“Thus far I have gone, tracing a secure way over the pathless seas: the very stars themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph.”
This won’t be a typical review –since Frankenstein is a classic and there are a lot of reviews on it– but a gathering of the thoughts and opinions I’ve had along the reading of this solemn book. So expect it to be subjective, honest and personal –and maybe with some spoilers. Also I’m always up to new ideas, so don’t hesitate to comment your thoughts if you disagree on something I say. Your words are always welcome!
I read the 1831 version, the one Mary Shelley revised and reedited adding some parts and rewriting others. Since I haven’t read the 1818 edition I don’t know if it changes that much or not. But in this revision Mary Shelley wrote an introduction where she exposed how she came up with this story and why she decided to change some parts of it.
At the very beginning of Victor’s story (Chapter Two) there’s a passage where he says:
“I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.”
That deeply reminded me of Shelley’s introduction, where she writes:
“And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart.”
It made my heart sink, as I’ve lost some people who were important for me but I also remember when life used to be beautiful and painless, when death wasn’t part of it.
“With how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our enquiries.”
Flash-forwarding to Chapter Four, Victor says that in (natural) science you can always go further, discover new things, but that in many other disciplines you cannot discover nothing more than what’s been already discovered. Well, here I highly disagree. In any discipline, being it natural sciences, humanistic sciences or any other branch of science, you can always find something new, you can always go further and discover what’s been hidden or not yet thought. As a historian I felt denigrated by that quote and I needed to say a word about it.
“For an instant I dared to shake off my chains, and look around me with a free and lofty spirit; but the iron had eaten into my flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self.”
Taking advantage of this, I’ll let my thoughts on Victor Frankenstein get loose and wild. In Victor Frankenstein we find the perfect romantic gentleman, don’t we? He’s the firstborn in a wealthy family, life smiled at him until he himself messed it all up by giving life to a creature he got rid of right after, leaving him in this wild world, surrounded by beings (humans!!!) who hate him for not being ordinary. And from here, Victor will try to sell you that he’s the victim of the story, which you could end up believing if he stopped hating the monster when he’s at the gates of death. But he doesn’t, which makes me think that in spite of everything he’s been through his personality doesn’t change that much. Which is sad, honestly, because it can do no good to your soul to die hating someone that much.
“We shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.”
Now it’s the monster’s turn. As opposed to Victor, the monster does evolve. Just like a baby he learns gradually. First he walks and develops his senses, then he learns to speak, read and write, and in the way he learns what love is by watching other people love each other, and after that he learns what hate and pain is in firs person, which fills his good heart of rage and envy. That’s partly why I think the creature asks Victor for a partner, because everyone will reject them and since they will only have each other they will have to end up together. But I like the way the creature knows that even getting a partner he wouldn’t have been entirely happy, because in his heart he still would have known that he was not loved by humans, which he longed. But then, when Victor dies, he forgives him for everything, even though is too late. But just as he tells Walton at the end of the story, he was driven by envy, not malice. Even so, he killed, for which he’s still a monster.
“You throw a torch into a pile of buildings; and, when they are consumed, you sit among the ruins, and lament the fall. Hypocritical fiend! If he whom you mourn still lived, still would he be the object, again would he become the prey, of your accursed vengeance. It is not pity that you feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn from your power.”
This quote explains quite well the “game” the two main characters are playing at the end of the book. For the very first time in his life the monster feels like his “father” is paying him attention, even if it's not the one he originally needed and wanted. But that’s why he keeps giving clues and helping Victor through their hunting, so he can keep track of the monster and keep up with this kind of dog-eat-dog game. And at the same time, it's the way the monster uses to make Victor realize that he's been miserable all his life because of him, it's his way to be cruel to him. But I want to believe that what he really wanted with this hunt was to change his creator's mind, to make him see that no one should be alone, that everyone deserves some love in their life. But he doesn't get it.
So which is the aim of this book? I think that Mary Shelley wanted to criticize the society and its so rooted prejudices while expressing the deepest thoughts and feelings from the Romanticism. At the end, I’ve found Frankenstein basically sad, heart-breaking and quite hair-raising, just as a good Romantic and Gothic novel has to be.
“He found that a traveller's life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments.”
Genre: Gothic, horror, fiction, science-fiction.
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