Frankenstein

I was able to download Frankenstein by Mary Shelley for free from Barnes & Noble last November. The version I chose is unabridged and updated for modern readers. I had not ever read it and was intrigued when, appropriately last Halloween, my friend Lisa added it to her reading list. Oh, how I was about to take a deep dive, head first, down the Frankenstein rabbit hole.

The story was not at all what I expected when I finally began reading it this spring. I find the writing style difficult, being as it is full of overwrought Victorian sentiment, florid descriptions, and meandering sentences. I gave it a five-star review, with the following write-up on Goodreads, because of its formidable reputation. 

A classic piece of rambling, melodramatic, Gothic literature, so far removed from the Halloween-esque version of Frankenstein we’ve come to know. A ghost story indeed, about humanity's doomed attempts to play god.

I was very close to finishing the book when I went to visit Meredith and Andrew in Maine on Memorial Day weekend this year. It turned out to be rainy and cold, perfect for streaming two Frankenstein movies on Netflix. Our creature-double-feature began with Guillermo del Toro’s spectacular 2025 interpretation starring the new teen heartthrob Jacob Elordi. I loved it. There are so many interpretations of this legendary tale, it makes my head spin. In fact, my desire to dissect all things Frankenstein started bordering on obsessive :) I had conversations with my son-in-law who had studied the book extensively in literature classes in college. Andrew recalled exploring the themes of free will, grief, isolation, and hubris. Somehow I was never interested in stories about monsters and super heroes in school so I completely missed out on learning about the rich literary and cultural significance of this genre. 

In addition, there is so much to unpack surrounding Mary Shelley’s tragic life, the backstory of how and where the idea for Frankenstein was conceived, and the book's publishing history. First published anonymously in 1918 when the author was only 20 years old, it was speculated at the time that it was actually written by her fiancé, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. After his untimely death in 1822 at the age of 29, Mary republished a version she had revised. This reworking, published in 1831, addressed some of the criticism the original had received. In an introduction to the second edition, Mary challenges questions of authorship head-on. “It is not singular that, as the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity, I should very early in life have thought of writing…” 

Raised by parents who believed in free love and other scandalous ideas for the times, Mary and her step-siblings had tumultuous upbringings. Her mother, the famous feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, died only 11 days after giving birth to her daughter. Her father, William Godwin, a political philosopher and novelist known for his anarchist viewpoints, remarried when she was four years old. Mary's youth was not only marred by her own mother's early death but by a troubled relationship with her stepmother. Her romance with Percy Shelley, who was already married, was also a complicated affair. Grief seemed to follow her everywhere. Only one of the Shelley's four children lived to adulthood, and Mary lost her own life to a brain tumor at age 53 in 1851.

Famously, it was in 1816 in Geneva, Switzerland that the concept of Frankenstein came to life. Mary and Percy Shelley, along with their infant son William, and Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont were neighboring next-door to Villa Diodati, the mansion rented by renowned poet and man-about-town, Lord Byron and his personal physician, John Polidori. Trapped indoors during what came to be known as The Year Without Summer, the group of five adults (Claire is often completely left-out of the assemblage) socialized together extensively. One pastime included reading, among other things, volumes of German ghost stories and medical texts. At one point, Byron challenged each guest to write their own ghost story. In her own words, Mary described her insecurity being among her male companions, and how one night a vivid waking dream led to her crafting the plot of her famous tale.

“I busied myself to think of a story—a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart.“

I think she succeeded. Unbelievably, Polidori who was ruthlessly chastised by Byron and Shelley for his youth and literary inexperience, wrote The Vampyre (1819) and is credited with inventing the vampire genre. His life ended tragically two years later at age 25 (some say by suicide).

My favorite pleasant surprise during my Frankenstein journey has been the second movie screened during our Memorial Day weekend mini-film-festival in Maine — Maggie Gyllenhaal’s 2026, The Bride!, starring Jessie Buckley (of Hamnet) and Christian Bale. 

What a wild ride it is with so many references to earlier renditions of the story as well as a nod to the 1930’s gangster culture of Bonnie & Clyde. I’ll end with this line that I love from a monologue by an agitated and disturbed Mary Shelley as the movie begins. She’s describing her compulsion to tell another story, perhaps about a bride…for her monstrous creation.

“Darlings, something is cracking. The words are beginning to come. Is it a ghost story? A horror story? Or most frightening of all, a love story?” 

Stay tuned for my next excursion into the world of Frankenstein...                

Love & Other Monsters by Emily Franklin. This novel explores the complex dynamics in Geneva during The Year Without Summer, including relationships between Mary Shelley and her sister Claire Clairmont, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron, as well as between Claire, Byron, and Polidori!