There Is Something At Work In My Soul, Which I Do Not Understand

I recently finished reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

Artist Renata Krawczyk (@rena.illustration) has created this stunning cover that will look lovely on any bookshelf.

~POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT~

  Rating: 3.5/5 stars

"The book tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a Swiss student of natural science who creates an artificial man from pieces of corpses and brings his creature to life."

I was more than just a little excited to pick up this enduring and quite popular classic, gothic horror novel, for the first time.

For over 200 years Frankenstein by Mary Shelley has captured our minds and toyed with our fears, entering the canon of classics while remaining as relevant and thought-provoking a metaphor as science progresses onward. It is certainly worthy of the lasting fame, being an exquisite blend of Gothic horror and Romantic morality that delves into philosophical and allegorical inquiries in an endlessly engaging narrative that had me reading late into the night with a fervor to reach the end. It is a story we likely all know, and not much new to say someone hasn’t already said and better, but even still I was fascinated by every detail, with its fabulist monster story, the nested framing of two men on a quest in the arctic, the epistolary narrative, the plots of murderous vengeance and, of course, the fall from innocence with the damnation of ambition. This is also a story about how being a deadbeat dad passes along trauma that reacts negatively and is rather terrifying with its massive monster that moves fast and kills hard. This cautionary creation tale of catastrophe forces us to confront the grotesqueries of humanity grappling with life and death, and question what is truly monstrous.

éThis book is sort of the antidote to those cliche inspirational office posters about ambition everyone had in the 90s, because here we find ambition to drip into arrogance and basically create calamity. Framed from the perspective of Cpt. Walton, as he attempts to reach the North Pole—and fails—we hear the story of another man who’s blinded by his own ambition until it is too late. Doctor Victor Frankenstein’s story is a chilling fall-from-grace story, beginning with a sweet adolescence that slowly turns to the grotesque along a path of bloodied corpses of innocent people to chronicle his own loss of innocence. The spark to this is the early death of his mother, coupled with his reading of scientific books at university (self-education through books is mirrored as well through his monster), amalgamating into an idea with the best intentions to ‘renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.’ We all know the maxim that good intentions are the paving stones to Hell, however.

While we tend to just remember the Doctor’s last name, the full title of the book is Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, and here we begin to understand why fire and light is such a frequent symbol. As Prometheus gave fire to humans and was punished for it, we see Frankenstein attempt to ‘pour a torrent of light into our dark world’ by conquering death and creating life (with electric shock instead of fire but close enough), something that will be his own undoing. It is only natural, drawing on ideas of the Romantics that nature is the pinnacle of good and perfection and since he ‘collected bones from charnel houses; and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame,’ to create and give life to his creation, therefore the manufactured (see also: “unnatural”) creation must also be profane and Frankenstein shall be punished. You know, the whole ‘don’t play god’ argument. The creature wrecks havoc on Frankenstein’s life as ‘the cold stars shone in mockery,’ and the barren Arctic is a sort of Hell (devoid of fire and warmth) where Victor inevitably meets his demise.

Yet Victor never views his ambitions as unnatural (him and the Captain being figuratively blinded by their ambitions functioning as another fire/light metaphor), and even at the end he says to Walton ‘I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.’ He sees no ethical dilemma in his manufacturing of life, his fears stem from the supposed hideousness of his creation—‘ugly…a thing such as Dante could not have conceived’—and then later the string of murders. ‘A new species would bless me as its creator and source,’ Victor writes, propping himself up as a paternal godlike figure, ‘no father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs,’ however he fails as a father to his creation by abandoning it. He does not even give the creation a name, even when hunting it after the multiple murders. This is key, as in fairy tales naming something is a way to take away it’s power (think Rumpelstiltskin being defeated by guessing his name). ‘I think of the act of naming as diagnosis,’ Rebecca Solnit writes in her essay Call Them by Their True Names, ‘once you name a disorder, you may be able to connect to the community afflicted with it, or build one.’ Seeing as the creation turns to evil deeds due to a feeling of isolation and being othered, this idea of naming, of giving a space, makes the lack of naming or any parental care more emphasized as a fatal misstep. So not only does Victor have his fall from grace for trying to play god, but also failing in even the most basics of paternal support.

Let's turn now to Frankenstein’s monster. Left to his own devices, this giant manufactured from death finds he is met with fear and misunderstanding at every turn. While he seems to only have pure intentions at first, he is pushed into solitude and begins to lash out, especially at his creator (definitely some religious symbolism there). While he may be manmade, he is also very human all the way down to emotions and existential crises of selfhood:

The creature conducts his autodidactic education mostly through reading and watching a family interact. Among his books are Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Milton’s Paradise Lost, the latter being very influential on his impressions of the world and themself.

While the classic human vs nature and the whole ethical conundrum is fascinating, it is the look at the person under the extreme absence of love and support that grabs me most. On one hand, it is an intriguing look at the horrors of isolation and being othered, but it also makes me wonder how narratives like this became concrete in collective consciousness and instill further fear into people against anything different. Is this also central to ideas of xenophobia and pushbacks against equality, the fear that if we allow the marginalized to have space, they will harm the people-of-status-quo/colonizers as a state of revenge? Thinking about it that way is frustrating and sad, the idea that those who have been harmed continue to be so out of fear for the repercussions, which only furthers the othering and marginalizing. So I guess that’s something to consider too, and work on undoing in social consciousness. And a reminder to give love and empathy. The creation only wanted to be understood, given empathy and space, given love.

Now, the question here proposed by Shelley is, who is the ‘true’ monster? The man who reached for the profane and abandoned it into a life of torment, turning toward evil, or the misunderstood being thrust into the world already considered an abomination and becoming ‘malicious because I am miserable.’ It's ethical quandaries like this that make this a fantastic classroom choice or one to toss and turn with for days.

Check out Frankenstein and discover who is the real monster.