Here Be Monsters

Frankenstein Or, The Modern Prometheus is a very strange novel in more than one respect. Respect one really has nothing to do with the novel in itself in terms of Mary Shelley’s writing, but it’s very real to the modern reader. The book bears no relation at all to the movies, not even the Kenneth Branagh version which I seem to remember made some sort of claim to authenticity. The ‘creation’ scene beloved of all directors is non-existent, almost, in the novel. There’s just a passing reference to the eyes of the monster opening, an image which returns to haunt Victor later in the story, and that’s about it.

More importantly, it’s generally abominably written. The dialogue, where you get some as a relief from the tedious explication of Victor’s account, is stagey at best, and it’s often not as good as that – the sort of thing a teenager might write for the stage. The inconsistencies of plot are startling – how exactly does the monster cross the waters to get to England? And when it’s not being inconsistent the plot manages to lurch into utterly superfluous digressions, like that of Felix and his tiresome family history. All of this though is better than those moments, of which there are more than a few, when the novel seems to turn into a kind of travelogue.

And the strangest thing of all? Despite all the above, Frankenstein is a wonderful novel simply as a result of the mythic power of Mary Shelley’s big idea. In fact, the idea is so powerful it shatters the timid frame of the fiction that attempts to contain it. The monster, the daemon, the fiend – all Victor’s terms for what his tiny mind cannot contain – is startling in the reality of its pathos and the truth of its needs, for a mate, for understanding, for revenge. No wonder it came to take even Victor’s name away.

I’ve got forty pages left and I’m relishing everyone of them.