A masterwork that birthed modern science fiction, horror and psychological thrillers, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a cautionary and morality tale. It critiques unchecked science the morality of playing God and questions what makes us human.
If that’s not enough, Frankenstein delves into identity by way of isolation, revenge, empathy, compassion, and social connection.
Challenged by Lord Byron and Percy Shelley to write a ghost story during a wet summer holiday, Mary based her story on a nightmare triggered by the pair discussing reanimating the dead. But it’s not really about that…
Encased in ice
An epistolary novel, the explorer Robert Walton writes home while his ship lies trapped in arctic ice. He rescues a stranger, Victor Frankenstein who relates the tragic tale of himself and his creation in first person.
Obsessed with overcoming death, Victor animates a creature from body parts. Overworked and overcome with regret, Victor has a breakdown and the creature escapes.
When the creature returns to his creator, articulate, self aware and full of recrimination, Victor rejects his creation. In a speech that encapsulates the novel, the creature replies:
“I expected this reception… All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!… You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life?… Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it… I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend…”
As if that’s not enough themes to unpack, the monster than demands Victor create him a mate to end his loneliness and the pair can go live out their days as two of a kind.
Out of guilt, Victor agrees but then undergoes another breakdown as he contemplates playing God a second time. Rejected again, the creature goes on a rampage of violence.
Out of its time
The story of Frankenstein is so loaded with the baggage of pop culture, bad movies and worse t-shirts, few people know the original. Mary Shelley’s prose is classic nineteenth century. She reaches for the high literary bar set by Percy Shelley and Bryon, with pages of description and dense, formal construction.
When Shelley writes action, it’s as good as anything in literature, vivid and direct. But too often we’re caught up in the travelogue as Victor hunts the creature through foreign lands. The prose becomes as purple as the mountain views. The slow pacing and meandering narrative adds to the difficulty.
Then there’s the triple framing; Victor tells the creature’s story, within his own, within Walton’s letters, complete with moral commentary.
Crichton said it better
The central protagonist Victor is deeply unsympathetic; self-obsessed, whining, endlessly recycling the same arguments. Victor founds the original ‘mad scientist’ trope, whose pursuit of knowledge exacts a terrible cost. His callous abandonment sets the creature on the path to ‘monster,’ yet Victor never truly takes responsibility.
Obsessed with the science of creation, he doesn’t consider the morality of tinkering with life until it’s too late.
The creature shows more compasion and benevolence than Victor, but reaches a breaking point to become the monster on a rampage of revenge.
Both of them, unsurprisingly, display symptons of extreme depression. We’ll come back to that soon.
1818 and 1831 Editions
The novel itself has a complex history. Shelley published the first edition begun at eighteen and completed as a twenty-year old. A second edition appeared in 1831 after Mary Shelley was widowed and lost two children. The story takes a much darker turn through an extensive edit.
Early feminism
A further layer is the feminist thread. Shelley’s mother Mary Woolstencraf was a renowned campaigner for women’s rights. No coincidence, then, the creature is obsessed with physical appearance and access to education, rights and status.
The counter to this? All the female characters, Elizabeth, Agatha, Safie, Justine, are sweet subservient, and lack agency; period ideals of womanhood that lack any depth.
Nature or Nurture
Shelley comes down firmly on the side of nurture. Cruelty was not part of the creature’s nature. The creature exhibits all the human characteristics, the need for love, friendship and belonging.
Taught to be kind and compassionate by blind William, the double rejection by his God/father is enough to send anyone mad. The creature falls to the impulse to punish rejection with anger and violence.
The Modern Prometheus in the sub-title?
Before he stole fire from the gods, Promethus was a Titan in ancient Greek mythology who created a man form clay, nurtured and educated him.
Frankenstein is framed as the modern Prometheus, taking in himself the power to create life.
The First Rule of Fight Club
There’s a modern revisionist take on Frankenstein as psychological horror. There’s a growing opinion that Victor is psychotic. That the monster exists in his head, and Victor himself committed the murders in a disturbed state of dissociation. Walton, close to death himself, is the only other person to glimpse the monster out on the ice. He’s now considered an unreliable narrator, recording a delusional madman.
After all, in the book itself we never meet the creature. We only know him through Victor’s telling.
A creature of legend
And this is why Frankenstein endures. Post-enlightenment, with the industrial revolution in full flow, and horrified by the potential of the new science, Shelley focuses on the creation myth. What makes us human? Good? Kind? What turns us to evil? Frankenstein’s themes fill sci-fi, fantasy and horror to this day.
i’ve heard this before but i’ts interesting nonetheless.
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