MsMojoNotes: Frankenstein

Today, Mary Shelley is renowned and widely remembered for her contributions to Gothic literature and science fiction; “Frankenstein” is regarded by many as the first true piece of sci-fi. Less than two weeks after she was born in 1797, her mother, the influential, proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, tragically died – an event that would affect Shelley for the rest of her life (Gordon, 2018, p. x). Born Mary Godwin, when she was 16, she met the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, five years her senior. Though he was married to someone else, the pair ran away together, touring Europe.

This led to a fateful stay in Villa Diodati in Switzerland, rented by Lord Byron in 1816. This was also the famous “Year Without a Summer”, when the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia led to a global cooling event. The weather was foul, and, in a story that’s now well-known, Byron challenged his friends to write the scariest stories while they were trapped inside together. One of these was John William Polidori’s “The Vampyre”, one of the first vampire novels ever written. But nothing could compare with what Mary Shelley produced: the beginnings of “Frankenstein”. According to Shelley’s notes, the first words she formed were, “It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld my man completed” (Gordon, 2018, p. xiii).

The plot of “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” is very familiar to most people. But though we all know the broad strokes – Victor Frankenstein tries to create life and creates a monster – how does the story actually unfold? It begins in the eighteenth century, not with Victor Frankenstein or his Creature, but with the Arctic explorer Robert Walton, who has set out on a journey to discover the North Pole (Shelley, 2018, p. 7). It’s key to note here that nobody successfully went to the North Pole until roughly ninety years after “Frankenstein” was first published, so it was still mysterious. Walton is writing letters to his sister, Margaret Walton Saville; in his fourth letter, Walton tells Margaret how his crew have seen “a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature” crossing the ice with a pack of dogs (Shelley, 2018, p. 15). They then find Victor Frankenstein himself, sick with exhaustion. Frankenstein reveals he is pursuing the giant, and Walton brings him aboard. When Frankenstein hears of Walton’s ambition to find the North Pole, Frankenstein resolves to tell Walton why he is wrong, launching into the story (Shelley, 2018, p. 20).

At length, Frankenstein talks about his happy childhood with his parents and two brothers, Ernest and William. He also grew up alongside Elizabeth Lavenza. It’s widely understood from the beginning that Elizabeth and Victor will, one day, marry. Frankenstein becomes obsessed with alchemy and other esoteric forms of science and is sent to the University of Ingolstadt to study. While some mock him for his interests, others encourage him. In the novel, Frankenstein leaves it purposefully vague how he builds the Creature and animates it. He does this on purpose, telling Walton that he doesn’t want anybody else to repeat his mistakes. He says: “Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” (Shelley, 2018, p. 41). In most adaptations, however, we see Frankenstein constructing his man from body parts, and then reanimating him with lightning. This is largely thanks to the hugely influential 1931 movie, which, while iconic, takes many liberties with the story.

However animation is accomplished, the Creature is brought to life, and Frankenstein is horrified by the 8-foot-tall monster he has built. Frankenstein says that this is a “catastrophe”, and that he had intended his creation to be beautiful – but it hasn’t worked. He says: “His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes” (Shelley, 2018, p. 45). He flees and abandons the Creature, hiding in his apartment, and when he returns, the Creature has disappeared. Much later, Frankenstein’s brother William is tragically killed; the nanny, Justine, is assumed to be guilty and executed for it. But Frankenstein ultimately reunites with the Creature, who has now learned to speak, and tells him what has happened in his absence – including that the Creature was responsible for William’s death, as Frankenstein had assumed.

The Creature lived for a time in the woods, eating only berries and nuts he could forage, until he found the De Lacey family living in a cabin. By listening to them, he learns to read and to speak French, discovering that they were a noble family in Paris until they were exiled. The father of the family is blind, so the Creature decides he’ll introduce himself to him, first. However, this doesn’t work, and he is chased away. He then sets his sights on Frankenstein, whom he blames for abandoning him, and tracks him down in Geneva. He comes across William and murders him, then frames Justine, feeling little remorse. He demands that Frankenstein makes him a woman. He says: “You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do; and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse” (Shelley, 2018, p. 136).

Frankenstein agrees at first, but then decides that he cannot bring another monster into the world and goes back on his word. This enrages the Creature, who claims a third victim, Frankenstein’s friend Henry Clerval, and tries to frame Frankenstein for it. He ominously tells Frankenstein, “I will be with you on your wedding-night” (Shelley, 2018, p. 163). Frankenstein believes the Creature is going to kill him when he marries Elizabeth – but, he’s wrong. He DOES marry Elizabeth, and then discovers that SHE is the Creature’s fourth and final victim. Following this grief, Frankenstein decides to track the Creature around the world, chasing him all the way to the Arctic, where he meets Walton. Walton is persuaded by his men to turn back, leaving glory in the North Pole behind. Frankenstein decides to leave the crew and continue chasing the Creature, but he’s too weak, and dies hours later. In the final moments, the Creature reappears and laments the loss of his Creator, confessing that the murders and revenge didn’t make him happy. He tells Walton that he’s going to destroy himself. The novel ends as the Creature is “borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance” (Shelley, 2018, p. 216).

