with joy. It was a wonder. It was a monster. It was alive.
Unlike Henry and Clark, she did not only see the monetary benefits of the creature’s existence, and let it go to live its last moments free.
‘My darling, my glorious little monster!’ I whispered, fumbling at the knot on its back. ‘Go on, then. At least, if you are to die – if this was all for nothing – then you shall die free.’
McGill could have easily just left the revisit to Frankenstein as a gender-bent Frankenstein with dinosaurs, but instead, she took into account how Mary as a woman of the time, would approach her creation. In doing so, they created a masterpiece.
Molly McGill is a writer from County Derry, Ireland. She has a bachelor’s degree in film studies and creative writing from John Moores University and has a passion for writing and reading weird horror fiction.
