Mary Shelley
Frankenstein

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I’ve been meaning to re-read this book for a while, as it was years and years ago that I first read it and I don’t remember much really about the story so it will feel like I’m reading it for the first time. It’s always strange, though, reading an old classic for the first time (or the first time in a long time) as so many aspects of the story are inevitably familiar just from it being a famous story (and often a film or tv series), so you kind of know the basic details before you even start reading it and this always makes me wistfully think how amazing it would have been to be someone reading it for the first time in 1818 (when it was published) with no inkling of what it was about as I can imagine a horror story like this must have been fairly shocking!

The book begins with a letter from St Petersburg written by R Walton to his sister, Mrs Margaret Saville in England, dated 11th December in the 1700s (though the exact year isn’t specified) reassuring her of his safe travels so far, although reminding her that he still has a ‘laborious voyage’ ahead. He states that the purpose of this journey is to seek a passage far north to reach the North Pacific Ocean and the countries beyond there, which would then reduce the current journey of several months, and of ‘ascertaining the secret of the magnet’. He reminds her that he has been planning this journey for six years, after inheriting money from his cousin and then familiarising himself with the hardships of sea travel by joining the crew of whaling boats, and also studying maths and medicine and science in order to give him the knowledge required to navigate the seas. He says he will arrange a boat and sailors in the town of Archangel and then depart on the main part of his journey in June, and that it may be many months or perhaps years before he sees his sister again. Oooh, I’m excited to see the first few chapter headings are letters, I love a story told through letters, epistolary novels are my favourite kind of novel. Although I immediately wanted to turn to the end of this first letter to see who had written it (which I did, though very carefully so I didn’t see anything else too soon)! I liked that Walton said that this journey had been a childhood dream of his influenced by books about voyages which he read in their Uncle Thomas’ library, I love that he has been inspired in his ambition by books, and he said he was ‘passionately fond of reading’ which makes me very much like him! And I’m intrigued by his sister viewing her brother’s journey with ‘evil foreboding’, why I wonder? Perhaps it’s just that travel was less usual then, particularly to certain places, and Walton is in St Petersburg in Russia which seems a place very far from England at that time in the 1700s so I’m thinking he’s an adventurous person, and he mentions the ‘icy climes’ he is heading north to, so it sounds like he is travelling further north than St Petersburg, he actually seems to imply he is heading to ‘the pole’, so is this the actual North Pole?! That would surely be a very dramatic and dangerous place to venture to in the 1700s! He mentions ‘a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty’, and where they hope to make new discoveries and that it is ‘a land never before imprinted by the foot of man’, so it does sound like somewhere as remote and untouched as the North Pole! Wow, I can understand why Margaret was filled with foreboding, I think I would feel similarly if it was my sibling going there now, never mind then! I’m not sure when people first explored this part of the world, I will have to look it up. And interesting that their father’s dying wish was that Walton didn’t follow a career which involved him going to sea, hmmm, I wonder why that was, although I presume it was dangerous then but I wonder if there was an incident in their father’s life which made him so determined to prevent any plan of that from his son. And oh, I did feel for Margaret when Walton said it may be months or years until he saw her again, how dreadful for her potentially not knowing what is happening to her brother or even if he has died! And I do hope myself that he survives this dangerous adventure as I very much like him, though I can’t help thinking he’s somewhat foolhardy for attempting this! And I love the beautiful descriptive style that Walton writes in, it’s quite formal but I guess this is perhaps the time it’s written in too as they used more descriptive and formal language then, but he says he used to be a poet so he obviously has skill in choosing and using expressive words. I think I’d treasure a letter from him! And I am already wondering about the monster and when and how it will feature, obviously the creator of it isn’t Walton as I remember the name of the creator is Frankenstein (rather than the monster being called Frankenstein). I had presumed the monster would be created in some basement in London (as I am guessing the author, Mary Shelley, is English) so the story potentially being set in the North Pole is a surprise, but perhaps Frankenstein is travelling to such a remote part of the world himself in order to escape from the horror of what he has created so Walton will meet Frankenstein on the way and be told his story? Obviously all will become clear but I can’t resist speculating, I do love the start of a book when I’m trying to interpret how the book will progress from the hints and clues given and what the themes and important characters will be (although I’m also aware that all my enjoyable speculating then delays me from continuing with the reading of the book, tee hee).

Walton writes another letter to his sister dated 28th March from the town of Archangel, saying he has hired a boat and suitable sailors and describes the characteristics of his lieutenant (who is English and ambitious) and the characteristics of the master of the boat (who Walton admires for his gentleness with the sailors, rather than using the brutality often shown by such men). Walton says the winter weather has been severe, but it is hoped that spring will be mild and that he may be able to leave on his voyage earlier than originally planned, though he promises Margaret that he won’t do anything rash and will act safely both for himself and his staff. Awww, bless him, he admits he is lonely as he has no friend to share his successes and plans with and also to share his disappointments with. I remember he mentioned in his first letter about sometimes suffering from low mood, so I imagine he perhaps needs another person to lift his spirits rather than being able to do this for himself. And he’s only 28, so young! And again I do like letters within novels for how open the writers are and therefore how much they reveal about their natures and their thoughts, and Walton seems like a very deep thoughtful and sensitive man with all his reflections on the men he has employed, and indeed his reasons for employing them such as for the gentle and kind nature of the master. And I do adore Walton too for how he admits his feelings to his sister, they must be very close, although he hints that he didn’t mix as much as he should have done as a child and that she provided ‘gentle and feminine fosterage’, so I wonder if it was often just the two of them when they were children. He admits to her his ‘trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful’ thinking of his adventure ahead (though he adds that his ‘resolutions…are as fixed as fate’) and begs her to continue to write to him in the hope these letters may reach him ‘when I need them most to support my spirits’, and adds ‘I love you very tenderly’, awww, bless him, what a lovely man, and a lovely brother. It does make me wonder though if he may be too sensitive for such a hard and brutal journey and the difficulties and sacrifices he may have to face. 

