Name: Frankenstein Novel
Rating: 3.865283459964933 (1711 reviews)
ISBN: 9781602918115

Mary Shelley

Emily Hutchinson

Frankenstein Novel

Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.

Based on the third edition of 1831, this volume contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Bysshe Shelley's preface to the first edition. This revised edition includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with 'A Fragment' by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori's 'The Vampyre: A Tale'. 

Frankenstein

cass

the book i least expected to have incest in it

or, The modern Prometheus

Tim Pendry

This is the 1831 revised Edition of Mary Shelley's seminal horror novel rather than the original 1818 version. Oxford Classics now prefers to talk up the latter in an excess of literary purity but this is the version that a more mature Mary preferred and endorsed. She wrote this originally in a burst of creativity when she was scarcely 19 and there is certainly merit in reading what her raw youth produced out of a fertile relationship with men of ideas in the wake of the failure of the radical impulse that her famous parents represented. Nevertheless, what we have here is still the text preferred in her mid-30s. It should not be neglected. Whichever version is preferred, many who have been brought up on Frankenstein in later popular culture will have found the book hard-going. This is probably because of expectations that the book should be science fiction when it is something else entirely, owing more to the concerns of the turn of the nineteenth century than to the world of the actual industrial-scientific revolution. The two first Universal films stuck broadly to the spirit of the book but the science in the fiction is pretty small beer and the later tradition concerning it relies on her 1831 Introduction rather than anything in the novel. She gives us some sense (in 1831) of the speculative interest in science amongst the poets and scribblers who met at Villa Diodati near Geneva in 1816 yet in the text she is extremely careful to say very little about Vicktor Frankenstein's methods. The scientific aspects of the case may excite us now but a contemporary reader would have been much more aware of the Gothick horror aspect of the book and its political, moral and social sub-texts. The 1818 Preface (which she admits happily enough was drafted by her husband) dwells on literary rather than scientific concerns. There is even a large nod in the story to the Arabian tale of the previous literary era. Of course, critics are right to point out the many implausibilities, even ridiculousness, in the plotting, including the refined demonic sensibility of our monster, but this is expecting the literary mind of the period to be other than it could be. The style may be (to us) almost comically declamatory and worthy yet this was the milieu of people whose leisure reading was still influenced by the likes of Fanny Burney and who were expected to consider literature to be a matter of high seriousness. It is the moral and political aspects of the book that should perhaps interest us more than the rather self-serving claim of genre specialists for this book to have instigated the science fiction genre. Mary was the daughter of the first great English anarcho-libertarian, William Godwin, and of the first great recognised feminist (even if that word has been debased by post-Marxists since), Mary Wollstonecraft. She was born into seriousness of purpose. Her early teenage best friend and husband was the radical poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The story is largely written and set near Geneva in Switzerland, where Voltaire settled and promoted radical ideas in the nearest thing in that era to a free country. Much of the relationship between the monster and his creator and of both with society has to be seen in this context of moral seriousness and contemporary debates about human nature and the good society. The complexities explored and implied are remarkable from a late teenager. This is not the place to try to produce a full critical essay on the novel but a few things stand out, elements that suggest a degree of constructive contestation with her parents' and Shelley's idealistic radicalism. In 'class terms' this is a critical novel in understanding the problem of the bourgeoisie faced by the mob, a problem which emerged when the French Revolution resulted in the baying of blood and imperial tyranny instead of the rule of reason. A similar crisis would take place in 1917 but the terms of that later problematic (what happens when the 