It’s not a new claim that maybe Shakespeare was someone else, or a collection of other people. How could it be, people wonder, that some under-educated rube from the provinces could write such beautiful, witty, universally acclaimed stuff?
Ok. Whatever.
Now, out comes a book claiming that Mary Shelley couldn’t have written Frankenstein. She was only eighteen, for one thing, and her other works don’t soar as high or dig as deep.
But it’s one thing to claim that Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare. He’s a guy. When you claim that a woman’s husband (Percy Shelley, of course) was the true author of a classic, then you get called a misogynist.
I assume that Mary wrote Frankenstein. Frankly, though I enjoyed the book, I don’t get how it’s so amazing that only a world-class poet could have written it. (And I’m far from alone. Germaine Greer thinks it’s so bad that it’s obvious a teenage girl wrote it.) But it’s not right that any alternative claim must be called misogynistic.