I recently read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Of course, I knew the story; but had never
read the novel inspiring so many books, movies, plays, and TV programs. (The
International Movie Database lists nearly 200 entries with “Frankenstein” in
the title, including such curious entries as “Saint Frankenstein” and “Bikini
Frankenstein.” Yes, some must conflate the monster with his creator.) I won’t explain why I picked up this classic
of the horror genera so late in life. Instead,
I’ll just offer some observations.
I’ll skip issuing any “spoiler
alerts.” If you’ve grown up in the movie and television era and don’t know
Shelley’s story, you’d probably be surprised to discover the blockbuster Titanic includes a shipwreck.
My first thought after reading the
book was, “Would this get published today?”
Long passages are punctuated by long passages. There are too many unanswered questions, too
many coincidences. The monster’s moment
of animation is told in a brief, detail-free paragraph—no antennae rising into
the sky to capture lightning in this story.
Perhaps we are to simply say, “Of course, it’s alive; it’s science,
after all.”
More important than the trifling
details of its creation is the creature’s rage at a world that sees him as a
monster. The focus of that rage is
Victor Frankenstein who, repulsed by his creation, rejects the creature on the
very day of his “birth.”
… I saw the dull
yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion
agitated its limbs.
How can I describe
my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such
infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in
proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God!
His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his
hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but
these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that
seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were
set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. …. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for
the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. …. but now that I had finished, the beauty of
the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had
created, I rushed out of the room….
Shelley was the daughter of pioneer
feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who believed it unjust to judge the worth of a woman
by her physical beauty (a view she shared with evangelical Hannah More,
incidentally). Frankenstein is guilty of immediately judging his own creation
by its failure to exhibit the beauty he expected. Frankenstein might have learned from
humanity’s Creator, of whom it was said, “People look on the outward
appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (I Samuel 16:7) How
different the story would have been if the doctor had looked beyond the
creature’s appearance to see a being capable of learning, thinking; and, early
on, acts of kindness and courage.
Frankenstein retreats to his
bedroom where he spends hours pacing; wondering how so much could have gone
wrong. Finally, he sleeps. But he awakens to find the creature standing
over him.
I started from my sleep with
horror; a cold dew covered my
forehead, my teeth chattered, and
every limb became convulsed;
when, by the dim and yellow light
of the moon, as
it forced its way through the
window shutters, I beheld the
wretch— the miserable monster whom I
had created. He
held up the curtain of the bed; and
his eyes, if eyes they may
be called, were fixed on me. His
jaws opened, and he muttered
some inarticulate sounds, while a
grin wrinkled his
cheeks. He might have spoken, but I
did not hear; one hand
was stretched out, seemingly to
detain me, but I escaped
and rushed downstairs.
Rather than respond to the
creature’s pathetic attempt to communicate, the scientist flees. Frankenstein
spends the rest of the night huddled in the garden. At daybreak, he leaves his refuge and wanders
the streets. He ultimately discovers the
creature has gone. And he doesn’t care
where.
In fact, the creature has started down
a path to further rejection, rejection answered with acts violence and murder,
inspired by rage and revenge—ultimately directed at its creator, Victor
Frankenstein.
Along the way the creature will
learn to speak and to understand something to the larger world.
Before the story ends, we discover
Shelley’s monster—unlike most unleashed by Hollywood—can discuss philosophy
(and theology?). But he always comes
back to Frankenstein’s failure. Again
and again, the creature reprimands the doctor for rejecting his creation. At one point he cries out to Frankenstein,
“Unfeeling, heartless creator! You had endowed me with perceptions and passions
and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind.”
And Frankenstein, like his
creation, is consumed with rage and revenge; he seeks only to destroy the
creature. But he fails.
The Arctic explorer Robert Walton
rescued the sick and weary Frankenstein, who has pursued the monster beyond the
Artic circle. It is Walton who tells
Frankenstein’s story in letters to his sister.
The novel ends with Frankenstein
dead (not, by the way, at the hands of the creature). That night the monster creeps onboard the
ship to view the body (to say he wishes to pay his respects seems
inappropriate). Here Walton encounters
the monster for the first time and, like so many others, is initially repulsed.
But he finds himself in a discussion with monster. As the beast attempts to
explain his actions, Walton moves from rage, to pity, to distrust, to rage
again, and finally to a kind of wonderment.
As Frankenstein’s still-unnamed
creation looks on the body of his creator, he begins to speak of his own
future. His creator dead, the creature
as no will to live.
I shall collect my
funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may
afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such
another as I have been. I shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which
now consume me or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is
dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very
remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. (Emphasis mine.)
The creature’s final words hold the
hope of a better future, oblivion.
‘But soon,’ he cried with sad and solemn
enthusiasm, ‘I shall die, and what I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these
burning miseries will be extinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly
and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration
will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit
will sleep in peace, or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell.’
He sprang from the cabin window as he said
this, upon the ice raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away
by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.
We are left to believe the monster
died in the barren wilderness of the Arctic; though Shelley doesn’t actually
say the monster died, she probably didn’t have a sequel in mind. Why did the
monster plan a “funeral pile” so his ashes might “be swept into the sea by the
winds?” Apparently so his remains might
not inspire some “curious and unhallowed wretch”
of a scientist to imitate Frankenstein.