Frankenstein and the Creature are the two characters with the most focus; the hero and the villain – though Shelley leaves it up to the reader to decide which is which (Gordon, 2018, p. xvi). Victor is beloved by all in his life but is unable to see that he already has true happiness in his family. Instead, he pursues the occult and gives in to limitless ambition, which is his downfall. The Creature, on the other hand, is misunderstood by the world and by his creator, but is also vindictive and dangerous. Though he attests many times that the cruelty of man has made him violent, and that if he were happy – specifically, by having a wife – he would stop, he still commits multiple crimes. It’s up to you to determine which of them is the most sympathetic (Robinson, 2008, p. 220). Other major characters include Elizabeth, whose death causes Frankenstein to finally decide to destroy the Creature; Clerval, whom Frankenstein likens to himself when he was younger; and Walton, who is similarly a mirror of Victor used to teach us about the dangers of abandoning morality in search of knowledge.

Who do you think is the real hero of the story, Frankenstein or his monster? Be sure to let us know!

Though “Frankenstein” is a short novel, it’s dense, and there are a lot of ways to read it – which is part of what makes talking about it so fascinating, even over two hundred years later! The first key theme we’re going to talk about is Man vs. God. Through the secondary title, “The Modern Prometheus”, we’re immediately introduced to the story of Prometheus in Greek myth. Prometheus is a Titan who creates humankind from clay, and then defies the gods by bringing them fire from Olympus; he’s punished harshly for this by Zeus (Robinson, 2008, p. 217). But while Prometheus cares for his creations and nurtures them, Frankenstein does the opposite, running in horror from the man he has created. This sets up Victor Frankenstein’s fatal or tragic flaw: his arrogance and ambition. As he tells Walton many times, his mistake is thinking he can and should be able to do what God does – that is, creating life from nothing (Shelley, 2018, p. 20). Where a benevolent god would have loved the Creature no matter what, Frankenstein is human, and fails. There’s also something to be said for the perversion of religion here. In the Bible, Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image”. By making the Creature appear human, Frankenstein is also trying to create a man in the image of God and doing so with disastrous consequences. The Creature, too, learns about Christianity. He tells Frankenstein explicitly: “Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel”, comparing himself not to Adam, but to Lucifer, or Satan (Shelley, 2018, p. 90).

In a similar vein, another major theme is the Natural vs. The Unnatural. The Creature is, of course, deeply unnatural. He even uses the word “unnatural” to describe himself (Shelley, 2018, p. 124). Created artificially in a laboratory in the early days of modern science and research, he embodies the unnatural in such a way that Frankenstein abandons his science as soon as the Creature is brought to life. By contrast, the natural world is always portrayed positively. Exploring and observing nature is something all the characters enjoy, and it brings them all a sense of comfort, including the Creature, who at the end laments that he won’t be able to enjoy the world anymore upon his death. But, again, this is about arrogance, and Frankenstein’s belief that he can go against nature so thoroughly with no retribution. Though it’s not clear what kills Frankenstein specifically, he does suffer greatly and ultimately die after journeying into the harshest, natural environment of all, the Arctic.

Finally, there’s the theme of parental responsibility. When you have a child, what do you owe to that child? This is something else that Shelley is preoccupied with. It’s widely thought that Shelley was drawing on her own experiences with her parents when she wrote “Frankenstein” (Robinson, 2008, p. 220). Her mother was, of course, not absent by choice, but was absent, nonetheless (Gordon, 2018, p. x). Her father, meanwhile, ended up abandoning and ostracizing Shelley when she left England to begin her affair with Percy. It was to her father, William Godwin, that she dedicated “Frankenstein”. This theme of responsibility is very clear, particularly where family is concerned. Even when it leads to tragedy, as it does when Victor’s mother nurses Elizabeth through scarlet fever and then succumbs to the disease herself, parents taking responsibility for children is a crucial theme (Shelley, 2018, p. 31).

Two hundred years later, and we’re still talking about this novel, and still seeing it appear in pop culture. Victor Frankenstein and his Creature are recognizable around the world as horror icons, with even Disney making retellings of the story. For the first three years the book was published, it was anonymous, with nobody other than Shelley’s inner circle knowing that she was the author. Thirteen years after the first edition, in 1831, she revised it, and also added a new introduction, in which she explained how “a young girl” came up with such a “hideous” idea (Shelley, 1831, p. 237). The sheer originality of “Frankenstein” has given it such a long lifespan, as a cornerstone in both the Gothic and science-fiction genres – as well as making Shelley a key figure in the influential Romantic movement of the nineteenth century.

As early as 1823, it was being adapted successfully for the stage, with Shelley even complimenting one version, “Presumption”, for thinking of things she hadn’t thought of when she wrote it. Centuries on, and “Frankenstein” has no copyright, meaning it’s free to adapt – and to adapt as loosely as the filmmakers like, which is to say, usually VERY loosely. Even the lauded 1931 version changes key details, like Frankenstein’s name being Henry, and him inviting his friends to watch as he reanimates the dead in his laboratory. Simply put, it’s one of the greatest, most influential works of fiction ever produced, made even more impressive by the fact Shelley was only eighteen when she started writing it – and twenty when the first edition was published. How many people can say they invented a whole new genre, which would go on to be one of the biggest things to happen in the entire canon of Western literature, before they turned twenty-one? For our money, only Mary Shelley has that claim to fame.

Let us know in the comments what your favorite adaptation of “Frankenstein” is.