book review on frankenstein

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Frankenstein, common sense media reviewers.

Classic of scientist haunted by his creation still timely.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

While Mary Shelley's often overwrought prose doesn

No sooner has teen Victor Frankenstein animated hi

Victor is surrounded by the most virtuous and nobl

There are of lots of dead bodies and plenty of dre

At one point in his troubles, Victor mentions that

Educational Value

While Mary Shelley's often overwrought prose doesn't stand the test of time so well, the issues she raises are at least as timely today as they were when she wrote the book. From its impassioned odes to Europe's beauty spots to its hymns to masters of study and scholarship, it offers a fair introduction to Western civilization as it existed at the beginning of the 19th century, and an opening for further study. Perhaps more important, it raises many questions about human nature, what causes people to behave as they do and leads to inexorably terrible consequences.

Positive Messages

No sooner has teen Victor Frankenstein animated his creation than he realizes he's made a terrible mistake, the dire consequences of which befall his loved ones for the rest of the book. Whereas few readers in real life are likely to commit his particular error of thinking it's a good idea to confer life on an inanimate being you've assembled from miscellaneous body parts, the larger caution to brilliant young innovators to consider the broader consequences of their inventions is all too timely.

Positive Role Models

Victor is surrounded by the most virtuous and noble of role models, including his parents and beloved "cousin" Elizabeth and good friend Henry, who are not only paragons themselves but never fail to come to his aid. Since he has been brought up surrounded by such values, he is all the more tortured by the horror he has unleashed upon them, and his inability to reveal it, and displays a degree of hand-wringing helplessness and spectacular denial that may seem strange to 21st century sensibilities. While we see many examples of people behaving nobly with regard to each other, including particularly touching examples seen through the monster's eyes, we also see the limits of that nobility -- no human is able to see past the monster's physical ugliness to the inner beauty he has managed to cultivate, even when he performs noble deeds, and all who see him flee or treat him violently.

Violence & Scariness

There are of lots of dead bodies and plenty of dread and foreboding, but no gore. All the monster's victims are strangled. But the subject matter is unavoidably horrific. Victor acknowledges torturing animals in the course of his research and building his creation from corpses. Rejected by his creator and other humans, the monster turns to killing innocent people simply because Victor loves them. There is also violence to innocent people at the hands of the justice system.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

At one point in his troubles, Victor mentions that he is taking laudanum in hopes of being able to sleep.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that the 1818 novel that launched dozens of Hollywood horror movies bears little resemblance to any of them, but is quite creepy enough, flowery prose and all, and, historically speaking, went a long way toward inspiring a genre in which things go very badly for many reels. It's also a mainstay of high school honors literature classes and a good intro to both Gothic literature and science fiction. Its themes of delving into the dark arts will have allure for the Twilight set, while the science project run amok (and the arrogance of its creators) is a subject that remains all too timely. Bigotry alert: One of the subplots involves noble Christian characters who risk all to save a Muslim friend from certain death, and once safe he betrays them to an evil fate.

Where to Read

Community reviews.

Parents say (3)
Kids say (17)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Classic horror story shows truths about humanity

Nothing compares, what's the story.

Rescued from an ice floe near the North Pole, a dying Victor Frankenstein tells a British explorer a remarkable tale of his blighted life: After an idyllic childhood as the eldest son of a wealthy Swiss family, he's sent to Ingolstadt to pursue his university studies, where his brilliance and thirst for knowledge soon become apparent. All his skill and energy are soon devoted to his obsessive quest to create life and bestow it on an inanimate being, which he constructs from multiple corpses after many experiments that horrify even him. When he succeeds in animating his creature, he is appalled by what he's done and hides from him; the creature disappears, and only gradually does it become apparent that in creating this being and then rejecting him, Frankenstein has brought about the doom of all those who are dear to him.

Is It Any Good?

From the hindsight of 200 years, there's much to mock in this book, and the prose can be a slog by today's standards. But the story and its philosophical issues are no less compelling today than they were when Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN, as evidenced by the fact that they recur in so many books, movies, and TV plots to this day.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Victor as the veritable poster child of the driven, arrogant genius with no thought for the consequences of his grand vision. What similar characters do you see in the world around you? How might he have chosen a wiser path?

One of the book's implicit what-ifs is what would have happened if a single human who saw the monster had been able to see past his physical ugliness to his inner nature; his conversation with the blind man is arguably the book's most poignant moment. Are people doomed to be this prejudiced, and thus doomed to have the victims of their prejudice act out against them?

Mary Shelley, who wrote the book during an idyllic sojourn with the bad boys of Romantic literature, Lord Byron and her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, is a subject of interest (and scandal) herself, which may make her interesting to teens. How about learning more about her at the library or online?

This story has launched many versions and sequels. What would yours be?

Book Details

Author : Mary Shelley
Genre : Horror
Topics : Magic and Fantasy
Book type : Fiction
Publisher : Simon & Brown
Publication date : September 9, 2011
Number of pages : 208
Last updated : July 14, 2023

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We Need to Talk About Books

Frankenstein by mary shelley [a review].

Frankenstein is a novel that has never left the popular imagination since it was first published in 1818 and it probably never will. A dark gothic fantasy, an early science fiction, or a ‘precursor to the existential thriller’; its arresting power has captured every generation. Possibly it strikes at something disturbing in human nature.

Cover Image of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Robert Walton can barely contain his excitement. He spent his childhood dreaming of adventure. As he grew up it seemed a remote possibility. A career as a poet floundered. But an inheritance from a cousin has made his dream a reality.

There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand. I am practically industrious – painstaking; a workman to execute with perseverance and labour: – but besides this, there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.

Walton’s chosen target is the frozen north. He has managed to procure a ship and a crew. The only thing he wishes for is a companion who shares his thirst for adventure. The north is a region that promises to combine the extremes of danger and mystery. The source of magnetism, unknown astronomy, unexplored sea routes and unexplained lights is matched by the perils of freezing temperatures, ship-wrecking ice and utter isolation from any supply or chance of rescue. Writing to his sister, Margaret, from St Petersburg, Walton can hardly wait.

He is not long disappointed. Early in their adventure, their ship is boxed in by ice and they dare not risk proceeding further. And they may not be alone. Through the distant mist they think they can make out the eerie shape of a huge figure making his way on the ice on a sled pulled by a team of snow dogs. The next day they spy another man with a dog sled. This man, though, is clearly in need of rescue and the crew pick him up from the ice barely alive.

It takes several days to revive the man. Walton is pleased that he might have found a companion, but when Walton tells him the reason for his journey, Victor Frankenstein breaks down in tears at the thought that Walton is suffering from the same obsession that has ruined his life. Victor has a warning for Walton of the awful consequences of Walton’s ambition. This warning is Victor’s life story.

New readers to Frankenstein might be surprised by how many of their ideas of the story do not originate in the novel but from how the basic concept has been borrowed and reimagined in various other formats. Victor Frankenstein is not the ‘mad scientist’ of the images those words might conjure up. The use of electricity, the foraging from cemeteries, is hinted at but not given the weight of other tellings. And Victor’s creation is certainly not the zombie-like, brain-dead, monster but an articulate, thinking, feeling being that is human in all but appearance.

The novel’s first clever trick is its structure. If the story began with Victor Frankenstein telling you his life story, I suspect many readers would not venture far. By instead beginning with Robert Walton’s letters to his sister, the reader is instead dropped into the icy waters of the Arctic and made to tread water. Robert’s infectious description of his thirst for adventure, despite the dangers; his romantic desire for knowledge having been seduced by the mysteries of the far north where none have ventured before, effectively harpoon the reader. It also foreshadows and creates sympathy for Victor’s similar motivations to pursue his own tragic quest.

Another aspect that made Frankenstein a landmark was that its themes were far more sophisticated than the gothic novels that preceded it. While sharing elements with other classic plots types, Frankenstein did offer something new to readers. Most obvious is the nature of the monster itself. Traditional stories would have the reader siding with the ‘hero’ in their quest to defeat the monster. Frankenstein turns this around and forces us to ask who is the real ‘monster’ and who, if anyone, is the ‘hero’.

Victor struggles to articulate why he despises his creation other than to say he finds its appearance hideous. Although it is likely that the real reason Victor finds his creation so abhorrent is that it is a reminder of his obsession and folly; his turning away from the light. The prejudice towards the creature’s appearance is confirmed by the creature’s own experiences where he finds if it was not for his appearance he would be acceptable to society. The blatant prejudice towards the creature who then uses this to justify his turn to violence leaves the reader to wonder if there are any heroes at all in this novel or only monsters.

I think the part of the novel modern readers struggle with is Part 2. This is the part mostly narrated by the creature. He tells Victor who tells Robert, who tells his sister (and us) what became of him after Victor fled his laboratory and abandoned him. The creature relates how he learned to understand, speak and read language, how he learned to provide for himself, his encounters with fire and people and, most of all, about how he learned about his nature and how others perceive him. The characters in this Part allow us to compare and contrast the creature’s experience of rejection with others who are also exiled from society.

Modern readers may find this Part a bit strange, a bit unconvincing or a bit dull compared to the rest of the novel. Maurice Hindle in the Introduction to this Penguin Classics edition offers an explanation for what this Part is about.

Besides its role in the development of the plot, Hindle suggests this Part exemplifies Mary Shelley’s beliefs concerning theories of mind. In particular, the theories of the British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). In Locke’s view, the mind is a ‘blank slate’ or tabula rasa at birth. The development of the mind is therefore formed in response to experience. It is an argument supporting a strong role for nurture over nature for the development of the mind. As well as this philosophical take, the themes of isolation and alienation were prevalent in the Romantic era and are at work in this Part of the novel.

Putting aside the question of whether the modern science supports the argument (see Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate if you are interested), Mary Shelly is showing us here that, while the creature’s physical attributes have been designed by Victor, his non-physical attributes are a product of his experiences. From his acquiring of language to his moral outlook, these are the result of how he feels the world has treated him and what place, if any, the world has for him. If the creature is lacking in these regards, it may not be inherent in his nature as Victor seems to believe, but it is society, including Victor, that has responsibility. Again, we are found asking who is the real monster?

The origin story of Frankenstein is one that has become one of the most famous in literary mythology. This is the tale where, during a visit to see Lord Byron in Geneva, stuck indoors due to bad weather, those present occupied themselves by reading German ghost stories before Byron proposed a ghost story competition between them. And from this experience the then eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley created the germ of what became Frankenstein . There is of course more to the story than the famous anecdote.

Unlike many novels, with Frankenstein there is no mystery as to Mary Shelley’s influences and inspirations. This is because so much of her life is laid bare for us to see. Apart from being famous for her own achievements, she is also the child of a famous mother and father. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), was a philosopher, feminist and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women . Wollstonecraft died shortly after giving birth to Mary Shelley due to complications with the birth. Mary Shelley’s father was the political philosopher William Godwin (1756-1836) and her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), was a writer who came to be regarded as one of the major English Romantic poets.

We therefore have a great deal of information about Mary Shelley’s life. We know where she lived and travelled and with whom, what she was reading and writing and who were her visitors at home and others in her orbit. Hindle argues that features of Mary Shelley’s biographical, philosophical and literary life feature in the novel.

For example, Mary was present when Samuel Taylor Coleridge visited and read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner , which influenced Frankenstein . Another visitor to the Godwin house was Humphrey Davy, a pioneer of electrochemistry and an advocate for the unlimited powers of science, much admired by Percy Shelley. Byron and Percy Shelley had been discussing the possibilities of animating life, the experiments of Erasmus Darwin and galvanism during the time in Geneva when Mary Shelley was coming up with her ghost story.

We also know a lot about what Mary Shelley was reading. She was a fan of Samuel Richardson, Madame de Genlis and read a lot of gothic novels, whose influences can be seen in Frankenstein . More philosophically, she also heavily read Milton, Rousseau and the aforementioned Locke. Again, the influence of their political, religious and existential ideas are evident in the novel. Milton and Paradise Lost was revered in the Godwin house and Hindle suggests the creature in Frankenstein turns from being like Milton’s Adam to Milton’s Satan.

But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe, that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting. I often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me, to my own. Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his creator; he was allowed to converse with and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature: but I was wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; For often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the better goal of envy rose within me.

Percy Shelley’s influence in the novel also can’t escape mention. It has been suggested that Victor Frankenstein is at least partly based on Mary Shelley’s husband. They share an interest in science that runs to an obsession and a faith in Man’s unlimited creative powers. The theory that Percy is the real author of Frankenstein (the novel was originally published anonymously) has never faded no matter how unreasonable the claim seems. If anything, Frankenstein is more reliably interpreted as a critique of Percy’s beliefs and character, showing the dark side of where it might eventually lead. To me, it would require a level of self-awareness that does not credit him as the author of the novel.

I did once hear that Mary Shelley denied that Frankenstein was about Man’s relationship with God but that may not be true and I cannot find a source for that now. In any case, it is an interpretation that is difficult to completely reject given that the story concerns a battle between Creator and Creation with many references to Adam. Victor rejects his creation and this rejection is keenly felt by the creature who asks like a child to a distant father (something Mary Shelley also experienced) shouldn’t the Creator have some responsibility for the happiness and wellbeing of his creation?

I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural Lord and king, if thou wilt also performed thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to who thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember, that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen Angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.

The other common interpretation of Frankenstein is that it is a warning against the pursuit of scientific knowledge and the powers it unleashes. The subtitle of the novel is ‘The Modern Prometheus’. In classical mythology, Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gifts it to mankind. Like a literal divine spark his act sets humans on a path towards technology and civilisation. Prometheus is punished by the gods for his act and is therefore a saviour and martyr for mankind.

Prometheus Bound by the ancient Greek tragedian Aechylus is the most famous version of the myth. Both Byron and Percy Shelley were admirers of it and wrote their own Prometheus works. But as Hindle points out, the Greek and Roman versions of the Prometheus story differ. A comparison between the two again makes one wonder if he is a ‘hero’. Hindle suggests Mary Shelley combines the two in Frankenstein .

‘The ancient teachers of the science,’ said he, ‘promised impossibilities, and performed nothing. The modern masters promised very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted, that the elixir of life is a chimaera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pour over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens: they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.’ Such were the professor’s words – rather let me say such the words of the fate – enounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being: chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein, – more, far more, will I achieve: treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

Modern audiences are familiar with the theme that danger lies in the pursuit of knowledge. If fictional takes are insufficient we have plenty of examples from history that can be interpreted that way. However, it can be reasonably argued that this is not Mary Shelley’s message in Frankenstein . Rather, the tragedy is the consequence of narrowmindedness. It is not Victor’s ambition that is his undoing, even if he sometimes seems to think so himself. Rather, it is that in his obsession he lost perspective, balance and his moral centre.

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquilly. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.

Victor’s attempt to be a creator of new life is in a sense blasphemous but Mary Shelley is not making an argument in favour of a return to traditional Christianity either. It seems more inclined to find a new moral perspective. One for which there is an urgent need in the face of the new powers technology is creating.

The Enlightenment period in which Frankenstein was written was one of great transition – ‘between doubt and Darwin’. In 1828, ten years after Frankenstein was first published, Friedrich Wöhler reported his synthesis of urea – a substance produced by living organisms – using entirely inorganic ingredients without any need to involve a “vital force”. In 1840 Justus von Liebig published his text on organic chemistry arguing that plants absorb carbon from the atmosphere and nutrients from non-organic materials in the soil, further destroying the idea of the vital force. These results were very controversial at the time. It had been assumed there was a strong separation between the materials of the living and the non-living world.

Frankenstein captures the excitement and fears of an era where previous certainties had crumbled to dust leaving the unsettling feeling of being untethered to any physical, mental, spiritual or moral reality.

I first read Frankenstein probably almost twenty years ago and declared it one of my favourite books. In recent years I have decided to reread these favourites and some others that I believe deserve another look. The results have been up and down. Rereading All Quiet on the Western Front saw me demote it from my favourites list. On the other hand, rereading Catch-22 affirmed its place on my favourites list and as probably my favourite novel overall.

Reading Frankenstein a second time, I am not sure how to place it. I probably did not enjoy it as much as I did the first time. That Part 2 is a bit puzzling and difficult. But what Frankenstein does well it does exceptionally well. I am thinking here of the intrigue and anticipation it builds in the Part 1 and a few specific scenes that stick in the memory. The turns in plot that I had not remembered from my first experience still had the power to surprise me. One in particular turns the plot in unexpected ways.

Reading it again, I also love Mary Shelley’s descriptive writing. She gives a real sense of time and place to the reader that is evocative and makes for some of the powerful scenes I mentioned. Despite the fact that the use of the pathetic fallacy was a familiar trope in gothic novels, some contemporary novels I have read recently have been disappointingly deficient in this regard. Mary Shelley really puts them to shame.

Frankenstein has lost none of its power to captivate and horrify. I also doubt whether we will ever lose our ability to reanimate it to suit our circumstances. In our post-Enlightenment world it continues to agitate us and remind us of our worst fears.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: A Comprehensive Review

Book cover of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"

28 Nov Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: A Comprehensive Review

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Overview and Thesis

“Frankenstein” is not just a tale of horror but a profound exploration of human nature and the boundaries of scientific pursuit. It raises questions about creation, responsibility, and the moral limits of knowledge, making it as relevant today as it was in the 19th century.

Plot Summary of Frankenstein

The novel begins with Captain Robert Walton’s letters to his sister detailing his voyage to the North Pole. Here, he encounters Victor Frankenstein, a scientist obsessed with creating life. Frankenstein recounts his story to Walton, forming the novel’s main narrative.

Victor grew up in Geneva with a deep interest in science. At university, he becomes fascinated with reanimating life and secretly constructs a creature from body parts. Upon bringing it to life, he is horrified by its appearance and abandons it. The creature, intelligent and sensitive, seeks companionship but faces universal rejection and hatred. Its loneliness and suffering turn to vengeance against Victor, leading to a tragic chain of events that includes the deaths of Victor’s loved ones.

The creature demands Victor create a companion for him. Victor initially agrees but then destroys the female creature, fearing the consequences. The creature vows revenge, leading to the deaths of Victor’s bride and best friend. Victor pursues the creature to the Arctic, where he meets Walton and concludes his story. Victor dies, and the creature, remorseful, disappears into the cold wilderness, presumably to die.

Book Themes

Creation and Responsibility : Victor’s attempt to create life raises questions about the ethical limits of scientific pursuit and the responsibilities that come with creation.
Isolation and Companionship : The novel explores the pain of loneliness, both in Victor and his creature, highlighting the need for companionship and understanding.
Revenge and Justice : The cycle of revenge between Victor and the creature underscores the destructive nature of vengeance.
The Sublime Nature : Shelley vividly describes natural landscapes, reflecting the romantic era’s fascination with the sublime and its power over human emotions.

Character Descriptions

Victor Frankenstein : A brilliant scientist whose ambition leads him to create life, only to be horrified by the result.
The Creature : Victor’s creation, intelligent and emotional, but shunned for its appearance. Its desire for companionship and acceptance turns to a vengeful wrath.
Robert Walton : The captain whose letters frame the narrative, sharing similarities with Victor in ambition and isolation.
Narrative Structure : Shelley’s use of framed narratives adds depth and perspective to the story.
Language and Imagery : The novel’s eloquent language and vivid descriptions enhance its themes and emotional impact.
Pacing : Modern readers may find the pacing slow in parts, with extensive introspection and description.
Character Development : Some characters, especially female ones, are less developed and serve more as plot devices.

Literary Devices

Symbolism : The creature symbolizes the consequences of unchecked ambition and the alienation of those who are different.
Foreshadowing : Shelley uses foreshadowing to build tension and hint at future tragedies.

Audience Suitability

Ideal for readers interested in classic literature, science fiction, classic horror, and philosophical themes.

Comparisons

Comparable to works like “Dracula” by Bram Stoker in its gothic elements and to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” in exploring scientific ethics.

Recommendation

Highly recommended for its timeless themes and contribution to literature.

