Frankenstein

So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein – more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

When my husband saw that I was reading Frankenstein, he said, “Surely you've read that by now.” And although I was just a few pages in, I replied, “I never have, and anyone who says they know the story because they've seen a movie adaptation doesn't actually know Frankenstein either.” As the book begins, a young explorer (who believes that the North Pole, with its constant sunshine, must be a balmy, ice-free paradise awaiting discovery) is arranging to Captain an expedition north, the details of which he writes to his sister. The last letter he is able to send back to England via a passing whaling ship details a strange sight he and his men saw while briefly icebound: a dogsled was speeding across the ice and “a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge and guided the dogs”. The next day, they rescued another man who had apparently been in pursuit of the giant, but with a broken-down sled and only one dog, they found him “nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering”. The crew brings the man onboard ship and revive him, prompting this Monsiuer Frankenstein to tell the Captain his life story, all of which he dutifully writes down in a journal for his sister's eventual reading pleasure. I was so intrigued by this framing device – how on earth does Frankenstein end up pursuing his monster across the Arctic? – that I was happy to plunge into this read as though I knew nothing of what was to come. (But further to that, I'm going to proceed in this review as though there's no such thing as a spoiler for a two hundred year old story.) I am delighted that I thought to finally pick up this book, and am in awe of the teenaged Mary Shelley who gave us this classic tale.

Wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!

After relating to Captain Walton the story of his upbringing in Geneva, Frankenstein eventually describes how his studies led him to discover the mechanism of creating life; and without ever stopping to consider if he really should, the university student spends two years stitching together human parts from cemeteries and charnel houses to create an “ideal form”. But when he brings his creature to life (he refuses to divulge the method, but it doesn't involve a spooky castle laboratory, lightning strikes or neck bolts), Fankenstein finds his handiwork so repulsive and horrifying that he flees the chamber and falls into a long-lasting fever; incidentally setting loose his monster on an unsuspecting world. 

There is love in me the likes of which you've never seen. There is rage in me the likes of which should never escape. If I am not satisfied in the one, I will indulge the other.

Frankenstein eventually meets his creation (who speaks eloquently, having learned French from a family he was spying on), and having been spurned by humanity and rejected by his creator, the monster vows revenge against Frankenstein if he doesn't build him a companion. The scientist (eventually) refuses to comply, and when the monster starts murdering Frankenstein's friends and family, Frankenstein rejects thoughts of suicide and makes his own vow of vengeance:

“By the sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by the deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O Night, and the spirits that preside over thee, to pursue the dæmon who caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict. For this purpose I will preserve my life; to execute this dear revenge will I again behold the sun and tread the green herbage of earth, which otherwise should vanish from my eyes for ever. And I call on you, spirits of the dead, and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to aid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster drink deep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me.”

I had begun my adjuration with solemnity and an awe which almost assured me that the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my devotion, but the furies possessed me as I concluded, and rage choked my utterance.

I was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish laugh. It rang on my ears long and heavily; the mountains re-echoed it, and I felt as if all hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter. Surely in that moment I should have been possessed by frenzy and have destroyed my miserable existence but that my vow was heard and that I was reserved for vengeance. The laughter died away, when a well-known and abhorred voice, apparently close to my ear, addressed me in an audible whisper, “I am satisfied, miserable wretch! You have determined to live, and I am satisfied.”

And so, to the Arctic in pursuit of a monster. 

It's often said that Frankenstein is a warning about the unintended consequences of scientific discovery, and it is that, but it's also a commentary on the unforeseen consequences of creating any life. There are several stories within the narrative of families having more babies than they can care for, and having grown up with a famously feminist mother and an atheist father, Mary Shelley makes the case that not only is it possible to be excluded from a mother's love, but we have all been abandoned by God; where is He as we stumble naked and unprepared through an unjust and uncaring world? The only comfort we might hope to find is in friendship with one another, and at their cores, each of the three narrators (Captain Walton, M Frankenstein, and the monster) are seeking true friendship (unfortunately, Frankenstein's self-centered pursuit of glory and refusal to accept its consequences leads to him losing the best friends he ever knew). With the social instability caused by the Industrial Revolution and the challenge to longheld beliefs resulting from the Age of Discovery, Shelley was no doubt tapping into the deepest fears of her readers; no wonder she tempers her tale with lushly reassuring Romantic Era writing.

I enjoyed the varied settings – from the lakes and peaks of Switzerland, the wave-crashed shores of the Orkney Islands, to the icebound Arctic – and I enjoyed the period details. (I particularly liked that Shelley has a character lament the destruction of the Mayan and Inca empires, others weep over the “hapless fate of (America's) original inhabitants”, but sees no irony in Clerval's lauded ambition to visit India to assist “the progress of European colonization and trade”; how are those not all the same thing?) But most particularly: I enjoyed the balance between the big picture (the themes) and the engaging narrative; an emaciated man pursuing a giant across the Arctic by dogsled was completely fascinating to me; I can only imagine how that appealed to people in its day – and especially to those who might have believed that the North Pole was a balmy, ice-free paradise. So happy that I finally picked this up.