'other' you want to liberate liberates themselves and then discovers an inconvenient agency of their own) were being set by Mary's post-revolutionary generation. Percy Shelley remained a radical through and through until his death. Others, like Wordsworth, became deeply conservative. But Mary explores in this novel, if indirectly, the class tensions created by events over her life time and she becomes increasingly quietist in her responses. The monster is the scientific creation of a driven romantic intellectual. It is hideous but it is not by any means necessarily bad. It is a blank slate, a form of rough hewn noble savage. What it (he) gets is rejection, as a child might be rejected by its mother. The creator's rejection is then succeeded by a social rejection because of his uncouthness despite him making remarkable efforts at self-improvement (we should note that such self improvement was also the preferred stance of the radical working class of the day). He sees, through his learning, a better world and then that world rejects him despite his learning its mores and its values. Rejected by his creator and by society, he goes bad, makes demands, threatens and murders to get his way and then slips into downright evil. The sections devoted to his demonic evil are more (and are intended to be more) horrific than his actual creation. Peter Cushing's Hammer version reverses this: the later tradition prefers to see the monster through pathetic eyes ... but Mary's monster actively chooses evil. The creation rejects his creator just as revolutionism and the Enlightenment came to reject the Creator but, however intended, the book refuses to offer us a simply homily. The creation is not evil because he was made that way from the start, he becomes so because of his treatment. And what is the nature of that evil - it is a determination on revenge and a stalking of his creator in order to get what he wants and, when he does not, a cruel game of cat-and-mouse with Frankenstein to cause him maximum suffering at every turn. The 'monster' hates his Creator because his creator is, in fact, insensitive and emotionally cold, someone who clearly wishes he had aborted his own 'child'. The reading back to the relationship between God and Man in everyday life is not hard to make. Yes, there is the Promethean or Faustian aspect to the novel - the search for knowledge beyond what should be known (the central theme of the image of Frankenstein ever since) but the book itself makes this second order to the Luciferian evil of the created one, this new Adam. And note the fascinating fear (one of the truly science fiction aspects of the novel) that the new Adam will procreate with a new Eve and create a new species that will displace humanity - in effect, a version of Nietzsche's 'ubermensch' or transhumanism 'avant la lettre'. Here the seeds of the later pathos are to be found - though bad, then evil, after a sincere attempt at good, the monster was cruelly rejected, self improved, tried to connect with humanity, was traumatically rejected and simply wanted autonomy as a new proto-species. But now let us return to the politics of the mob and the bourgeoisie. It is not hard to see the mob as the 'other' as a monster 'created in our image' but rough-hewn and clumsy. What happens when this 'other' is rejected by us despite its attempts to be like us? Why, it becomes criminal, devious and demanding and eventually, if rejected enough, and virtually told that it must not reproduce, it seeks bloody revenge and torments 'us' with fear. The 'us' is not you or me but it is the middle class readership of novels in the most advanced economy of its day, dedicating itself to moral improvement and the arts despite adversities (as in the family in the monster's story). It goes to Church. This insight of Mary's into the problem of the middle classes when faced by the 'masses' is the story of much of Western political culture ever since. The middle classes actively try to create their working class through 'improvement' but are insensitive to its own sense of autonomy. As aristocratic deference collapsed, the middle classes either had to recognise the desire of the mass to share in what they had or, eventually, to try and rule it by fear and so extirpate the 'criminal' (meaning inconvenient) self assertions, the Miltonic aspects, of the Satanic mob. There have been many attempted solutions to this problem since then but the core issue remains much as it did when Mary created a dialectical struggle between Frankenstein and his monster - the progressive intellectual cannot recognise the monster as his moral equal.

