Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I first read Frankenstein in my third year Philosophy class. Unlike many other students in class, I hadn’t had any previous experience with Frankenstein (I’d never – and still haven’t – seen any of the movie adaptations) but still the name ‘Frankenstein’ had become synonymous with ‘Monster’. I was surprised, then, to learn that Frankenstein was in fact the Doctor, rather than the creation. A pleasant surprise.

I read the novel in a day. I enjoyed it, despite the often clunky and superfluous narrative and I felt ridiculously sorry for the creature. Then we ‘did philosophy’ on it and, for me, the book was ruined. I didn’t enjoy my philosophy class and any attempt to apply this model of philosophy to a text was met with stiff resistance from me (which is ridiculous because I now realise just how much the novel is based around the question of what makes this tangle of flesh and muscle that we are ‘human’ but at the time, no amount of philosophising was going to break through my stubbornness). Still, I studied the influence of different philosophies on Frankenstein and I ended up writing about it in my exam. I vowed never to read it again.

We approached the novel again in my fourth year Victorian Gothic class. I didn’t re-read it. I used the knowledge I’d gathered the previous year and was prepared to assault the novel for being overly philosophical and very difficult to read and I was poised, ready to attack when Dr Edwards completely turned my opinions in on themselves and left me sitting staring blankly at the lecture handout. I found that there were things in Frankenstein that I enjoyed learning about – things that I had actually written in my own notes the previous year and had then promptly forgotten in the deluge of philosophical reading of it. I wrote an essay on the Gothic double in Frankenstein (having not re-read it, yet), an essay on the use of language, the sublime and the Uncanny in creating a new type of horror novel (still, hadn’t re-read it). I was learning to appreciate Frankenstein.

Then it was announced that two rather brilliant actors would be portraying the story of Frankenstein at the National Theatre, directed by the rather legendary figure of Danny Boyle. I bought a ticket. In fact, I bought two and travelled from Glasgow to London to see a play about a text that I still wasn’t sure I liked. Yes, the play is an adaptation but my appreciation of the text sky-rocketed after seeing it and for months after all I could think about in relation to Frankenstein was the Lacanian mirror. In the scene at the DeLacey house the Creature mirrors the actions of Old Man DeLacey, copying how he sits, how he gestures, how he holds himself. He does the same with Frankenstein in the scene in the Alps, mirroring the way Frankenstein points, the way Frankenstein swoops about the stage. These small stage directions highlight rather emphatically the fact that the Creature learns from example and that is why he turns out ‘bad’. As the creature exclaims in Dear’s script after he lies to and then rapes Elizabeth: “Now I am a man!”

I was moved to tears. How could I have missed so much of the depth that is in Frankenstein? Why did I hate this novel that everyone seemed to love and adore? Surely, I must have read it wrong?

I read it again.

I still think it’s a little clunky and a heck of a slog sometimes but, without the weight of That Philosophy Class bearing down my neck, I realised (or remembered, as the case may be) that I actually really, really enjoy the novel. No, there is no escaping the deluge of imagery and allusion in it (Milton’s Paradise Lost just happened to be lying around? No, I hardly think so. The setting in Geneva and the rugged islands off the Scottish coast – all that sublime landscaping is as oppressive and present as if we were actually in those landscapes and we can practically feel the Alps looming over us) but it only adds to the appreciation of the text as we experience Frankenstein’s oppression right along with him.

But amongst all the posturing and imagery I think that what Shelley is pointing out is the one fatal flaw that we as human beings have: ambition. Shelley is telling us to be ambitious but not too ambitious, not to assume that because we have begun to master technology that we can master the intricacies of God’s universe in the way that Frankenstein does. As Frankenstein says to Walton:

“’Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least my by example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow’” (31).

Frankenstein attempts to “become greater than his nature will allow” and play God by trying to create life from spare parts but instead what he creates is, essentially, the terrifying personification of his own ego and ambition that he abandons when he realises how ugly it is. Shelley points out that creation and parenthood is about more than simply giving that “spark of life” to something – we have a responsibility to look after that which we create.

Is Frankenstein, then, a novel about bad parenting? Well, yes. But not all that it is. Woven into the tale of ‘bad-parenting’ is the tale of the man who was too ambitious – his ambition ruined his life, ruined his family and in the end, it killed him. His ambition ruled how he lived out the rest of his life, decided when he should die and then lived on long after Frankenstein died on Walton’s ship.

Recent interpretations (the Boyle production at the National included) make too much of Frankenstein’s inhumanity. I think he has become, like his creation before him, misunderstood. Yes, he abandoned the creature, yes he tried to kill it but he was, undoubtedly, terrified by what he had done. He wasn’t ready for what he had created and found himself weaker than his creation. In the confrontation in the Alps, Frankenstein finds that he is being persuaded by the rhetorical power of the Creature’s argument – his creation has power over him and Frankenstein has to find a way to stamp that power down and reclaim superiority. In Boyle and Dear’s interpretation, Frankenstein is unforgivable and we sympathise with the Creature. In Hollywood films, the Creature is ridiculed and voiceless (like so many Others, but that’s an argument for another day). Shelley’s original text straddles both of these interpretations; it sympathises with both Frankenstein and the creature’s struggles to come to terms with what they are and what they’ve done and condemns neither, really – she gives no clear answer to the question of who is right and wrong for the simple fact that there is no answer. She leaves it open to interpretation – and it is definitely interpreted.

Adaptations of Frankenstein can serve to distort and pervert the true story of Shelley’s novel. As Boyle and Dear explicitly declared time and again, they wished to give the Creature back his voice. But the novel itself devotes much time to Frankenstein’s creation: his section of the narrative is the climax of the story, it’s the most eloquent and it’s the most charged with feeling. Shelley is giving voice to what is, essentially, the next generation – the future – while warning the ambitious man that only God and God’s way can truly create.

Too long, didn’t read?

Read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It’s really good.