Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
In my years-long project to develop a deep understanding of the “gothic,” I had still never read one of the foundational works of gothic literature, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, Mary Shelley’s 1818 proto-scifi Romantic novel. I finished the book over the weekend—I believe that I read the 1818 version, based on descriptions online of the later revisions, but my free ebook version did not specifically say which text it was, annoyingly. (In what I read, Elizabeth is Victor’s cousin, which likely indicates the 1818 version.) I can say it’s a fascinating text, perhaps not one that I loved, but absolutely crucial. For one thing, my previous understanding of Victor Frankenstein and his monster, from pop culture, was, of course, completely wrong in terms of the book.
I’m trying to think of how I first encountered Frankenstein (‘s monster) as a character or idea. I am tempted to say in a commercial for Franken Berry cereal. I think I’ve never eaten it, but I assume it’s a cereal cobbled together from a sinister collection of bits and pieces of other cereals? and then flavored to evoke berries of some kind? Then there’s James Whale’s great movie, which I had naturally encountered many times long before I actually saw it, and its direct sequel which I still haven’t seen. Plus The Munsters, Scooby Doo, Young Frankenstein and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Coppola-produced 1994 film, and many other references.
Reading the book, then, was a bit disorienting. I expected it to be considerably different from the story I knew, but I also expected the subsequent tellings to have some grounding in the book, instead of practically none. Whale’s Frankenstein, which is the dominant version of the story now, was based on an unproduced American adaptation of a British play that was based on the novel (just barely). The stage-to-screen version of the story adapts the bare bones of the concept and a few of the incidents of the novel, while adding much of what we think of as key elements: the monster’s inability to speak, his lumbering awkwardness, bolts in his neck, the use of electricity in the form of lightning to animate the monster and Victor as a modern “mad scientist” character. Whale does manage to dramatize the fiend’s emotional experience a little bit, making him a sympathetic figure, which is true to the book at least in character.
What surprised me the most about the book was how little detail there is about the monster’s creation. There is practically no description of it, just fleeting mentions of the cobbling together of a very tall human-like creature from used parts that then Victor brought to life—somehow, via some mysterious science he learned about but wouldn’t talk about. He did not scream, “It’s alive!” under crashing thunder and flashing lightning; instead, he felt bad immediately and ran away, then came back later to find his creation gone. A subsequent revision of Shelley’s may have added a bit more detail, possibly involving “galvanism,” an early exploration of electricity, but in the original, nada.
To a modern reader, Victor Frankenstein’s embodiment of Romanticism can be incredibly tiresome, as he fails spectacularly to prevent the utter destruction of his friends and family primarily because he has so many feelings he’s contracted a cold and can’t get out of bed. I have seen the interpretation that the monster may, for Mary Shelley, have embodied certain unsavory traits of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley; who knows, but I find it hard not to see Victor as a damning parody of the Romantic man, utterly ineffectual in the face of the rapidly industrializing Europe and the inherent class savageries therein. At least, I would like to look at it that way but I fear I just don’t understand Romanticism very well.
I’ll interject at this point to say that I rewatched Kenneth Branagh’s film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein after finishing the book, and that, though I didn’t remember this until I rewatched it, it’s actually much closer to the book than any other Frankenstein story I’ve seen. A serious attempt is made to follow the outline of the book, at least once the creature leaves his maker, but there is a great deal that is ridiculous about the conception, all the same. Victor, for example, is played by a youthfully narcissistic Branagh as a dashing and well-muscled young doctor, who must remove his shirt to display his hard-won abdominals when practicing his science, and certainly seems pathetic, but not nearly pathetic enough. He is neither as sickly nor as deranged as the original Victor, though he does avail himself of a Shakespearean catalog of feelings. Helena Bonham Carter’s Elizabeth is more interesting than the character in the book, that is to say, she’s crazier here, which is a Bonham Carter mode that has become more pronounced over the run of her career. MSF doesn’t have these two kids as cousins, but does have a hilariously icky moment when they discuss how they are going to have to stop thinking of each other as siblings so they can become lovers, and then they kiss fiercely. (In the 1818 version, they are first cousins and she’s raised from infancy as if she’s Victor’s sister but they are promised to each other in marriage, nonetheless.)
Also, regardless of how the filmmakers strive to downplay it, the fact is Branagh’s Victor implants John Cleese’s brain in Robert De Niro’s head, with much less funny results than one would hope. Cleese is fine in a straight role as one of Victor’s professors, but it’s impossible not to believe De Niro’s monster will inherit a silly walk or two. He does not. It should be said, though, that De Niro is great in this movie, bringing a method actor’s determination to an almost inconceivably appalling character, who is absurdly designed. Both of the reanimated monsters suggest Victor is a terrible doctor, as he has apparently (very badly) stitched them together like a Grand Guignol set at a quilting bee rather than in any rational relation to the circumstances of their human deaths. When he reanimates the dead Elizabeth (also not in the book), there’s nary a mark on her corpse, but he stitches the fuck out of her anyway.
In the novel, the creature is remarkably sympathetic. He only hurts people in self-defense, at first, and has a mighty hope that he will find people who will befriend him. He teaches himself philosophy from first principles, and learns to read and write. Although hideous to behold, he is naturally gentle and highly rational and articulate, and tragically only too aware of his own monstrousness and the rage he feels at his rejection by society. This leads to a bit of murder. But then he asks Victor to make him a companion, swearing he will vanish from civilization with his bride, never to be seen again, never hurting another person.
Victor eventually consents and begins work on this new creature and even almost finishes the work, then he destroys her in a fit when the creature visits him for a progress report. As a result, the creature swears revenge against Victor and all his friends and family and then proceeds to destroy them all—just like he said he would. Victor fails to take this seriously at all, in glaringly obvious ways, to his ruin. He’s a very hard character to find sympathy for, since he could have prevented almost all the violence.
Is Frankenstein the original science fiction? It’s often regarded as such, although in some ways it seems to have such a hostility toward science and the scientific worldview that it’s a questionable designation. At the same time, it isn’t exactly a cautionary tale about a scientific god-complex run amok because Victor is so pathetic. He could have fixed a lot of things by doing more science, but he doesn’t because he’s too horrified. In any case, it remains a fascinating, hugely important work and I’m glad I finally got around to it.
