"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley

Have you ever wanted to become God? Would you be ready to deal with the consequences of your creation...?

Frankenstein: the name itself has become a household name and has lived longer than the person who created it. It's a story that has ascended unto myth status, where it seems like the story and the concept has always existed, as if it just popped up somewhere from the same space as the stories from Greek mythology. It's no coincidence that this story is subtitled "The Modern Prometheus", allowing for comparison to the context within the text and the text itself in more ways than one. Everyone knows the story: a mad scientist creates a monster made out of dead bodies and the monster wreaks havoc. It feels like a tale as old as time.

However, what if I were to remind you that this story has only been around for 204 years? How about that it was not only written by a woman, but a teenager? Would you have believed that a girl named Mary Shelley would become a mother to an entirely new literary genre?

But who was Mary Shelley, and how in the world did she manage to create a story that would manage to surpass her in name and legendary status?

Who was Mary Shelley?

• Mary Shelley was born in 1797 to two prominent writers: William Godwin, a political philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, author to A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and one of the earliest figureheads for women's rights. It would make sense that she would become an influential author later in life.

• She met Percy Bysshe Shelley when she was 16 and had a grand love affair with him, which resulted in them marrying until Percy Shelley's death in 1822. It's worth noting that during this affair, Percy Shelley was married to one Harriet Westbrook, who later committed suicide while she was pregnant with his third child.

• She wrote six other novels after Frankenstein was published, as well as several short stories, travelogues, articles, and more.

• She became the creator of modern science fiction when she wrote and published Frankenstein, using the hard science of the time to create an engaging narrative.

• She died in 1851 due to a suspected brain tumor.

“Mary Shelley.” Wikipedia, 29 Oct. 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shelley.

How did Frankenstein come to be?

To tell this story correctly, we need to follow the Romantic movement and Gothic literature genres (which Frankenstein falls under both), and we need to set the scene:

This story takes place during 1816 in Geneva, Switzerland. It's a beautiful summer in Geneva: the sun is shining, the mountains are piercing the heavens, the lake is nice and cool compared to the warm temperatures, and the surrounding foliage truly radiates the majesty of God's creation. However, on the days that this story takes place, the warm summer weather is taken away by days upon days of pouring rain, the kind you wouldn't want to get caught in during the 1800s without catching a fever and potentially dying.

Enter our characters: Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Claire Clairmont (Mary's stepsister), Lord Byron, and his physician, a Dr. Polidori. They've been stuck inside their villa for the past few days with nothing to do, when Byron gets an idea: since they've been hanging around telling each other ghost stories and they're all writers, let's start a ghost story competition! Whoever tells the scariest story wins! They all agree to his suggestion and start working on their stories...

…all except Mary. Writer's block is hitting her pretty hard and she can't for the life of her figure out what she wants to write about. She knows that she wants a philosophical aspect in her story, but other than that, she doesn't have a clue on what she's going write for this writing contest. So, as most people do when they can't solve a problem after hours and hours of thinking about it, she decides to sleep on it. What she dreams next shakes her to her core, as she describes in her 1813 Introduction:

"When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw – with shut eyes, but acute mental vision – I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantom of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion."

This one dream would be the beginning of a legend in the making: not only did Mary's story win the writing contest, the story itself would soon become an overnight sensation, a myth that would surpass the author's future works and the author itself in name and longevity. Who would have guessed that a teenage girl would make a lasting impact and change the world in the process...?

What's the book about?

Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.

(Summary from Goodreads)

When did I read this?

September 26 - October 27

Positives:

+ Mary Shelley's mind was miles beyond anyone else in the room and easily blew everyone else in the writing competition out of the park!

+ Her descriptions — while sometimes may seem a little excessive (especially when describing the nature that surrounds the two narrators) — engage the reader into wanting to know where the story is going to go next.

+ The decision to have Robert Walton bookend the story was initially weird, but ultimately a good decision to make narratively-speaking: he provides an audience stand-in for the story being told to him by Frankenstein himself.

+ The monster is an eloquent, poetic communicator, contrary to popular belief.

+ He's also a pretty emotional being capable of complex thought. Where was this monster in the Universal Monster movies?!?! ☹️

+ The monster is also 100% certified #relatable:

+ He's depressed

+ He has parental issues

+ He feels/knows that he's a "mistake"

+ He constantly curses God for creating him

+ He's educated, but for all the knowledge he's learned, he's not doing so great at the moment

Negatives:

- Elizabeth Lavenza.

- She's only mentioned in how beautiful and kind she is.

- Soothes Frankenstein whenever he gets too worked up about things.

- Writes him letters of encouragement.

- Delivers speeches that sends surrounding crowds into respectable agreement.

- Gives up what little life she had beforehand to take care of the remaining Frankenstein children when Madame Frankenstein kicks the bucket.

- She's considered Frankenstein's "property." 😬

- Some of the dramatic language got a bit... much towards the ending.

- Frankenstein's laments at first are pretty impactful, but when he's cursing God for the fortieth time, it's kind of like "okay, can we move on...? We've already heard about this."

- Some of the descriptions of nature and the introspective moments kind of felt like a CD skipping in place. At first, it might be interesting, but then you're like "okay, can we move on...?" again until you skip to the next part.

Reality Check:

Death, depression, murder

Content Warning:

Dismembered limbs, fresh corpses, a brief fascination with death with romanticized descriptions of rotting corpses and the circle of life

Is it a truly litassociative Halloween experience?

There were some portions of Frankenstein that I wasn't heavily invested in, but I would definitely say that it was a great reading experience. Despite the fact that some of the dramatic spectacle can wear a little thin towards the end of the story, the story sometimes feels like it's moving at a crawl, and despite the fact that Mary Shelley made the only female supporting character in a suspenseful horror narrative about becoming a mortal God a benchwarmer, I found myself moving through the story at a quick pace, invested in Dr. Frankenstein, his quest for scientific godhood, and how it impacts his surrounding friends and family. It wasn't a hair-raising experience for me like it might have been back in the day, but there were definitely moments where I visibly grimaced at the grand horror of it all (note the "romanticized descriptions of rotting corpses" bit in the Content Warning section). I definitely suggest that you pick up Frankenstein for those dark Autumn nights during Quarantine, where the mortal plights of man vs. monster, nature vs. science, and father vs. son haunt the literary world to this day.

Frankenstein can be found at your local library and/or your nearest bookstore.

Final rating: