Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Prepare to hear of occurrences that are usually deemed marvellous! -- V. Frankenstein

Frankenstein was the result of a challenge between Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary's husband Percy Bysshe Shelley in which they all agreed to write a supernatural story, and for some reason, this is the one that survives in the modern imagination. As a story, it has some intriguing aspects--it was probably the first crack at the modern trope in which scientists suffer for trying to play God. As you probably know, Frankenstein is the name of the scientist and not the monster that he creates, but as you may not know unless you have read this thing, the first thing he does when it comes to life is wig out and abandon it. Lonely, confused, spurned by its creator, the monster--here called a "daemon"--wanders away, learns to talk like a true Edwardian gentleman, and seeks revenge by killing everyone Frankenstein has ever loved. The daemon, who happens upon a copy of Paradise Lost so that this will make sense, tells Frankenstein that he wanted to be his Adam, but instead became his Lucifer, the fallen creation determined to wreak havoc.

And mother of pearl, is it tedious. I don't need the writing in Frankenstein to be "Ozymandias" or anything, but it is a special kind of awful that I would have thought would have been sort of embarrassing to Percy Shelley. When you are not being exhorted to "prepare to hear of occurrences that are usually deemed marvellous," you are being subjected to very repetitive descriptions of the Swiss countryside and the sort of feelings it engenders. Every emotion is either the highest joy or the deepest misery, and they are all described at length.

The plot can be equally inane--the worst bit of it when the daemon holes up in an abandoned house where he can peer through a hole in the wall at a simple rustic family. Conveniently for him, the family takes in a young Arab girl (a convert to Christianity fleeing the possessive Islam of her father, naturally) whom they teach to speak English so that the daemon can follow along. After it kills Frankenstein's brother and best friend, then tells him I will be with you on your wedding-night, he spends his entire wedding night looking for it, not once thinking that, I don't know, maybe he shouldn't leave his new bride alone? At points it reminded me of Dan Brown, if Dan Brown had a bigger vocabulary.

As an idea, it's easy to see why Frankenstein's monster is so alluring. Our expanding scientific abilities, results of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, were accompanied by a deep anxiety that our power might outstrip our wisdom; the story itself remains because we still live in that world. We probably always will. But this is not a very good book.

Brooke liked it, though.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in high school and never cared for it much. Upon revisiting the novel a second time, I came to appreciate it. Knowing a bit about Shelley’s background helped me become more emotionally involved. I can’t imagine being the daughter of a great feminist but writing to appease two brilliant but no doubt difficult to live with men, being Percy Shelley and William Godwin, who were pushing her to make a name for herself.

Nothing draws me to an author like a good and proper amount of description. The grotesque nature of Shelley’s descriptions of Victor sewing the monster together out of various parts of numerous dead bodies absolutely gave me chills. It wasn't hard to see why Victor would become ill every time he saw a scientific instrument (though it was hard to see why Henry would nurse the sulky and elusive Victor back to health). I haven’t seen any of the cinema versions of this book but my bet would be that none of them could give her work justice.

Both Robert Walton, who was on a journey to the North Pole, and Victor, the young college student playing God, were too single minded in their pursuits not to be frustrating at times, and I was glad Walton did not play much of a part in the novel. My professor brought up a point that I hadn’t though of (and don’t know that I agree with) that Victor might have potentially been afraid of adult relationships/sexuality and that was what made him become so alienated from his family and what made him become so devoted to his work. At any rate, his both possessive and detached relationship with his “almost sister” was both interesting and problematic to me.

As a child, who didn’t at some point confuse the magical and the impossible with science? Victor’s interest in alchemy and his devotion to it even after his professors all told him more or less that it was hog wash made him seem both foolish and enchanting despite what happens as the plot unfolds. You would think, however, that a man smart enough to do what he did would have a little more common sense.

I wanted to adopt the monster and protect him up until the point in which he was denied a mate and became a killing machine. His fascination with the impoverished De Lacey family made me ache for him and his loneliness. As he got his hopes up, I worried and hoped for him, even as I scowled at Shelley for making certain things, like the way he so quickly picked up reading from Ruins of Empires, seem even more impossible than the actual creation of the monster.

I’m sure you all have probably read this, but if you haven’t, I’d recommend it.