Potential Test Questions and Answers

It draws a parallel between Victor’s overreaching ambition and Prometheus, who defied the gods by giving fire to humanity.
The creature begins as a blank slate, but its experiences of rejection and cruelty shape its actions, suggesting that behavior is influenced by treatment and environment, not inherent nature.

Book Details

ISBN: 978-0486282114
Page Count: 280 pages
Publication Date: 1818
Publisher: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones
Genre: Gothic novel, Science fiction
Reading Age: 15 and above

Awards and Accolades for Frankenstein

Recognized as a pioneering work in science fiction.
Continues to be studied for its literary

Adaptations

“Frankenstein” has been adapted and released as a movie or series many times over. Most recently, or yet to be released, is the movie, “Lisa Frankenstein,” to be released in 2024. The movie details:

“Lisa Frankenstein” is an upcoming American horror comedy film, slated for release on February 9, 2024. The movie, written by Diablo Cody and marking Zelda Williams’ feature-length directorial debut, offers a unique twist on the classic Frankenstein story. The plot is set in 1989 and revolves around a misunderstood teenage goth girl, Lisa Swallows. In a lightning storm, Lisa accidentally reanimates a handsome corpse from the Victorian era using a broken tanning machine in her garage. This act leads to a playfully horrific transformation, after which Lisa and her resurrected companion embark on a journey in search of true love, happiness, and some missing body parts.

The film stars Kathryn Newton, Cole Sprouse, Liza Soberano, Henry Eikenberry, Joe Chrest, and Carla Gugino. The production of “Lisa Frankenstein” was completed in May 2023, and it is currently in post-production, with editing, music composition, and the addition of sound and visual effects underway.

Given the involvement of acclaimed talents like Diablo Cody and Zelda Williams, along with a promising cast, “Lisa Frankenstein” is anticipated to be a fresh and inventive addition to the Frankenstein adaptations, blending elements of horror and comedy with a modern twist on a timeless story.

More info on Frankenstein film adaptations are available on IMDB.com

About the Author, Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in 1797 in London, was a prominent figure in the Romantic literary movement. She was the daughter of philosopher William Godwin and feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, both of whom were well-known intellectuals of their time. This intellectual environment deeply influenced Shelley’s development and worldview.

Early Life and Influences

Born into a family of intellectuals, Shelley’s education was rich in literature and philosophy.
Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died shortly after her birth, was a famous advocate for women’s rights, and her father, William Godwin, was a political philosopher and novelist.
Shelley received an unconventional education, where she had access to her father’s intellectual circle, which included many prominent thinkers of the time.

Personal Life and Marriage

Shelley’s life was marked by both passion and tragedy. At the age of sixteen, she eloped with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. This caused a scandal and estrangement from her father.
The couple faced numerous hardships, including financial difficulties and the death of two of their children.
After Percy Shelley’s untimely death in 1822, Mary Shelley focused on her writing and on raising their son, Percy Florence Shelley.

Literary Career

Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein” when she was just eighteen, during a summer stay with Lord Byron and Percy Shelley in Geneva, where a challenge to write a ghost story led to the creation of this iconic work.
Besides “Frankenstein,” she wrote several other novels, including “The Last Man” (1826), a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, and “Lodore” (1835), which focused on the experiences of women in society.
Her works often reflect her belief in the Romantic ideals of emotion and individualism, and they explore themes of social justice, particularly the status of women.
Shelley’s work, particularly “Frankenstein,” has had a profound impact on literature and popular culture, inspiring countless adaptations and interpretations.
Her contributions to literature were not fully recognized during her lifetime, but she is now considered a pioneer in the genres of science fiction and horror, as well as an important figure in feminist literary history.

Other Best-Sellers and Awards

While none of Shelley’s other works achieved the fame of “Frankenstein,” several received critical acclaim.
“The Last Man” is considered a significant work in the science fiction genre.
“Mathilda,” though not published during her lifetime, has been recognized for its exploration of taboo subjects.

Mary Shelley’s life and work continue to be a subject of scholarly study and public interest, her narrative art and exploration of themes like creation, responsibility, and societal norms remaining relevant today.

Bookshop.org helps to support independent book sellers. Please purchase ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley on Bookshop.org. https://bookshop.org/a/1289/9780486282114

News, Notes, Talk

Read Percy Shelley’s review of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein .

As the story goes, eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley came up with the idea for Frankenstein one dreary summer night in 1816 while she and the poet Percy Shelley (her then lover, later husband), were vacationing in the Swiss Alps with Lord Byron, who suggested that they pass the time by each writing their own ghost story. “Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated,” mused Mary, and the rest is literary history.

When she unleashed Frankenstein upon the world two years later, she did so anonymously. Nevertheless, word got out that the book’s author was a woman ( gasp ), and the ensuing early reviews were incredibly critical. One particularly misogynistic critic wrote, “The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment.”

The year before it was released, in anticipation of the myopic critical backlash, Percy Shelley wrote a rave review (sadly unpublished until 1832, ten years after had Percy drowned in the Gulf of La Spezia) of his new wife’s remarkable debut.

Take note, literary couples: this is what supporting your spouse in their creative endeavors looks like.

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.

“The novel of Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, is undoubtedly, as a mere story, one of the most original and complete productions of the age. We debate with ourselves in wonder as we read it, what could have been the series of thoughts, what could have been the peculiar experiences that awakened them, which conducted in the author’s mind, to the astonishing combination of motives and incidents and the startling catastrophe which compose this tale … it is conducted throughout with a firm and steady hand. The interest gradually accumulates, and advances towards the conclusion with the accelerated rapidity of a rock rolled down a mountain … We are held breathless with suspense and sympathy, and the heaping up of incident on incident, and the working of passion out of passion … The pathos is irresistible and deep … In this the direct moral of the book consists; and it is perhaps the most important, and of the most universal application, of any moral that can be enforced by example. Treat a person ill, and he will become wicked … It is impossible to read this dialogue—and indeed many other situations of a somewhat similar character—without feeling the heart suspend its pulsations with wonder, and the tears stream down the cheeks! … The general character of the tale indeed resembles nothing that ever preceded it … an exhibition of intellectual and imaginative power, which we think the reader will acknowledge has seldom been surpassed.”

–Percy Shelley, Athenaeum , November 10, 1832

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On frankenstein , a monster of a book, arts & culture.

The art and life of Mark di Suvero

Behind the scenes of James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein .

In 1818, it probably would have been more shocking to have a novel about a Victoria Frankenstein doing perfectly normal, boring science than one about Victor making a hodgepodge of body parts come to life. In more than one way, Victor Frankenstein embodies the double contradiction at the core of the mad scientist outlined in the previous installment of this essay . First paradox: though deprived of reason (mad), this character is also the ultimate embodiment of reason (a scientist). Second paradox: even though mad scientists are always outcasts who rebel against the establishment, they tend to represent that very establishment—they are, for the most part, well-to-do white men.

True enough, every now and then, Frankenstein looks beyond Europe—for example, in search of a habitat for its monstrous offspring and sedatives that may quiet the nightmare of reason. After his first nervous breakdown, following the creation of the monster, Victor, saturated with Western knowledge, “found not only instruction but consolation in the works of the orientalists.” Together with his friend, Clerval, he learns Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew and reads the texts in the original:

Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating to a degree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country. When you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and garden of roses,—in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart. How different from the manly and heroical poetry of Greece and Rome.

Toward the end of the novel, we learn that while Victor was reading the “orientalists,” the creature, abandoned by his creator, roamed the countryside. He found refuge in a hovel next to a cottage and, from his hideout, eavesdropped on the family of poor cottagers, the De Laceys. This French family is involved with “a treacherous Turk” and his daughter, Safie, “a lovely Arabian.” The decisive aspect of this nested narrative is that Safie is a device to justify the monster’s acquisition of language. He learns French along with her as he listens in on the De Laceys’ lessons: “Presently I found, by the frequent recurrence of one sound which [Safie] repeated after [the cottagers], that she was endeavoring to learn their language; and the idea instantly occurred to me, that I should make use of the same instructions to the same end.” The languageless monster is associated with this “Oriental” character—though not for long: “I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian,” the creature brags a few paragraphs later. The symmetry is remarkable: while Victor, having “conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy” and wanting to “fly from reflection,” moves away from European reason by learning Arabic, the monster (through his Arabian proxy) moves toward it by learning French.

Still, despite this flirtation with other cultures, both the creator and the creature, for all his Caliban-esque echoes, are European—Swiss and German, respectively, though in the 1831 version, Shelley turns Victor into a Neapolitan, which may help to make him a tad more “exotic” and meridional (compared to a Genevan). While Victor seeks solace by looking east, the monster turns south. Begging Victor to create a mate for him, the creature argues, “If you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again; I will go to the vast wilds of South America … My companion will be of the same nature as myself … We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our food.”

South America, the potential breeding ground for monsters, is presented like the Eden this Adam never knew. Shelley may have been thinking of Argentina’s vast pampas and titanic glaciers as a shelter for the oversize monster and his family—after all, according to some, Patagonia seems to derive either from Patagón (a huge monster in Primaleón , a chivalric novel from 1512) or from patón , referring to the giant feet the Tehuelche people were supposed to have. True or false, these etymologies nicely echo Victor’s mentions of the creature’s “huge step on the white plain. The reality, however, is that around the time the novel was published, rather than being a prelapsarian Arcadia, most of South America was involved in wars of independence and efforts to constitute sovereign states. That these struggles were fueled, in no small measure, by the philosophy of the Enlightenment and one of its creatures, the French Revolution (whose links to Shelley’s novel have often been pointed out), gives the project of exporting this monster of reason to Latin America an unintentionally ironic twist.

These glances east and south are some of Frankenstein ’s timid attempts at escaping the general sense of normalcy the mad scientist is supposed to denounce. But for all the bizarreness of Victor’s scientific method and its results, he remains profoundly and unshakably conventional. Consider that most crucial of scenes, where Victor witnesses the creature coming to life:

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 … The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. 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 … Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.

After two years of toil and many more of research, after laboring with corpses and body parts, after having discovered the mystery of life itself, Victor witnesses the awesome miracle of his creature opening its eyes to the world and finds it … “ugly”? The frivolity of his reaction is stunning. Somehow, the shallowest aesthetic values suddenly outweigh the biological marvel in front of him. Victor’s offended sense of normalcy prevails over the scientific curiosity that has ruled his entire life. And there is no ethical or even religious component to his “horror and disgust”; he simply finds the monster unsightly and is “unable to endure the aspect of the being [he] had created.” Indeed, “the different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature.” The reality of the creature outdoes the madness of the creator’s designs. If there was ever something “abnormal” about Victor, the monster normalizes him. It is the monster (rather than its creator) who questions the established order. And this is the point where Frankenstein stands out as a unique, freakishly exceptional book.

Frankenstein not only is a book about a monster; it is also a monster of a book. Like the creature, it is made up of incongruent bits and pieces stitched up together. If “the dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of [Victor’s] materials,” something similar can be said of Mary Shelley’s process. The text is a wonderful monstrosity composed of several genres, texts, and voices patched up into one weird creature. The book begins as an epistolary narrative (with the letters that Captain Walton, headed for the North Pole, writes to his famously voiceless sister), then it becomes a journal with dated entries, and then a story, transcribed by Walton, organized in chapters, like a novel, edited by Victor himself. “Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history: he asked me to see them, and then himself corrected and augmented them in many places,” Walton reveals in the final chapter. (“Since you have preserved my narration … I would not that a mutilated one should go down to posterity,” Victor says, furthering the comparison between the text and a chopped-up body.) Frame narratives multiply: Walton’s story contains Frankenstein’s, which contains the creature’s—whose long tale is quoted uninterruptedly for several chapters—which contains yet other stories, such as the ordeals of the De Lacey family, the cottagers the monster overhears from his hovel. Polyphony is a form of monstrosity—one voice made of many.

Within each one of these stories and voices, several genres coexist: fictional autobiography, philosophical treatise, melodrama, horror, gothic, all of them sutured with “wonderful and sublime” lyric threads that sometimes unravel into strands of what feels like travel-guidebook prose. And to further compare the book to the monster, Shelley, of course, helped create the genre of science fiction, a radically new creature composed, again, of paradoxical parts.

Furthermore, the monster and the novel have the same birth. Here is how Victor first comes into “natural philosophy,” the “genius that will regulate [his] fate” and lead to the creation of the monster: “When I was thirteen years of age, we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon: the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa.”

And here is Mary Shelley in her 1831 introduction to the novel, telling the famous story about the book’s inception in Villa Diodati, when she was nineteen years old: “In the summer of 1816, we visited Switzerland, and became the neighbours of Lord Byron … But it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house. Some volumes of ghost stories , translated from the German into French, fell into our hands.”

Proper names and contextual details aside, the resemblance of these passages, both in content and structure, is striking. In Frankenstein , randomly reading Agrippa during a bout of bad weather breeds in Victor “contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy” and makes him long for the time “when the masters of the science sought immortality and power.” This, in turn, will lead to the creation of the monster. In a similar fashion, the volume of ghost stories picked up haphazardly during “the summer that never was” inspires Lord Byron to challenge Percy and Mary Shelley and John Polidori to “each write a ghost story.” As is well-known, “his proposition was acceded to.” The result was Frankenstein (with Polidori’s “The Vampyre” as a bonus). Victor and Mary—two teenagers on a spoiled vacation, reading a book that falls into their hands by chance. This is the starting point for both the monster and the novel.

Frankenstein ’s main themes are well-known: the hubris of the creator, the friendlessness of the creature, the inversion of hierarchies between them. (“You are my creator, but I am your master; obey!” the monster tells Victor.) Still, there is a good reason why this mad scientist and his many clones have remained a productive figure for centuries. At any given historical moment, this character offers a glimpse into the anxieties and hopes conjured up by knowledge and technology. Whether optimistic or apocalyptic, traced to their source, most of these narratives lead to one fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? Victor Frankenstein’s creature: “And what was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant … I was not even of the same nature as man … When I looked around, I saw and heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned? … What was I? The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans.”

A radical form of exception, a monster is a creature made of the combination of disparate parts to become “something out of the common order of nature,” according to Samuel Johnson’s definition in his Dictionary . In a sense, then, humans are the first monsters: thinking beasts. None of the bizarre splices and hybrids in the history of literature, from centaurs to cyborgs, comes even close to our own monstrous constitution, where reason coexists with the darkest instincts. And since we are doomed to not only to live with this “thorough and primitive duality,” as Henry Jekyll puts it, but also to be aware of it at all times, these fictions of mad geniuses and their offspring may be some of the stories we tell ourselves to grapple with it.

Part 1 of this essay, on mad scientists throughout the canon of the genre, can be read here .

Hernan Diaz is the managing editor of RHM. His first novel, In the Distance , was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Book Review—Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

April 10, 2020

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November 17, 2023

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August 5, 2022

Book Review— Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

October 25, 2019

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Book Review

Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley
Historical , Horror , Science Fiction

Readability Age Range

Dover Thrift Edition, Dover Publications; first published in 1818, this edition published in 1994

Year Published

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine .

Plot Summary

In the 18th century, a sea captain named Walton writes to his sister from his North Pole expedition. He tells her he’s rescued a scientist named Victor Frankenstein, and he shares the man’s strange and horrific tale:

Frankenstein lived with his close-knit family in Europe. His parents adopted an orphaned girl named Elizabeth, and they hoped she and Victor would marry someday. Victor and Elizabeth both looked forward to this marriage.

As a young man, Victor leaves home and studies science. He begins to experiment, hoping to reanimate dead bodies. He pieces together a creature and manages to bring it to life. When it begins to move, he is appalled by its hideous form and distraught by what he’s created. Frankenstein flees his laboratory. He later returns to find the creature is gone. The incident causes Victor to fall into a lengthy illness. His friend Henry nurses him back to health.

Months later, Victor returns to his family’s home in Geneva. He sees his creature climbing a mountain nearby. Then he learns his brother, William, has recently been murdered. Justine, William’s caretaker and a family friend, is accused of the crime. Victor knows his creature is to blame, but he is unable to prove Justine’s innocence or prevent her hanging. The grieving Victor runs away to the mountains. His creature finds him there and gives Victor his account of entering the living world:

The creature explains that after leaving Frankenstein’s house he quickly discovered that humans are terrified of him. He hid out in the woods but began to watch a family in a nearby cottage. He learned how to speak and act over the months he spent observing them. Finally, he decided he wanted to befriend them. He believed he might succeed if he could first introduce himself to the blind father alone.

The father was amiable as the creature spoke of his desire for friendship. But when the rest of the family returned to see the creature in their home, they screamed in terror. The creature fled. He later burned down the house in frustration when he realized humans would never accept him. He began to hunt for information about his creator. His first act of revenge against Frankenstein was to kill William.

The creature demands that Victor create a woman like him so he won’t be alone in the world. He promises to vanish forever if Victor does this. Victor reluctantly agrees and goes to do his work on a remote island in Scotland. He knows the creature is watching him. He has great difficulty making himself start the project, especially as he imagines what might happen if the creatures produce offspring. He finally destroys the female, and the enraged monster vows he will be with Victor on his wedding night.

Victor leaves for Ireland and is accused of murder upon arrival. He learns the deceased is his dear friend Henry. Victor is eventually acquitted, but the incident devastates him. He returns to Geneva to marry Elizabeth, all the while fearing the creature’s threat. Frankenstein spends the wedding night anxiously watching for the monster, only to have the creature kill Elizabeth in the next room. Devastated by Elizabeth’s death, Victor’s father dies a few days later. Victor has lost everyone he loved, and he vows to have revenge. He pursues the monster as far as the North Pole, but then he collapses. That’s when Walton finds him.

Narration about Captain Walton resumes. With the ailing Victor aboard and the ice becoming too difficult to navigate, the captain decides to turn the ship around. Victor dies, and the creature comes aboard to mourn him. Walton discovers the creature, and the monster laments that his creator’s death hasn’t brought him the peace he’d expected. He vows to kill himself and floats away on a raft of ice.

Christian Beliefs

The monster refers to himself as Frankenstein’s “Adam,” since the scientist was his creator. He laments the fact that Frankenstein considers him more like Satan than a son.

Other Belief Systems

Frankenstein calls his mother’s death a bad omen.

Authority Roles

Frankenstein creates a monster but cannot tolerate it when it comes to life. He agonizes about how to satiate the creature’s need for love without creating a race of monsters that would haunt future generations. Victor’s parents take in the orphaned Elizabeth and love her as their own.

Profanity & Violence

The Lord’s name is used in vain a few times.

Though not described in graphic detail, Frankenstein tears apart his female creation. Justine was hanged, and a cottage was burned down.

Sexual Content

Discussion topics.

Get free discussion questions for this book and others, at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books .

Additional Comments

Historical context: Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818 and revised it in 1831. The 1831 text is the version most commonly found in modern reprints of the book, including this one reviewed by Focus on the Family.

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

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Frankenstein – Book review – 4.5⭐️

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. (Published 1818).

“If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion.”

*warning: small spoilers ahead*

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Kenneth Branagh and enjoyed every minute of it. Two long walks and some household chores flew by and suddenly the book was finished. The voice of Kenneth ‘Mister Shakespeare’ Branagh (who also directed and starred in the 1994 film Frankenstein ) is perfect for this prose and both the writing and the narration as well as the story itself kept me glued to the pages (or in this case, glued to my earphones) and left me wanting more.

Damaged characters are my kryptonite, so you can imagine that I sympathised heavily with the creature that Victor Frankenstein, a student of chemistry and natural philosophy, had built and then abandoned after he’d been horrified by it upon bringing it to life.

Frankenstein’s creature is referred to as ‘the wretch’ or ‘the daemon’ in the novel and he is of course commonly known as ‘the monster of Frankenstein’ in popular culture. I will refer to him only as ‘the creature’ though, because I do not think of him as a wretch, demon, or monster.

Although he did set out to take revenge on Frankenstein and committed various evil acts in the process, the creature was far from evil himself. He was lonely, damaged and misunderstood, and enraged because of that. He was capable of love, but no one showed him any affection. He recognised beauty, but no one saw beauty in him. He even had a thirst for knowledge, but no one taught him. If Frankenstein hadn’t shunned the being he had created, but had taken the trouble to teach him, to raise him and show him affection, it could have all been so different because this creature had so much potential. What if?

