Frankenstein

By Mary Shelley

Frankenstein is the classic gothic horror novel which has thrilled and engrossed readers for two centuries. Written by Mary Shelley, it is a story which she intended would ‘curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart.’ The tale is a superb blend of science fiction, mystery and thriller. Victor Frankenstein driven by the mad dream of creating his own creature, experiments with alchemy and science to build a monster stitched together from dead remains. Once the creature becomes a living breathing articulate entity, it turns on its maker and the novel darkens into tragedy. The reader is very quickly swept along by the force of the elegant prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multi-layered themes in the novel. Although first published in 1818, Shelley’s masterpiece still maintains a strong grip on the imagination and has been the inspiration for numerous horror movies, television and stage adaptations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions
• Release date: Oct 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781848703582

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was an English novelist. Born the daughter of William Godwin, a novelist and anarchist philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a political philosopher and pioneering feminist, Shelley was raised and educated by Godwin following the death of Wollstonecraft shortly after her birth. In 1814, she began her relationship with Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom she would later marry following the death of his first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the Shelleys, joined by Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, physician and writer John William Polidori, and poet Lord Byron, vacationed at the Villa Diodati near Geneva, Switzerland. They spent the unusually rainy summer writing and sharing stories and poems, and the event is now seen as a landmark moment in Romanticism. During their stay, Shelley composed her novel Frankenstein (1818), Byron continued his work on Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-1818), and Polidori wrote “The Vampyre” (1819), now recognized as the first modern vampire story to be published in English. In 1818, the Shelleys traveled to Italy, where their two young children died and Mary gave birth to Percy Florence Shelley, the only one of her children to survive into adulthood. Following Percy Bysshe Shelley’s drowning death in 1822, Mary returned to England to raise her son and establish herself as a professional writer. Over the next several decades, she wrote the historical novel Valperga (1923), the dystopian novel The Last Man (1826), and numerous other works of fiction and nonfiction. Recognized as one of the core figures of English Romanticism, Shelley is remembered as a woman whose tragic life and determined individualism enabled her to produce essential works of literature which continue to inform, shape, and inspire the horror and science fiction genres to this day.

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Contents

General Introduction

Publisher’s Introduction

Notes to the Introduction

Bibliography

A Note on the Text

Frankenstein

Author’s Introduction

Dedication

Preface by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Letter 1

Letter 2

Letter 3

Letter 4

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Walton, in continuation

Notes to Frankenstein

General Introduction

Wordsworth Classics are inexpensive editions designed to appeal to the general reader and students. We commissioned teachers and specialists to write wide ranging, jargon-free introductions and to provide notes that would assist the understanding of our readers rather than interpret the stories for them. In the same spirit, because the pleasures of reading are inseparable from the surprises, secrets and revelations that all narratives contain, we strongly advise you to enjoy this book before turning to the Introduction.

General Adviser

Keith Carabine

Rutherford College

University of Kent at Canterbury

Publisher’s Introduction

Background & Themes

For many people, the dominant image of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) has remained that of Boris Karloff in James Whale’s 1931 film. It has been suggested by one critic that the novel – and particularly the Creature – has become ‘a metaphor for our own cultural crises’, [1] an idea reinforced by, for example, recent newspaper headlines about ‘Frankenstein food’. Furthermore, varied reinterpretations of the novel, ranging from comic film versions such as Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein and Richard O’ Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, to the 1960s novelty record The Monster Mash by Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett and the Crypt Kickers, confirm that Frankenstein is part of our social and cultural iconography. The details of Mary Shelley’s background – particularly the ‘ghost story’ contest which is supposed to have given ‘birth’ to the novel – have enhanced a ‘Frankensteinian’ mythology which has concentrated upon images of fear and monstrosity at the expense of other issues. This is a pity, because Mary Shelley deals with a range of significant ideas in her story. Frankenstein is not a simple battle between good and evil; it is not a ghost story, nor really a gothic novel. It defies a single interpretation, engaging instead with some of the crucial social and public questions of the period.

Much emphasis has been placed upon the importance of Mary Shelley’s family history in shaping the story of Frankenstein. Although a ‘literary heiress’ [2] as the daughter of the famous radical thinkers Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, her upbringing was marred by loss. Her mother died ten days after her birth in 1797; and the effect of this maternal absence was compounded by her father’s remarriage in 1801. His daughter struggled to accept her stepmother, and an increasing alienation from Godwin was confirmed when Mary eloped at the age of sixteen with Percy Bysshe Shelley, the Romantic poet, in 1814. [3] Shelley was still married, and the scandal was increased by the inclusion in the elopement of Mary’s half-sister, Claire Clairmont, who reputedly became Shelley’s mistress. Mary gave birth to a daughter in 1815; the child’s death within two weeks of its birth has been perceived by some critics as crucial in understanding Frankenstein. [4] Certainly, a glance at Mary Shelley’s journals from this period confirms her devastation. The entry for 20 March describes a dream in which the child was revived:

Dreamt that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived. Awake and find no baby. I think about the little thing all day. Not in good spirits. (Journals, p. 70)

While there is no doubt that this experience significantly influenced Frankenstein, it is misleading to see the novel as purely semi-autobiographical. It is, in fact, connected to a range of scientific, philosophical and political ideas of its time.

Chief amongst these was scientific exploration, in which Erasmus Darwin, Humphry Davy and Luigi Galvani were some of the key names. Darwin was (like his more famous grandson) mainly interested in botany and the process of evolution; through his works Zoonomia (1793) and Phytologia (1800), he explored the creative and regenerative process of nature, but without seeking to intervene in or change this process. One experiment, where he reputedly animated a piece of vermicelli, seems particularly important as a source for Frankenstein and is referred to by Mary Shelley in the Introduction to the 1831 edition. Davy was a chemist: in his Discourse (1802), he argued for the power of chemistry as the underlying principle of all life. This enabled the chemist to interfere in the natural world to change and modify it. [5] However, Galvani’s revivifying of dead tissue seems to have had the most obvious impact on Frankenstein: in 1791, he experimented on ‘animal electricity’ which was substantially produced from the brain and conducted to muscles and other organs through the nerves. Mary Shelley’s knowledge of these ideas derived from several sources. Her father, a friend of Davy, was deeply interested in new scientific thinking; Percy Shelley was also very interested in radical science, and not only encouraged her to study the subject but accompanied her to lectures in London; and Mary Shelley herself investigated her father’s and husband’s libraries, reading a wide range of material in order to extend her awareness of contemporary scientific and philosophical debate. It is clear, therefore, as Anne Mellor has noted, that Frankenstein is rooted in authentic scientific ideas of the period (1989, p. 90); but Mary Shelley’s attitude towards science remains ambiguous. Mellor argues that Frankenstein differentiates between what its creator saw as ‘good’ and ‘bad’ science: the novel implicitly approves the ‘non-interventionist’ approach of Darwin by showing the dire consequences of a science that sees itself as a ‘master’. [6] Marilyn Butler, on the other hand, sees Frankenstein as engaging with two differing interpretations of ‘life’: the question as to whether life was some intangible essence or simply the sum of a collection of biological and physiological functions (1993, pp. xv–xxi). [7] For Mary Shelley, however, two of the most important aspects of science centre upon the essential ‘masculinity’ of scientific thought, and the responsibility of the scientist in the aftermath of his experiments: it is with these elements that Frankenstein is particularly concerned.

This ‘masculinity’ is most evident in the removal of any feminine element from the Creature’s ‘birth’; the scientific process activated by Victor excludes any sense of the humanity of the Creature and defines life only on scientific terms. The attempt by Victor’s ‘masculine’ science to appropriate the quintessentially feminine act of childbirth must eventually fail because he never thinks about what he will do with his creation once it is alive. The exclusion of femininity extends to the consistent marginalisation and destruction of women by Victor’s ‘progress’. Justine Moritz’s execution is caused, initially, by Victor’s actions and then his cowardice in refusing to tell the truth. Elizabeth Lavenza’s relationship with Victor is sacrificed as he pursues his obsession, until she literally becomes a sacrifice on the altar of his ambitions; and this destructiveness extends also to Victor’s treatment of the half-completed female Creature. All these deaths are violent, and all come about through male intrusion into a female process in which, in the ‘natural’ order of things, masculinity plays a much more peripheral role. The novel, therefore, articulates a confrontation between a scientific pursuit seen as masculine and a feminine ‘nature’ which is perverted or destroyed by masculinity. [8] As Mark Jancovich puts it:

Mary Shelley’s novel is a specific intervention within the social debates over the organisation of science and knowledge, and it calls for a democratisation and domestication of both science and society. It is a critique of the separation of spheres . . . The novel is concerned that subjective experience and domestic affection should not be separated from, and defined as irrelevant to, scientific activities. (p. 33)

The marginalisation of Elizabeth, Justine and even the female Creature represents the exclusion of domestic and human concerns from the scientific process: and, the novel suggests, while such exclusion continues, experiments will ultimately fail.

Most importantly, however, Victor fails as a ‘parent’. The Creature is his ‘child’, and he fails to love and educate it. [9] This betrayal of responsibility is made clear in the Creature’s narrative, which is told to Frankenstein and which lies at the heart of the novel.

The Creature is like a new-born baby when abandoned: completely helpless and ignorant, he is forced to discover his own basic needs and teach himself the skills necessary for his survival. He also learns that his hideous appearance will make him despised and rejected, in spite of his benevolent disposition and longing for human companionship. His isolation from humanity is marked by his namelessness, and by the epithets which dehumanise him: ‘wretch’, ‘daemon’, ‘monster’. However, his narrative reveals his persistent hope that his loving nature might be recognised beneath the horrific exterior, and therefore he attaches himself to the De Lacey family. His breadth of knowledge and his articulacy are explained by this association; he learns to read by overhearing Felix de Lacey’s education of the Arabian Safie and then by finding some books which he tries to decipher. These books are important in understanding the novel. Plutarch’s Lives, Volney’s Ruins of Empire, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Werther and Milton’s Paradise Lost all represent ideas important in Romantic thinking and give the Creature points of reference. Paradise Lost is particularly significant: ‘I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed’ (p. 77–8). His reading registers the terrible recognition that his humanity is unheeded and that, like Milton’s Satan, he is seen as ‘evil’ even though he is also tragically isolated and suffering. His attempts to make himself potentially acceptable to the De Lacey family are to no avail; in fact, they are the catalyst by which his nature turns from love to hate, and this relates the novel to some important theories concerning the formation of human nature in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, three of which seem especially relevant. David Hartley [10] believed that the early experience of the senses shaped human identity; John Locke [11] suggested that humanity was neither naturally good nor evil, but a tabula rasa upon which experience would ‘write’; Jean-Jacques Rousseau [12] put forward the idea of the ‘natural man’ who is constricted and corrupted by society. These ideas are examined via the effect upon the Creature of his treatment by humanity in general and Victor in particular, which constitutes some of the most poignant moments in the novel:

. . . what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant; but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; 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? (p. 93)

Mary Shelley demonstrates that creation does not stop at the moment of ‘life’. Victor manufactures his Creature, but then literally ‘creates’ him as a monster by his rejection. The Creature’s account of his continued attempts to make friendly contact with others, and the hostility with which he is constantly met, thus marks him as a tragic figure whose testimony is deeply moving.

