Mary Shelley was an interesting person. Her father was an atheist and encouraged her to adhere to his anarchist political beliefs. She had a rich education and when she was a teenager, she was the mistress, then wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. That meant that she had many social connections with prominent writers of the Romantic movement that was so popular at the time, most specifically with Lord Byron. It was because of these connections that she was able to spend the summer in Geneva with her husband, Lord Byron, and several other authors where they were confined to the house due to the poor weather. While there, they dared each other to write a ghost story, which got young Mary Shelley thinking. Later, when the conversation turned to nature of life, she suggested that perhaps a corpse could be reanimated, and that night, had a dream that inspired her famous book Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus.
This was a book that I had to read a few months ago for my British Literature course and it was totally different from every movie or T.V. portrayal of the Frankenstein story that I had ever seen. I was expecting to read a story about a mad scientist and his demented helper who screams “It’s alive!” when the monster comes to life, then must fight his creation as it mindlessly terrorizes the town. While there were some aspects of that (though the demented helper is nowhere to be found), Frankenstein was actually way more philosophically terrifying as it explores the state of man and what causes it, not to mention the psychological horror of it.
The first thing to keep in mind when reading this gothic novel is that Mary Shelley was an adherent of the pervasive belief that man is not inherently sinful but is rather inherently good; the only reason why man would sin is because of a lack of education or connection. We see this throughout the book as Frankenstein’s monster (which I shall henceforth call “the creature”) tries to socialize but fails. During his creation, the creature was put together in such a way that Victor Frankenstein believed would make him the most beautiful creation of all. However, after being reanimated, Victor realizes that he made a horrendous mistake and flees, leaving the creature to fend for himself. He’s confused, doesn’t know where he is or what’s happening and flees from the laboratory. Over time, he comes to a farm where he hides and observes the people living there, eventually learning the basics of how to speak and read. He becomes aware of emotion and tries to help them in return for their unwittingly teaching him. However, after he tries to make contact with them, they drive him out because he looks like a monster. He is given no chance to tell his side of the story and that social isolation combined with his lack of knowledge causes him to become evil.
Those two factors come to equal resentment towards his creator, and he starts trying to make Victor’s life hell by killing off his family members and friends. When Victor eventually catches up to him, the creature demands that he make for him a female to ease his loneliness, but Victor refuses because she might become eviler than the original creature, which makes the creature’s resentment build even more and the killing spree continues until he finally avenges himself by killing Victor. His vengeance procured; he realizes that he is now truly alone and goes to wonder the Earth until he eventually dies. It’s a psychological horror story not just for Victor but also for the creature and it’s awesome.
Another thing that makes it an incredible story is that it’s an early example of transhumanism in fiction. If you’ve never heard of the term transhumanism, an example of it would be the movie Avatar. It’s a combination of the human and the nonhuman and we see it in Frankenstein as Victor tries to play God and ends up with terrible results. He tries to create something that is more than human, that is better, but it ends up being imperfect and causing destruction. It’s an early example of how we shouldn’t try to mess around with life.
Then, of course, there’s just how well-written this book is. Not only do I think that it might’ve kicked off an entire subgenre of Gothic literature, but since it’s written in the 1st person POV, you get to step into the shoes of Victor Frankenstein. You get to feel what he’s feeling as he tells his story to the mariner, Robert Walton (which also makes it so that it’s not illogical when he eventually dies). I don’t think that it would’ve been as good had Shelley written it in any other POV.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 