Walton’s third letter is dated 7th July and informs Margaret that he has left Archangel and is well on his way to his destination, updating her about the weather and his men, and assuring her that he will be ‘cool, persevering and prudent’ for his sake and hers. Hmmm, I wish we’d seen at least one of Margaret’s letters too, I guess she’s probably just a peripheral character and her only purpose in the book is to enable Walton to inform the reader (via his letters to Margaret) of what he is doing and why, but she seems an important aspect of Walton’s life and her replies are obviously important to him so it might give us more of an insight into him if we’d seen what she had chosen to write to him about in her letters, plus I’d be interested to see how she is coping with her fears for her brother and also how she deals with these fears in her letters to him, ie whether she is brave and encourages him and wishes him success, or whether she lets her fears show and continually seeks reassurance from him about his safety or even urges him to abandon his scheme and come home, though somehow (not knowing her but just guessing!) I think she’d choose the former and bravely encourage him and then privately try to deal with her own worries, bless her. And it occurs to me when I’m mentioning her as a peripheral character, that it might be that Walton is actually a peripheral character too and he may well fade away in importance within the book after he meets Frankenstein, who perhaps then takes over the tale, though I do hope we get to hear if Walton survives his adventure and returns safely to Margaret, and I’ll miss him if we hear very little more from him as I love the poetical way he writes such as ‘the very stars themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph’.

Walton’s next letter to Margaret takes the form of a journal entry and is dated 5th August, though he says he doesn’t know when this will reach her, if ever. He relates ‘so strange an accident’, and goes on to explain that when they were hundreds of miles from any habitation, surrounded by sheets of ice, they were shocked to see a sledge being pulled by dogs and driven by a man ‘of gigantic stature’, which then disappeared over the horizon. The following day they have not progressed much themselves due to the ice sheets, and suddenly see a sledge and an exhausted near-starved near-frozen man, with one remaining dog, drifting towards them on an ice sheet which had broken away, therefore trapping him and the dog on that ice sheet. They offer help to him but he first asks where they are travelling to, which seems to Walton a very odd request from someone who is near death and who would surely desperately accept whatever help is offered him and would thankfully travel to whatever location the rescuer is going to. The man speaks English, though with a foreign accent, but he collapses when he is brought on board and is unable to talk for two days while he recovers. Walton places this man in his own cabin and takes care of him, describing him as ‘melancholy and despairing’ and sometimes almost mad. Oooh, I love journal entries just as much as letters, and what an enticing beginning to the journal entry with it mentioning ‘so strange an accident’! And I’m wondering if l was right in my guess that Walton would meet Frankenstein on his travels and so Frankenstein is this man, or perhaps this man is someone who knows Frankenstein’s story? In fact, it just occurs to me that the surname Frankenstein doesn’t sound English (could it be German?) so my presumption that the monster was created in some London basement is probably far wrong! I had wondered at first if this man who Walton rescued was the same man of ‘gigantic stature’ that they saw on the sledge the previous day (and possibly is the monster!), but when Walton writes of the rescued man he says ‘he was not, as the other traveller seemed to be…’, so this implies it’s not the same man, phew…or perhaps they are the same man and the ‘gigantic stature’ was due to layers of clothes which he has now lost? I guess I’m hoping that Walton hasn’t taken onboard the monster and will now be at risk from him! And I do hope that Walton also rescued the one remaining dog on the ice sheet with the man, but there seems to be no mention of it, sigh! And it makes me slightly anxious for Walton’s survival with it not being clear just where and when this journal entry was found, I’m hoping it’s not that it was found on Walton’s boat many years later with none of the crew having survived…!

Walton’s journal entry of 5th August continues with details of what the rescued man tells him. The man explains that he was on the ice seeking someone he calls a ‘demon…who fled from me’, and he is very interested to hear that Walton and his crew saw a person the day before travelling on a sledge drawn by dogs, and he then wonders hopefully if this person was also trapped by the breaking up of the ice sheets, as he had been, and has perhaps perished, and he begs to be told if the crew spot the person again. Walton writes that the man is improving in health, and describes him as ‘noble…attractive…amiable’ and that he is grateful for any kindness shown to him, though he seems full of grief with ‘his spirit…broken by misery’, and Walton feels great sympathy and interest in this man, confiding in his journal that he is beginning to look on him as the friend he was earlier yearning for. Phew, so clearly it’s not the monster who is onboard Walton’s boat, that’s a relief! But why are Frankenstein (who is presumably this rescued man) and the monster out in that wilderness in the first place and how did they reach there, particularly the monster as surely he would have attracted attention from people on the way there due to his size. And bless him, Walton is so desperately keen for a friend, I just hope he won’t regret meeting this man and be traumatised by what he hears from him, or have his honest faith in this man (and possibly his faith in humanity) shaken, or that he is pulled into danger.

The next journal entry is dated 13th August and Walton feels more interest in the ‘so gentle, yet so wise’ man with a ‘never-failing power of judgment’, and is grieved to see him so miserable. Walton shares with him the purpose of his own journey and his childhood dreams regarding this, but the man then surprises Walton by warning him of the danger of allowing a dream to dominate a person’s actions, and then offers to share his own experience in order to demonstrate this, saying he has ‘lost everything and cannot begin life anew’. Hmmm, Walton’s descriptions of this man as gentle and noble and wise and of good judgement are very interesting considering my presumption that this is Frankenstein, a man who has basically played God and created a (possibly) dangerous monster, as I would have presumed that this act had been undertaken by someone who was obviously clever but also had a lack of morality and a lack of consideration as to the possible consequences of his actions and was rashly driven by his own ego to achieve success no matter what the cost, all which seem very opposite characteristics to the ones identified by Walton regarding this man. But I can see some of the similarities between Walton and this man which would encourage Walton to regard him as a friend and equal, as he describes the man’s great eloquence with words, which I feel Walton has too, and of course the man showing an interest and sympathy in Walton’s aims (‘the burning ardour’ of Walton’s soul) is bound to be flattering to lonely Walton, bless him. I feel again though that Walton should perhaps show some caution with this man, but he seems so inexperienced with the nuances of friendship and so desperately eager to see this man as a friend or ‘brother’. I don’t want Walton to be hurt either emotionally or physically, I really feel ridiculously protective towards him!