Curiously, in the Middle Ages, the bodies of witches were burned to
prevent their resurrection.
Frankenstein’s monster wanted no resurrection; he wanted his painful
life to end.
Though the creature seemingly
prefers oblivion to the life he has known, with its consuming agonies,
“feelings unsatisfied,” and bitter guilt, his final words hint at a yearning
for some consciousness beyond death.
*****
Why did Shelley tell this strange
story? I’m not equipped to fully answer
that question. The simplest answer was to win an impromptu story-telling
contest conducted to pass the time during an 1818 visit to Switzerland with her
husband Percy Shelley and their friend Lord Byron. More thoughtful answers suggest:
--She wrote to challenge the
“celebration of science and technology” that marked the Enlightenment. (Anne K.
Mellor, The Making of a Monster: An Introduction to Frankenstein, http://www4.ncsu.edu/~leila/documents/Mellor-MakingaMonster.pdf.)
--She wrote from a feminist
perspective to suggest would happen should a man attempt to create life without
a woman (curious how scientists now hope to help women create life without
men).
--She wrote from a
quasi-theological perspective to address God’s abandoning his creation,
humankind.
Let’s think about that last
suggestion.
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein (1818) during a time of
intellectual tumult and change. While
the evangelical movement was inspiring many to “serious,” experiential faith,
others were questioning the very foundations of culture. The heyday of deism was past but its impact
remained and some writers had boldly taken the next step in declaring their atheism. Thus, long before Shelley wrote, thinkers
were, in one way or another, denying the existence of a God involved in the
affairs of the world.
Across the Atlantic, in the still
new United States, college students were embracing skepticism. Not even the fires to the Second Great
Awakening would eradicate the appeal of unbelief.
On 1 November 1755, an earthquake
estimated to have been about 8.5 to 9.0 magnitude shook Lisbon; the estimated
death toll in Portugal, Morocco, and Spain was between 40,000 and 50,000. Some
have suggested a death toll approaching 100,000. Because it was All Saints’ Day many
worshippers were killed when churches collapsed on them. Voltaire, Hume, and others used the Lisbon earthquake
to debunk the notion of a benevolent God who cares for the world.
Erasmus Darwin (1701-1802), whose rumored
experiments Shelley mentions in the opening paragraph of her novel, had already
proposed a theory of evolution his grandson would later refine. Charles’s grandfather had little use for
religion. “Man has but five gates of
knowledge,” Erasmus wrote, “the five senses; he can know nothing but through
them; all else is a vain fancy, and as for the being of a God, the existence of
a soul, or a world to come, who can know anything about them? Depend upon it …
these are only the bugbears by which men of sense govern fools.”
If Mary Shelley wrote to deny God’s
existence or to besmirch God’s character, she was walking already-trodden
ground.
As it happens, Shelley’s book
didn’t create much of a stir among religious types. Some may not have read
it—indeed, some believed reading novels was frivolous (if not sinful, at least
a poor use of God-given time). Some who
did read it might have simply thought it a scary book no one would take
seriously.
Whatever Shelley’s intention, the novel
allows us to contrast Victor Frankenstein as creator and God as Creator.
-Frankenstein the creator produced
an imperfect creation—though he “had selected his features as beautiful”
Frankenstein was repulsed by the living thing before him. God the Creator produced a perfect creation—when
the newly made human stood before Him, God used the words “very good” to
describe his handiwork, meaning “He validated it completely.”
-Frankenstein created to feed his
ego, to prove what he could do. God created to produce an entity upon whom He
might bestow His love, giving humankind His greatest gift, Himself.
-Frankenstein abandoned his
creation when it proved imperfect; God’s creation—humankind—abandoned Him,
spurning the innocence of perfection He had bestowed upon the man and the
woman.
-Frankenstein pursued his creation
to destroy it, ultimately failing in his vengeful quest. God pursued His creation to rescue it,
ultimately taking on human nature in the Incarnation, and to reverse the effect
of humankind’s self-chosen imperfection.
-Frankenstein’s failure to truly
love his imperfect creation turned his work into a monster fueled by vengeance
and committed to violence. God’s
relentless love for his imperfect creation has turned monsters into men and
women of peace, benevolence, and goodness, saints.
*****
In recognition of the bicentennial
of Frankenstein, Hollywood will
release a biopic Mary Shelley
starring Elle Fanning in the title role. Doubtless the film will deal with her
controversial romance with and marriage to Percy Shelley, who drowned two years
after the novel was written, and with the inner and familial dynamics shaping
her personality and imagination. She
will be portrayed as a woman who defied convention (though there were certainly
others doing so at the time, including Hannah More). In her brief marriage, Mary would face
heartbreak due to Percy’s repeated infidelity and the loss of three
children. Shelley, who died in 1851,
would write other novels but none would be as famous as the one she wrote when
she was eighteen.
Looking back, I suppose there is
little doubt who won the story-telling contest.
By the way, if you live
near central Ohio you might check out the website for Actors’ Theatre of
Columbus. They will be staging Frankenstein this summer, using Richard
B. Peake’s 1823 adaptation of Shelley’s novel.
Find out more at http://theactorstheatre.org/2018-season/frankenstein/.
