An utterly fantastical and undeniably queer melding of Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein that recasts Mary Bennet as an insatiable scientist, one who creates a monster in an attempt to save herself from spinsterdom
Mary Bennet is the middlest middle child of all time. Awkward, plain, and overlooked, she’s long been out of favor not only with her own family but with generations of readers of Pride and Prejudice.
But what was Mary really doing while her sisters were falling in love? Well, what does any bright, hardworking girl do in an age when brains and hard work are only valued if they come with a pretty face? Take to the attic and teach herself to reanimate the dead of course. The world refuses to make a place for peculiar Mary, but no Bennet sister ever gives up on happiness that easily. If it won’t give this fierce, lonely girl a place, she’ll carve one out herself. And if finding acceptance requires a husband, she’ll get one. Even if she has to make him herself, too.
However, Mary’s genius and determination aren’t enough to control what she unwittingly unleashes. Her desperate attempts to rein in the destruction wreaked by her creations leads her to forge a perhaps unlikely friendship with another brilliant young woman unlike any she’s ever known. As that friendship blossoms into something passionate and all-consuming, Mary begins to realize that she may have to choose between the acceptance she’s always fought for and true happiness.
Release date:
September 30, 2025
Publisher:
Grand Central Publishing
Print pages:
400
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It does not matter at all that my mother never loved me. I have always known it; it has never signified. Reverend Quindley’s Admonishments for Godly Young Ladies says, “You are commanded to honor your father and mother, but there is no reciprocal demand placed upon them. Therefore love humbly, obediently, and without expectation.” Why should it distress me? I have never found much to interest me when it comes to her conversation, either. When one thinks about it from a purely logical perspective—which as you know, Herr Holzmann, I strive always to do—it is absurd that mothers and daughters are expected to be so firmly attached to one another solely because of the connection of blood. My mother did her duty by me; she fed me and clothed me and brought me up (nearly) to respectability. Certain species of newt, you know, eat their young, especially if there is a danger of overpopulation. My mother, herself cursed with far too many offspring and all of us daughters, is comparatively merciful.
I lead with this, Holzmann, well aware that it will confuse you, for I have something very shocking to tell you, and I do not wish for you to draw the wrong conclusions. No doubt you are now quite bewildered: Why should your friend and colleague Sir Gregory suddenly write as though he were a young lady with difficult parents?
(Do I sound pompous? I am told I often sound pompous. You have never said so, though. It tends to happen when I am nervous.)
Here is the truth, my friend: The country squire Sir Gregory G—, with whom you have corresponded for many months on subjects ranging from mathematics to chemistry to the movement of celestial bodies, is actually a gentleman’s daughter of nineteen years. That is—me. My name is Miss Mary Bennet, third of five daughters of Mr. Bennet of Longbourn, Hertfordshire.
There. I have told you at last.
Dear Holzmann, do not be angry. If you have not already thrown this letter in the fire in disgust, I shall explain.
I did not mean to deceive you, my friend—at least, not for long. After I read your enchanting little partial proof of Goldbach in the Journal, I was so taken with the neatness and creativity of it that I felt I simply must write you. However, I had by then learned not to expose my true identity when writing to men of letters. I will not bore you with the details, but had I not written under my true name, the isolation of rhodium would properly be attributed to me, not to Mr. Wollaston. I singed my eyebrows off for nothing.
I meant only for “Sir Gregory” to pay you his compliments and then disappear again. I meant it as a favor to you as well—I did not intend to bring scandal upon you for corresponding with an unmarried female, for I did not know your domestic situation (and indeed still do not).
I thought, truly, that that initial letter would be the beginning and end of Sir Gregory. But you wrote back, Holzmann. You not only wrote back, but you had the most gratifying things to say about the points I had raised in my letter, and—best of all—questions of your own.
Is there anything better than a question you do not yet know the answer to? I could not help but let “Sir Gregory” take up the pen once more.
