Frankenstein

Mary W. Shelley

 

As I sit down to write this review, I ponder the question – why do we write through out the ages to deny God – and in doing so why do we deny our own putrid desires?

I was disappointed in the book.  I have always hesitated in reading it – the short blips one hears regarding the nature of the novel – Man playing God and failing.

No it wasn’t it.

It was another shout out – much like Melville’s Moby Dick but on a lesser scale.  More like “hey, why did you make me and leave me here.”

The Romantics are my least favorite brilliant people.  When you have a young author who ran away with a married man sitting down to write a ghost story – well that is quite the mix. 

I know, I know, I’m being judgmental of the author and not the book but the author of such a books bears scrutinizing. 

The work, as with both first and second generation Romantics was brilliant and it is satisfying to note that this one is from a woman.  The language was beautiful, the story well paced and I loved the relationship with the young adventurer in the beginning of the book and Frankenstein.  As a matter of fact, the young captain and his mourning of Frankenstein made me more sympathetic than I would have been without their brief relationship.  I’m not sure if the author intended the reader to focus on that relationship – on the surface it may have been a ploy- you know – “and the moral of the story is…”  but it made the novel for me.

Other than that…come on.

“Nature,” not sin.

“Remorse,” not repentance.

“Recouping,” not abandonment.

Now if we took the stand that Frankenstein was along a microscopic examination of a god abandoning his creation, then we could not be sympathetic to Frankenstein.  I’ll be frank (pardon the half pun) it was hard for me to be sympathetic to Frankenstein.  In that I feel as if I am drawing into the author’s web of “Ah-ha, so how can any deity be worthwhile?”

Please.

The creator in this story has no love.  The creator in this story follows his baser instincts of knowledge gathering and wisdom ignoring.  The very fact that he sent his bride to their room, letting her out of his sight to fight a battle that, up to that point had always been gorilla in nature is proof of Frankenstein’s selfishness.  Really? Really, could one think after wiping out family and friends while away from them that the diabolical fiend would take the confrontation at last, man to ‘man?’

Unlikely.

Do I think this faulty thinking on behalf of the author?  NO, I do not and I believe the author brilliant in her deliberations.  What the author has accomplished is yet, another Byronic hero that her contemporary would be proud and another slap at that part of humanity who loves God.  Think of Frankenstein as deity.  Think of his noble character, his physical beauty, his power to reason, even his creation, stronger, more agile, could not destroy him and in the end wept bitterly.  But in the end who was left standing – a point, that the second generation of Romantics hammered on relentlessly – man and man alone – nothing higher and nothing lower. 

Hence my disappointment.