By Mary Shelley

Welcome to Halloween, brought to you one week early. I first came across this book when I was in secondary school because this was what we were studying in English class for a term. Other than our yearly study of a Shakespeare play, this was the second text that I studied that I was actually interested in. The first book was 1984, a book that I will not review until it stops feeling so real.

Before I go on, there is a bit of housekeeping to do. After this review, I will be looking at the Universal’s Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and Netflix’s Frankenstein.

“Victor Frankenstein is a highly driven scientist who is obsessed with one goal: creating life. After succeeding in his quest, he is so horrified by the result that he completely rejects and abandons his creation, leaving this newly formed being to find its own way in the world with no assistance. The creation encounters rejection at every turn, leaving him with a sense of loneliness and a strong thirst for revenge.”

There is a reason why this book is both a classic Gothic novel as well as the first science fiction novel. This book feeds into so many other works throughout time. If you are reading this but haven’t read the book, you should know there is a lot of backstory before we get to the monster.

For this story, I have 3 thoughts.

Firstly, I need to talk about the framing device, because the book starts with Captain Robert Walpol writing to his sister about the voyage in the Antarctic before finding Victor Frankenstein on the ice. Then this half-dead man tells him his story. But the reason that I am bringing this up is that in Victor’s story we get the monster’s story and his story of the people he spied on. Now I know that at the time you need an explanation as to why you are reading this story, like with Dracula being made up of letters, newspapers and the like. But I do wonder what his sister thought about the novel she received.

Secondly, Victor Frankenstein is the smartest idiot who ever lived. He is smart because if he was not, then there won’t be a story. The first part of his idiocy is the fact that, when making a female monster, he backs out because he is scared that his two creations will have kids. Since he is the one building her, he can prevent that. The second part of his idiocy is the fact that, after being threatened by the Monster that “I will be with you on your wedding night”, he still gets married. Even if he thought that the monster would go after him and not his wife, that is still a stupid move.

Thirdly, the real villain is bad parenting. I know that the original lesson of the novel is that it is wrong to play god and create life. But I can’t help but wonder how much happier everyone would be if Victor had actually taken care of his creation instead of running away the moment it didn’t look right. Considering he was the one who made it, then its appearance should not be a surprise. But as I said earlier, if things were different, there would be no story.

Thank you for joining me, and I hope you enjoy this Halloween season and until next week.

Happy reading to all and to all a good night.