It grieved me to deceive you, for I soon found in you such a friend as I have never known in all my life, even if we never wrote of anything personal. I do not know if you are twenty-five or sixty, married or single, rich or poor—only that you are a Swiss gentleman of letters. And yet I know you draw your integrals with little curls at the end to distinguish them from your S’s. I know that you prefer Leibniz to Newton, and that you look with as much scorn as I do upon the theory of phlogiston. In short, my friend, I know you better than I have ever known anyone, and you know me better than anyone has ever cared to.
(I included the bit about my mother because I believe that cases of wayward young ladies such as I are often blamed on the mother. I assure you that no mother in the world could have prevented my being like this.)
I tell you the truth now because I am in great danger. You will have noticed that this letter is burnt in places and smells more strongly of chemicals than usual. I must beg you to come here without delay, for matters are moving beyond my control. I believe you will, my friend, for even if you despise my deception, you will be unable to resist the knowledge I have to offer.
If that does not draw you, I do not know you at all. Pray come quick, for if you do not, you may come not to aid me but to avenge my memory. Even now—
But no, the sun is almost up, and I must post this without delay. I will tell you the rest when I see you.
Yours sincerely,
MISS MARY BENNET
I expected you by now, Holzmann.
It is now nearly three weeks since my last letter. Not only have you not appeared in Meryton, but you have not even responded. I must own, sir, I am rather disappointed in you. I thought a man of such intellect would be better able to see past the prison of my sex in the name of the meeting of the minds that we have hitherto shared. In that, it seems, I am mistaken.
I am not being pompous. When a friend has made it clear he no longer desires any intimacy, a withdrawal into frosty formality is, I believe, indicated.
I suppose, Holzmann, I owe you a debt of gratitude. You have not, at least, written to my parents. Nor have I heard word of any of the theories or discoveries I shared with you as Sir Gregory making their way to the public under your name.
Goodbye, Holzmann. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors. At least I wish I wished you the best. At the moment I own that my fondest wish is that you will forget all your Latin and discover a fossil that has been discovered a dozen times before. And then fall down a well.
(Later)
Before I could post this letter, matters changed. I intended to let you go; I am afraid that will not now be possible. The situation has progressed; perhaps even where you make your home (London? As I always write to you care of the Journal, I’ve no idea where you live) you have heard of some of the strange events that have transpired around Meryton. The peculiar affair of the Netherfield piano, I believe, made the papers.
Holzmann, you must come. It is your own work as much as mine that went into the creation of my—no, our—project. Indeed, were it not for your enthusiasm when I first proposed the idea of personal elementation, I am not sure I should have pursued the matter at all. Your warm support for the idea that human personalities, like matter, could be broken down into essential building blocks was, on the more frustrating days, what spurred me forward. That, and the wonderful book. I know, I know—I never told you in so many words that I planned to put our theories into practice. Well, I did, and I have, and now he has escaped and I do not know what I shall do.
I remain,
Your respectful colleague,
MARY BENNET.
P.S. Do, do, do come. If we can bring matters under control, I daresay our names will be inscribed in the annals of science alongside Newton and Cavendish and Copernicus. Yours will, at any rate.
P.P.S. If it is the female issue that worries you, I assure you it needn’t. I have neither beauty nor charm. You will not, I promise, fall in love with me.
P.P.P.S. Nor I with you.
P.P.P.P.S. As you know I have never included a postscript before; now I have included four. From this you may deduce how my usually (I flatter myself) organized mind is in the greatest disorder. Please, Holzmann. I need you.
Well. So this is how it is to be.
Holzmann, I suppose you did me a favor by never responding to my pleas for help. Your complete silence has taught me a lesson that I ought to have learned long ago: There is no one in the world one can rely on but oneself.
(Does that sound bitter? I do not mean to be bitter.)
The situation is under control for the moment, you will be interested—or not—to know. It took considerable effort, and I daresay the neighbors will never look at me the same again, but it is done.
Whether he will remain docile, or whether our problems are just beginning, I cannot say. However, I have decided to continue updating you. Perhaps you really do wish to reply to my letters but cannot for some reason—a long illness, maybe, or you performed that experiment with pure sodium that I advised against and blew your hands off. And if matters do worsen again, perhaps at the expense of my own life, I believe someone ought to know how this mess came about, even if that someone is handless.
