“Worked up to desperation, he applied the wires of the battery and put the apparatus in motion, whilst a demonic laugh of derision appeared to ring in his ears, and the surrounding mummies seemed starting from their places and dancing in unearthly merriment . . . .” These are the first words in English to describe the reanimation of a mummy — and the story behind them might surprise you.
Jane Webb was a young, seventeen-year old, recently orphaned British woman when she penned her science-fiction novel _The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century_. The cover shown here is a modern one, but Jane wrote her book in 1827. As with all sci-fi, the story reveals much about the writer’s own times.
For one, the Victorians had been smitten by Egypt-mania and coveted all things Pharaohnic. Thus, Webb had the Ancient ruler Cheops resurrected by an English aristocrat wondering what the connection between the human soul and the body might be. Other influences that Jane brought in included a fancy for electromagnetism (Cheops was brought back to life by a battery-operated “galvanic machine”).
Importantly, Webb was also responding to the British Romantic writer Mary Shelley, whose _Frankenstein_ repulsed her. While Shelly had an atheist and politically progressive bent, Jane Webb (who later took on a married surname Loudon) used her tale to promote a political agenda that favored a Constitutional monarchy working in league with the Catholic Church.
It is interesting the ways that this (to us) ultra-conservative moralizing meshed with other components of _The Mummy!_. For instance, the action takes place in 2126, when England’s ruler is a wise but firmly ruling queen (named Claudia: Cheops lands his air balloon on her and kills her during a pagent, unfortunately). In this future, women wear trousers and have wild-shaped hairdos, and automatons serve as surgeons and lawyers. There is even a quick way of messaging others in her futuristic world. Finally, Cheops isn’t an evil character, but rather a wise advice-giver.
Jane Loudon never wrote another science-fiction novel, but it is fascinating which of her ideas came to fruition.
