Duality Of Immortality

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly’s The Mortal Immortal is a short story that explores the duality of immortality. It follows the protagonist, Winzy, a possible immortal who has the un-aging body of a twenty year old. On his three hundred and twenty-third birthday, the apparently eternally youthful Winzy recounts his past and the reasons behind his current state. He writes about himself as a naïve nineteen-year-old who was “very poor – and very much in love”, who received employment from the infamous alchemist, Cornelius Agrippa, in order to pay for his marriage to his childhood friend, Bertha. During his work, he drinks half a vial of what he assumes is a potion that cures love, but is actually an elixir for immortality. He eventually gets married
In stories that involve immortality, it is a common occurrence for the immortal character to regret obtaining an endless life. In the essay “The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality” by Professor Bernard Williams, the author states that, “Immortality, or a state without death, would be meaningless, I shall suggest; so, in a sense, death gives the meaning to life”. In the paper, he analyses the character Elina Makropulos from the play, The Makropulos Affair, an immortal who in a similar state as Winzy. Describing her life, Williams writes, “Her unending life has come to a state of boredom, indifference and coldness. Everything is joyless: ‘in the end it is the same’, she says, ‘singing and silence’. She refuses to take the elixir again; she dies.” Compared to Elina Makropulos, Winzy is no different. His initial joy of having a constant youthful vigour has decayed over his prolonged lifetime, and it has slowly been replaced by extreme boredom and the desire to release himself from his possibly immortal frame. Winzy invites this reader to put themselves in his shoes and to judge him. By doing so, he attempts to dissuade others from pursuing immortality by revealing to them his own inner
Subtly, he also attempts to warn his readers about women who are similar to his wife. Throughout his entire story, he does not depict Bertha in a very good light. Though she is described as a beautiful, dark-haired girl with beaming eyes, she is also portrayed as selfish, greedy, and incredibly ungrateful. He only works under the extremely ill reputed Cornelius Agrippa because Bertha calls him a coward who “fear[s] to face the Devil in [her] sake”. After working for the alchemist, she continues to berate Winzy, and forces him to apologize to her. She irrationally demands that he spends more time with her, though Winzy does not have time due to his work. She taunts him by telling him about her richer, more favourable suitors. Yet, once one of the suitors were forced on to her by her protectress, Bertha takes on the persona of a powerless damsel and begs for Winzy’s help and forgiveness. Though their initial years of marriage were happy, she began to envy Winzy’s unchanging youthfulness. She began to question him endlessly, until he finally tells her about his incident with the elixir. Afterwards, Bertha continues to resent Winzy, and begins telling others that he is a freak with a deadly disease, while still refusing to acknowledge her own aging. Even upon her deathbed, she is irritated about the fact that her husband will outlive her. She has been nothing but a negative