“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.”

The subtitle of Frankenstein is ‘ the modern Prometheus ’, but it might as well have been ‘ the story of a brilliant scientist who is also a bit slow on the uptake ’ because somehow Frankenstein always had his epiphanies a minute too late. Let’s go through three of these that made me question Frankenstein’s brightness: – Epiphany 1: Frankenstein spent months putting together a human being. He saw what his creature was going to look like, limb after limb. Yet only after he animated it did it hit him that he had created a monster and he ran for the hills. – Epiphany 2: After Frankenstein promised his creature that he would make him a female companion he set to work. Again, he spent months building this female being. And when did it strike him that maybe this female would become as vicious as her male counterpart? When was he hit with the sudden thought that the male and female creature might procreate and be the Adam and Eve of a wicked species? Exactly, when he was nearly finished (but, thankfully, this time before he brought the being to life). – Epiphany 3: The creature had already killed two of Frankenstein’s loved ones, caused the death of another loved one, and had made it very clear that he would continue to take his revenge when he warned Frankenstein that he’d be there on his wedding night. And what did Frankenstein do on his wedding night? He left his wife alone! As soon as I heard that he left Elizabeth on her own I knew… She dead. She very dead indeed. But of course, that realisation didn’t hit Frankenstein until he heard a scream and found a lifeless Elizabeth. Well, colour me not very surprised.

Two other things that made me frown: – After Henry was killed Frankenstein fell ill, but he talked during this illness, murmuring about how he was the cause of all the murders and how he had created a monster. And yet no one around him questioned this? Did the people around him who heard him feverishly confess to murder and talk about a demon just shrug it off thinking ‘well, that’s bloody disconcerting, but let’s not do anything about it’? – Elizabeth asked Frankenstein if he hadn’t found another woman he’d rather marry or if he didn’t consider her more of a sister than a potential wife. Frankenstein replied that he was very sure he wanted to marry her, but that he had this massive secret that he would tell her about only after they were married. That, my dear Elizabeth, is a red flag.

To me, the best parts of Frankenstein are the chapters in which the creature tells Frankenstein what happened to him after Frankenstein turned his back on him. How other people also shunned him and how he learnt from the cottagers he observed. How even the cottagers didn’t give him a chance and how much he craved a friend. I was mesmerised by the way the creature told his story and these chapters consist of some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read (or, in my case, heard).

“The young girl was occupied in arranging the cottage; but presently she took something out of a drawer, which employed her hands, and she sat down beside the old man, who, taking up an instrument, began to play, and to produce sounds sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the nightingale. It was a lovely sight, even to me, poor wretch! who had never beheld aught beautiful before. The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged cottager won my reverence, while the gentle manners of the girl enticed my love. He played a sweet mournful air, which I perceived drew tears from the eyes of his amiable companion, of which the old man took no notice, until she sobbed audibly; he then pronounced a few sounds, and the fair creature, leaving her work, knelt at his feet. He raised her, and smiled with such kindness and affection that I felt sensations of a peculiar and overpowering nature: they were a mixture of pain and pleasure, such as I had never before experienced, either from hunger or cold, warmth or food; and I withdrew from the window, unable to bear these emotions.”

The novel is perfectly balanced, making the reader understand both Frankenstein and his creature. On the one hand, you sympathise with the poor being abandoned by his creator and you curse Frankenstein for not helping him and for not taking responsibility (almost wanting to shake him violently and shout ‘he just wants to be loved!’). On the other hand, you feel for Frankenstein whose loved ones get taken away from him one by one and who’s haunted and tormented forever by the being he so ambitiously and passionately put together and so mistakenly brought to life.

The ending caught me off guard and for a second I thought my audiobook had stopped playing because I’d lost Internet connection, but the book was simply finished. It didn’t surprise me because I thought the ending wasn’t good, but because I still (perhaps somewhat childishly) long for an ‘and all was well’ ending. For a happily ever after. But the ending is perfect in its sadness. A heartbreaking tragedy.

4.5 out of 5 stars.

This review can also be found on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2672426521

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Frankenstein by Mary Shelley – Book Review

The book cover of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Warning – possible spoilers! (Tiny ones, though, and I’ll try to avoid even those; I swear I’ll give my best not to ruin it for you… :-))

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley – Book Details

TITLE – Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

AUTHOR – Mary Shelley

GENRE – classic , gothic , science fiction , fantasy , dark academia

YEAR PUBLISHED – 1818

PAGE COUNT – 269

MY RATING – 4 of 5

RATED ON GOODREADS – 3.86 of 5

Initial Thoughts

Monsters are amongst my favorite fantasy creatures. Plus I love reading classics. But when I first read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, I have to admit – I didn’t know how to appreciate it. I think a lot of it had to do with my expectations back then. I expected a Hollywood-style monster story and got instead an existential tragedy.

I had never even seen a proper adaptation before. Only short pieces in which a crazy scientist manages to bring a monster to life. The scientist had a vibe of an 18th-century version of Sheldon Cooper on crack. And the monster looked and sounded a lot like Lurch.

That was literally all I knew about this incredibly innovative, imaginative and immersive classic. In fact, Frankenstein is frequently referred to as the world’s first science fiction novel.

Apparently, when she was 18, Mary, her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, their friend Lord Byron and a few other people were traveling Europe. On a boring rainy day, the group decided to pass the time by competing in who can write the creepiest ghost story.

Mary based her story on a nightmare that occurred to her after hearing her husband and Lord Byron talking about the possibility of reanimation and bringing the dead back to life. In the dream, she saw a man creating a horrific creature and regretting it instantly…

What Is Frankenstein by Mary Shelley All About

Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.

Victor Frankenstein is an ambitious, enthusiastic, brilliant young scientist obsessed with uncovering the secrets of life and death. Determined to accomplish what no man had ever done before, he manages to give life to a creature he has created himself using parts of dead bodies.

However, faced with the result of his experiment, he instantly regrets what he’s done. The monster looks so grotesque and unnatural – even his creator doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.

But, no matter how repelling, the monster has many human characteristics. Including the need for love, friendship and belonging. As well as the impulse to punish rejection with anger and violence.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley – My Review

The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

If you want to get incredibly confused, indecisive about whose side you are on, ultimately realizing you do not have anything to compare this story with to be able judge the characters correctly – then this book is exactly for you!

As I mentioned, Frankenstein was not at all what I expected. It was much less a fantasy and creating a monster and much more a story about making an irrevocable mistake, learning to live with the guilt and trying to fix what can be fixed.

I loved how strong and resonating the moral of the story was. The consequences were brutal. And on the second read, I was more able to appreciate the thought behind this novel. It’s uniqueness and foreshadowing. The huge existential questions it covers. Well, touches on, really. But still.

At first, I didn’t like how perfect the Frankenstein family was portrayed. But the more I read, the more I appreciated the contrast between their kindness and innocence and the terror of Victor’s creation.

Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? […] Of what materials was I made, that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture? But I was doomed to live.

Amongst the other things I liked was the writing style. Not the most accessible book I’ve ever read, you can definitely feel it was written in another century. But it was beautiful and it almost felt like poetry at times, which created a perfect balance to the horrifying events described.

And of course, what I liked the most was the story itself. So original. So imaginative. So thrilling. Unlike anything I’ve ever read.

Victor’s thirst for knowledge was almost palpable. His curiosity, delight in front of the unknown. His first experience with death and sorrow. Frustration when facing an unsolvable riddle. The need to push the boundaries.

Plus the appeal of the supernatural, just all the possibilities it could offer. And also a certain level of serendipity.

It all created a compulsive read.

It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.

However, the first time I read Frankenstein, I felt like the main story – the story about a man who, in an attempt to create life, created a monster – wasn’t given enough space. The book is not very long, and a lot of it goes on descriptions of nature, Frankenstein’s relationship with his family and his inner monologues.

I expected a bit more about how he created a monster and how they both dealt with that instead of endless regret monologues. Plus, I assumed Frankenstein had a better, more direct and specific motive for creating the monster than – I really really wanted to know.

All that said, this was a brilliant read that resonated with me and made me think about it often until I finally caved and grabbed it again.

Regret and guilt are at the very center of the book. Lots of deep thoughts to make you question what you thought you knew about life, and creation, and loneliness. About looking for a purpose and not finding one.

The monster’s story is so tragic.

It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.

Mary Shelley’s story of Frankenstein and his monster became one of my favorite stories ever. It was a great pleasure to finally get into the origins of a creature we all have heard of, that became an inspiration for so many movies, art, as well as other stories and characters.

I will be adding this book to my recommendations for the best classics for fall (which I hope will be done soon 😅).

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(2) comments.

It is so interesting to learn a little bit behind the author’s inspiration for this book! I can believe that such a tale would come out of a nightmare. I loved reading about what you liked and did not like; it is always interesting to see how writers approach concepts!

Thanks so much! ❤️️ Did you know there’s also a movie Mary Shelley from 2017? Great cast. I’m pretty sure it focuses on the years when Frankenstein was created. I still didn’t get a chance to watch it, but I plan to ASAP…

ARTS & CULTURE

What frankenstein can still teach us 200 years later.

An innovative annotated edition of the novel shows how the Mary Shelley classic has many lessons about the danger of unchecked innovation

Kat Eschner

In movies, television shows and even Halloween costumes, Frankenstein’s monster is usually portrayed as a shuffling, grunting beast, sometimes flanked by Dr. Victor Frankenstein himself, the OG mad scientist. This monstrosity created in the lab is now part of our common language. From Frankenfoods to the Frankenstrat , allusions to Mary Shelley’s novel—published 200 years ago this year—and its many descendants are easy to find in everyday language. And from The Rocky Horror Show to the 1931 film that made Boris Karloff’s career, retellings of Shelley’s story are everywhere. Beyond the monster clichés, though, the original story of Frankenstein has a lot to teach modern readers–especially those grappling with the ethical questions science continues to raise today.

