Book: Frankenstein by Mary Shelly
Title: Frankenstein
Author: Mary Shelly
I read this book once back in 1987 for a literature / writing class in college. While I understood the basic story line of Frankenstein pretty well, I felt that the finer nuances of this work escaped me then. So now, after twenty-three years, I thought I’d give Mary Shelly’s work another read and see if the plight of Frankenstein’s creature makes more sense. Fortunately nowadays, there’s an extensive Cliffs Notes volume that extensively explores this book by setting the time-frame in which the author, Mary Shelly wrote. It details the format of the book, explains the difference between Gothic and Romantic novels and why this book incorporates both styles, and it outlines how the book uses a concept called framing in that it tells one story that is framed by or contained within another. These insights will hopefully bring greater understanding of Frankenstein and enable me to get more out of the tale.
What continues to grab me about this book’s plot to this day, is how graphically the Frankenstein story illustrates how a being, repeatedly denied love, affection, and acceptance in general by society, might grow angry after years of exclusion and vengeful as a result, and how he might seek to hurt others to avenge this treatment of deprivation. Indeed much of the crime that victimizes today’s society here in 2010, appears to derive from society’s casting out of the “misfits.” Eventually, these people come back to harm us all. Barely a women herself at nineteen years of age, Mary Shelly possessed a deep and beyond-her-years understanding of the basic human need for love and acceptance as well as the potentially disasterous consequences of denying these. She seemed to be aware of Abraham H. Maslow’s work a full one hundred fifty years before he completed it. This time thorugh in fact, I’ll be reading the book with the Maslow slant in mind.
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- Tom’s Views –> Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs
July 20th, 2010 at 8:09 am
11:10 AM: Read Mary Shelly’s introduction and the first two letters overnight.
July 21st, 2010 at 5:46 am
12:00 AM: Read the remaining two letters in the author’s introduction as well as chapters one and two. Frankenstein has made his initial appearance in the last letter and these first two chapters are written in his voice.
11:00 PM: Listened again to the author’s introduction and the first two letters from R. Walton.
July 23rd, 2010 at 7:51 pm
10:50 PM: Reread chapters 1 and 2; this time with [Emmy] by my side. Frankenstein describes his early life, his adopted sister, and close friend. Then a tree destroyed by lightning brings into focus the pursuits of the understanding of how life works.
July 24th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
11:00 PM: Read chapter 3 through 5. Frankenstein’s adopted sister Elizabeth falls ill with scarlet fever and his mother nurses her back to health but then dies herself from the same affliction. Frankenstein goes off to college to study the natural sciences with emphasis on how life begins and ends. He becomes obsessed with a god complex for two years as he builds “the creature” and brings it to life, and is horrified as his creation. He meets the creature and then, promptly develops a nervous disorder that takes him all the winter months to recover from. A close friend from home visits him at his university and helps Frankenstein return to health, vigor, and vitality.
12:15 AM: We decided to read chapter 6 as well. Frankenstein receives a letter from Elizabeth becoming him to write more and telling him about the happenings in Geneva (his home town) and with his family. It’s now over a year since he created the creature without so much as a glimpse of it. Probably a good thing, as Frankenstein relapses into his nervous malady any time he sees or discusses tools or theories associated with that “ill-fated” project.
July 26th, 2010 at 11:11 am
01:00 AM: Read chapters 7 through 11.
Brother William is murdered. A letter from his father relays this bad news. Frankenstein returns home and is greeted by a thunderstorm. Sees the creature in the storm and believes that it was he who killed his brother.
But a relative, Justine is accused, convicted, and executed. Frankenstein blames himself not only for William’s death but for Justine’s also; certain that it was the creature who committed the atrocities. He leaves home to consider his guilt.
He journeys up a mountain alone, just for that purpose; to be alone with his thoughts and feelings. There, he meets his creation, and the creature offers explanation for his crimes.
Though the creature is physically more agile, stronger, and larger than man, he still requires food, air, water, shelter, and warmth. He has all the human senses, and from watching people busying themselves with domestic chores, he learns how to build fires by which to keep warm.
The creature convinces Frankenstein to listen to what he’s been through; pleading for compassion and understanding.
11:30 PM: Read chapters 12 and 13. The creature continues his explanation his life thus far, and how he transformed from a benevolent soul to one full of anger and hatred toward the human race. In this part of his tale, he befriends a family in a cabin in the woods. He helps them with their daily chores without revealing himself to them. He learns basic language skills by observing them and how to use various tools and to prepare food.