Walton’s final journal entry is dated 19th August. The man states he will tell Walton of the ‘great and unparalleled misfortunes’ caused by his own seeking of knowledge. Walton in his turn says he hopes he can help to alleviate the misfortunes of his new friend, but the man says that his fate is determined and nearly fulfilled, that he waits ‘for one event, and then I shall repose in peace’. Walton states in his journal that he will write down what the man relates in the form of a manuscript, for Margaret’s ‘pleasure’ but also for Walton’s own interest and sympathy so he can re-read it later. Oooh, so this is it, the main story! Though I’m sorry that it isn’t to be in Walton’s own words, I will miss him. And I can’t help doubting that Margaret will feel ‘pleasure’ when (or if) she reads this story as I suspect Walton’s assumption that it will be a ‘strange and harrowing’ account is more accurate rather than it being something pleasurable to read! And I realise that it’s been quite some time since the only sighting of (presumably) the monster on 31st July (it now being 19th August), so does this mean that it is dead, and also is proof of its death the ‘one event’ that the man is waiting for?

The man is called Victor and is from Geneva and of a distinguished and important family. He relates the history of his parents’ happy marriage, though his father was much older than his mother. Victor was their eldest son and was adored and indulged by them both and admits that he was brought up to view life as ‘one train of enjoyment’. His parents also adopted an orphaned child of noble Milanese and German parents, this child was called Elizabeth Lavenza and Victor adored her and felt quite possessive towards her and as if she belonged to him, they being of similar ages. He says he lived a secluded life, apart from his one friend Clerval, and he developed an interest in learning ‘the secrets of heaven and earth…the physical secrets of the world’ and he relates the books that interested him then, though he always yearned to discover more than these books could teach him, particularly about the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life which was rumoured to ‘banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable’, as well as reading about raising ghosts and devils. He then relates that when he was aged about 15 he witnessed lightning destroy an old oak tree and then became fascinated with electricity and science and mathematics, adding that ahead lay his ‘utter and terrible destruction’. Wow, very dramatic words there, extremely dramatic, eeek! I was interested in his early childhood and whether the indulgence shown to him by his parents contributed to any of his later actions, and if the possessiveness he felt towards his adopted sister is of relevance too in the later decisions of his life, particularly perhaps if his friend Clerval and Elizabeth fell in love and Victor felt rejected and jealous. Though I must be cautious not to infer too soon bad characteristics of Victor from all this, as he also said how grateful he felt towards his parents for the wonderful and happy life they gave him, and I must give him credit too for being self-aware enough to be searching back in his childhood himself for clues as to why his life turned out as it did. And, on a side note, the family’s travels when Victor was young sound amazing, especially to stunning Lake Como (where they found and adopted Elizabeth), it all reminds me of the Grand Tour around Europe that people used to do (and I keep meaning to read Agatha Christie’s book of The Grand Tour), and I also loved that as children they used to act out King Arthur plays as I adore the King Arthur stories (particularly the books of Mary Stewart), and eeek I can’t help but be excited at the mention of the philosopher’s stone and the inevitable association with the wonderful Harry Potter book, though I imagine the Harry Potter books couldn’t be further away from this book! Some of Victor’s life experiences seem similar to Walton’s too, namely living a fairly secluded life and having a sister who he looks up to, and I wonder if this contributed to Victor and Walton being drawn to each other.

Victor continues relating the story of his earlier life, saying that when he was aged 17, Elizabeth caught scarlet fever though thankfully survived, however their mother then caught it after insisting on nursing Elizabeth and she sadly didn’t recover and died, having first shared on her death-bed her hope that Elizabeth and Victor would marry. Victor then left Switzerland to study at a university in Germany, which had been planned before his mother’s death. He initially felt very lonely there, missing Elizabeth and his brothers and father and his friend Clerval, as well as grieving for his mother, but he was then enthusiastic at the prospect of all he could learn there. He was particularly inspired by a teacher of chemistry who spoke about how this science had made miraculous discoveries, such as how the blood circulates and what the air that we breathe is made up of, telling Victor that this science has ‘acquired new and almost unlimited powers’. Omg, a death-bed wish from a dying mother, that must be very hard to refuse, whether the young people wanted this themselves or not. And I wonder if Victor did want it but Elizabeth didn’t and this broke his heart (I’m still looking for reasons to explain what drove him to do what we know he did, ie create a monster!)? And of course losing his mother must have affected him deeply, as well as leaving his home and family to go and study. But oh dear, I feel a kind of dread of inevitability settling on me with how Victor was so inspired by the possibilities of the power to be utilised from chemistry, I can see a hint now of how his childhood studies and these new scientific studies could combine to drive him to attempt something extraordinary, and indeed Victor admits that the words of his teacher inspired him with the idea that he could achieve new things and ‘explore unknown powers and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation’. And he finally refers to himself in this section with the surname of Frankenstein, so this man that Walton has rescued is indeed him!

Victor dedicated all his time to the study of chemistry and natural science and natural philosophy over the next two years, and received recognition from the university for his discoveries. He focused his attention on the structure of the human frame, studying how life begins and how it ends including what happens to a dead body and how it decays, and from this work ‘a sudden light broke in upon me’ and he discovered ‘so astonishing a secret…of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter’, though he says that he will not share this secret with Walton as he doesn’t want to lead him to ‘destruction and infallible misery’. Eeeek, what has he begun with his discovery ‘of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter’, omg, is his monster actually a dead person brought back to life?! But then surely that person has their memories and their family? Somehow I had presumed he had just created a monster from scratch, not that he had brought a dead person back to life, although I can see that by using a dead person then the frame of the person is already there rather than the difficulty of having to create a heart and hands and legs, etc, but I see so many other potential difficulties in using what was once a person with all that they could bring with them when brought back to life! And I quite admire the cleverly convenient way that the author has got around the problem of potentially needing to explain the scientific process of reanimating lifeless matter, with having Victor tell Walton that it is for his own good that he will not share the secret! Though I imagine electricity plays a big part in it, and this makes me think too of those paddles that are used in hospitals to restart someone’s heart.

Victor deliberated for a long time on how to employ this knowledge and whether to create a being like a human or create a simpler organism, but his confidence was so overwhelming that he believed he could create something as complex as a human, although he decided that in order for the intricate parts of a human to be easier to create he would increase the size of these parts, so therefore make the person about eight feet tall. He was overawed by the thought of creating a new species and of how he would be benefiting the world, and also wondered ‘in process of time’ if he might be able to renew life into someone who had died. He neglected his health and rest and contact with his family in pursuit of his work, and became feverish and anxious in his obsession with the thought of success, striving to overcome his failures and to continue on even more determinedly, including collecting items from graveyards and slaughter-houses. Oh, ok, so he isn’t bringing a dead person back to life, that is somewhat of a relief, although it sounds strange to say that amongst all the other repulsive things he is doing like collecting grisly items from graveyards and slaughter-houses, ick, although I am relieved that even he says that at times he felt repulsed by his ‘filthy creation’, and I also wouldn’t be surprised if his fever could have been due to him handling all this decaying matter as well as him not resting and eating properly. The grave robbing reminds of the wonderful epic The Quincunx book too.

After nearly two years, in the early hours of a November night, he completed his mission and ‘saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open, it breathed hard and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs’. Victor was elated but then immediately disgusted at ‘the wretch…the miserable monster’ he beheld, with its yellow skin barely covering the muscles and its watery eyes and black lips. He had believed he was creating something beautiful but was shocked now to stand back and view the result. He rushed out of the room, and tried to give in to the exhaustion he felt and to sleep but he saw in his nightmares what he had created so he then left the building and wandered the streets in his distress, struggling with the bitter disappointment that this ‘horror’ was the end result of all his hard work and sacrifices and the shattering of all the dreams which had sustained him during that time, he often nearly collapsed whilst walking with the accumulated exhaustion and despair and also felt constantly haunted in his thoughts by the ‘demoniacal corpse’. Omg, I hadn’t expected his extreme repulsion at what he had created, I had presumed he would be giddy with his success and it would be later that things went wrong, not that he couldn’t even bear to look at what he has created. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for Victor, but I can appreciate that it must have been soul-destroying (and I do see the irony in my choice of word ‘soul-destroying’ when he had just created a soul, tee hee!) for him to try and face the fact that his dreams of success and  achievement, and all he had sacrificed for this, has not brought him what he hoped for. And I wasn’t sure if he dreamed that the monster walked to his bed and looked down on him, or if the monster actually really did this, but either way Victor left the monster there at his apartment unguarded so there is also the fear in my mind that it could now be out in the streets! And I not only wonder what the reaction from readers was to this book (shock and horror probably!) but also wonder if that reaction was exacerbated by the fact it was written by a woman, with women being referred to as the ‘gentler sex’ at that time, sweet and sensitive and not capable of dreaming up such things as robbing body parts from graves and creating a monster! I wonder if it was obvious that the book was written by a woman when it was first published or if she used a male name or just used her initial M in order to disguise the fact she was female? And grrr, we’re not getting Walton’s reaction to all this, I wonder if he was shocked and disgusted at what his friend had done, the man he had so admired and been so pleased to find, or if he didn’t believe any of it and thought his friend had had a delusional breakdown?

As Victor wandered the streets, he suddenly saw his friend Clerval step down from a coach. Clerval had finally received permission from his father to be able to study in Germany and he had also arrived there due to concerns about Victor’s long silence. Victor felt a ‘calm and serene joy’ at seeing Clerval, with the association of the safety and normality of friends and family and home which he brought, and he greeted Clerval warmly. Clerval remarked on how ill and worn Victor looked but Victor did not share with his friend what he had been labouring on, and walked with Clerval back to his apartment, though he also felt dread at what might be waiting there for him. He told Clerval to wait outside the apartment while he went inside first, but ‘the apartment was empty…freed from its hideous guest’ and Victor was overjoyed at his ‘good fortune…clapped my hands for joy…that my enemy had indeed fled’. Omg, obviously the monster not being there in Victor’s apartment is a horror of its own with the thought of where it might be and what it might be doing, but I also wonder what Victor had planned to do if the monster had been there, would he have killed it perhaps? And what are his plans for dealing with the monster, he surely can’t think that it’s all now ok as it has left his apartment, surely he must be aware that it isn’t wise for the monster to be wandering around the town?! I guess Victor probably isn’t in his right mind with the shock and emotional turmoil of the shattering of his dream which has driven him on for the last two years and no doubt the exhaustion and lack of sleep of those two years is also impacting him now he doesn’t have his dream to sustain him, but how how how how can he not terrified at what he has unleashed?! I can’t help disapproving of his irresponsibility! And I can’t help remarking on the huge coincidence that Clerval arrives there unannounced just as Victor is walking past! And I realise I am instinctively calling the monster ‘it’, but Victor seems to refer to it as ‘him’ so I will do the same.

As they were relaxing and chatting in his apartment, Victor began to act strangely, laughing hysterically and unable to sit still, and he then fell into a faint and a ‘nervous fever’. This illness brought him close to death over several months and it was only by the diligent care of Clerval that he pulled through in the springtime. When Victor eventually began to recover his health and his senses, he immediately wondered if he had spoken of his experiment and of the monster during his illness but Clerval didn’t give any hint of this. When he was a little stronger, Clerval gave him a letter which had arrived when he was ill from Elizabeth (named now within the family as his cousin) begging for some confirmation from him that he was now better, after Clerval’s updates to them, and explaining that she had dissuaded his father to travel to Victor due to the danger of the long journey on his own health, and though she was desperate to come to Victor herself she knew that she would never have been allowed to travel there alone. She updated him with how his brothers, William and Ernest, were, and his father, and also provided him with an update on Justine Moritz who had been adopted into the family before Victor’s mother died and who had made them all proud with how she had improved herself by the education they provided for her, and who Elizabeth now felt very close to. Omg, so several months have gone by! Even if Victor had intended to track down the monster and deal with him, he wasn’t able to do so due to being ill! But where has the monster been all this time?!!! And yay, we have another letter (this one from Elizabeth), I do love letters as a format for a story. And I wonder if there is a particular reason why this Justine has now been introduced? She is mentioned by Elizabeth as having been a great favourite of Victor’s when he lived at home, so is there relevance to that further in the story?

When Victor had fully recovered, he introduced Clerval to his professors at the university, who praised Victor heartily for the progress he had been making in his studies, though Victor now felt abhorrence for those studies and even seeing the apparatus in the classrooms brought back his nervous symptoms. Clerval had noticed this distress of Victor’s when he was still recovering, so he had removed all of the scientific apparatus from Victor’s apartment and had even moved Victor to a new apartment. Though Victor was grateful that Clerval ‘never attempted to draw my secret from me’, he never felt tempted to confide in Clerval what had happened as he could not bear to think about it. He abandoned his subject of natural sciences and natural philosophy and joined Clerval in the study of Oriental languages, and he gradually became stronger and healthier and happier again over the course of that year and made plans to return to Geneva while Clerval stayed on in Germany to study further. Hmmm, I feel an apprehension at how effectively and conveniently Victor seems to have pushed the monster away from his mind, with no thought of where the monster is and what he is doing. He seems to feel no sense of responsibility for this monster, or a sense of responsibility towards humankind to ensure they are safe from the monster. I am pleased Victor is now happy and healthy, but he really does seem to be sticking his head in the sand here, I feel!

However, a week or so before leaving for Geneva, Victor received a letter from his father who begged that Victor would come home immediately as his brother William had been murdered. His father explained that William had not returned from an evening walk they had all gone on in Plainpalais as William had gone on ahead of the others during the walk, and that he was then found in the early hours the next morning ‘stretched on the grass livid and motionless, the print of the murderer’s finger was on his neck’. His father added that Elizabeth blamed herself as she had that day let William wear a valuable locket which had a picture of their mother in it, and as the locket was missing from William’s body she presumed that the murderer had been tempted to steal it and therefore killed William in the process. Omg, that was a shock with William being murdered, but I can’t help second-guessing why this event has been introduced, surely it can’t be that the monster is the murderer? Could the monster have seen paperwork at Victor’s apartment detailing Victor’s family and where they lived, and was determined to hurt Victor by hurting them, so perhaps trying to punish Victor for creating him in the first place, or punish Victor for displaying obvious disgust at his appearance?! Surely surely not, surely that would be too much…?! 

Victor left for Geneva, and was often emotional when he saw the familiar scenes of the area as he approached home, he sometimes felt overawed by the beauty of the scenery and at other times felt apprehensive of the changes in the area which would inevitably have occurred in the six years he had been away. It was evening when he arrived and the gates of the town were shut so he had to spend the night in the next village, and he therefore decided that evening to visit the site of his brother’s death. A storm occurred as he was walking through the trees to the spot and he suddenly caught a glimpse of the monster silhouetted in a flash of lightning, and he then felt certain that it was the monster who had killed his brother. He was almost overwhelmed by this thought, and also with the thought of how many other people the monster may have killed in the two years he had been loose. He considered pursuing the monster but then saw in the next flash of lightning him climbing the near-perpendicular face of a nearby mountain and quickly reaching the summit and disappearing. Victor was at first determined to share all the information he had about the monster and his certainty of it having committed this crime, to ensure he was tracked and caught, but he then considered how unbelievable his tale would sound, as well as how unlikely it was that anyone would be able to capture the monster, so he decided to keep quiet. Omg, so Victor thinks the monster killed William! I’d kind of thought, on reflection, that my idea of the monster being the killer was a bit dramatically paranoid of me, but it seems not! Although I’m still not sure if Victor is right to leap to the conclusion he does, particularly with him viewing the monster as ‘a depraved wretch whose delight was in carnage and misery’, does Victor really know the monster is like that?! I feel we are now being led to view the monster as almost indestructible and possessing far more strength and speed than a human, with him climbing the sheer inaccessible face of a mountain and quickly reaching the summit with no effort at all, and with Victor admitting the monster is almost like ‘my own vampire’ and him feeling that trying to catch him would be like trying to ‘overtake the winds or confine a mountain stream with a straw’, hmmm again, is he right in how powerful and almost demonic this monster is or is he exaggerating the danger in his mind, either due to his traumatised memory of the monster when he first looked upon him or in order to kind of provide a reason for not pursuing the monster which would inevitably require Victor to admit to other people the existence of the monster and his creation of it? But at least Victor has finally given thought to the dangerous consequences of what he created and what he allowed to be unleashed on the world due to him not making any effort to retrieve the monster again after he had left the apartment. And I am trying to be generous to Victor and remind myself that he was desperately ill pretty immediately afterwards, but if he had told Clerval what he had done when he first met him then at least Clerval could have tried to do something or have alerted the authorities. But even now Victor is still keeping quiet about the monster’s existence, sigh, I know he has stated his reasons for this but I can’t help suspecting one of the main reasons is that he is scared to fully face the consequences (to others, as well as to himself) of what he has done. But how deliciously gothic with the monster being illuminated in a flash of lightning, I love it! And Victor’s description of the scenery of Geneva does sound stunning, such as the snowy mountains being ‘the palaces of nature’ and the lightning ‘illuminating the lake making it appear like a vast sheet of fire’, I will have to google pics of these places he mentions such as Lausanne with its view of the lake, and the mountains of the Juras and Mont Blanc and Saleve and the Alps of Savoy and the Mole, and the village of Secheron where he rested, as well as Plainpalais. And I’m fascinated with the gates being shut to the town as this reminds me of the old city walls around London in Roman times or of the gates and walls around Paris during the time of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Victor entered his family home early the following morning and was greeted by his brother Ernest, who was grateful for Victor’s arrival, saying it would greatly help comfort their father and Elizabeth. Ernest then told Victor that Justine had been arrested for the murder, as a servant had found the locket in the pocket of her clothes and Justine hadn’t been able to explain how it had got there, and he added that Justine would be tried in court that day. Victor immediately told Ernest that they were mistaken with Justine’s guilt, but he thought to himself again that he would not explain about the monster as he wouldn’t be believed and he was also certain that Justine would be found innocent as there would be no evidence against her. Omg, so this is why Justine was introduced! Victor will surely have to speak up now, he can’t let an innocent person be accused of the crime when he believes the monster did it (though I am reminded again that he has no proof of the monster’s guilt, though it does seem a huge coincidence that the monster is there in the area), but grrr it seems that he is content to keep quiet and believe in the judicial system and that Justine will be found innocent without a need for him to speak, sigh! I feel this won’t last long though, he surely can’t conceal this huge secret for much longer. And I wonder if Justine saw the monster herself and was so horrified by it and unable to comprehend quite what it was she saw or be able to speak about it?