Until this encounter with his creation, Victor’s self-obsession is boundless. His primary concern with his own ambitions is reflected in his irresponsibility. Even he, however, cannot be unmoved by the Creature’s story and agrees to make a female companion for him. None the less, he again abandons his responsibilities to the Creature by refusing to complete the female. He fears creating a monstrous ‘other’ race who might run riot over the earth; yet the Creature gives no indication that he intends to reproduce, and simply speaks of living in isolation with his companion until both should die. Frankenstein’s fear of a ‘multiplication’ of Creatures has, in fact, roots in his own ambitions and his self-obsession: when he first conceives the idea for his experiment, he speaks of the ‘variety of feelings which bore me onwards’:

A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs. (p. 43)

Victor’s ‘variety of feelings’ constitute, in fact, a form of blatant self-aggrandisement, and he presumes, therefore, that his own egotistic desire to create a ‘race’ must be in the Creature’s mind. It is this same self-obsession which encourages him to believe that the Creature’s threat concerning his wedding-night must be directed at him, when the reader guesses that the target is Elizabeth. Having found an outlet for his egotism in the ‘birth’ of the Creature, he perpetuates the suffering he has already caused by assuming the Creature will replicate his ambition.

The destruction of the female Creature is the catalyst for the deaths of Clerval and Elizabeth and the final pursuit across the northern ice. This episode is particularly interesting because it reveals a change in the balance of power between Victor and the Creature. During the latter’s narrative, only his vulnerability and need of Frankenstein were evident: but by the time of this final chase, the Creature dominates the relationship, leading Victor across the wilderness, leaving food, markers and messages for him. This new dynamic also, however, reveals a mutual dependence. The Creature kills Frankenstein’s family, not Victor himself: Frankenstein fails to destroy the Creature: and their deaths occur almost simultaneously, but not at each other’s hands. Families – whether the Frankensteins or the De Laceys – are eliminated until just the two main protagonists remain. Isolated and bound by their obsessive desire for revenge, their interdependence becomes absolute:

The ensuing, confused pursuit binds the two together and tears them apart in a dialectic of desire . . . Excluding all other relations, this polarisation of self and other is so absolute that it can only end in death. [13]

These final scenes also reveal the indissoluble bond of parent and child. The Creature’s lament after Victor’s death is a cry of pain, anguish and desertion, and also of remorse, a feeling that Frankenstein never betrays towards the Creature. Before his death, Victor speaks of ‘another’ who ‘may succeed’ (p. 166) where he has failed; it seems evident that he has learned little from the suffering he has caused. This lack of self-awareness is indicated in his address to the sailors on the ship, whom he describes as faint-hearted for wishing to turn back from the voyage of discovery. His death is followed by the final appearance of the Creature, the product of Frankenstein’s experiments: this juxtaposition of the survival of Frankenstein’s ambition with its progeny maintains the ambiguity towards science that characterises the novel, as the desire for further progression is paralleled by the tragic results of such progression.

The balance of sympathy at the novel’s conclusion is firmly in favour of the Creature, in spite of Walton’s stern reprimand to him: it closes with a reminder of his need, his vulnerability, and his love for Frankenstein. Thus Mary Shelley leaves us with an image of Frankenstein’s scientific ‘success’ but parental failure. Having created life, he failed in the most important part of the creative process, the nurturing and educating of his creation, and the acknowledgement of responsibility for it.

Narrative Form

The form of the novel is epistolary and multi-layered, enclosing narratives within narratives. Its structure is symmetrical: the story begins with Walton, moves to Frankenstein, then to the Creature, then back to Frankenstein and finally to Walton again. This narrative pattern can also be described as triangular: each of the three main characters has important conversations with the two others, and this triangular pattern also marks the exclusion of all other characters from the story.

This choice of narrative form occasions a variety of effects. The different narratives are offered as testimonies: there is no omniscient narrator to comment or to guide understanding. The reader has to absorb the narratives and draw their own conclusions. Secondly, it conceals the author from the reader. Anne Mellor has identified this as evidence of Mary Shelley’s ‘anxiety of authorship’: ‘Mary Shelley doubted the legitimacy of her own literary voice, a doubt that determined her decision to speak through three male narrators’ (1989, p. 53). This suggests that the author could sidestep concerns about her ability – indeed her right – to produce a novel by concealing herself behind a range of narrators, all of whom are members of the sex ‘authorised’ to write and speak. Beth Newman, on the other hand, sees these differing narratives as a deliberate strategy to destabilise the text: each narrator is telling a version of the story, not the version, and the reader is therefore invited to question the accounts offered (p. 169). The narrative form also brilliantly enfolds the concerns of the story. The Creature’s narrative, which is the heart and centre of the text, lies literally at its heart, expressing the key themes of abandonment, responsibility and the effect of environment.

