I Read Books: Frankenstein
Frankenstein
As I’ve said before, it’s good to go back to the source material. So what have you got Mary Shelley?
The first thing that’s often forgotten, removed or altered is the frame story. Captain Robert Walton is in his icebound ship looking for the North Pole when he spots a giant man on a dog sled, then comes across Victor Frankenstein, who tells him the story.
Victor tells his story, about how he grew up, went to university and studied chemistry (although he uses human remains, he’s not a surgeon; the book deliberately* does not tell us how he creates his creature but it seems that he grows him). He creates a creature meant to be beautiful but when he brings it to life (again not told how he animates him, the phrase spark of life is used but this is a metaphor, and there’s no lightning or storm, it is a “dreary night”) it’s horrible. Frankenstein flees into the night, goes back the next day and finds the creature gone, collapses and is ill.
It’s set in the 18th century, and as French armies aren’t rampaging across the landscape it’s before the revolution. The choice of books that the creature reads are of interest in that Shelley will have read them from a romantic and radical point of view. The creature itself destroys Frankenstein’s family, because he insists that he must have a companion – a bride to form his own family.
It's short and rich and also long-winded in the manner of the time. Both Frankenstein and the Creature feel enormous emotions that cause them to either collapse in despair, destroy their own work and go on rampages. And they keep secrets, in Frankenstein’s case sometimes because he feels shame. On this read I couldn’t help but see what was going on through a lens of mental health, one that Shelley probably didn’t have the vocabulary or knowledge of, but still may have observed.
Read This: Because it’s the original and justly a classic, and later adaptions distort it to the point of transformation
Don’t Read This: Frankenstein acts like an idiot, the
creature monstrously, they both have their reasons but really they should grow
up and deal with it, also not go on at such length
* From the authorial perspective Shelley isn’t interested in that really; from within the text Victor isn’t going to tell because it led to disaster.
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