Copyright © 2017 by Wil C. Fry.
Some rights reserved.
Author: Mary Shelley
Year: 1818 (mine is 2015 Barnes & Noble collectible edition)
Genre: Horror fiction, science fiction, adventure
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
ISBN 9781435159624 (paperback)
Wikipedia page
Author’s Wikipedia page
Summary
Frankenstein is well-known enough that a summary might not be necessary. It is often considered the first “true” science fiction story. Written in the early 1800s, the events of the story are set in the 1700s (no specific year is given), and are entirely written in the first-person — though three narrators are used. The book opens and closes with letters from Captain Robert Walton to his sister, describing how he came upon and rescued Victor Frankenstein. Sandwiched between these are first-person accounts told by Frankenstein himself (as purportedly related by Walton) of his own life and times. In the middle is the first-person narrative of “the Creature”, as purportedly passed on to Walton by Frankenstein.
Walton is on a dangerous mission to explore the North Pole (which in reality wasn’t reached until the 1900s) when he observes figures engaged in a chase across the ice — revealed to be the Creature and Frankenstein. He rescues Frankenstein and draws out his story. Frankenstein tells of his childhood, his studies in chemistry, and his discovery of a method (unspecified) to bring dead organic matter to life. Frankenstein is repulsed by his creation and abandons it, falling into an extended period of mental illness through which he is nursed by a friend. The Creature, having escaped the laboratory, hides in the woods and learns how to survive, observes humans and learns to speak and read, and learns that his appearance is detestable to people. When the Creature finally finds Frankenstein, he demands (under threat) the creation of a female companion and promises that he and she will hide from humanity in the wilderness of South America. Frankenstein reluctantly agrees and after some delay begins the creation of a second being. At the last minute, he destroys his second project, for which the Creature vows revenge. After killing Frankenstein’s new bride, the Creature escapes and is chased by Frankenstein all the way to where Captain Walton found them on the ice.
(I learned after reading that the text of my edition is from an 1831 revised version by Shelley, and not the original 1818 text. The Barnes & Noble sales page I linked to above says this edition contains “Part II”, full of notes and scholarly writing on the topic, but it does not. My book contains only the text of the story, a title page, and a copyright page.)
What I Liked Least About It
There was very little to dislike about this book, or the edition which I purchased — a sturdily-bound soft-cover with a built-in bookmark ribbon. Part of me wishes my copy contained the extras promised by Barnes & Noble, but another part of me is glad they’re missing — sometimes it’s more enlightening to simply read the story and ignore what others have said about it.
Perhaps the primary fault, from a writing perspective, is that all three first-person narrators speak with indistinguishable voices; their phrasing, word-choices, thought-structure, and even exclamations are nearly identical. It is notable that their opinions, views, and experiences are different, but as a reader I expected their phrasing to be different as well.
What I Liked Most About It
I was pleasantly surprised that this read more easily than Dracula though it was written many decades earlier; I had expected the language to be more obscure but instead found the opposite. Shelley was a brilliant writer and the story flows smoothly and deliciously off the page. A sample:
“Thus situated, my only resource was to drive before the wind. I confess that I felt a few sensations of terror. I had no compass with me, and was so slenderly acquainted with the geography of this part of the world, that the sun was of little benefit to me. I might be driven into the wide Atlantic, and feel all the tortures of starvation, or be swallowed up in the immeasurable waters that roared and buffeted around me. I had already been out many hours and felt the torment of a burning thirst, a prelude to my other sufferings. I looked on the heavens, which were covered by clouds that flew before the wind, only to be replaced by others. I looked upon the sea; it was to be my grave. ‘Fiend,’ I exclaimed, ‘your task is already fulfilled!’ ”I was also impressed with the author’s ability to “see both sides” — she tells the Creature’s version of events sympathetically, despite (apparently) buying into Frankenstein’s opinion that the “monster” must be destroyed. In fact, this conflict of points of view rode with me throughout the story, creating a compelling tension. Though I got the distinct impression that Shelley herself was against the idea of a scientist “creating life”, she clearly also understood why the Creature turned to evil deeds. She carefully describes how the Creature was born into confusion, much like a human infant must be — “a strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses.” And further, she describes how the Creature wondered about his creator and why he had been abandoned.— pg 157
“And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant... I was, besides, endued with a figure so hideously deformed and loathesome; I was not even of the same nature as man... When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned? ... But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was not a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in heights and proportion... What was I?”Further, she treats the Creature’s moral arc as one would a human’s — she ascribes to him no inherent evil motives; all his anti-social acts were a response to the way he was treated by human beings. Having had no instruction, no example of care and love, and no moral guidance in his early days, it is to be expected that he would react poorly to rejection, screams of horror, and being cast out — even the best of us tend to react poorly to such stimuli.— pg. 108-109
Again, I must contrast this reading with Dracula — which I had finished only two weeks earlier: It was a brilliant relief to not be preached at in this book. While Dracula’s author took every opportunity to quote scripture, regale the reader with tales of God’s plan and power, fully explain the Gospel on multiple occasions, Frankenstein was blissfully secular by comparison. There are of course religious words in the book — “Good God!” is used as an exclamation on multiple occasions, and several figures of speech make an appearance: “for God’s sake”, “thank God”, “God forbid”, and others. But one suspects these are merely parts of language to Shelley rather than expressions of a devout belief in God. Her characters do occasionally reference their belief in God, however. Justine, for example, exclaims: “The God of heaven forgive me!”, and further claims she will “submit in patience to the will of heaven”, but it is clear that this is a reference to Justine’s beliefs only and not to the worldview of the author. The Creature references lowercase “gods” and uses “godlike” as a synonym of “good”. He later compares his own situation to that of the biblical Adam, of whom he had read in Paradise Lost, but indicates that he only briefly considered it a “true history”. (This sounds like an awful lot, but I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with these references. After Dracula, this book really was nearly religion-free.)
Treatment Of Women
One thing I was on the lookout for was how women characters (the few who existed) were treated. Because the author was a woman — fairly rare in those days — I wondered if her ideas regarding women would differ from those typically portrayed by authors in the 1800s. (And after reading, I brushed up on Shelley, reminding myself that she was the daughter of the famous early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.)
As soon as the first female characters were introduced, there was an obvious difference from (again contrasting with) Dracula. Instead of “pretty and rich” being the primary descriptions, Shelley gives them full back stories, personalities, and quirks, especially Elizabeth — Frankenstein’s adopted “cousin” and eventual dead wife — but also the women in the family watched by the Creature as he learned to speak and read. Each has their own opinions, abilities, and desires. One woman, Safie, escapes her father because he intends to give her away as a bride in violation of her consent.
In one particular passage, I began to be disappointed. It’s when the Creature is demanding Frankenstein build him a female Creature to salve his emotional wounds. The Creature’s speech on this sounds like something ripped from today’s “Incel” (involuntarily celibate) webpages.
“At length I wandered towards these mountains, and have ranged through their immense recesses, consumed by a burning passion which you alone can gratify. We may not part until you have promised to comply with my requisition. I am alone and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create.”He’s basically saying he’s violent because people won’t have anything to do with him, and if only he owned a woman-creature he would be happy and quit killing folks. (At this point, he’s only been the cause of one death that we know of.) To me, it felt like a close paraphrase of incel hero Jordan Peterson who recently said “enforced monogamy” is the solution to mass-killings, that violent attacks are what happens when men do not have partners.— pg. 130
“I am malicious because I am miserable... If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I shoudl return them an hundred and an hundredfold; for that one creature’s sake I would make peace with the whole kind! ... I demand a creature of another sex... and it shall content me.”— pg. 131-132
Shelley’s protagonist Frankenstein “compassionated” with these remarks and “sometimes felt a wish to console him”, eventually deciding “I had no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which was yet in my power to give.” I began to despair that this irreligious feminist had yet bought into the idea that women are mere property of men.
Another 18 pages went by before Frankenstein is startled by a thought: what if the woman-creature he creates isn’t attracted to the first Creature?
“As I sat, a train of reflection occurred to me, which led me to consider the effects of what I was now doing... She, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might even hate each other... She also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species.”This gives Frankenstein pause, but isn’t enough to change his mind. For me, the fact that the woman’s (potential) desires were mentioned at all vindicated the author; she writes it as if it would be a surprise to a man to consider a woman’s consent at all. (What eventually worries Frankenstein the most is that the two creatures will breed, putting the existence of humans in danger.)— pg. 151
Was Frankenstein Gay?
It turns out I wasn’t the only modern reader who noticed this (see Google search), but at more than one moment in reading, I wondered whether Shelley was attempting to portray Captain Walton and — to a lesser degree — Frankenstein as barely in-the-closet gay men. Early in the book, Walton writes to his sister: “I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me, whose eyes would reply to mine”; he adds that he wants the “affection” of a man. Walton is overjoyed when he finds and gets to know Frankenstein — he describes his newfound friend as having a “full-toned voice” and “lustrous eyes” which “dwell on me with all their melancholy sweetness”, not to mention the “thin hand raised in animation”.
Frankenstein himself sometimes uses language that indicates a more effeminate bent than one might expect. While he does profess love for Elizabeth, his descriptions of her seem colder and more rote — forced by custom — than do his descriptions of some of the men in his life. When, near the end, Walton tries to reinvigorate the dying Frankenstein by entreaties to be best buds, Frankenstein replies: “Can any man be to me as Clerval was, or any woman another Elizabeth?” It struck me that he led with Clerval while in the company of another man, and mentioned his actual wife as a seeming afterthought.
Other commentators have suggested that the Creature itself is a metaphor for Victor Frankenstein’s homosexuality, which he perceived as a horrible thing responsible for so much misery in his life. I didn’t read that deep into the story but after seeing several writings in this vein I suppose it’s possible.
Conclusion
In sum, I’m glad I read this directly after finishing Dracula. The contrast between the content of the stories and in the quality of writing was incredible to me. Frankenstein is the far superior book in my opinion. Its central message also has, I think, more relevance in modern times. While Dracula is mere fantasy-horror, with an antagonist both created and defeated by mythology (crucifixes, spiritual power, and communion wafers), Frankenstein depicts a near-human created by a scientific process and turned evil by abandonment and ill-treatment.
While neo-Luddites sometimes cite the Creature as a cause for avoiding genetic tinkering (using terms like “frankenfood”), the actual lesson of the novel for me does not point in that direction at all; rather it emphasizes that the science itself wasn’t to blame for the Creature’s malbehavior — he only became a “fiend” due to circumstance.
While religionists and other modern day myth-believers question whether a clone or lab-grown human baby would have a “soul”, science notes that there is no evidence of anyone having a soul. Any negative issues arising in the life of such a future human would likely be due to what we have done, rather than any inherent defect.
NOTE: Frankenstein can be read online for free at Project Gutenberg (here).
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