At her trial, Justine appeared calm and confident, she explained to the court that she had spent that evening at her aunt’s house in the next village and when she had learnt that William was missing she had immediately begun searching for him, but she had then realised how late it was and that the gates to Geneva had been shut for the night so she spent the night in a barn and began searching for William in the early hours of the following morning. She added that this was why she was near the spot where his body had been found, and that her lack of sleep the previous night had caused her confused state, and that she had no idea how the locket had ended up in her pocket. Elizabeth vouched for Justine’s character to the court and stated that she was convinced of her innocence, however the judge and the public were convinced of Justine’s guilt and she was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to death. Grrrr, Victor!! I am so frustrated with him not saying anything! He declares that ‘the tortures of the accused did not equal mine…the fangs of remorse tore my bosom…the heart-sickening despair’, hmmm, perhaps he did suffer but I still feel he should be owning up to what he created and released on the world, I am struggling to feel much sympathy for Victor at the moment! And poor poor Justine being found guilty! I am sure she must have seen the monster beside William or saw it murdering him and she is so shocked and scared and confused by what she saw that she can’t speak about it, so she isn’t then able to defend herself by pointing to someone else as I am guessing she thinks she won’t be believed if she tries to describe the monster and she feels that if she admits she was near the body at the time of the murder then her story of the monster will be thought to be a lie. Oh god, I wonder if Victor will suspect this too and then speak to Justine, perhaps if they spoke together about the monster then surely they would be believed, and surely at least Victor stating that he created the monster would back up Justine’s story and prove her innocence. But I am still puzzled as to how the locket got into Justine’s pocket, she says she can’t imagine who would try to frame her by placing it in her pocket and that she doesn’t understand why the murderer would place it in her pocket rather than taking it away and getting money for it and she doesn’t know how someone could have placed it in her pocket without her noticing, all of which I wonder myself! I do believe she is innocent, but I am beginning to wonder if she picked the locket up from beside William’s body but perhaps was in such a shocked and dazed state after seeing the monster kill William that she genuinely doesn’t remember doing this, or perhaps she doesn’t want to appear guilty by admitting she picked up the locket. But it must also mean that the monster (if it was the murderer, which I’m still a little loath to fully believe) didn’t want the locket for himself. And as an aside, it gave me quite a jolt to see Victor’s mother called Mrs Frankenstein (when Elizabeth said in court that Justine helped to nurse Mrs Frankenstein during her last illness), obviously that would be her name (!) but it was just that the name was spoken quite innocently without any of the associations that we automatically have now when we see that name!

The following day Victor and Elizabeth were shocked to be told that Justine had confessed her guilt, and Victor began to wonder if indeed it was Justine who had killed William and not the monster. Elizabeth and Victor visited Justine in prison and she explained that the prison priest had harassed her to confess and told her that she would go to hell if she didn’t confess, and so under that relentless pressure and with no-one to consult with she confessed, but she promised them that she was innocent and both Elizabeth and Victor assured her that they believed her. Justine then said she could die tomorrow in peace, and ‘on the morrow Justine died’. Oh noooo, what awful heart-rending words! I felt sure that Justine would be saved, I can hardly believe she is dead, bless her, poor poor Justine, what a brave brave soul, and also with her determination to try and comfort Elizabeth, saying that she hoped Elizabeth could ‘live and be happy, and make others so’, omg, it’s quite heart-breaking! And Victor still hasn’t spoken about the monster, arrrgh! I was feeling relieved when he went to the prison as I honestly felt sure that he would then speak about the monster to Justine and Elizabeth and vow to get Justine released, or that Justine would speak to them about seeing the monster which would then prompt Victor to speak, but no, even though he says he will forever blame himself for the deaths of William and Justine and the sufferings of Elizabeth and his father and brother Ernest and calls himself ‘the true murderer’, well, yes, I think he is now, as he’s effectively allowed Justine to die! And now we also don’t know what Justine may have seen regarding the murder and the monster (unless she has left a journal, fingers crossed…!).

Victor was filled with remorse and guilt and despair, from his own feelings but also from seeing Elizabeth and his father and brother so low and sad. He became depressed and often contemplated suicide but stopped himself from this as he didn’t want to cause the others more suffering and he also didn’t want to leave them unprotected to be attacked by the monster. He felt unable to be around people and so he travelled to the valley of Chamonix for a few days, which he remembered from his childhood, and the beautiful scenery and sounds of nature brought him some peace. Hmmm, I know I have been hard on Victor, but I will keep in mind (and try to feel slightly more generous towards him) that he said his experiment had been undertaken ‘with benevolent intentions…and (to) make myself useful to my fellow beings’ so this reminds me that he didn’t mean harm by what he did, and also that he does now fully appreciate what he has unleashed on the world with him saying that he ‘ardently wished to extinguish that life, which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed’. And he is made to feel this even more by seeing daily the grief of Elizabeth and his father and brother. I’d also not considered, with all the drama of Justine’s situation, that the monster is still out there and could potentially be intending to attack other relatives of Victor! And as Elizabeth is so completely convinced of Justine’s innocence, I wonder if she will then inevitably give thought to who the actual murderer was, as no-one seems to be thinking of this (obviously because Justine confessed to the crime), could she end up discovering the existence of the monster?! And oooh, again the description of the scenery that Victor sees on his way to the valley of Chamonix and also when he reaches there, makes me crave to see it, with him mentioning the ravine of Arve, and the town of Servox with its ‘immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on every side, the sound of the river raging among the rocks and the dashing of the waterfalls…ruined castles hanging on the precipices of mountains…the mighty Alps whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all’, as well as the bridge of Pelissier, and also the valley of Chamonix itself with its ‘immense glaciers’, wow! And I was particularly struck by him mentioning the summit of Montanvert with its ‘tremendous and ever-moving glacier (which) with slow pace is advancing down from the summit of the hills to barricade the valley’, as considering this was written in the 1700s has the glacier now made its way down and the valley is now blocked? It all sounds very dramatic and awe-inspiring and it makes me wonder if the author felt that it was only such very dramatic and awe-inspiring scenery that was fitting for such a dramatic and awe-inspiring tale, and makes me wonder too if the author herself had been to these places and was struck by the feelings they inspired in her so was determined to include them in her story? And I can’t help being reminded of Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, with its description of beautiful dramatic nature scenes and ravines and ruined castles, and particularly when Victor quoted a piece of poetry as there was lots of poetry quoted in Udolpho. And I don’t recognise the poem (or passage) that Victor quotes but a couple of the lines resonated with me ‘We rest, a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise, one wand’ring thought pollutes the day’, omg how many times that has happened to me!

