Frankenstein / Mary Shelley / 1818

Frankenstein / Mary Shelley / 1818

Shelley has this delightful Russian doll of a narrative style where one narrator tells the story someone else told them, who in their story will tell the story someone else told them, and so forth. The primary narrators, Captain Walton and Victor Frankstein, are remarkably like one another, both shame-ridden, earnest and ambitious men, searching for approval and success. Captain Walton’s pitiful inferiority complex and lack of worldly knowledge is as funny as it is foreboding and worrisome. It’s easy to hate Frankenstein as has such a poisonously guilt-ridden narration. The foil between these characters provides fodder for conversations about stigma, racialization, shame, and nurture vs nature. This is an absolutely curious text racially, as the monster feels like a pretty obvious stand-in for a colonized other. The plot runs pretty tight, it’s just feels incredibly stupid at times because all Frankenstein had to do was open up to the right people or really anyone and a lot of the turmoil of the conflict could’ve been resolved radically differently and better for him. I was a bit disappointed to find that the monster basically talked like a 19th century gentleman, although it was hilarious to get the scene of the monster philosophizing about the impact Paradise Lost had on the development of his consciousness. 

4/5