Frankenstein

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Muriel Spark, in her study of the author, Mary Shelley, says of the novel that ‘perhaps the wonder of it exists, not despite Mary’s youth, but because of it.

‘Until I met Shelley I could justly say that he [Godwin] was my God

the Creature wants to know, just as we want to know, where he has come from and why he is here.

It is ironic that the Creature’s narrative, so vital to the moral underpinning of the whole work, has been ignored in so many of the theatrical and filmic re-workings of the story.

Both Don Quixote and Frankenstein start out with the noble intention of helping their fellow creatures, but their aspirations are doomed by their pursuit of a ‘single vision’, one that takes them further and further away from satisfying the moderate needs of the community, and nearer and nearer to a personally tragic denouement.

If, as Mario Praz has claimed, ‘an anxiety with no possibility of escape is the main theme of the Gothic tales’,43 then Frankenstein certainly qualifies for the genre, since both antagonists in the book are ‘inescapably’ doomed to pursue each other to the death: Frankenstein in order to expiate the guilt arising out of his presumptuous ‘act of creation’, the Creature to avenge his absolute rejection by all.

At this time he desired that I should write, not so much with the idea that I could produce any thing worthy of notice, but that he might himself judge how far I possessed the promise of better things hereafter.

What may not be expected in a country of eternal light?

I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing.

But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection.

I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me;

How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother!

I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.

A youth passed in solitude, my best years spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage, has so refined the groundwork of my character

There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand. I am practically industrious – painstaking; a workman to execute with perseverance and labour: – but besides this, there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men,

I never saw a more interesting creature; his eyes have generally an expression of wildness, and even madness, but there are moments when, if any one performs an act of kindness towards him or does him any the most trifling service, his whole countenance is lighted up, as it were, with a beam of benevolence and sweetness that I never saw equalled.

For my own part, I begin to love him as a brother; and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. He must have been a noble creature in his better days, being even now in wreck so attractive and amiable.

have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart.

How can I see so noble a creature destroyed by misery, without feeling the most poignant grief?

‘Unhappy man! Do you share my madness?

my thirst for a more intimate sympathy with a fellow mind than had ever fallen to my lot; and expressed my conviction that a man could boast of little happiness, who did not enjoy this blessing.

his full-toned voice swells in my ears; his lustrous eyes dwell on me with all their melancholy sweetness; I see his thin hand raised in animation, while the lineaments of his face are irradiated by the soul within.

But Caroline Beaufort possessed a mind of an uncommon mould, and her courage rose to support her in her adversity.

I was their plaything and their idol, and something better – their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me.

The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.

In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder.

A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.

With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.

the creature isn’t even alive yet and you already resent it. good heavens.

His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! – Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of pearly whiteness;

I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.

He meant to please, and he tormented me.

Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating, to a degree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country. When you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and a garden of roses, in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart.

Enter the house of mourning, my friend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not with hatred for your enemies.

‘Dear mountains! My own beautiful lake! How do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?’

all judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape.

‘Oh, Justine!’ said she. ‘Why did you rob me of my last consolation? I relied on your innocence, and although I was then very wretched, I was not so miserable as I am now.’

my confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was. He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments if I continued obdurate.

‘I do not fear to die,’ she said; ‘that pang is past. God raises my weakness and gives me courage to endure the worst. I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me and think of me as of one unjustly condemned,

How sweet is the affection of others to such a wretch as I am!

‘Do you think, Victor,’ said he, ‘that I do not suffer also?

but now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other’s blood.

‘All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!

Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature,

Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.

I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me.

Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.’

If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched.

It was as the ass and the lap-dog;2 yet surely the gentle ass whose intentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved better treatment than blows and execration.

‘But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses;

Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence;