Lindsay Clancy y el monstruo de Frankenstein

A shocking crime drew crowds like none other, but those filling Lindsay Clancy's trial for weeks didn't come for entertainment. They sat in the second row of benches, notebooks in hand, searching for a piece of themselves in her. Stephanie McCrummen wrote about this atmosphere and listening in The Atlantic, focusing on the spectators behind the rows of seats.

Now, let's return to the trial. The defense portrayed a mother who constantly sought help (psychiatrist visits, medications, emergency rooms) and was abandoned by a fragmented system; the prosecution, a woman with resources who knew what she was doing. As I read, I thought of a 200-year-old monster. In 1816, at 18, Mary Shelley imagined a man who created life and, upon the creature's first breath, fled the room, ashamed.

From this abandonment sprang a chain of deaths. Feminist critic Ellen Moers read Frankenstein as a "birth myth," a novel about motherhood whose true horror isn't creating life but abandoning it. The crucial part is what Shelley does with our gaze: she places that father-creator exactly where the culture would place a monstrous mother (the one who gives birth and denies) and makes us empathize, see her tragedy.

To Lindsay, the prosecution showed her leaving her children as broken toys on the basement floor: the monstrous mother, the oldest category of the repertoire and —why deny it— the most comfortable for all. Even the medical term, puerperal psychosis, exists, yet we chose the monster. This double standard was also diagnosed by Shelley: she gave men tragic pain but denies women the same. We must continue reading.