So, I just read Frankenstein for the first time. Very enjoyable. I have read a lot about the themes over the years, and of course one of the most common is that Frankenstein is actually the monster and that the "Monster" is innocent.
I'll come back to that.
Despite reading about the book and hearing it discussed in popular culture, there were still a few surprises:
- Dr. Frankenstein is not a doctor at all. He is a brilliant, although somewhat miseducated young man, more akin to an overzealous grad student than anything else.
- The Monster is not made of corpses. Although one of the plot elements is the concealing of the exact nature of his construction, it is alluded to. Mr. Frankenstein consults bones from the mortuary, but it is not clear that he uses them in actually making the Creature. It is just as likely that he is using them to study their anatomy and recreate them from other materials. At one point he specuates that he could use this method to reanimate decaying flesh, but dismisses it out of hand. Lastly, the proportions and properties of the monster make it impossible that it was made of human bodies. Which leads me to:
- The monster is truly terrifying. The Creature possess superhuman speed, strength, agility, is both massive at 8 feet tall, and supernaturally stealthy. It can move at tremendous speed across any type of terrain, enter any closed room virtually at will, and go undetected to suddenly appear within feet of a victim. It is relentless and able to endure conditions that would kill an average person. It is also possess incredible intelligence and strategic capability.
- It is incredibly creepy. Despite the Creature's superhuman intelligence and ability to understand and learn about human social mores, it desperately chooses to reveal itself in the most disturbing ways. Imagine a beggar coming to your home, saying he hopes to live with a family that he has been watching closely for a long time and profoundly loves but they do not know he exists. Then he suddenly reveals that it is you and your family he has been secretly watching for months. This is exactly how the monster chooses to reveal himself to the world, and is it any surprise that the family is disturbed to the point that they kick him out and move away?
Now, the young Mr. Frankenstein is not a complete innocent either. He does create a living, feeling, thinking being without considering the consequences. He does abandon the creature (or rather allows the creature to wander away and doesn't go looking for it). He engages in unethical research, but he is also not ever given any training in ethics. He is a grad student who, in essence, stumbled on the secret to give life and decided to test it. How many young students right now are developing programs that they don't fully understand in hopes of achieving AGI? Are they all monsters, too? Or are they young curious people who love science, have hopes for high achievement, and no proper ethical education?
It is relevant that Frankenstein is not a Doctor, in that he has not been thoughtfully in the field, seen the errors of others, experienced setbacks and implications of his work, or shared his work with others. He is just a little more than a kid in his parents basement hacking away on something in solitude (well, the attic of his boarding school, but you get the idea).
He should have shared what he was working on. He should have warned those he loved that they were in danger of this monster, he should have risked the disbelief that he feared in sharing the truth. Most of the people who are killed by the monster could have been saved, or at least warned of the danger if he was not so intent on keeping it a secret. Frankenstein is a complex hero.
And the Creature is a complex villain. He is abandoned in the world and mistreated by those who are afraid of his appearance. He is desperately lonely. So he decides to force his creator to make him a mate against his will. He does so through violent threats, proven by murders that the monster has already committed without hesitation.
He is what we would today call a violent incel. He thinks he is too ugly to be loved except by a monster like himself. He has no interest in whether such a creature would have any interest in him. Frankenstein almost caves, and in fact begins to make a bride for the creature, only to finally consider the moral implications of such an act. He destroys his work before the monster's eyes.
Let's talk about Justine. Following the (probably) first murder, of Frankenstein's kid brother, the monster frames her for the act. Justine is basically an orphan that the Frankenstein family took in as something of a charge or perhaps maid. But the monster, crucially, doesn't know this. He sees a random woman asleep in a barn and instantly thinks of making her his girlfriend (she had fallen asleep while looking for the missing boy). But then he decides that she would only reject him too, so he plants evidence of the murder on her because Justine is guilty of being a somewhat attractive young woman - who would surely reject him if given the chance. You see why I characterize him as a violent incel.
People sometimes point to the occasional gentle and even heroic nature of the creature as proof that Frankenstein made him into the monster he became. He helps the family he (innocently) stalks for months in numerous ways. He tries to save a little girl from drowning. He ultimately expresses remorse for his actions and claims he will go to the wilderness and kill himself. But in the meantime, he just straight up murders a lot of innocent people to "punish" Frankenstein. He is not a hero or even an antihero. He is just a complex villain.
Anyway, this is already longer than I really intended. I'm happy to hear the thoughts of others. Have you read the book? Do you agree or disagree?
I think they're both pretty monstrous but in different ways. We can empathise with the plight of a creature that has no purpose other than to (essentially) satisfy the ego of its maker and still be appalled at its actions. Victor is monstrous in his inability to take responsibility and not consider what he's doing.
There's an argument that Mary Shelley was putting Frankenstein in the role of God and the monster as Adam as a commentary on religion. She, like her parents and her husband, was inspired by the Satan of Paradise Lost (the monsters reading primer!) in which Milton had his Satan question what right god had to 'rule' just because he'd created. And just like god did to another of his first creations, Lilith, Frankenstein cast away the 'bride' of 'Adam'.
It's a truly excellent read, however you look at it.
It's pretty explicit - there are direct references to it throughout the book. My takeaway was that Frankenstein was the opposite of God; God cared for Adam whereas Frankenstein abandoned his creation. I was halfway expecting a parallel about God abandoning us, but whenever it is brought up, it is framed as a contrast with God's inherent goodness.
God cared for Adam until he cast him out of Eden. Adam and Eve were punished by god which is an abandonment of sorts. A turning away at the very least.
When the Shelleys (and others) were writing it was the time of the Enlightenment (and Revolution) and writers and political thinkers from across Europe and the US were using god and satan in a new way - less as supernatural beings of unlimited power and more as allegories - god was superstition/tradition/the ruling class and satan was science/progress/revolution. For anyone interested, the academic Peter Schock wrote about this in his Romantic Satanism book and Per Faxneld of Stockholm University wrote an excellent paper on Milton's Satan as a political rebel.