Walton’s role as the primary narrator has several dimensions. He mediates the stories of Victor and the Creature, and, at the beginning of the novel, Shelley also uses him to introduce some of the key themes. Walton is on a voyage of discovery to the North Pole, which he describes as ‘those shores which I so ardently desire to attain’ (p. 19), and his motivation for his ambitions foregrounds that of Victor Frankenstein:

I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. (p. 13)

The nature of Walton’s ambitions is made even clearer when he says, ‘I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path.’ Walton’s yearning for a friend and companion with whom to share his aspirations and ambitions is answered by the finding of Frankenstein. Although their friendship is short-lived, it is marked by Walton’s emphasis on Victor’s ‘benevolence’, ‘sweetness’, and ‘nobility’ (pp. 21 and 23), and this anticipates the description of Victor’s friendship with Clerval. However, Walton is also linked with the Creature: he speaks of his ‘neglected’ education, but that he was ‘passionately fond of reading’ (p. 14), and this foregrounds the Creature’s self-education through reading. His friendship with Victor also parallels the Creature’s desire for a like-minded companion to alleviate his loneliness. This similarity shows the normality of the Creature’s desires and his understandable rage and pain at their denial.

The framing narrative of Walton’s letters allows Mary Shelley to find a reason for the story to be told and to characterise him in a way that prepares us for the appearance of Frankenstein. His function is to suggest themes that become more concrete after the introduction of the main protagonists, and to convey their narratives. His personality is important only in so far as it reveals aspects of Victor or the Creature.

The Ghost-Story Contest

The story of the creation of Frankenstein is almost as well known as the novel itself. It emerged from the notorious ‘ghost-story’ contest involving Mary and Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori at the Villa Diodati in Switzerland in June 1816, described in Polidori’s diary entries for June 1816 and confirmed by Mary Shelley herself in the 1831 Introduction. Byron challenged the group to tell a ghost story for their mutual entertainment. According to Mary Shelley’s account, a conversation between Percy Shelley and Byron concerning the ‘principle of life’ gave rise to the ‘acute mental vision’ (p. 4) from which the novel emerged. Mary Shelley continued to work on the story after returning to England in September 1816, and it was eventually published in 1818. This first edition was accompanied by a Preface written by Percy Shelley in the guise of the author, in which he sought to contextualise some of its ideas. His involvement in the writing of the novel has been a subject of speculation for some critics, including Christopher Small (1972) and James Rieger (1974); Rieger, in particular, suggested that he could almost be described as co-author. This has been refuted by more recent work by Anne Mellor (1989) and Jane Blumberg (1993). Mellor, in particular, has closely researched the alterations made by Percy Shelley to his wife’s manuscript [14] and has concluded that, while Shelley’s influence upon Mary Shelley was immense and while she virtually gave him carte blanche with her text, the changes he made are not necessarily improvements, and that Mary Shelley’s assertion in 1831 that she ‘did not owe the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely of one train of feeling, to my husband’ is justified (p. 5).

The 1831 Introduction which contains this assertion (and which is reproduced elsewhere in this edition) has itself become as much a part of the text as the actual body of the novel. As Fred Botting has observed:

Regularly invoked in critical accounts of Frankenstein, the Introduction is regarded as the place where a single authorial voice becomes identifiable and the text is, at last, provided with a unified meaning. But the Introduction is neither as unified nor as uncomplicated as many readings would have it. (1991, p. 53)

Botting argues that the 1831 Introduction has become an additional text through which any reading of the novel must be mediated because this is where the author ‘speaks’; he suggests that the Introduction is itself a ‘fiction’ which Mary Shelley used as a means of asserting her own ‘authority’. [15] He therefore alerts us to the dangers of accepting the 1831 Introduction as a necessarily ‘truthful’ account either of the writing of the novel or the impulses behind it. Botting’s argument is particularly useful when one considers Mary Shelley’s account of her ‘envisioning’ of the Creature’s revivification: ‘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’ (p. 4). This description, while adding to the fantastical mythology of Frankenstein, manages to detach Mary Shelley from her story. By ascribing its creation to an imaginative impulse over which she had no conscious control, Mary Shelley can offload responsibility: the story becomes, not a deliberate creative act or choice, but the product of an overactive imagination fuelled by German ghost stories and far-fetched scientific ideas. Mary Shelley also uses the Introduction to explicitly reject Frankenstein’s scientific ambitions as ‘supremely frightful’ because they ‘mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world’. Such a gesture to religious belief is not made in the 1818 text or Preface; clearly Mary Shelley saw the 1831 Introduction as a way to frame and explain, and also perhaps to exonerate, her ‘hideous phantom’ (p. 4). This supports the argument that Mary Shelley sought, in 1831, to make her novel acceptable to what she perceived as a more conservative readership (see A Note on the Text elsewhere in this edition).

Frankenstein and Revolution

Frankenstein has a significant relationship to revolutionary political ideas of the time, particularly the Revolution in France and subsequent conflict in Britain and Europe. The French Revolution produced considerable anxiety in England about the possibility of parallel uprisings, which translated into a paranoia about the ‘masses’ that characterised them as fearful and ‘monstrous’. However, although Frankenstein engages with a range of radical ideas and philosophies, it has an ambiguous attitude towards the idea of revolution.

