4thace reviewed Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Review of "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein, or, The modern Prometheus" on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This book is often hailed as the first science fiction novel, grown out of the Gothic style, but to me it came off more like a morality story that alluded to things that could only happen in science fiction as we see it now. Mary Shelley alludes to chemicals and apparatus needed to create the monster without really evoking what any of this was about. Instead we spend long stretches in the head of the title character whose fate is to do things he comes to regret bitterly afterwards. It is told as a sort of double framing story, where an explorer is sending letters to his sister, and in one of these is the tale related by a Swiss wanderer he picks up in the far north, turning out to be Victor Frankenstein fruitlessly pursuing his monster to make it pay for the crimes it committed. And inside Victor's …
This book is often hailed as the first science fiction novel, grown out of the Gothic style, but to me it came off more like a morality story that alluded to things that could only happen in science fiction as we see it now. Mary Shelley alludes to chemicals and apparatus needed to create the monster without really evoking what any of this was about. Instead we spend long stretches in the head of the title character whose fate is to do things he comes to regret bitterly afterwards. It is told as a sort of double framing story, where an explorer is sending letters to his sister, and in one of these is the tale related by a Swiss wanderer he picks up in the far north, turning out to be Victor Frankenstein fruitlessly pursuing his monster to make it pay for the crimes it committed. And inside Victor's story are passages where the monster gets to relate his own fantastical tale including how he learns to speak and read and understand this hostile world into which he was thrown in his hideous misshapen form incapable of redemption. That part, by far, was the most interesting bit, and when the book reverts back to the travels of Victor with his friend and his family and engagement and so on, it just felt lackluster to me. But throughout it is a curious account of characters doing things for unfathomable reasons. Why did Frankenstein create the thing, just because he could? Why did it decide to kill even after it had acquired reason? Why did Victor not take any precautions against the hostile deeds the monster pretty clearly told him he was going to do well in advance? I think there's no good to be thinking about these plot points rationally, which to me was a disappointment, because the author was evidently much more intent on evoking a Gothic mood and depicting a tragic outcome by any means possible. I felt impatient at times but kept reminding myself that this was written long before any idea that something more coherent to modern tastes could grow out of the genre.
I listened to the audiobook which helped carry me through the parts where I would have set the book aside because of my problems with it. Of course many have run with the germ of this tale and made popular works which go in different directions from Shelley's original, which is why we still remember it today. The later works all try to connect the elements in their own way, but the gaps in the original story (I think the one I listened to was a revision of the original) point to a different artistic goal I have to respect for what it is.