The next day Victor climbed towards the summit of one of the mountains, without a guide and even though ‘the rain was pouring in torrents and thick mists hid the summits of the mountains’, and as he reached the top he saw the monster ‘advancing towards me at superhuman speed’. Victor at first felt faint with shock and terror but he accused the monster of being a ‘cursed…detested form’ and stated that he would kill him, but the monster reminded Victor that he was far more powerful and superior than Victor was. The monster then added that he was ‘miserable beyond all living things’, that he had been ‘driven from joy for no misdeed…am irrevocably excluded’ and insisted that he was originally ‘benevolent and good…my soul glowed with love and humanity…misery made me a fiend…I am miserable and they (mankind) shall share my wretchedness’. He also stated that Victor ‘my creator, detest and spurn me…abhor me’, even though he felt that Victor was ‘bound by ties’ to him and Victor owed him ‘justice…clemency and affection…compassion’. The monster then stated that he had a condition for Victor to agree to and then he would leave Victor and mankind in peace but if the condition was not met then it would kill the rest of Victor’s family and friends. He took Victor to his hut in the mountain and demanded that he listened to his tale. Victor felt ‘curiosity and compassion…for the first time also I felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were’. Omg, the image in my mind of the monster bounding over the ice with ‘superhuman speed’ is indeed terrifying with his power and invincibility! But then I can’t help feeling sorry for him being so alone and miserable and oh god he really does sound so tragically alone, that he is really suffering from being alone and I guess it must be awful to be really and truly alone in the world, but the desperate loneliness of the monster really is heartbreaking, and also that he feels so hurt that his creator rejects and abhors him and used such cruel words towards him. And how ironic that both Victor and the monster are unhappy, and both blame the other for causing this unhappiness and both are certain that the other can alleviate their unhappiness, they seem to be so inextricably linked and I wonder if their fates are linked too (which kind of reminds me of Harry Potter and Voldemort, that neither can live while the other lives). But Victor is going to listen to the monster’s tale, and I can’t help wondering where his (and my!) sympathies will be at the end of the tale as I am surprised already at how the author has encouraged me to feel pity for the monster’s loneliness. And I obviously also wonder what the monster’s request is. But omg, this is far more of a heartrending tale than I thought it would be, I was expecting just a horror story but I suspect now that it is far more involved than that and will tug at my heartstrings and play on my mind for a long time afterwards, and I wonder if the author’s intention was to remind us how people can deeply hurt each other and how there is (tragically) perhaps no pain as deep as that which another person you care about can inflict on you. Argggh, I almost don’t want to go on and feel more heartache! But I am quite blown away by the power of the words used by the author, this really is incredible writing and makes me feel that I must read more of her work, though I am only aware at the moment of this book to her name but I will research what else she wrote, she surely must have written more, a skill such as this cannot have only produced one book, what a waste that would be! And I notice that I am calling Victor by the name Victor rather than the name Frankenstein, even though the monster and others call him Frankenstein, I’m not really quite sure why I have made this distinction (!), I think perhaps just because the name Frankenstein is so inextricably linked with a monster and a horror story but that I am beginning to feel there is so much more to this story and the characters than just a monster and horror. 

The monster described his memories of the beginning of his life when he felt invaded with the senses of hearing and seeing and smelling all at the same time and was confused by light and darkness and heat and cold. He had walked until he ended up in Ingolstadt Forest and was then hungry and thirsty and tired as well as ‘half-frightened…desolate…helpless miserable wretch’, but that he gradually learnt to feed himself on berries and to drink from a stream and also found a large cloak and a fire which provided him with warmth and the ability to cook food. He then left the forest and entered a village but the inhabitants were scared of him and pelted him with stones so he went back into the forest and took shelter in a small outbuilding attached to a cottage. He could see into the cottage through a chink in the wall and he watched the family (a father with his son Felix and daughter Agatha) and learnt their French language and learnt about human history and its laws and government and criminal system and the different countries of the world and its social classes and genders, as well as learning from them about human emotions and behaviour, and he began to care for the family deeply and often secretly helped them by gathering firewood for them and clearing their path of snow in the winter. He also realised that his appearance was very different from theirs after he saw a reflection of himself in a pool ‘with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome…a blot upon the earth’, although he also realised that he was much stronger than them and was able to withstand extremes of heat and cold far better. He also realised that he had no family himself as he had found Victor’s journal in the pockets of the clothes he had taken from Victor’s apartment so he had read about Victor collecting the body parts which made up his body and Victor’s disgust at this process, and that this ‘discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was’. Omg, it’s just awful thinking of the monster seeing that information in Victor’s journal, where the parts of his own body came from and Victor’s disgust at this process, I can’t imagine how heart-breaking that must have been for him. And just as I was busily looking for reasons to help explain what led Victor to do what he did in creating the monster, I am now looking for reasons to help explain the monster’s actions, and surely this reading of the journal must have been a huge tragic factor. But there was also a lot of detail in this section of the book about the family’s history and that they were French nobles who helped a Turkish man escape his unjust jail sentence but were then punished themselves for this by being exiled from France which resulted in them living in poverty in Germany (where they are now), and about Safie being the Turkish man’s daughter and her and Felix being in love and getting married and her joining the family in the cottage. I’m not really sure why we have all this detail of the cottagers, and particularly of Safie and her father, it is interesting but seems to be taking us away from the main story of the monster and Victor which I am impatient to get back to! However, I am apprehensively anticipating that the monster eventually presented himself to the family, hoping to be accepted, and was then desperately hurt by their reaction, so I almost don’t want to read on to see it happen and part of me is welcoming the delay caused by all the description of this family! And I had (foolishly, I now realise!) presumed that it was English that the monster was learning from the family and that he was then speaking English to Victor, but obviously the family were speaking French which makes me wonder if Victor and other Swiss people speak French? I will have to google, and I feel ashamed of my lack of knowledge about the language spoken by the Swiss! But as an aside, I was interested in what books the monster had found and read, these being Plutarch’s Lives, Sorrows of Werter, and Paradise Lost.

