Title: This Icy Region My Heart Encircles
Author: Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem
Date of First Publication: October 1991
Place of Publication: The Ultimate Frankenstein
Type: short story
Characters: The Creature; Mary Shelley; Percy Shelley
Themes: MAD SCIENTIST/MONSTER; QUEER FRANKENSTEIN; SYMPATHETIC MONSTER; WOMEN WRITING MONSTERS
Critical Summary: This short fiction story goes in depth about the nightmares and creations that belong to the late Mary Shelley. Her significant other, Percy Shelley, experienced a deplorable demise. The heart that belonged to her husband was recovered since the flames of the beach pyre failed to consume his heart. The heart was given back to Mary where she kept it with her and protected it in a shelf. Mary has recurring bad dream of her dead little girl, Mary Jane. Be that as it may, one night she awakens from her bad dreams to see her other daughter, Clara who is there for two or three seconds, and at that point vanishes. She also sees her child William, who she is anxious will drop out the window. However then he vanishes too, like his sister did before him. They all passed and she is only able to see them for a couple seconds before she is reminded that she failed to keep her children safe and alive. Everybody vanishes and she is distant, thinking she is alone again, just to find she isn’t. The Creature she created from her dreams, who she wrote and thought about shows up in bed with her. The Creature is impeccably proportioned and has lovely highlights. Seeing the excellence in her creation, she feels terrible and twisted in contrast to it. Before long she discovers that the creature she made is really female. The Creature requests Percy’s heart and Mary agrees. They both find that the heart was not secured by the bit of fabric and has vanished. Both shout out, blaming the other for taking the warmth. At last, the beast chokes Mary and they both pass away.
In the short story This Icy Region My Heart Encircles, the subject of Queer Frankenstein is uncovered once it is found that Frankenstein is really a woman in bed with her real creator, also a woman. Despite the fact that in this story she is called a woman, she is given no body attributes that can be recognized as a woman’s, and only defined as beautiful. The fact that she is a woman raises many questions about gender. Has Frankenstein been a woman this entire time? How does the creature itself want to be distinguished?
Then again, much like the first story of Frankenstein, these beasts become animated out of dreams and clarifications that the primary character in the narratives make. Which takes us to the subject of Mad Scientist/Monster. In Frankenstein, Victor battles rationally and physically for quite a long time to make his creature, just to resent what he had made. In This Icy Region My Heart Encircles, Mary dreams and writes in her diary about her creation. There is no proof there that she did in reality make this beast; however, her creature comes during the evening with her when she’s separated from everyone else. Mary may not lose control of her experiment in this scene, but she loses control of her mind. For her creature to wake up around evening time alongside her dead children gives the reader an understanding that this can be only a fantasy. At last, the beast slaughters Mary and dies with her. This could’ve conceivably been the end of a nightmare or perhaps the end of both their lives.
Administrative Notes: Malyssa Arellano, CSUF; Jonathan Donabo (editing)