July 28th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
Reread chapters 12 and 13, and also read chapter 14; [Emmy] had fallen asleep the first time through. But in chapter 14, the creature continued his narrative on how he changed from a peaceful, gentle, and kind being to someone capable of murder. He described how he learned to speak, read, and write, by observing humans living in a cabin in the woods. He spent much of this chapter telling the stories of these people, presumably, to show how he developed an abiding affection for them.
July 31st, 2010 at 9:51 am
12:40 PM: Read chapters 15 and 16. The creature tells Frankenstein of how he developed his initial sense of benevolence and how he came to love the folks in exile, living in the cottage. He found some books; one was Milton’s Paradise Lost that he said he read as though it was true history. He learned that men can assemble in great numbers to form large governments; to this point, the only assemblies he had seen involved very small numbers of people such as those living in the villages he’d visited thus far as well as the cottagers. He came to abhor vice and violence, and to love all the more the people he observed.
He lamented the day of his creation just as Frankenstein had, and unlike God who, as the story goes, had created humans in his image, the monster was hurt to learn that Frankenstein had not created him in his. Indeed, the creater he created was so ugly and replusive that Frankenstein himself wanted no parts of him. Frankenstein rejected him at the moment of his “birth.”
The creature then works up the nerve to approach the cottagers, first introducing himself to the blind man; who was not initially repulsed at the creatures hideous form as he could not see it. So it would seem, blindness enables the so afflicted to more readily see the attractive parts of the ugly. I found the creature’s description of his fear of reaching out to people eerily similar to what I’ve usually felt when approaching women. Like him, I worry that they’ll reject me because of my own average-looking form.
Unfortunately, the creature’s fears were realized, as are mine usually, when the sighted cottagers returned home to find him at the knees of the old man. They spurned him and the young man, Felix, struck the creature and drove him out.
In this story, the creature was not created with his fear of humanity; but learned it from the violent rejections he’d thus far received. Neither was I born with my fear of approaching women for dates; but learned that from how they generally treated me as I grew up.
July 31st, 2010 at 5:12 pm
Read chapters 17 and 18. Frankenstein, persuaded by the creatures story of the violent and consistent rejections he’s received, and how that has made him into the angry and vengeful entity that murdered a child, agrees to create a female companion for the creature.
Frankenstein then returns home to prepare for this task, which he hates; believing himself to now be enslaved by his own creation. But he finds it hard to start build another like the creature already created; worried that two creatures might more effectively harm humanity than just one.
Meanwhile, Frankenstein’s father informs him that he’d be happy if Frankenstein would marry Elisabeth. But before he does, Frankenstein seeks to visit England, to consult with philosophers there about issues pertaining to the constuction of the female creature. He began this trip early in the fall, and trusted that the creature would follow him as he said he would, and not remain behind to hurt other members of Frankenstein’s family.
Frankenstein waits a couple days for his best friend to join him and then the two of them continue the journey to England together; admiring the countryside and towns through which they passed all the while. They eventually enter Holland, and then set sail for Britain.
July 31st, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Read chapters 19 and 20. Frankenstein sojourned in London for months as he interviewed natural philosophers there to better forumlate his approach to building a mate for his creature. Then he goes from England to Switzerland, where he begins assembling a second creature as he promised he’d do for the first one.
But then, many of the possible negative ramifications of creating another like the first weighed heavily on Frankenstein; making him unsure whether he should continue this endeavor that he hated so much. Then, he notices the creature watching him as as he fashioned the second, and then and there, he realizes that he absolutely cannot continue. So he destroys the second creature; casting its remains on the floor.
The creater, upon seeing this, howls and departs. But later, her returns to confront Frankenstein. Frankenstein tells him basically, to get lost and that he’d never again attempt to create a mate for the creature. The creature, upon seeing Frankenstein’s resolve, tells him that he’ll be with him on his wedding night. Then, the creature departs.
Frankenstein discards the remains and the instruments used to build it in a large body of water (a bay or the ocean).
Frankenstein then becomes temporarily lost on the water and almost dies. But then he comes to land, where he encounters an angry crowd that apparently believes that he is responsible for a murder that took place there the previous night. They formally accuse him, and it looks like the creature did it and, as he did to Justine, attempted to frame Frankenstein for it.
August 1st, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Read chapters 19 and 20. Frankenstein sojourned in London for months as he interviewed natural philosophers there to better forumlate his approach to building a mate for his creature. Then he goes from England to Switzerland, where he begins assembling a second creature as he promised he’d do for the first one.