Jane Blumberg notes that the fact that Paradise Lost with its anti-authoritarian themes has such an important role in the text, implies support for revolutionary activity (p. 43); the novel’s use of the myth of Prometheus as an analogy for Victor Frankenstein also supports an ‘anti-authoritarian’ reading, as both versions of the Prometheus story – Prometheus plasticator and Prometheus pyrphorus – narrate a challenge to the gods for the right to create. [16] Mary Shelley’s deliberate invocation of this in her subtitle, ‘The Modern Prometheus’, suggests not only awareness of the rebellious elements of her story but a desire to draw them to the attention of the reader. However, during the nineteenth century, it was the Creature, rather than Frankenstein, who became a metaphor for hostility to the authority of Church and State, as the following quotation from an 1830 edition of Fraser’s Magazine illustrates:

A State without religion is like a human body without a soul, or rather like a human body of the species of the Frankenstein Monster, without a pure and vivifying principle. [17]

Although this comment misreads the novel in its perception of the Creature as soulless and thus inhuman, it reveals the anxiety about potential revolution that gripped the British establishment at this time, and suggests that Frankenstein had somehow become identified with this; Maurice Hindle points out that ‘the ‘Frankenstein Monster’ image was appropriated repeatedly to signal the threat ‘revolting mobs’ posed to an increasingly affluent bourgeois class’ (p. xl). Even fifty years after the novel’s first publication, Punch printed an illustration called ‘The Brummagem Frankenstein’, which was a response to agitation for the Second Reform Bill of 1867 and portrayed the worker as an oversized ‘monster’ waiting to be given the franchise; while, in 1882, Irish nationalist leader Charles Stewart Parnell was portrayed as ‘The Irish Frankenstein’ in another Punch cartoon. [18] The novel was also used as a metaphor for insurrection in nineteenth-century fiction: Elizabeth Gaskell, for example, refers to the ‘powerful monster’ of working-class agitation in Mary Barton (1848). [19] However, the destruction of both Victor and the Creature implies that this anti-authoritarian position is doomed to failure. Victor’s challenge to the gods is punished, and his ‘revolutionary’ project of determining the secret of life ultimately fails. The Creature,

Reviews for Frankenstein

[moniquesnyman-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A classic isn't a called a classic because it's a run-of-the-mill type of book. It's a groundbreaking novel/movie/song that inspires people and stays with you forever, and it's likely that it won't be topped in one, two or sometimes three generations. A classic is a classic because it's unique, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is definitely a classic. The prose is beautiful, the story is gripping and the book itself is absolutely breathtaking. As far as horror is concerned, this is one of those must-have classics that you can revisit every couple of years.

But we all know the story about Frankenstein and the monster he creates out of body parts. We all know who Igor is and what happens in the end, I mean, if you haven't read the book then you've probably watched one of the movies, right? So, instead of going on and on about the plot we all know about, I'm going to talk about the beautiful book. Seriously, this is one super pretty book. It's in Penguin Books' horror series, recently brought out for horror fans that includes five other fantastic titles (American Supernatural Tales was one of them). This is one pretty edition for one creepy tale ... in other words, you'll freaking love it if you have a thing for horror books. Also, I'm pretty sure it'll be a collectors edition in the not-so-distant future.

If that doesn't appeal to you, and you need a little something extra, rest assured that I can sweeten the pot for those folks on the edge. Guillermo Del Toro is the series' editor and there's a nice little introduction by him. Yes, he's not all movies all the time, sometimes this horror director makes time for books too!

So, yes it's pretty, yes it's a great edition and yes, the editing is great. As far as I'm concerned you can donate your other editions of Frankenstein to the less fortunate, because this one just looks so much better on a bookshelf.

[aseikonia · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the second or third time I've read this and it's just as marvelous as before. A tale within a tale within a tale by a literary mastermind at the height of her genius.

[cindywho-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is another one I'd just never gotten around to reading. The story is far from what popular culture has made of it (I confess I was most familiar with the Young Frankenstein version) The monster is much more vocal and interesting. Victor is kind of a weenie and it's all a bit overwrought. I listened to the audiobook from the classic tales podcast and the narrator was pretty good, obviously enjoying all the "begone!s" and "wretchs"

[dalepeters_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Disappointing, especially for such a highly regarded "classic". 5% action, 95% describing how everyone *feels* about what just happened.

[reading_fox · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Seminal fantasy work, one of the early defining books of fantasy genre. Shame it isn't more readable though I suspect that's just my more modern tastes.

[ladypembroke · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have thought, but this being a classic piece of literature, I'm not going to write them down for posterity. That never served me well in lit classes, and I don't foresee it going well on the internet.

