Frankenstein

At this moment, when Frankenstein was still being read, I had not read any fictional work, not for a while.

The method of explaining, with a diction so alluring and so clear; so sophisticated, however old, is one of the first things that would be obvious to he who decides to embark upon this literary journey that takes one, after calm coercion, into the world of its own self, with your own world temporarily superseded.

The story explores, crucially, the theme of ethics that purportedly “should” guide man through his journey of curiosity. Victor Frankenstein, the quick-witted man who, after being a fanatic of myths and the supernaturals, became — on contact with a scientist, specifically a chemist — one who, with youthful vigour which was complemented by said intellect, was what one could call a dilettantish master of Chemistry. He was a master in that he learnt and became acquainted with the essentials as fast as one who was revising past knowledge would; a dilettante in that he was, regardless, new to the art of searching for higher understanding. But it was not only chemistry he hoped to conquer. In Frankenstein's own words:

It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.

This overzealousness, as the novel portrayed, was shown by the decision of Frankenstein to create a being which should have been human but ended up, upon his execution of the conceived plan, a grotesque monster. That our curious hero failed to think through his curious escapade was the reality which dawned upon him as he suffered through the consequences of his actions.

His journey of discovery through various experiments in his labs, and through the perusal of the works of men who had preceded him in efforts to understand the world, was an interesting one which the author portrayed to we the readers with such vividity only made possible by the constant employment of descriptive skill.

The novel explores the art of grief and its influence on human actions. It showed by the ease with which Frankenstein, by his monster — let us refer to it, for ease, as Franken — was controlled to do a lot of irrational things. Grief does not only create hysteria from purported nothingness in we that were once happy and suddenly become its unfortunate victims — rather, it exploits our nostalgia induced by the happiness which, now, has ceased to exist; it continuously, like a cancerous tumor, replicates inside of us, and causes the constancy of our internal environment to be but a thing of the past, and that is what the work also in majority of its parts shows: how devastatingly fast the degeneration of the mind by the wicked symptoms of grief can cause the body to become, as a comrade, moribund.

Looking past the core themes of horror, grief, and human curiosity, there are other themes in the work which add up to bring the dream — as Pessoa would refer to it — in its entirety into the world of reality. There were little bits of the political; a benevolent presence of that which represents the interests of the tourist; an unignorable inkling of the metaphysical; and the Homeric freedom to create!

Frankenstein starts with letters, four of them, from a man who goes on an explorative voyage similar in reason to Frankenstein's actions, addressed to a woman. On the first — a repetition of the previously stated, I am aware — one cannot but notice the extreme talent with which the book is started; the excellence of the prose, so reminiscent of one's favorite teacher's exegetical writings, does come with an all-pervading tenderness, supported perfectly with the instructiveness and strictness of said teacher. Imagine, now, that the said teacher is an essayist who managed, also, to live in the nineteenth century. That was what Shelley immediately decided to hit us, the readers, with.

But that fascination with the prose is not allowed, by the content itself, to take all of our attention. The narrative acumen, it is obvious, conspired with the narrated and the prose — the reading of which was also with an effusion of competently applied metaphors — to accomplish one of the most crucial missions of a novelist: captivation.

That the brilliance has been touched, then, does not immediately clear a claim — irrelevant, however to we that see, but vital enough, nonetheless, to be openly refuted — on who the rightful author was. The attribution to Mary Shelley is one which I find absurd, and which most who are well-acquainted with the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley would also find absurd. Shall I then highlight a few of the things you need look out for, before you see the truth bared in front of you?

I begin with the narrative style of Percy, and that which was employed in the novel. I speak not, first, of the points of view of the protagonists and antagonists, but of the sentence construction of dialogues, of the description imbued therein, and of the inclinations to be metaphorical in descriptions.

That Percy wrote Zastrozzi is an idea unanimous in its existence. It was apparently his earliest novel; and in it, if you can, as you read, mentally take yourself to the year it was published, you would see the seed of his literary genius not in its earliest stage of growth, but in a stage still too early for it to earn the title of plant. It would be obvious that the seventeen year old who wrote that will (you are still in that period) develop to be a man of letters. Move to St. Irvyne, published a year after Zastrozzi, and behold the maturity to a young tree of the earlier described seed of genius, green in its still early branches that are nonetheless, and uncannily, strong enough to be sat on.