Holzmann, you have been my constant correspondent for many months; when it comes to the technicalities of my process, you already possess most of the particulars. However, since your own experiments have henceforth been unsuccessful, I suppose I should give you an explanation of how I came to study this subject. Perhaps a fuller account of the origin of my theories and my development as a woman of science will allow you to reproduce my work at last—or, as seems more likely to be necessary, to destroy my work.
I learned to read before I could talk. I was unusually late to speak, nearly four years old; in our large family no one seems to have been much concerned about this. I imagine it was considered a blessing in our noisy house.
I was approaching my fourth birthday, and unease was at last growing that something might be truly wrong with my head, when a fateful spanking changed matters considerably.
I had read all the books I could find, from my elder sisters’ primers to Mamma’s novels from the circulating library to even the housekeeper’s book of accounts—anything I could get my small hands on. No one believed I was really reading, of course, since I had never uttered a word, but they let me amuse myself by “pretending” to read.
The trouble came when I ran out of books. I remember reading the last page of Mrs. Burney’s Evelina and starting to cry—not because I was moved by that ridiculous tale, but because I had read it four times already and sucked all the savor out of it. I felt that if I could not get some new ones my life would not be worth living. Unfortunately, the remaining unconsumed books were in my father’s study.
My father’s study was my Shangri-La, my Camelot. It was the one place I was strictly forbidden to go. I was not a disobedient child, but I was also quite convinced in my baby mind that if I did not get something new to read I would die, so I felt I had no choice.
At first I was discreet. I would slip in when no one was looking, grab a volume at random, and secret myself under the credenza. There I would read a few pages, just enough to take the edge off my thirst, then I would put it back in its place and slip out with no one the wiser. I even carefully maintained my father’s faults of alphabetization, though they drove me mad.
As time went on and I was not caught, I grew bolder. I read more and more, longer and longer, until one day I became so absorbed in my volume of Dalton that I failed to hear my father come in, and he found me cross-legged on the floor with a volume nearly as large as myself open on my lap.
I can remember the way my heart thumped in terror when I looked up and saw his astonished face, which quickly changed to fury. He grabbed the book, snapping it shut so fast that it pinched my fingers. When he found his voice, he roared, “Mrs. Bennet!”
My mother came fluttering in, still holding the shirt she was sewing. “My dear, what is it—oh! Mary, you naughty girl, what are you doing with that?”
“Mrs. Bennet,” he said, very sarcastically, “it matters little if your idiot daughter plays with your Gothic romances, but these are real books. She must not be allowed to damage them.” And he turned me over his knee and rapidly spanked me thrice.
“I do not care if you s-spank me,” I sobbed as my mother wrenched me free. “O-only let me r-r-read the rest of the p-page. I want to know what Dalton said about the relative weights of carbon and phosphorus.”
At this, both my parents stared at me, dumbfounded. My father let the book of Dalton’s fall from his hands in astonishment; I caught it with a look of reproof.
“Mary,” said my mother, “you can talk?”
“It appears so,” I said. “I never tried before.”
“Good God,” said my father. “Did the child really read all that?”
“Of course I did,” I said, wiping my nose.
“And why not?” my mother demanded, replacing my sleeve with a clean handkerchief. “She is your child, Mr. Bennet. If you are clever enough to read such things, why should not she be? Good heavens, Mary, stop sniffling in that disgusting fashion.”
“Yes,” said my father faintly. “Why not.”
You may imagine that all this created a bond between my father and me, but it did not fall out that way. Oh, for a time he enjoyed showing me off to his friends; I was even allowed in his library on occasion. But I soon ran through all the volumes he had, and when I tried to discuss them with him, it became clear that, at least when it came to volumes of natural philosophy, I understood them a great deal better than he did. Papa fancies himself a gentleman of letters, but really, his library, while broad, is shallow. His Latin and German are poor, and—pardon the unfilial sentiment—his mathematics execrable.
My father was not jealous that I understood more than he did. He simply did not believe it. When I began to beg, with increasing urgency, for more books to continue my studies of the natural sciences, he simply decided that I did not understand them, that I had been putting on airs, and that that was quite enough of that.
What is a young natural philosopher to do? Well, I could only make the best of things. Mamma, having discovered that shoving an unread book into my hands would keep me quiet for hours at a stretch, borrowed as many as she could from the neighbors. Few of them had libraries even as fine as Papa’s, though, and I had soon read every book within ten miles that was deemed suitable for a young lady’s eyes (and quite a few that were not).
But the one true ally I had in my quest for more advanced knowledge: my father’s cousin, Rev. Henry Bennet—known in our household as Harry. He was rector to our small parish, and his passion for learning made him a staunch friend to both myself and my father. He even persuaded my father to take me along to an electrical salon.
I can still remember how my heart pounded with excitement as the carriage lurched along toward Harry’s friend’s house. I was bursting with questions about electrical fire, but as my father, who hated leaving home, grew more sarcastic with every bump in the road, I held my tongue.
“Still don’t see why we must bring the child all this way,” my father grumbled. “This sort of exhibition was old in my father’s day.”
Harry winked at me. He was shy and stammering with most adults, but grew steadier when speaking to me or Papa. “Mary was not here in your father’s day,” he pointed out. “Besides, electrical fire still contains many mysteries. Perhaps one of us shall be the next Franklin or Galvani.”
“Hmph,” said Papa, but he looked pleased, and I stopped worrying he would turn the carriage around.
There were perhaps a dozen of us crowded into a small salon. The electrician, a tired-looking man in a stained cravat, seemed as bored by his own demonstrations as Papa claimed to be, but I was in heaven. His apparatus consisted mainly of a great glass globe held by a metal frame and attached to a crank, and it required all Mamma’s lessons in etiquette to keep me from rushing forward to get my hands on it. From the moment he had the servants draw the curtains, leaving us in darkness, I felt a thrill go through me. There was a soft whirr as he turned his glass globe against the cloth, then we all went ooh (even Papa) as he waved his metal wand, lighting up this artificial night with a shower of sparks.
He showed us all the old standbys—the artificial aurora, arcing blue-green between two poles; using electrical power to turn a book’s pages without touching it. It was all new to me, and I felt I was nothing but eyes and ears and tongue, existing only to see the sparks, hear the sizzle, taste the strange tang in the air.
He concluded by having us all hold hands in a line. I took hold of my father on one side. On the other, a small and rather sweaty hand slipped into mine, and I realized in surprise that there was another young girl in attendance. I had been so busy staring at the electrician’s equipment that I had scarcely noted the other guests. We exchanged shy smiles, and then the electrician closed the hand of the man at the end of the line around a jar wrapped in some kind of metal foil. He himself took the hand of the lady at the end, and dipped a metal rod into the jar.
Zzzzap!
A tingle raced through me. A flutter, like nervousness, or excitement, flooded my body starting from the stranger’s hand. There was minor pain, too, shooting through my chest like longing. Her fingers twitched against mine and she gave a soft oh.
The adults were not so poised. “I say!” said Papa, and several ladies screamed and one swooned. The electrician immediately set about apologizing—it seemed the shock had been rather stronger than he intended. I turned away, wondering if I could get him to do it again. It had hurt, but only a little, and what was that next to the thrill of touching the mysteries of creation?
I looked at the girl. The perfect ringlets that had hung around her face were now in some disarray. Short hairs stood out all around her face, like a sort of electrical halo. I reached out to touch it without thinking and we gasped as another shock went through us both. We had neglected to let go of each other’s hands.
Holzmann, I cannot tell you what this first taste of electrical fire did to me. Mind and body, I felt consumed by it. I felt as if I had a body for the first time, as if the spark had created me instead of merely passing through me. The sensations I felt—I am a young lady, so I shall mention only my fingertips, a warmth in my cheeks, and a tingle in the tip of my nose, but please believe that every part of me felt—well, it felt. On the carriage ride home it still shivered over and through me. My fingers clenched around the remembered sensation of that shock passing from the stranger’s hand into mine, up my arm, and thrilling through my chest until my father carried it away again.
“Admit it, cousin,” Harry teased Papa. “You enjoyed yourself.”
“Yes, well, it’s always a very gaudy display. That young showman, though, what a charlatan. Did you hear him spinning tales to that young lady? Telling her electrical fire could be used to transform one metal to another, or even create living insects from nothing! Preposterous.”
“Yes,” Harry admitted. “Most of it.”
“Most?”
“I know this talk of spontaneous generation is nonsense, but when he called it ‘the spark of life,’ well, we do not really know what electrical fire is, do we?”
“Nonsense.”
“Biblical scholars talk of the ‘spark of the divine.’”
“Oh, don’t go all churchy on me.”
Harry just laughed. “What do you think, cousin Mary?” he asked.
“I should like one of those great glass globes,” I said.
Papa laughed as though I’d made a joke. I leaned back against the seat, ignoring the jouncing. The spark of the divine. The stuff of life itself.
Harry was a good friend to me all that year, most kind. No, not kind—kindness implies doing something one would rather not, and Harry, I think, genuinely enjoyed my company. He often solicited my opinion on scientific matters, first with the mock gravity of one humoring a child, and then with real interest. He was like me in many ways: shy, odd, clever, passionate about answering the questions the world posed. Sadly he caught consumption and we lost him. His death, in the very room where I now reside, was for me a harrowing XXXXXXXX XXX XXXXXXXX XXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXX XXX XXXX XX XXX XXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXX XXX XXXX XX XXX XXXXX XX XXX XXXXX XX XX XXXXXX XX XX XXXXX
Apologies, Holzmann, I let my pen run away with me. It is my research you care about, not my juvenile melancholy. I have scratched out the extraneous details. I mention Harry only because he influenced the path of my experiments in several ways:
Harry was not the only relation who took an interest in us Bennet girls. My uncle Gardiner, Mamma’s brother, was a wealthy manufacturer in town. He and my aunt were great favorites with us. When my elder sisters Jane and Lizzy each turned twelve, the Gardiners began to take special interest in them. Each was invited to visit the Gardiners in town shortly after her twelfth birthday, and continued to visit frequently after that. Naturally, when they came to visit shortly after my twelfth birthday, I assumed my turn had come. They were sophisticated London people; surely, in them, I would find like-minded friends at last.
I had never been to London, and longed to see it, but I think the principal reason for my excitement was simply the prospect of being distinguished for special attention. Since Harry died, I had never had any to speak of. At best, I was one of an undifferentiated mass of Bennet sisters. At worst, my attempts at society provoked blank stares, awkward silences, and even titters behind gloved hands. There is a trick to being easy in company, and I have never been able to learn it.
I believe that when the Gardiners arrived, they did have the intention I imagined. They had never spent much time with me, and from the first day of my visit, they did much to distinguish and encourage me: bringing me on carriage rides, asking me to play for them, and doing their best to draw me into conversation. They even talked to me about science. My uncle’s factories were concerned with the dying of cloth, and as such he was fairly well versed in chemical processes and could converse sensibly about the latest advances. He seemed impressed by my understanding of them.
His wife, in particular, fascinated me. She was a little younger than he was, and still very beautiful—so beautiful, I felt at the time, that it hurt to look at her. At twelve, I had a fascination with female elegance. I often found my gaze lingering on their faces and forms, which I realized must be because of a sort of collegial curiosity. I was the only one of my sisters who was not pretty, but I had not yet given up hope that I might achieve it. With study and effort I had left my sisters in the dust at embroidery, music, and mathematics—why should beauty be any different? So everything my aunt did, I studied, from her laugh to the way she absently brushed back the charming little curl that kept springing forth from her coiffure. To be singled out by someone so elegant—what lady of twelve can ask for more?
I fear the effect of all this unaccustomed attention upon me was rather overwhelming. My excitement at spending time with these clever, cosmopolitan people thrilled me like a drop of water in the desert; if no one in Meryton liked me, I decided, it was simply because they were sleepy and stupid, not because I myself was inadequate. Here at last . . .
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