It was this idea that drove a creative new edition of the novel for readers in STEM fields. Published last year by MIT Press, Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers and Creators of All Kinds is specifically aimed at college students, but has a broad appeal to those looking to explore the past and future of scientific innovation. When Shelley published Frankenstein , it was considered a graphic book with shocking portrayals of mental illness and ethically fraught science—two qualities that lay at the heart of why the story has endured. “It is hard to talk about Frankenstein without engaging with questions of science and technology,” says Gita Manaktala, MIT Press’s editorial director. From the electricity that Dr. Frankenstein uses to animate his discovery to the polar voyage that frames the narrative, science is integral to the novel.

Then there’s Mary Shelley’s personal history, as the editors note in their introduction. When she wrote the first draft of Frankenstein she was just 19, about the age of the students this volume was intended for. She had already lost a child , an unnamed daughter who died days after her birth, fled her family home to elope with poet Percy Shelley and undergone an education far more rigorous than most women—or indeed men—of her time. But for all that, she was still very young. “If she had turned up at [Arizona State University] or any other school,” write book editors and ASU professors David Guston and Ed Finn, “she would have been labelled an ‘at-risk student’ and targeted for intervention.”

Instead, she went to Lake Geneva with Lord Byron and Shelley to engage in the story-writing contest where she composed the first version of Frankenstein , drawing on material from her education and her life experiences. Her story contains “A very adaptable set of messages and imagery, but it still has at its core this incredibly profound question, that again goes back to Prometheus, goes back to Genesis, ‘What is our responsibility for the things or entities that we create?’” Guston says. That question can as easily be examined in the context of scientific innovations like gene editing and conservation as it could in the context of industrialization and electricity in Shelley’s time.

The book’s editors wanted to tease out those questions by having a wide range of commentators– from science fiction writers and psychologists to physicists–annotate the text with their explanations and related commentary. The annotations range from an explanation of alchemy from Columbia University historian of science Joel A. Klein to an examination of technology’s place in state executions from ASU gender studies scholar Mary Margaret Fonow. This treatment “offers a really distinctive perspective on the novel and directly aims it at an audience that we think is really important to the book but that might not otherwise think that the book is really meant for them,” Finn says.

Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (Mit Press)

This edition of Frankenstein pairs the original 1818 version of the manuscript with annotations and essays by leading scholars exploring the social and ethical aspects of scientific creativity raised by this remarkable story.

The editors also commissioned essays looking at everything from gender and nature in the book to the idea of “ technical sweetness ”—that is, the idea of a technical problem having an inevitable, perfect solution.

The resulting paperback is its own kind of stitched-together creature: behind a dramatic graphic cover, the reader finds many of the trappings of a traditional book, including a footnoted editors’ preface and introduction, the annotated novel, the essays, and a historical timeline of Shelley’s life. It’s still Frankenstein , one of the most commonly assigned books in university classrooms according to Manaktala, but it’s Frankenstein anatomized, laid bare on a dissection table with a number of its scientific, philosophic and historical entrails pulled out for readers to examine.

Frankenstein presents an excellent vehicle for introducing readers to a broader conversation about scientific responsibility, says Finn. In contrast to the pejorative use of Frankenstein’s name in terms like “Frankenfood” for GMOs, the novel is “actually quite thoughtful and takes a much more nuanced and open stance on this question of scientific freedom and responsibility,” he says.

“It’s a book that’s relentlessly questioning about where the limits are and how far to push, and what the implications are of what we do in the world,” Manaktala says. For students learning about subjects like gene editing and artificial intelligence, those questions are worth exploring, she says, and science fiction offers a creative way to do that.

As part of an effort to keep the book accessible to a wide scholastic audience, the editors created the Frankenbook , a digitally annotated website version of the book where they plan to expand the annotations of the print version. Hosted by MIT Press, the site also has a community annotation function so students and teachers can add their own comments.

Manaktala says the publisher is looking for other seminal works of fiction to annotate in a similar fashion, though nothing has been settled on yet. “It’s a way to keep great works of literature relevant for a wide readership,” she says. As for the annotated Frankenstein and the online Frankenbook, they remain, like the story they tell, a cultural work in progress.

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Kat Eschner | | READ MORE

Kat Eschner is a freelance science and culture journalist based in Toronto.

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By the Book

Alice McDermott Is Reading ‘Frankenstein’ for the First Time

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“The original is more complex, more overwrought and more harrowing than popular culture had led me to believe,” says the novelist Alice McDermott, whose new book is “What About the Baby? Some Thoughts on the Art of Fiction.”

What books are on your night stand?

Moving from right (ready to hand) to left (a reach): Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” “Winter’s Tales,” by Isak Dinesen. Seamus Heaney’s “100 Poems,” and “The Historians,” poems by Eavan Boland. A stack of recent fiction: “The Office of Historical Corrections,” by Danielle Evans, Joshua Henkin’s “Morningside Heights,” “Summer Water,” by Sarah Moss. Then Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia,” a Penguin edition of Sophocles, “The Three Theban Plays,” and two books by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “The Phenomenon of Man” and “Writings Selected.”

Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?

Now reading Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” I must have avoided it for all these years because I’d seen so many film adaptations — “Young Frankenstein” my favorite. But the original is more complex, more overwrought and more harrowing than popular culture had led me to believe. I love Frankenstein’s first glimpse of his monster: “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.” Victor Frankenstein misses these sweet details — the inarticulate sound, the grin, the outstretched hand — but Mary Shelley knows what they signify.

Describe your ideal reading experience (when, where, what, how).

Summer afternoon, a bit of shade, a novel, a tall glass of iced tea and a slice of good bread topped with fresh tomatoes. Then a piece of buttery shortbread in order to linger a bit longer before it’s time to go back to work (my own). In wet or cold weather, a novel and a hot drink before a fire. Or a whiskey, if it’s late enough. (Writers’ Tears is a lovely and appropriate brand.)

But any late night when the house is quiet is ideal for reading, especially for reading theology or philosophy, when there’s no one around to notice I’m looking puzzled, or turning the pages at long, frowning intervals.

I’ve also always loved to read in some quiet corner of a university library — all the books I’ll never get to standing by, lending their fragrance to the place. An occasion I’m sorely missing of late.

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Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Book Review: Frankenstein

This year marks the 200 th anniversary of one of my favorite books â€“ Mary Shelleyâ€™s Frankenstein . Actually, its full title is Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus . And that is a good reminder that this novel is really about Frankenstein the man, not about his creation. Frankenstein is the one who steals from the gods (God?) the ability to create life from that which is lifeless. And, as long as we are clearing up misconceptions, the novel is not about re-animating the dead, as is often popularly shown in the movies, but about the formation of a new being from parts that were not necessarily even human. Early in the narration of his creation, Frankenstein says, â€œA new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent nations would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirsâ€ (61,62). This last sentence in particular is full of dark foreboding because gratitude is an emotion which his creation never feels.

And that is perhaps the thing which I think is most interesting in the book; not Frankenstein himself, or even the monster, but the implications of what it means for a creator to make a creation. In my mind, this is the central psychological drama of the book, mirroring another work which undergirds the whole of the drama of Shelleyâ€™s book â€“ Miltonâ€™s Paradise Lost . Shelleyâ€™s creative genius, like that of Milton before her, is focused not on the creator, but the creature. Miltonâ€™s great rhetorical genius is focused on Satan, and while his Puritan heritage cannot make Satan the hero of the epic poem, he can make him what the medieval heritage would never do â€“ Satan can become a complex mind whose rebellion against God is so complete that he wages war against his creator. Even Luther was more medieval than Milton; Luther reminds us in his great hymn that Satan knows his doom is sure. Milton gives Satan much more ambiguous knowledge of his supposed end, even to the point where he denies that reality. Frankensteinâ€™s monster, unlike Satan, outlives his creator and in many ways is superior not only to his creator, but to the whole race of man. But perhaps this is straying too far too early.

For me, the most interesting part of the story is not the creation of the monster; that is, perhaps understandingly, a relatively empty void in the story since it cannot actually be done. The only hint that Shelley gives us is the concept of galvanism. We only know that Frankenstein discovered what the ancient alchemists only dreamed about â€“ he discovered the key to unlock the movement from non-living to living. The philosopherâ€™s stone was popularized by J.K. Rowling, but it is really a very ancient idea. And it is not merely the creation of life, but of rationality. Frankensteinâ€™s creation would be able to join Descartes in declaring â€“ I think, therefore I know I have existence. Frankenstein, as the modern Prometheus, does not merely bring the ability to create life, but soul and consciousness.

The other background characters from both Milton and the book of Genesis, are Adam and Eve. Shelley is working through the ideas of what it means to live in a post-lapsis world. Why is man the way he is? We simply need to look to his movement from immaculate to fallen creature. And it is not just the world as it is now, but what if we could interview Adam and Eve after they had fallen. Would they be able to recount for us their own psychological movement from saint to sinner? Would Adam be able to know himself as being in some way different from what he was now that he has fallen? Genesis is of course silent, but both Milton and Shelley create intelligent beings who not only know that they have sinned but can remember what they were like before and are intelligent enough to know what has changed. Shelleyâ€™s monster knows what it is like to live both in and East of Eden.

These issues occupy most of the book, at least obliquely. However, the most significant is the Monsterâ€™s recounting of his own history to his creator; a recasting of the Adamic narrative in the first person from his first dim memory of his first breath to his knowledge of himself as an evil being. This is, in my mind, one of Shelleyâ€™s most ingenious passages, and is what makes the novel one of the great pieces of English literature in the 19 th Century. It is to this personal narrative that I would like to devote the rest of my time/space.

Beginning in Chapter XI, Shelley imagines the story of the Monster and his first awakening in a way that seems very much like what a child would go through in the first months after her birth. This â€œchild,â€ however, is fully formed, and 8 feet tall, but his newly created brain still takes time to develop. His first images are dim and cloudy; his sensations are a blur, but still they drive him, much like a newborn does not know that she is hungry, but does know that she is in pain. His first interactions with people awaken in him the fight or flight reflex when he is pelted with rocks. But his reaction is much like you would think of a toddler: he holds up his arms, closes his eyes and runs. The learning of language is much as you would expect; he learns through the process of naming of concrete things and learning to differentiate these concrete realities through the symbols associated with them. Only instead of a parent teaching the fundamental structure of language, he has to learn it in secret, watching a family as they interact with one another. It is through this erstwhile family, whom he â€œadoptsâ€ as his own, that he learns the realities of family life and what it means to both love and be loved. But since he learns only through veil of secret observation, this creates in him a longing for what he cannot have: relationship. He can only ever be the secret member of the family for he has seen himself in the reflection of the water and he knows who and what he is; he is a monster to be shunned by all, even his creator.

