Frankenstein: Mary Shelley’s 1818 Classic of a Creator, His Creature and the Fear of Life and Death
Frankenstein is an old classic about a scientist who creates a monster and the horrible events he unwittingly sets in motion. In it, Mary Shelley poured out all her fears and anxieties about life and death. It is hard to believe that it sprang from the imagination of a young woman who was only eighteen when she began it and twenty when it was published in 1818.
Author: Mary Shelley (1797–1851)
Title: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
Format: English paperback (Penguin Classics), the 1818 text, 289 pages
Scope: Gothic novel often called the first science fiction novel
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0143131842 (ASIN 0143131842)
Victor Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein is a hard-working young university student who discovers how to give life to a lifeless body, and uses his knowledge to create a man-monster. He believes his discovery will lead to further scientific advances, but when he succeeds in bringing his creation to life, he is filled with loathing.
The Creature’s Side
Although Frankenstein sees his creature as a brutal demon, the book lets readers see events from the creature’s point of view. The story the creature tells sympathises with his loneliness, while it portrays Victor Frankenstein as arrogant. In the end, it is Frankenstein who must answer for the monstrous acts committed by his creation.
A Summer at Lake Geneva
The novel was born in the summer of 1816, the so-called "year without a summer", when a huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia the year before had left Europe cold and stormy. Mary Godwin, eighteen years old, was staying near Lake Geneva with Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom she later married. Trapped indoors at the Villa Diodati with Lord Byron and his doctor, John Polidori, they read ghost stories, and Byron proposed that each of them write one. Mary’s idea, which she later said came to her in a waking dream, became Frankenstein; Polidori’s became The Vampyre.
Science and Ambition
Mary Shelley grew up among radical thinkers: her father was the philosopher William Godwin, and her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, died days after her birth. She was fascinated by the science of her time, especially experiments with electricity on animal and even human bodies, known as galvanism, which seemed to suggest that life itself might be produced in a laboratory. Victor’s ambition reflects that excitement, and the novel’s subtitle, The Modern Prometheus, links him to the Titan who stole fire from the gods and was punished for it.
The Creature’s Education
The heart of the novel is the creature’s own narrative. Hiding in a hovel next to a cottage, he learns to speak and read by secretly watching a poor family, the De Laceys, and educates himself with three books found in the woods: Milton’s Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. He becomes eloquent and sensitive, and his longing for companionship, and the cruelty with which humans reject him, turn him to vengeance. Readers who know only the grunting monster of the films are often astonished.
Which Text?
The novel was published anonymously in January 1818. In 1831 Mary Shelley revised it substantially, adding an introduction about its origins and making Victor seem more a victim of fate. This Penguin edition prints the original 1818 text, which many scholars prefer. James Whale’s 1931 film with Boris Karloff created the flat-headed monster of popular culture, which is very different from the creature of the book.
A Question That Remains
But what would have happened if the creature had not been so alone, if people had not despised him as they did? The anguish and fear of both creature and creator can be felt throughout. Two centuries later, its questions about science, responsibility and rejection are as relevant as ever.
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