Book review: Frankenstein

Hello readers! As mentioned in the previous post, this week my work dragged me away from the dreary confines of northern England – and what with all the travelling, I managed to get a bit of reading done. I read something that had been on my hit list for a while: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published in 1818.

So, why Frankenstein? Before last week I knew almost nothing about it. However, the book is renowned for being groundbreaking, standing out from most literature at the time by exploring philosophical themes in a brand new context. I had little idea what these themes might be, but there were two key points that piqued my interest. Firstly, Frankenstein is often considered to be the first science fiction novel, and secondly, it was written by Mary Shelley.

Historical context

At first, I wasn’t sure how Frankenstein could be a science fiction novel. Horror, sure – but science? Even after reading it, I’m not sure it fits the modern definition of the genre. However, it was the first book to utilise the “mad scientist” character, now ubiquitous in science fiction. We all know the type: a single-minded genius, slightly unstable, who uses technology to create man-made horrors beyond our comprehension, before facing the spiralling consequences. This sort of hubris is a recurring theme in sci-fi – and always will be, until some single-minded, slightly unstable genius accidentally creates something that plunges us all back into the dark ages.

Author context

Now, a little bit about Mary Shelley. She started writing this book at the age of 18, and published it when she was 20 – which is an amazing achievement for her, and a depressing comparison for the rest of us. It’s an incredible feat, especially at a time when women were seen as intellectually inferior. The impact of her story on society has been huge, and I’m surprised and saddened that I knew so little about her. Why did I spend a year of my English GCSE studying The Woman in Black when Frankenstein was available? I feel robbed. Susan Hill probably feels the opposite.

Mary Shelley was the daughter of two other writers, both of whom were very progressive for the time: the philosopher William Godwin, and the women’s rights activist Mary Wollstonecraft (who published some controversial stuff: namely, that women were not naturally inferior to men, and only appeared to be due to a lack of education). However, Mary Wollstonecraft died after complications from childbirth, and so Mary Shelley never knew her mother. Still, she grew up with more education than most girls, in a house with radical political ideas.

When she was 16, she fell in love with the poet Percy Shelley, who was 21 at the time and already married. They eloped to France, where Mary had an illegitimate child with him. Weirdly, they took Mary’s stepsister with them, and weirdlier still, it seems that she and Percy were also lovers – which Mary wasn’t too happy about. All three supposedly believed that marriage and monogamy were just tools to control women, but it sounds like things were maybe a little bit strained.

Unfortunately, Mary Shelley’s woes didn’t end there. She lost three children, and although she eventually married Percy, he still had relations with plenty of other women. However, she loved him until the end, and was distraught when he died in a tragic yachting accident aged 29. A true poet’s death.

Warning: three paragraphs of spoilers.

The story of Frankenstein begins with a series of letters written by the captain of a ship in the Arctic Circle. Confused? I was. It turns out that Frankenstein is a framed narrative: we’re hearing the story from a captain, who relays the story from Victor Frankenstein, the scientist who created the monster.

In brief: Victor grows up in Switzerland, and as a child becomes obsessed with alchemy, wanting to discover ways to elude death and cure disease. We are introduced to his family: his doting parents, younger brothers, adopted sister Elizabeth, and his best friend Clerval. The happiness is not to last: his mother is the first fatality, dying of scarlet fever, and after this he goes to university in Germany, where he works through his grief and becomes a talented scientist (not yet mad). Somehow, he discovers a way to bring dead matter to life, and instead of returning home, he engrosses himself in constructing a living humanoid (madness unlocked). He becomes a shell of his former self, losing contact with his family (definitely mad by this point), and though he tries to make the creature beautiful, when he finally brings it to life, he is so repulsed that he flees (not just mad, but stupid too).

Obviously, the creature escapes, and the rest of the story follows Victor’s slow and painful downfall, as the creature seeks revenge on its creator. It kills his little brother, his brother’s nanny, his best friend, his adopted sister/wife (just go with it), then his father. Basically, nobody survives. Even Victor dies at the end, killed by hypothermia having chased the creature to the Arctic. The story ends with the captain seeing the creature drifting away on the ice.

Worth reading?