This then becomes the central tension of the book. Does Frankenstein, as his creator, not owe his creation some measure of fulfillment of his being? Should he not give something to his creation to help him become more than this wretched being? What if instead of running away, Frankenstein had stayed to help nurture his creation? If man is truly a social being, as says Aristotle, would a being made in manâ€™s image not also need society? And thus, the monster, deprived of all social interaction, hounded and feared simply for his size and visage, seeks revenge on his creator for his being unable to fulfill the longings of his heart. He meets with his creator and asks of him a companion â€“ an Eve â€“ like himself, hideous, and together they will seek the happiness which is available to them. But, in a god-like fashion, Frankenstein finally begins to envision a world which is populated with the beings which he has created; beings which are superior in strength, intellect, and are â€“ at least in Frankensteinâ€™s mind â€“ only vicious. He believes, though we are left wondering why he thinks this, that he has created a being which is incapable of virtue. On the other side, the monster insists that vice is only open to him because society leaves him no choice. â€œIf I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimesâ€¦ My vices are the children of forced solitude that I abhor; and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equalâ€ (195). Imagine Adam having to convince God that he would be better with an Eve.

In an effort not to reveal too much of the story, I will only add that when Frankenstein ultimately refuses, the monster seeks to fulfill his promise. But this is the point â€“ mankind, like Frankenstein, is seeking to control his world in the beginning of the 19 th Century, and this becomes the motif of the next 150 years. Man makes his life better, but this comes with a cost. Can man create something which might destroy him? In the 20 th Century, the answer became yes with the advent of massive nuclear arsenals. Human beings had become our own Frankenstian monsters. If there is a moral to this tale it is that simply because man can, does not mean that he should.

In many ways, Frankenstein is the precursor to the great 20 th Century science fictions in which mankind must live in the world he has created. Frankenstein made a monster; one which was superior in many ways to his creator. But the monster, as a rational being, was uncontrollable and moved from virtue to vice. And like God, Frankenstein was left with a creation which needs redemption, but man could not unopen Pandoraâ€™s box. In contrast to the limited abilities of Frankenstein, God could become one of his creatures to remake that which was marred and open the way to grace. Frankensteinâ€™s monster instead of receiving grace, only receives hatred and vengeance. We, unlike the monster, have received grace; the Word was made flesh, and through Him, we have been recreated. No longer cast out, the door has been opened and we are invited in to hearth of the family of God. Frankenstein ends with the death of the creator; our creators dies, but that is not the end, it is the beginning of the unlovely being remade.

Editor’s Note: For additional exploration of Mary Shelley’sÂ Frankenstein:Â Or the Modern Prometheus , give prayerful consideration not only to Andy Walsh ‘s Science Corner: Lightning in a Novel , but also to Andy’s next science post (10/31/2018). Thank-you Michael and Andy! Great to have you both part of the team during the 200 th anniversary year of Frankenstein . To God be the glory! ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director, Emerging Scholars Network

About the author:

Michael J. Stell, MATS

I am a PhD student in theology at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. I am studying the theology of John Williamson Nevin, who taught in the seminary of the German Reformed Church in America in the mid-nineteenth century. He was also the president of Franklin and Marshall College and a friend to James Buchanan, the 15th president of the United States. I am currently a teaching fellow at CUA, teaching undergraduate theology and Church History classes. My goal is to teach at a college or university after completing my degree program. I am also the current vice-president of the graduate student association at CUA. Before life as a grad student (if that were an acronym it would be BLaaGS) I was a teacher and principal in secondary education at various Christian schools in the Northeast. My family and I currently live in Hagerstown, MD.

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Maureen Younger

Book review: frankenstein – mary shelley.

Forget the Hollywood image of the monster with bolts in his neck, Frankenstein, written by the then 18 year old Mary Shelley, is an intriguing read as well as a morality tale, still as relevant for today, if not more so.

Within Shelley’s tale of Victor Frankenstein who creates a being that turns into a monster who eventually sets out to destroy him, Mary Shelley depicts the dangers that are inherent when man tries to play god in his single-minded pursuit of science and knowledge merely for its own sake, and with scant regard for any of the possible moral consequences that might arise from his actions. The tale also illustrates the dangers of judging people – to paraphrase Martin Luther King – by how they look and not by the content of their character; and that if you shun people simply because they look differently from you, the anger and resentment you sow will inevitably come back to haunt you.

Frankenstein was written while Mary Shelley was in Switzerland with her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, and was first published anonymously in 1818. Presumably as a woman, and a teenager at that, Mary Shelley assumed – as numerous other female authors have done before and since – that the book had more chance of selling if people didn’t realise it had been written by a woman. Finally when her name did appear in the second edition, many people couldn’t believe that a woman could have invented such a story.

And it’s quite some story. In fact it’s a story within a story. We hear of Frankenstein via letters by a Captain Walton – who meets Victor Frankenstein while on his own journey for glory in the freezing north seas. Like Frankenstein, he too is exploring unchartered territory and in so doing is likewise leading himself and his crew into possible death.

In Frankenstein’s case, his unexplored territory is pushing the boundaries of science. Frankenstein is clearly a highly intelligent and capable young man. Even towards the end of the novel when he is an emotional and physical wreck and on the point of death, Captain Walton concludes: “ What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin! He seems to feel his own worth and the greatness of his fall .”

Frankenstein’s troubles begin while a student at Ingolstadt. Having recently lost his beloved mother, Frankenstein decides “ what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death! ” But he clearly hasn’t thought through the moral implications should man indeed become invulnerable to death ; and it is also clear that he is partly induced by the glory that would attend such a discovery. And in the pursuit of this knowledge, he commits the fatal sin of desiring to learn the “ hidden laws of nature ” and “ the secrets of heaven and earth ”. In other words, he decides to play god. “ A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs “.

Totally consumed by this desire to “ unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation ”, he doesn’t go home to visit his family for several years but instead devotes himself tirelessly to his studies. It is this monomania which Shelley warns us against. “ If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed .”

Frankenstein informs Walton that in the course of his studies: “ I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter” and creates life in the form of the nameless creature. That this creature is hideous is without doubt: “ its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes ”. However, we never get a detailed description of him. His image is left mainly to our own imagination. All we really know about him is his yellow, watery eyes and the fact that he is unusually tall and superhumanly agile and strong, able to live in the most inhospitable places on earth and climb an almost perpendicular mountain: and that at the very sight of him, children and women run away screaming or faint on the spot, and men immediately assume the worst and want to attack him.

Throughout the novel the monster is shunned, first by his creator Frankenstein and then by society. That at first he has noble qualities is without doubt. He is intelligent, eloquent, persuasive and sensitive. He is initially empathetic to the needs of others around him. While hiding in a hovel, he watches the De Lacey family in their daily struggles to survive and goes out of his way – anonymously – to be of assistance to them as he “ wants to restore happiness to these deserving people ”. He refuses to steal their food when he realises how little the cottagers have; instead he goes out and collects wood for them and clears their footpath of snow. His empathy is such that he is sad when they are sad, happy when they are happy. He imagines winning them over, gaining their love and finally no longer being alone. However, the De Laceys are so horrified by his appearance in the cottage that they refuse to live there anymore. With his hopes so cruelly dashed, the creature experiences feelings of revenge and hatred which in turn “ bent my mind towards injury and death” and in his impotent rage he destroys their garden and cottage. It is then he decides to seek out his creator and sets off on his path of murderous revenge.

However the novel makes clear that the creature wasn’t evil by nature but it is what happens to him that changes him “ events, that impressed me with feelings which, from what I had been, made me what I am ”. It is this constant rejection by society, the assumption that simply because of the way he looks that he must be evil that eventually “ I declared everlasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me and sent me forth to this insupportable misery.”

After all, he helps the De Laceys and saves a young girl from drowning but in both cases he is met with hatred and his life is threatened simply because of his appearance. Worst of all, the man who created him, has shunned him and left him to a fate – loneliness – which fills him with hatred and resentment. Ironically, this creature who is to kill innocents for the sake of revenge, at first can’t understand how man can be both virtuous and evil. However once having felt not only abandoned by his creator but thanks to “ the subsequent blight of all kindly feeling by the loathing and scorn which his protectors had manifested towards him ” he is led into such a rage that he admits “ I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind .”

In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley illustrates how knowledge can be a two-edged sword. Just as when the creature puts his hand in the fire and realises that something, that provides warmth, can also cause pain, so knowledge can both help and be an affliction for mankind. Firstly, the more knowledgeable he becomes, the more the creature’s sorrow increases as he comprehends how singular his fate is. Secondly, there is the danger inherent in pursuing knowledge in a moral vacuum as it ‘ may be a serpent to sting you .” Given the times she was living in, it would seem Mary Shelley was warning of making science into the new god and of the dangers of idealism in the abstract.

We also see the proof of the adage that the path to hell is paved with good intentions. There is no doubt that Frankenstein wanted to help his fellow man. “ I had begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice, and make myself useful to my fellow-beings.” In the end, however, despite this “Now all was blasted: instead of that serenity of conscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe .”

Another adage which Frankenstein proves to be true is: be careful what you wish for. Frankenstein notes: “ I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; 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 ”.

Frankenstein pays a heavy price both in the loss of loved ones and in his descent into “ a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself”. He is continuously “ torn by remorse, horror, and despair ”. He is wracked by guilt, feeling that he is the true murderer of William and Justine. “ Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of unalterable evils; and I lived in daily fear, lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness .” As a result, Frankenstein is enslaved by a creation of his own making which even the creature acknowledges, saying at one point “ Slave” …. “You are my creator, but I am your master; obey !”

