Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Frankenstein and the Unexpected

Since the focus of most of the blogs from my own group is on what was NOT expected in reading Shelley's Frankenstein, I feel more or less obligated to stay within theme. There were two things along this line that caught my attention in reading Volume I, one a nearly complete omission, and the other an extremely delayed identification.

Let me start with the later.  I found it interesting that Shelley chose to delay giving us the protagonist's name until nearly 40 pages into the story.  Until I read the account of Henry Clerval's arrival in Ingolstadt, I didn't even notice that Shelley hadn't used the name of her title character anywhere in the story.  But once I saw it in print, I realized that I had been assuming the entire time that this was indeed Frankenstein who was telling his own story.  I flipped quickly back through the pages and found a reference to his first name all the way back in Chapter 1, but there was nothing giving us his last name before then.  The story to this point had been all about his character, and his motivations, and while there was certainly a focus on his family, it wasn't done in a way that made it obvious that he was the Frankenstein that the book is named for.

Of course, I knew it was him because I am familiar with the story and have seen many movie and comic book adaptations.  But it makes me wonder, what might the experience have been like for a first time reader in the early 19th Century?

The first thing that struck me, however, was purposefully done by Shelley, and added both mystery and morality in one fell swoop.  She completely glosses over the process that Frankenstein uses to animate his monster.  Victor sets up his scientific and chemical apparatus and the next thing you know, the monster's yellowed eyes open.  With Victor's reluctance to recount his efforts in detail lest the mistake be repeated, he is able to take the moral high ground.  He has learned from his tragic mistake, and so should we.

It's not nice to fool Mother Nature.

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