[ book tip by Emily Bullock ] For me Frankenstein is the perfect mix of Realism and the Gothic, a firmly established reality but a monstrously heightened one at that. Walton is the framing device for the story and both Frankenstein and his Creature relay their stories to him. He is a character to trust, a good solid man and the reader believes the versions that he tells them. But still I can’t help having the terrible sinking feeling that history will repeat itself, that the horror is not over.

Shelley presents both her main characters, Frankenstein and the Creature, and asks the reader to judge. Frankenstein seems to have an obsessive desire to play God, and yet the tragedy and loss he deals with seem like disproportionate retribution for this. The Creature is shown as a tabula rasa, a blank slate at birth. He is not born evil but Society makes him that way by abhorring and vilifying him. Yet the scenes where he kills are so graphically cold and cruel it is impossible to justify them despite his pain. Can it ever be right for the abused to become the abuser? Justified no, but explicable, of course, yes.

Shelley’s fiction battles with some giant themes: Science, Religion, Nature versus Nurture. Ultimately the book does not offer up any easy answers. This book was born of a nightmare Shelley had, just as the Creature springs from Frankenstein’s nightmarish impulse to create a life at any cost, a birth that will cost him so many deaths. I urge you to read the book and decide for yourself: the questions it asks are as relevant now as when it was written, who is the monster in this story? I feel that perhaps we all have monstrousness lurking inside us. This story is a warning to us all.

[ book info ] Shelley, Mary: Frankenstein. (Book language: English) OUP, 1998 . ISBN: 0-19-283366-9.