When the creature and Frankenstein finally meet, the creature asks his creator for just one thing – a partner to share his life with. He promises Frankenstein that he will cease hostilities and go into exile in South America, far away from any place inhabited by man. Frankenstein at first agrees. “ His tale and the feelings he now expressed proved him to be a creature of fine sensations, and did I not as his maker owe him all the portion of happiness that it was in my power to bestow ?” In the end, however, Frankenstein takes the more selfless option, aware that by doing so he may bring death and destruction to his own loved ones; he refuses to make a partner for the monster, finally realising the possible consequence of such an action for the rest of mankind.

Ironically in a novel that deals with someone trying to create life, the prevailing theme, however, is death and grief. As Frankenstein says at the beginning of the novel, unaware of how true a statement it will prove to be. “ To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death .” Little does Frankenstein suspect how death will haunt him. Mary Shelley depicts the grief over losing a loved one with great feeling and sensitivity. It was something she must have felt only too keenly. Her mother, the famous radical thinker Mary Wollstonecraft had died soon after her birth, and by the time of writing Frankenstein Shelley had already lost a child. When Frankenstein mourns the death of his best friend, Henry Clerval, the sentiments are movingly depicted. “ And where does he now exist? Is this gentle and lovely being lost forever? Has this mind, so replete with ideas, imaginations fanciful and magnificent, which formed a world, whose existence depended on the life of its creator;—has this mind perished? Does it now only exist in my memory? No, it is not thus; your form so divinely wrought, and beaming with beauty, has decayed, but your spirit still visits and consoles your unhappy friend .”

As the daughter of two radical thinkers (Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin) it is not surprising that the novel also includes some apt criticism on the iniquities of human society, using the monster as a prism to reflect its absurdities. “ I learned that the possessions most esteemed by your fellow creatures were high and unsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only one of these advantages, but without either he was considered, except in very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few !” There is also a sideswipe at the way the lower orders are treated compared to the more enlightened mores of the Swiss Republic. “ there is less distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the lower orders, being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined and moral…… (and) does not include the idea of ignorance, and a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being .”

And as the novel makes clear, if society ignores the wants and needs of others, it will end up paying a heavy and bloody price. “ Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good — misery made me a fiend .” After all, at the time of Shelley writing the novel, the French Revolution was not a too distant memory and many of the friends of Mary’s parents had taken a keen interest in the ideas of the revolution.

As for the creature he asks his creator Frankenstein many a question that us humans ask of god: “ What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them .” Although at times in his self-pity, the creature does verge on sounding like a teenager castigating his parents by pointing out he didn’t ask to be born. He is also selfish in his loneliness, deciding at first to kidnap the boy William without giving any thought to the effect such a kidnap would have on its victim. Even at Frankenstein’s death bed he bemoans his own fate with the line “ my agony was still superior to thine ”. And referring to the murders he has committed to wreck vengeance on Frankenstein he claims: “ he suffered not in the consummation of the deed. Oh! Not the ten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the lingering detail of its execution .”

The climax of the novel sees Frankenstein and his creature determined to destroy each other. Thus Frankenstein is also a morality tale on the viciousness of revenge. As the monster notes towards the end of the novel, “ For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires .” Filled with “ impotent envy and bitter indignation ” the monster has “ an insatiable thirst for vengeance ” and carries on wrecking vengeance on Frankenstein only too aware that “ I knew that I was preparing for myself a deadly torture, but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey. ” In a way the creature has created his own “ creature ” that will ultimately destroy him too. Revenge is therefore evidently not the answer. Both Frankenstein and the creature end up in hell of their own making that can only end in death.

And ultimately it is death that they both desire. Frankenstein is physically shattered and psychologically weakened by guilt and remorse. The monster likewise is bowed down with remorse and hatred of himself for his actions, determined to kill himself and leave not one iota of his existence. In a moment of redemption the creature does feel grief and horror at Frankenstein’s death and calls him a “ Generous and self-devoted being ” and asks for his pardon.

Frankenstein is a fascinating read. Shelley has a great eye for detail and her depiction of the Swiss countryside is highly evocative. The novel deals with various intriguing themes without getting in the way of a great story, well told. The story is also at heart very human. None of us may be able to create a living creature but most of us are capable of creating our own bugbears which end up taking a life of their own and controlling us – whether it be a career, a hobby, a relationship or an addiction. And with the strides made in science today, Frankenstein is also a warning that just because we can do something from a scientific point of view doesn’t necessarily mean we should. There are always consequences to our actions and we ignore them at our peril.

© Maureen Younger and www.maureenyounger.com [2013-2019]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Maureen Younger and www.maureenyounger.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Book Review: Frankenstein

Frankenstein is a classic novel that recollects the events after Victor Frankenstein, a knowledgeable and curious scientist, gives life to a haunting creature. As soon as this monster opens its eyes, Victor becomes filled with regret. Although the monster fled from Victor's apartment, it wasn't the last time they would interact. Readers witness Frankenstein's sickening and terrifying journey as he searches for his monster. I believe this novel did an amazing job of expressing the valid feelings of the monster while also displaying Victor's feelings and emotions. Some chapters in the story tend to drag and there are events that Mary could have elaborated on to provide readers a clearer image of each occurrence. But overall, this was a unique approach to expressing themes of isolation, vanity, cruelty, and fear.

Reviewer: Grade 12

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Frankenstein Book Review
Our review: Parents say ( 3 ): Kids say ( 17 ): From the hindsight of 200 years, there's much to mock in this book, and the prose can be a slog by today's standards. But the story and its philosophical issues are no less compelling today than they were when Mary Shelley wrote FRANKENSTEIN, as evidenced by the fact that they recur in so many ...
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [A Review]
Frankenstein is a novel that has never left the popular imagination since it was first published in 1818 and it probably never will. A dark gothic fantasy, an early science fiction, or a 'precursor to the existential thriller'; its arresting power has captured every generation. Possibly it strikes at something disturbing in human nature.
Review and Synopsis of Mary Shelley's Classic, "Frankenstein"
Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus," first published in 1818, is a foundational work in the science fiction and horror genres. It presents a compelling narrative that intertwines ambition, ethics, and the consequences of playing God. This review offers an in-depth analysis of Shelley's masterpiece, which is suitable ...
Read Percy Shelley's review of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
When she unleashed Frankenstein upon the world two years later, she did so anonymously. Nevertheless, word got out that the book's author was a woman (gasp), and the ensuing early reviews were incredibly critical. One particularly misogynistic critic wrote, "The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which ...
The Paris Review
Victor and Mary—two teenagers on a spoiled vacation, reading a book that falls into their hands by chance. This is the starting point for both the monster and the novel. Frankenstein 's main themes are well-known: the hubris of the creator, the friendlessness of the creature, the inversion of hierarchies between them.
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was ...
Book Review—Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Clearly, it's an extremely popular story. First published in 1818, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein belongs to the horror category, but was also instrumental in creating the science fiction genre. In the novel, Victor Frankenstein collects and connects parts from dead bodies, creating a living being. As soon as it's brought to life, however ...
Review: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Before I read Frankenstein, I read another great book called Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon. It is an excellent resource for learning more about Shelley, and her feminist mother Mary Wollstonecraft. ... But despite the harsh reviews, Frankenstein was an instant success and has remained largely read and studied since the 19th century.
Frankenstein
Historical context: Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818 and revised it in 1831. The 1831 text is the version most commonly found in modern reprints of the book, including this one reviewed by Focus on the Family. You can request a review of a title you can't find at [email protected].
Frankenstein
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. (Published 1818). "If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion." *warning: small spoilers ahead* I listened to the audiobook narrated by Kenneth Branagh and enjoyed every minute of it. Two long walks and some household chores flew by and suddenly the book was finished.…
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley - My Review. The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone. If you want to get incredibly confused, indecisive about whose side you are on, ultimately realizing you do not have anything to compare this story with to be able ...
What Frankenstein Can Still Teach Us 200 Years Later
Dr. Frankenstein at work in his laboratory Wikimedia Commons. In movies, television shows and even Halloween costumes, Frankenstein's monster is usually portrayed as a shuffling, grunting beast ...
Alice McDermott Is Reading 'Frankenstein' for the First Time
The novel's hapless protagonist has set his hopes for a new life on a windshield repair kit that he believes will launch him into the heady ranks of the gainfully self-employed. No customers ...
Frankenstein Book Review
The gothic novel Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818) is about a Swiss man, Victor Frankenstein, who was obsessed with natural philosophy, so much that he one day created a monster from body parts he…
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (Book Review)
March 14, 2018 By Ben McEvoy. Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley is one of the most thrilling, haunting, and poignant books I have ever read. Forget spending money on the latest Ban Drown, Kephen Sting, or Pames Jatterson (at least for now) if you haven't read Frankenstein. The most heart-pumping, heart-wrenching, soul-destroying, life ...
Book Review: Frankenstein
Book Review: Frankenstein. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Photo by CalamityJon. This year marks the 200 th anniversary of one of my favorite books â€" Mary Shelleyâ€™s Frankenstein. Actually, its full title is Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus. And that is a good reminder that this novel is really about Frankenstein the man, not ...
Book Review: Frankenstein
Review. In Mary Shelley's classic novel "Frankenstein", a young ambitious scientist decides to play God and, in the process, creates a monster. As the monster struggles with self-identity and the meaning of his life, he enacts revenge on his creator by destroying everything he loves. Any time you dive into a classic novel, it can be difficult ...
Book Review: Frankenstein
Book Review: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley. Forget the Hollywood image of the monster with bolts in his neck, Frankenstein, written by the then 18 year old Mary Shelley, is an intriguing read as well as a morality tale, still as relevant for today, if not more so.
Frankenstein: by Mary Shelley by Marry Wollstonecraft Shelley
3,030 ratings361 reviews. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a combination of Gothic novel and science fiction. It unfolds the story of a scientist Victor Frankenstein who creates a hideous monster from pieces of corpses and brings it to life. But the monster eventually becomes the source of his misery and demise. The plot of the novel is epistolary.
Book Review: Frankenstein
Review Frankenstein is a classic novel that recollects the events after Victor Frankenstein, a knowledgeable and curious scientist, gives life to a haunting creature. As soon as this monster opens its eyes, Victor becomes filled with regret.

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