But then, many of the possible negative ramifications of creating another like the first weighed heavily on Frankenstein; making him unsure whether he should continue this endeavor that he hated so much. Then, he notices the creature watching him as as he fashioned the second, and then and there, he realizes that he absolutely cannot continue. So he destroys the second creature; casting its remains on the floor.
The creater, upon seeing this, howls and departs. But later, her returns to confront Frankenstein. Frankenstein tells him basically, to get lost and that he’d never again attempt to create a mate for the creature. The creature, upon seeing Frankenstein’s resolve, tells him that he’ll be with him on his wedding night. Then, the creature departs.
Frankenstein discards the remains and the instruments used to build it in a large body of water (a bay or the ocean).
Frankenstein then becomes temporarily lost on the water and almost dies. But then he comes to land, where he encounters an angry crowd that apparently believes that he is responsible for a murder that took place there the previous night. They formally accuse him, and it looks like the creature did it and, as he did to Justine, attempted to frame Frankenstein for it.
August 3rd, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Read chapter 21.
Frankenstein was taken before a magistrate. Six witnesses present who discovered the warm body of a young man, who had been strangled. Later, the identity of this fellow was revealed to be Frankenstein’s best friend.
No damage to the corpse except the hand prints around its neck; the tell-tale signs of strangulation. Frankenstein remembered the similar hand prints on the creature’s earlier victims and, realizing that the creature was likely the murderer, cried out rants that incriminated himself.
Some witnesses claimed to see a boat pulling away in the vicinity of the murder that looked just like Frankenstein’s, and this was their primary circumstantial evidence against him.
Due to his crazy rants that on the surface made Frankenstein look guilty, they took him to prison. But the magistrate befriended him and doubted his guilt. Frankenstein had become sick with sadness and guilt at the creature’s latest violent act, and it appeared that the creature had likely framed Frankenstein. Frankenstein blamed himself for the creature’s heinous acts since it was he who created the creature.
Frankenstein’s father then visited, and this spurred Frankenstein to recover somewhat. But though he did get better, he continued to be haunted by nightmares of the creature attempting to kill him.
After a few months, Frankenstein was freed as evidence was discovered that proved he was nowhere near the crime scene when his best friend had been murdered, and him and his father decide to return home once Frankenstein is well enough to travel from Ireland back to Switzerland. He’s eager to reach his home town again so he might guard his loved ones and protect them from the creature’s wrath. They set sail for home.
August 4th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Read chapter 22.
August 21st, 2010 at 9:01 pm
Reread chapters 21 and 22.
In chapter 22, Frankenstein, on his way home, sojourned in France to rest. He didn’t wish to remain there long because he feared that the creature would hurt his friends and family at home.
Frankenstein repeatedly blamed himself for the murders committed by his monster; going so far as to say that it was his own hand (Frankenstein’s hand) that did these nasty deeds. This made him sound guilty of the crimes. But the magistrate as well as his own father, dismissed these ravings as products of the delirium he’d been suffering of late. He father eventually learned to avoid the subject of these murders so as not to make Victor anxious.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth wrote Victor, wondering if he has another lover. NOt that she had any cause to suspect an affair. She was just a little insecure; as she’d not seen Frankenstein in a while, and because she deemed him so beautiful and thus, in high demand. She tells him that she loves him.
Her letter reminds Frankenstein that she and his family are in grave danger of being killed by the creature. Yet he decides to believe that the creature is probably only gunning for him on his wedding night. So in ordr to bring about the eventual showdown with the creature sooner rather than later, Frankenstein decides to have the wedding despite the creature’s threats.
Frankenstein and his father reach Geneva, their home town. Frankenstein went about his business there carrying weapons; just in case the creature would show up. He derived some security in knowing his weapons were within easy reach. He tells Elizabeth of his nasty secret but does not reveal its details; saying that he’d reveal all to her after they marry.
The wedding day arrives, and Elizabeth is sad. Perhaps she’s worried about what Frankenstein’s secret might be. She coaxes him to be happy in spite of her own sadness.
The wedding night begins. The couple reaches their honeymoon suite.
August 23rd, 2010 at 9:41 pm
Read Chapter 23.
August 24th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
Read chapter 24.
August 25th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Read the Afterward section.
This supplied details of Mary Shelley’s life, who wrote her Frankenstein novel at 19 years of age. It contrasts Frankenstein with Milton’s Paradise Lost and other works or romantic literature, and from this, I think I’d like to read Paradise Lost sometime.
April 28th, 2011 at 6:42 am
I’ve been replaying this book the past couple nights while going to sleep. Now that I know the story pretty well, it’s nice to be able to listen to it without paying such strict attention to the details. Now, I can read it for fun, and learn some additional things about it without even trying.