I won’t go on about the deficiencies of the book, because these are mostly a result of its age. The pacing is a little off sometimes, and exposition often arrives like an avalanche, but the main reason to read this book is for its ideas, in order to ponder them both in the context of their own time and of the present. In this regard, Frankenstein very much stands out. If you have four hours to spare, and you’re comfortable with 19th century fiction, I’d recommend giving it a read.

The most striking aspect of the book is that it isn’t really a horror story – at least not in the way that the film adaptations might make you believe. The narrative is driven by the moral quandaries faced by Victor, told to us in the first person, as a stream of consciousness pouring across the page. Certainly, many elements are horrifying, even for our 21st century desensitised brains, but it isn’t particularly suspenseful or gory. The novel leans heavily into motives and character; in fact, the middle of the novel is an account from the creature itself.

Despite knowing nothing about the book before going in, I was still surprised that the creature could talk. It learns language and emotion by watching a family, while hiding in their barn. Although it has the capacity for love, it grows angry when it realises it will always be shunned for its appearance, and so it swears to seek revenge on Victor. These emotional responses are just as relevant now as they have ever been – and I can well imagine the same narrative being written for a robot or an AI instead. In this sense, Frankenstein is very much the first ever science fiction story, warning about humans playing god.

Quirky oddities worth a mention

The monster isn’t green. It doesn’t have stitches or bolts coming out of it. Instead, it has pale eyes, pointed teeth and yellow skin which barely conceals the organs beneath – all of which sounds a lot more scary.

Everyone speaks French. Including the monster. Not sure why this is funny to me, but it is.

The plot travels to lots of places, and you get the feeling that Mary Shelley just wanted to describe her favourite holidays. The first time that the creature speaks to Victor is on a glacier near Chamonix, in the Alps, which happens to be somewhere I’ve actually been. Sorry for the photo quality, but this was taken a few years ago now. Also, I imagine the glacier was a lot bigger when Mary Shelley visited in the 1800s:

Victor ends up doing a tour of the British Isles, including a trip to the Lake District (the favourite haunt of romantic poets). He eventually stations himself in a hut on the Hebrides, where the monster finally catches up with him. Then, by some crazy luck, Victor falls asleep in a boat and ends up in Ireland without mishap. This is somehow less believable than him creating life from dead organs.

If you ask me, Victor makes some very questionable decisions (and yes, I understand that this is the point of the book). For example, after bringing the creature to life, he manages to fall asleep, and then to go out for a walk, all while fretting over the morality of what he has done, rather than fretting over the fact that he left the room unlocked. He has numerous mental breakdowns that leave him bedridden for months – and I might just be heartless, but rather than feeling any sympathy, I’m astounded at how useless he is. He does an awful lot of fainting. And he never asks anyone for help. A lot of the disaster could have been avoided if only he had talked things through with someone.

Victor marries his sister. It’s a bit weird. She’s adopted when they’re both under the age of five, and even though they are brought up as siblings, their parents admit that they always intended for the two to marry. Also, this marriage comes out of the blue: one minute, Victor is calling Elizabeth his sister, and the next, he has decided to marry her to make their father happy. It certainly isn’t romantic, which feels odd coming from the lover of a romantic poet. Still, it was the 1800s.

Final comments 

To my surprise, we never find out how Victor brings the creature to life. My preconceptions were that the monster was made in a lab with electricity – but Mary Shelley didn’t bother with any of that. Victor builds the creature on the floor of his apartment, and refuses to explain how he did it, in case someone else learns the secret and makes the same mistakes.

This fact alone makes me question whether Frankenstein is really science fiction, because the animation of the creature verges on magic. These days, the science in science fiction has to be believable, with roots in our current understanding, even if it describes technology at the edge of our wildest imaginations. However, Mary Shelley made no attempt to explain how the creature came alive. So, perhaps the book isn’t warning about the dangers of technology and the arrogance of man after all? Perhaps the lack of actual science makes it more of a general commentary on the creation of life, the responsibilities of parenthood, or the way that none of us had any control over when we were brought into existence, or by whom. It’s certainly a lot to think about.

Finally, it is worth noting that the full title to this book is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. I wonder what Mary Shelley would have thought about the actual modern Prometheus – that is to say, the film made by Ridley Scott. Would she have disliked it as much as I did? I hope so. I bet she could have written a scorchingly scathing review.