Mary Shelley's classic work, published when she was just twenty years old, tells the tale of eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a terrifying creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Inspired after a competition between Shelley, her husband Percy, Lord Byron and John Polidori to see who could write the best horror story, Frankenstein is in part a gothic novel and considered by some as one of the first forays into science fiction. The story takes place in the 18th century and has led to numerous spin-off works featuring 'Frankenstein's monster.'

this is so good i almost teared up after reading the creature's final monologue.. are you kidding me! it wouldn't have turned that way if only victor provided him care and love as his creator. the creature even once addressed victor as his father i am going to cry. i can now understand why this classic is well known. though i cannot ignore the islamophobia on that one part, i feel it should be part of important discussions about the story

ayoni

“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.” 

sabiduría 

Victor Frankenstein's monster is stitched together from the stolen limbs of the dead, and the result is a grotesque being who, rejected by his maker, sets out on a journey to seek his revenge. In the most famous gothic horror story ever told, Shelley confronts the limitations of science, the nature of human cruelty and the pathway to forgiveness.

IMO should be a mandatory read in middle school. Otherwise I gathered beau landscape and sad.

martian1138

Insist on the original 1818 version.

IMO should be a mandatory read in middle school. Otherwise I gathered beau landscape and sad.

Now, is there a section for Happy books?

And what if I tattooed the creature’s whole final monologue on my back? Huh? What then?

Jacque

Charlotte Gordon

The 1818 Text

So much has already been said and so many ways you can read Frankenstein… personally to me what stuck was Shelley’s depiction of crushing alienation in the creature - I think the text lends itself to reading through a Marxist lens (Franco Moretti’s The Dialectic of Fear does this v well methinks)

admittedly I picked this up because I watched Guillermo del Torro’s film adaptation (I’ve fallen for the Jacob Elordi propaganda unforch). I am just a lil surprised at how many creative liberties del Torro took in his adaptation - the film is definitely way more Oedipal which was an interesting choice for sure but no complaints

Taira Robles

So much has already been said and so many ways you can read Frankenstein… personally to me what stuck was Shelley’s depiction of crushing alienation in the creature - I think the text lends itself to reading through a Marxist lens (Franco Moretti’s The Dialectic of Fear does this v well methinks)

admittedly I picked this up because I watched Guillermo del Torro’s film adaptation (I’ve fallen for the Jacob Elordi propaganda unforch). I am just a lil surprised at how many creative liberties del Torro took in his adaptation - the film is definitely way more Oedipal which was an interesting choice for sure but no complaints

not enough creature!!!!!! I love you creature!!!

Grace M

"Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?"

Coinciding a reading of Frankenstein along with the 1931 and 2025 versions of the movie, was probabaly one of the highlights of my year. And to come to realise the circumstances under which. Shelley created this tale of a god-complex in search for power that stems from trauma of losing a loved one, heartbreaking. I think I'm a little biased with this reading because of del Toro's adaptation as well, the tale told through the eyes of an empath holds more truly indeed.

diya

"Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?"

Coinciding a reading of Frankenstein along with the 1931 and 2025 versions of the movie, was probabaly one of the highlights of my year. And to come to realise the circumstances under which. Shelley created this tale of a god-complex in search for power that stems from trauma of losing a loved one, heartbreaking. I think I'm a little biased with this reading because of del Toro's adaptation as well, the tale told through the eyes of an empath holds more truly indeed.

D.L. MacDonald

Kathleen Scherf

Frankenstein,3rd Edition

This is a reread as the first time I read it was for a si fi class. Very glad I did

Florence

Thoroughly enjoyed this fantastic piece of literature by Miss Shelley. Definitely not the “language” I am used to reading but I’m pretty pleased with how quick I got through this! Looking forward to seeing the movie adaptation very soon!!!

ophelia ross 

"200 years after it was first published, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has stood the test of time as a gothic masterpiece-a classic work of humanity and horror that blurs the line between man and monster...The story of Victor Frankenstein and the monstrous creature he created has held readers spellbound ever since it was published two centuries ago. On the surface, it is a novel of tense and steadily mounting horror; but on a more profound level, it offers searching illumination of the human condition in its portrayal of a scientist who oversteps the bounds of conscience, and of a monster brought to life in an alien world, ever more desperately attempting to escape the torture of his solitude. A novel of hallucinatory intensity, Frankenstein represents one of the most striking flowerings of the Romantic imagination."

Or The Modern Prometheus: (illustrated Edition)

A delightful reread via the audiobook narrated by Dan Stevens.

Emiley Jones

Rachel

Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.

yearning competition but ur opponent is Frankenstein's Monster

SONYA

I don’t typically rate classics but yeah, it really was that good.

Tabitha Rone

Jonnie

Story: 4/5, Writing: 2.5/5. While I know this writing is typical of the time period, the long passages about Frankenstein’s mental anguish get really old. 

Frankenstein Novel

Reviews

Highlights