[deusxmachina-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I love this book so much more than any of the movie adaptations I've ever seen (actually, for anyone seeking horror and thrill in a story, this may be a huge disappointment), but in comparison to other novels of that genre and time period it's far from being flawless.I love the ideas in this story - the idea that one has to take responsibility for their creations, the idea that a being can be as gentle and good as a lamb, it will inevitably become a monster if it experiences nothing but rejection, the idea that just because something is scientifically possible doesn't mean that it should be done. Despite all the Romantic dressing up in this novel that makes it very clearly a product of its age, these premises are still modern and relevant.My gripe is with the characters. I'm aware that this is probably the 21st century reader in me, but - gods almighty, that Victor is a pathetic, self-absorbed piece of selfpity, full of "woe is me", much more fixated on his own emotions and tragic history than on the danger he has released carelessly on the world and without much reflection about his own role in this disaster. All his relationships seem shallow and superficial, and the only woman with a meaningful role in the story gets classically fridged to give him the final push.One day I'll have to read an adaptation from the wretch's point of view. His actions, reactions and justifications seem so much more interesting than Victor's.

[mdabril · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Frankenstein is one of my all-time favorite books, but it's important to understand why people like my enjoy it. If you haven't read the book, it may not be what you think.I love Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. To be clear, she is not the best author ever. Some aspects of her writing are a little juvenile and at times ever downright boring. Even though she herself was a woman, her female characters tend to be somewhat shallow and idealistic. Nevertheless, Shelley has a unique and gifted mind that is almost even prophetic in character. Her novel "The Last Man," for example, is one of the first to imagine the extinction of the human race, which is now a real possibility and an important area of thought. Similarly, Frankenstein is not altogether novel, since it builds heavily on earlier Romantic language, concepts, and images especially from Goethe and Mary's husband Percy Shelley. Nevertheless, she outdoes them by imagining in a prophetic way what the technological creation of new life could mean for the human person.With this in mind, let's be clear that Frankenstein is NOT a scary book, NOT about some dim-witted or pathetic monster, and NOT a source of cheap chills and thrills. It is first and foremost about the scientist who creates the monster. He does so out of a genius that unites both modern science and premodern thinking. Specifically how he makes the monster is beside the point; Shelley is secretive on this matter so that we do not get lost. It is not evident, for example, that he makes it from corpses; he uses corpses for study, but he seems to fashion the monster directly.The principle point of the book, therefore, is the emotion of Frankenstein as he comes to terms with his own creation. That which he fashioned to be beautiful, wonderful, superior to humanity turns out in fact to be hideous, ugly, and terrifying. The monster is superior to his maker in intelligence and power but not morality, and this forces Frankenstein to face his own unworthiness as a creator.Thus while Frankenstein the book is born out of Romantic ideas about the genius, the excellence of humanity, and the transcendence of the Promethean man--the one who dares to challenge the gods by taking upon himself the act of creation--it also profoundly serves as a counterpoint to the same Romantic spirit. This new Prometheus turns out to be a mere, weak man, who cannot quite come to terms with what he has created. Thus like her book "The Last Man," Shelley poses a vital question: Is humanity really still the gem of creation, or will the transcending force of nature ultimately leave us behind in the dust from whence we came?Frankenstein is thus a book that every reader of English should engage at some time. It would help, however, to have some familiarity with Romanticism (see an encyclopedia) and to spend some time reading some poems by other Romantic writers such as Percy Shelley. A brief look into Mary Wollstonecraft's Shelley biography might help as well, since I would argue that she is deeply shaped by the continual tragedies of her life, including the loss of her mother at an early age and a complex relationship with her father.

[jalenv_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

My sympathies are with the monster. Victor von Frankenstein was a responsibility-avoiding, self-absorbed jerk!

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As an eight year old child, I found myself in love with horror films. It was a Scholastic Press survey of horror cinema for children which appeared to crystallize this fascination. It was terrible time for a kid. We had moved twice in four years and my mom had left. My dad was traveling for work and a series of housekeepers and sitters were keeping the home fires burning. It is no surprise that I was reading all the time and staying up too late watching inappropriate films on television. That said, I was never drawn to Frankenstein.

The father of some neighborhood friends used to proclaim the superiority of all the Universal films, especially to the hyper-gore films of the late 70s. I could agree with Bela Lugosi or Claude Rains (as the Invisible Man) but I wasn't moved by Lon Cheney Jr's Wolf Man or the lump of clay which was Frankenstein's monster. It remains elusive to distinguish.

It was with muted hopes that I finally read Frankenstein this past week. I was pleasantly surprised by the rigid plot which slowly shifts, allowing the Madness of the Fallen to Reap Vengeance on the Creator (and vice versa). Sure, it is laden with symbols and encoded thoughts on Reason, Science and Class. Frankenstein remains an engaging novel by a teenager, one doomed by fate. It is prescient and foreboding. Highly recommended.

[ladycalamity · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing book. It's so much more than I thought it would be. Very interesting!

[kellyholmes-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A chilling tale! I read this in high school, which was a while ago, but even thinking about it now gives me the creeps.

[maddi-815887 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's a wonderful, intense and superbly written novel.Don't be afraid to read it even if you don't like the genre.

[maryh10000 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Considered by many to be the first science fiction novel.

[faith_murri · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.
I have to admit, I was somewhat weary of this book. Despite its short page count, it is very wordy and has long, large paragraphs, and that made the prospect of reading this rather daunting. However, I swallowed my pride and did it, and was greatly rewarded.

I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.
Frankenstein and his creature are both so interesting and complex; they're also both so pitiful. So much of their anguish and sorrow could have been avoided if not for human pride. They are both agents of horror and destruction in both action and inaction, and that made for a really interesting story.

Besides that, it's extremely quotable.

Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.
I was amazed at how Hollywood has continuously gotten the story wrong, so much so that this book felt entirely unique and the twists were effective. I don't know whether I should scorn or love Hollywood for their utter failure to accurately adapt this book into a faithful film. On one hand, this book deserves a great movie. On the other, the plot integrity of a very old book was maintained. The television show Penny Dreadful had a Frankenstein story line that was remarkably close to the source material considering, and the few big changes it made were justified in the larger story.

I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.
The themes in this were amazing! I love complex characters and dark, ambiguous morality in my literature. To be completely honest, I sympathized with Frankenstein way more than the monster, which I hadn't thought I would going into it. I loved both characters though.

Overall, it's a great book with an awesome story, and everyone should read it.

[drardavis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Despite its 19th century style and vocabulary this story still horrifies, partly because the gruesome details are left to the imagination. Victor Frankenstein does not reveal how he reanimates the creature. Stephen King would have spent several bloody chapters arranging the guts and brains and eyeballs. The motion picture image of the creature is only supported by Shelley’s description of the watery yellow eyes and the straight black lips. The pearly white teeth, lustrous flowing black hair, limbs in proportion, and beautiful features give a more godlike aspect to the monster. The violence is barely described. A dead body with finger prints on its throat. An execution. Some screams and sticks and stones to drive the creature out of a cottage. Even the death of Victor’s fiancee is but a muffled scream in a distant bedroom and a body on the bed. The true horror is symbolic, mythical, ethical, and metaphysical. Mary Shelley describes the consequences of hubris in prose while her husband gives a similar image poetically in Ozymandias. “Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”

[solitaryfossil · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Why did I wait so long to read this? An excellent novel and highly recommended. Wonderful.

[squeakychu · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's taken me 70 years to read this classic. Ironically enough, I started reading it because I was reading a children's version of this book to my four-year-old grandson, and I did not want his book to put spoilers into my own classic story which I started reading simultaneously.Wow! What a novel! I never knew the "real" story of Frankenstein, nor did I know that Frankenstein was the name of the doctor who created the monster rather than the monster himself.This novel was written in 1818 by a nineteen-year-old. Another "Wow!" needs to be inserted here. The story is magnificently written. I never much in the past liked to read nineteenth-century novels, but I did learn to appreciate them more with tutored reads of selected older novels provided so kindly to me by a fellow member of LibraryThing. What I learned to do with those novels was to take notes on the story, the characters, and keep a running vocabulary. This bailed me out quite a few times during the reading of this novel as I simply cannot keep all this information in my head.What I found exceptional in this novel was the dense storyline which in some places was truly beautiful despite the grim nature of the story. This was a book about friendship (or the lack thereof) and of courage (in many different forms).I especially liked this quote from late in the story:Even where the affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.Although people associate [Frankenstein] with horror, I will only now associate that word and the novel with sadness. It is a sad world in which we live in where some of us judge others by appearance rather than by inner motive. This novel only serves to accentuate that kind of sadness (and wrongness) and puts the face of a monster we call "Frankenstein" to that kind of sentiment.

[ansate · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

probably a 3 for pure enjoyment, but the meta fascination of how it has fit into our culture and shaped our storytelling is a huge bonus.plus she was like 18 when she wrote things because they were bored at a house party.

[caterpillarqueenie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It was good:)

[aelizabethj · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Halloween re-read. Pure love.

[csweder · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A classic.

[wndy2011 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not at all what I was expecting. Have seen many movie adaptations and the book is far better. Loved it.

[rontyler-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Why did I wait so long to read this? An excellent novel and highly recommended. Wonderful.

[jadedog13 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the first time I read the classic Frankenstein. I've seen movies and read variations. They always make the monster seem so relatable. However, after reading the original story, I find the monster to be malevolent and detestable. It wasn't his fault that Victor gave him life and made him hideous. I understand him being angry and lonely and lost. I get that he is looking for someone to understand him and accept him for who he is. And I get that he blames Victor, with good cause. But he kills innocents. I enjoyed the story and felt awful for Victor. He made a huge mistake and he paid dearly for it.

[lord_boris-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Much better plot than the movies. Monster created by the meddling hands of man (the modern Prometheus of the subtitle) yet made evil by man's lack of compassion. Victor spends years studying how to create life and when he does so he immediately runs away. He is not the most robust of men. He swoons, holidays for months and runs away throughout the book. Frankenstein is a bit of an idiot really and his creation has more substance. The conversations between the two were highlights.

At times it was slightly surreal (aside from the basic plot). The monster stalking Victor like his nemesis all over Europe and indeed to the Arctic. When he appears suddenly on a remote Orkney island where Victor is trying to create a female version for the monster was almost farcical. I was almost laughing out loud at this point.

I enjoyed this but the style was a bit flowery and bloated and some perseverance is required. Worth it though.

[britt84 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A true classic that can be read over and over and never gets boring.I really love Shelley's descriptive style and her philosophical approach to the topic. Instead of just writing a simple horror story, the story goes much deeper than that and shows a sensitivity that is usually lacking in stories about monsters. We get to know the 'monster' as a sensitive being that feels mistreated by the world and abandoned by his creator, and feels forced into gruesome deeds. Frankenstein is a selfish person that is unwilling to bear the consequences of his actions, until these consequences - literally - hunt him down.A novel that teaches us to have sympathy with the monsters and be accepting of creatures that are different from ourselves. At the same time, a commentary on the progress of science, and the selfishness of the masters in our society. Truly a novel that can be read in many different ways and is able to give you something to think about.