Red thunder-clouds, borne on the wings of the midnight whirlwind, floated, at fits, athwart the crimson-coloured orbit of the moon; the rising fierceness of the blast sighed through the stunted shrubs, which, bending before its violence, inclined towards the rocks whereon they grew: over the blackened expanse of heaven, at intervals, was spread the blue lightning’s flash; it played upon the granite heights, and, with momentary brilliancy, disclosed the terrific scenery of the Alps, whose gigantic and mishapen summits, reddened by the transitory moon-beam, were crossed by black fleeting fragments of the tempest-clouds.

If I were told, at the moment when I had begun, and was into the reading of Frankenstein, that the above awaited me in a part of the book I had not yet reached, would I have doubted it? Surely, I would not! But it is not at all a part of Frankenstein, but was the words that began the first chapter of St. Irvyne. Behold the magnificence that I have forever raved on about! and read this part of Frankenstein, and see if you can truly tell apart the style of expression:

The sun sank lower in the heavens; we passed the river Drance and observed its path through the chasms of the higher and the glens of the lower hills. The Alps here come closer to the lake, and we approached the amphitheatre of mountains which forms its eastern boundary. The spire of Evian shone under the woods that surrounded it and the range of mountain above mountain by which it was overhung.

The wind, which had hitherto carried us along with amazing rapidity, sank at sunset to a light breeze; the soft air just ruffled the water and caused a pleasant motion among the trees as we approached the shore, from which it wafted the most delightful scent of flowers and hay. The sun sank beneath the horizon as we landed, and as I touched the shore I felt those cares and fears revive which soon were to clasp me and cling to me forever.

Away from his scintillating and unique style of writing, I thus digress, and further my disquisition with the bringing to light the presence of all that we know are Shelleyan.

It was obvious that the work was suffused with all that we know were Shelley's interests. He was indeed quite interested in science, he flirted with philosophy, he was intrigued by electricity, he was entranced by the divine, he dabbled into chemistry…

How is it, then, that he who was interested in the supernatural managed to, in the book, manifest as Victor Frankenstein that was created by Mary Shelley, who had no such inclinations? Would we say he influenced her with all of his “obscene, annoying obsessions”? Were his experiments not a nuisance? Were his delirious actions not a nuisance? Did his irrational interest in the supernatural suddenly become infectious? Who would be influenced by that which is a nuisance to them? Was he, then, simply a muse? How improbable that would have been! To see a muse in another is not to be or to consciously create that muse, for it is hard to perfectly be that muse; but to see a muse in yourself is no hard task, for, more often than not, your work is ready before you discover yourself the muse. A good part of Frankenstein was from Shelley. He took himself — not just his inclinations — and infused into the man, and the others who made up his surroundings.

Strangely, also, this man who did not write Frankenstein had earlier novels, previously stated, centred around the same themes of protagonists (which are similar) dabbling into the forbidden, which Shelley also showed inclination in his lifestyle towards. Is it not strange?

Another is the manifestation of Shelley's Penchant for publishing anonymously. Zastrozzi was first published with just his initials. St Irvyne was published anonymously. That he decided not to be recognized as the author of Frankenstein — as it was also first anonymously published — is no real aberration, and is something worth noting.

Perhaps I am being a freak who obsesses over details, but in the part where Franken, as he begged Frankenstein to create another one of his kind so he could escape with her, said he would eat no cattle or anything flesh, but feed instead on berries and acorns, I was immediately reminded of Shelley's vegetarian “values,” and could see that since he wanted, at that point, to portray Franken to his creator as a moral being who should be granted its wishes, he — Shelley — chose to allow for its alliance to his idea of good morals by being a member of the vegetarians.

There are more personal patterns and parts of the novel which conspired to make obvious the author, but enough has been said already. That the brilliant mind called Shelley never wanted to be known as the author does not immediately force us to be subscribers to the party of lies; and for no other reason than that have I chosen to point out some of the refuting patterns I have seen in the work.