January 1, 2013
I will admit that I was a little hesitant to start this particular book. This is another one of those that has been sitting on my shelf for more than 2 years (in fact, it is the last one that I've completed...a library trip will be in order when I get off of work tomorrow). I tried to read it the summer after I graduated from college, but I found the beginning to be boring. I'll admit, I probably would have become just as frustrated with the beginning of Great Expectations if I'd started reading it at that time. It's the same reason why it took me a while to get into Jane Austen. Those 19th century writers (and not just the British ones, Nathaniel Hawthorne) could be really long-winded. They didn't seem to understand the concept of a "run-on sentence." I put the book aside, justifying it by telling myself that it wouldn't really be one that I could use in any of the classes that I was teaching, so why should I waste my time on it?
I found the going much easier this time around. Maybe because I've read more literature from that time period since I first tried to read it? Maybe because my goal in reading it was different? Whatever the case, I still found some parts of Frankenstein to be boring, particularly when the main title character was waxing philosophical, or was all "woe-is-me" (which is basically the vast majority of the novel). But in this review, I'm going to focus on how the story in this novel, which is hailed as being a pioneering novel in the genres of horror and science fiction, is very different from the images of Frankenstein and his monster that are so prevalent in popular culture.
So first off, Victor is usually depicted as being a mad scientist, with crazy hair and a laboratory with a high tower, and Igor his assistant, and the whole shouting of "it's alive!"...yeah, none of that is in this book. Victor is actually a pretty young guy throughout, creating the monster when he is a student in Germany (he is Swiss by birth). He comes from a nice family: his father, an older, wealthy gentleman, had been his mother's guardian before they had married. Victor grew up traveling with his philanthropist parents, and when he was still a little kid, they adopted a girl named Elizabeth, who would later be Victor's wife. He also has two younger brothers. His parents are supportive of him going to school to study science, which has fascinated him all of his life. His chosen academic field is called "natural philosophy," but I guess the modern equivalent of that would be biology.
Anyway, Victor is ambitious and curious. He spends a lot of time studying corpses in tombs and cemeteries, which does seem really crazy, but he justifies this by explaining that he was never superstitious, and his curiosity about anatomy overpowered any fears. I guess that makes sense. But then, he claims that he discovers how life is created, or something like that.
In popular culture, the creation of the monster is understood like this: he was made of gathered body parts, and was zapped to life by a lightning bolt. Or something like that. But in the book, the details of how the monster is created are very vague. I mean, obviously Shelley didn't really know how to create something and bring it to life, because at that time such a concept was purely fiction. But the narrator, as he explains his story to a ship captain who took him on board and saved his life, says that he will not explain how he did it, because he doesn't want anyone to duplicate his work. The terrible results make this reasoning pretty obvious.
So the monster comes to life, and Victor is so scared by it, because it's ugly and huge. But he'd wanted to make it large! And the fact that it was ugly, well...as I said, the author doesn't explain what the thing was made out of, but it's assumed that he was assembled using body parts. Victor faints, the monster flees...but of course, that's not the end of it.
Now, the monster itself is popularly depicted in this way: huge, green-skinned, with short black hair and a weirdly box-shaped head. Not so in the book: he is huge, definitely, but his skin is described as being more like a mummy's, and his hair is long and tangled, and he has glowing eyes. The monster is also depicted as being inarticulate, communicating with grunts and unintelligible cries of rage. But the monster in the novel is quite eloquent, having learned French while hiding in a hovel next to the cabin of some poor peasants.
The monster wanted to find love, and to find a purpose for living. When he is rejected by others and forced to hide, he becomes resentful of people. He finds where Victor came from, and murders his creator's little brother, resulting in the hanging of an innocent servant girl in the Frankenstein home. Victor comes home to this desolation, and though he knows the truth, he is unable to explain it to anyone because...well, who would believe him?
The bride of Frankenstein (or rather, his monster) is another popular image. The idea of her existed in the book: the monster confronts Victor and tells him to make him a wife, or the deaths will continue. Victor wimps out in this endeavor, and the monster is true to his word, killing Victor's best friend, his bride on their wedding night, and Victor's father dies of a broken heart. Victor dedicates the rest of his life to bringing down his monster, and that's how he's found by the ship captain, far north of civilization, literally chasing the monster to the ends of the earth.
I think that Shelley meant for both the monster and Victor to be pitiable creatures. But, as I found Pip in Great Expectations, I thought that Victor was a wimp. I mean, if he'd had the balls to handle what he'd created in the first place, things might have ended happily for everyone: the monster would have been accepted by at least the person who created him, and nobody would have had to die. And Victor was always falling ill whenever he was depressed: the guy spent more time laying around moping than actually doing anything. I am always surprised, in novels written during or about this time period, how much leisure time people of even moderate wealth were afforded. When Victor was actually determined to create the monster a bride (thus halting the violence that had already started), he traveled to England to gain the expertise necessary to do this (why, though?). Yet he and his friend (who was killed on this trip) spent time touring England, visiting friends...for months they did this! Must be nice!
Now, I actually did feel badly for the monster. As he himself said, in the beginning, all he wanted was to be accepted by someone, to have some connection to the world that he'd been brought into. In the end, he survived his creator, but he swore to go to the North Pole and burn himself to death, eliminating any trace of his ghastly, unnatural form. You know, as I was reading the monster's part of the story, I found myself remembering the adaptation of this book that was done for the show Wishbone. Ah, Wishbone, that well-read little dog. If you're not familiar with the show: this little dog is dressed up and reenacts famous stories, while there's a somewhat related plot going on involving his pre-teen owner or something. I thought of that episode, which I vaguely remembered, but I do remember feeling bad for the monster in that, too. I'll have to find that video on the Internet somewhere (I'm sure it won't be a hard, a lot of people liked that show and I'm sure someone's put it up on YouTube or something) and watch it again, and see how they depicted the monster on the show.
Anyway, I'm glad that I finally read this book. Through my graduate courses, but also through my little endeavor here, I'm discovering that people are always growing and changing as readers...as long as they continue to read. The fact that I read this book which once intimidated me makes me even more excited for what I'll read next. I have no idea what it will be, but I'm going to comb over my (still very long) list and find what titles they'd have available at the small library at the mall (the old library was destroyed in a flood four and a half years ago; the new library is going to be finished soon, I guess). My goal is to have at least one more book finished before my spring semester begins.
(on the left): Wishbone! I don't know who he's supposed to be in this picture. But wasn't he adorable? I'm not about dressing up my dog or anything, but Wishbone really rocked those 19th century duds.
(on the left): A popular (and inaccurate) depiction of Victor Frankenstein and his monster.
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