[elizajane_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reason for Reading: I intend to read the upcoming non-fiction title "The Lady and Her Monsters" which is about the writing and background of the creation of the novel "Frankenstein" so I thought it would be best if I re-read the book to better appreciate the former.I am a huge Frankenstein fan! I first watched the Boris Karloff movie as a young child and have since seen it dozens of times. I've seen all the MGM sequels and have a deluxe DVD edition with commentaries, etc. I've also seen many, many different remakes, pastiches and parodies of the movie as well as reading Frankenstein themed retellings, comics and pastiches. I have read this, the original book, once before when I was quite young. It was one of the first books I took out of the library when I obtained an adult library card with special permission of my father at 12 or 13. (You had to be 14, or in highschool, to get one at the time). Needless to say at this point in time 30 years later, the movie version, specifically the James Whale (Boris Karloff) version is the one that I think of when I think of the Frankenstein story.When I went into reading this book I knew that it was a totally different story than what my mind recalls from the movies but I also remembered that it started in the Arctic with the monster relating his story to Frankenstein. So from this I was totally blown away with how incredibly different the actual story is to the conceived modern notion of the tale. The book is told in narrative form from three different points of view and is a story within a story within a story. Starting off with a mariner writing home letters to his sister as he starts an Arctic expedition and then becomes stuck in ice he recounts his tale and his meeting of Victor Frankenstein who stumbles upon them near death in his mad chase of his creature. Then Walton, the mariner, recounts the tale that Frankenstein relates to him of his life. The awful, hideous story of his wretched life. Halfway through this recounting Frankenstein stops to relate the story the creature pauses to tell him of his life story since he woke from the "spark of life" and wandered into the world on his own. Then it goes back to Frankenstein's narrative and finally ends again with Walton's letters. This way we get both Frankenstein and the creature's tales from their own mouths, in their own words as they were related to the person they spoke to. Neither Frankenstein or the creature are sympathetic which I found surprising, as in the movie I am deeply sympathetic to Karloff's monster. But in the novel, he is a vile, wicked, murdering beast who at first thinks he has human compassion but quickly is turned from having any and easily finds violence and revenge better to his suiting when he is not treated fairly by others. Frankenstein himself is simply mad, the quintessential mad scientist. Obsessed with his creation he thinks of nothing else, working in solitude day and night until he completes his reanimation of life. Upon first glimpse of this "life" he is so horrified that he runs from it and from this point on he becomes obsessed with finding it and destroying it, however the monster has developed his own lust for destroying Frankenstein and sets out to destroy him also, not bodily but in mind and soul by killing all who mean anything to him.A frightening tale that shows the futility and madness at playing God with science, even though the book mentions very little about religion. This edition I read from "The Whole Story" edition is a wonderful annotated edition which really brings the classics to life. The annotations don't particularly help explain the story any better, though there are some pictures and definitions of some items and devices one may not be familiar with. The main purpose of these annotations is to set one geographically and historically within the place and era that the book was written. Profusely illustrated with etchings and paintings of place names mentioned in the story one becomes immersed in the scenery and in this book particularly the Gothic feel comes to life. Historically we see the prisons of the time period, meet the Romantic poets and artists who shaped the life of the author and the mood which carried over into this novel. I really enjoy and recommend this edition, have several others in the series and would pick up any others I found, but unfortunately they are out of print at this time.

[tanya8dogearedcopy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

For those who have not read the novel and only been subjected to film versions, it's "nothing" like the movies. The doctor, not the monster, is named Frankenstein and, the monster fully develops as a sentient being, not as a green, square-headed zombie with bolts stuck in the side of his head! The story is heavily influenced by Milton's Paradise Lost and some radical social theory at the time, something along the lines that a man's nature is most profoundly influenced in reaction to his societal upbringing, an earlier version of "it takes a village."

Frankenstein is a book that definitely bears rereading. There are multiple layers and approaches to take to the story: literally, emotionally, philosophically and metaphorically. On the basic linear narrative level, it is the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young ambitious man who leaves home and pursues his studies in Ingolstadt, Germany. His interests lie in the life sciences and his passion leads him to the secret of reanimating dead flesh into a living, sentient being. Mary Shelley, pulls the reader into the pathos and angst of both Frankenstein and his unnamed creature by creating pathos- and angst-ridden first person narratives into the story for both characters. Philosophically, there's plenty of material to vet: theism, existentialism, free will, fate vs destiny, Nature vs Nurture... The author makes several allusions to Milton's Paradise Lost; but comparisons to Dante's Inferno from The Divine Comedy are equally obvious and relevant. Milton's and Dante's works deal with the fall from divine grace and the soul's state of disgrace and, like Milton's and Dante's works, the listener cannot help but wonder if the story of Frankenstein is also a reflection of an interior journey.

Simon Vance narrates the Tantor edition of Frankenstein. HIs consummate skill with character-work comes to the fore and, bears an uncanny resemblance to his voices for The Millennuim Trilogy :-)

Redacted from the original blog review at dog eared copy, Frankenstein; 11/04/2011

[vikkilaw · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

SPOILER ALERT:


Did anyone else find Dr. Frankenstein a hand-wringing, whiney annoying little baby?