The monster decided to introduce himself to the cottagers as he believed they were kind and good people who would accept him and be sympathetic to him and love him even though he looked different to them. He introduced himself to the blind father first, thinking he wouldn’t be horrified by his appearance, and he did this when Felix and Agatha and Safie had gone out for a long walk. He talked for quite a time to the father, who told him he had a ‘sincere’ voice. But when the others entered the cottage, the sight of the monster caused Agatha to faint and Safie to run away, and Felix then beat him with a stick. The monster ran into the woods and howled, and said ‘from that moment I declared ever-lasting war against the species, and more than all, against him who had formed me’. Omg, deep down I knew this would happen but I couldn’t help desperately hoping that the family wouldn’t be repulsed by him and would accept him, as he’d desperately hoped for. Oh no, oh no, oh no, it’s just so tragically awful, I just feel for the monster so much! And surely the reaction of the cottagers must have contributed to the monster’s following hatred of mankind, and I can kind of almost understand that, with how destroyed he must have been after the dashing of all his hopes and dreams, and again this reminds me of the similarity between Victor and the monster as both had a dream that they had built all their hopes on and both were terribly disappointed and heartbroken at the subsequent result. And I wonder if the author is reminding us in this book of the danger of judging by appearances, as the father clearly enjoyed speaking with the monster and thought he seemed an honest and educated and interesting man (which he obviously is), but then these characteristics were all ignored with the shock of his appearance (although obviously I can allow that his appearance must have been a shock to them!). And again, the format of this book is very interesting as the story has been told by Walton and then Victor and then the monster, so we are being allowed to see the views and feelings of all three and being allowed to care for them, even though at least two of them wish to destroy the other, and I do wonder what Walton is making of all this as he sits listening to it!

In his desperation and unhappiness the monster decided to seek out Victor in Geneva, as he felt it was only from him ‘could I hope for succour…pity and redress’, but he also at times viewed Victor as ‘unfeeling, heartless…cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind’ and wished to revenge himself on Victor. He neared the outskirts of Switzerland in the springtime and saw a girl trip and fall into a fast-running stream so he immediately leapt in to save her but then a man appeared and shot at him, and the monster felt pain from the physical wound but felt more pain from the emotional wound and an ‘eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind…deep and deadly revenge’. He reached Geneva and was woken from sleep by a child running past him and it suddenly occurred to him that this child hadn’t had time or experience yet in their young life to develop the hatreds and prejudices of adults so he decided to take the child and to make him his friend, but the child screamed and called him a monster and a wretch and threatened him with his father Mr Frankenstein, and the monster recognised this name. He held tightly to the boy around his throat and was surprised when the boy died, but he then felt ‘exultation and hellish triumph’ at the realisation that this would cause pain to Victor. He took the locket from around William’s neck and admired the picture within it and wandered into a nearby barn and found Justine sleeping, it firstly occurred to him to wake her in the hope she would smile at him rather than be repulsed at him but his experience now was that every human looked on him with horror and this remembrance made him feel angry and misused all over again so he decided to hurt her and, remembering his knowledge of the criminal system which he had learnt from the family in the cottage, he put the locket in her pocket so she would be accused of the killing of the boy. Hmmm, well, that explains everything about William and Justine then and obviously the monster was involved, sigh. And I’m surprised that the author didn’t have Justine witness the murder or see the monster as I felt that would have been a good plot twist, but perhaps the author didn’t want Victor sharing at that point in the book that the monster existed and to then have the monster dealt with by the authorities, perhaps the author preferred that Victor’s and the monster’s destiny was that one had to destroy the other? But oh god, it is so tragic how much the monster is hurting and how he is pushed away from mankind no matter how he tries to be friendly and kind and helpful. I find myself sympathetic towards him and keen to focus on his good points, for example that he originally seemed to veer between seeking out Victor because he is his (kind of) father and family and he hoped for pity and support from Victor and then being consumed by rage that Victor had forced him into this life of misery and wanting to revenge himself on him, so I want to hold onto the fact that the urge for sympathy and empathy were there in the monster (along with the urge for violence and revenge, and of course I wonder which will triumph!). And I’m also trying to hold onto the fact that he didn’t mean to kill William but just didn’t realise his own strength (so could it be viewed as an accident really?), and also that his first thought when he saw Justine was still an optimistic hope that she would accept him rather than a determination to hurt her (even though his bitterness then took over and he chose to hurt her) and even then that he didn’t directly hurt her by killing her right then (even though of course this was the end result with the court sentencing her to death). And (although this is just a story) I can’t help wondering if the author is correct in how the monster would be perceived by mankind, both at that time when the book was written and now today, and also where the author’s sympathies lie, ie with the monster or with mankind, is she making the point that mankind’s unkindness and cruelty and prejudice caused the monster to act as he did so therefore mankind was deserving of the consequences? I also wonder if the author had a particular person (or race perhaps) in mind, either in her time or historically, when she wrote this book, someone (or a group of people) who looked different and who had therefore been ostracised and punished by society because of this, and she based the monster’s experiences on their experiences?

The monster had reached the point of his request to Victor, which was that Victor must create another creature like him, ‘as deformed and horrible as myself…of the same species and have the same defects’ so he would then have a female companion who would not shun him, like Adam had requested that God create Eve for him. Victor refused, saying that he would not be responsible for two creatures of wickedness in the world harming mankind, still angry at the mention of the monster’s involvement with William and Justine. The monster initially threatened Victor in order to try and make him agree to his request, saying that ‘I will work at your destruction…until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth’, but then reflected and said he would reason with Victor and explained to him that ‘I am malicious because I am miserable…if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear’, and he pointed out that if he had been shown kindness and benevolence by mankind then he would have returned this to them ‘a hundred and a hundredfold’. He also pointed out that Victor would have willingly committed the wicked act of murder in order to kill him, so how has he acted any differently to this in his wish to hurt and kill mankind. The monster promised that if Victor created a female for him, they would live separately from mankind and harm no-one, living peacefully and happily together. Victor then began to be tempted by the idea, mostly by his desire to have the monster live far away from mankind but also from beginning to feel that he really was responsible for the monster and the misery he suffered, as he had created him, and so perhaps he did owe him this request in order to try and rectify things and also that he perhaps owed it to mankind too. Victor therefore agreed to the monster’s request, and immediately returned to Geneva. Hmmm, as I’m now feeling really quite sympathetic towards the monster, I was relieved that he didn’t continue with his threats to force Victor to agree to his request, I much prefer what it says about the monster’s character that he applied reason instead and that also it was this reasoning which convinced Victor, I like that the monster reflected that reasoning is more powerful than threatening violence, and this confirms for me that the acts he had committed which initially seemed violent were just misunderstandings and were done without intent to hurt. And on that note, I’m also interested that the monster said that he doesn’t kill animals for his food, like humans do, he just lives on fruit and vegetables, and he uses this as another example to demonstrate how he is really a gentle and caring soul and doesn’t wish to cause pain, so that’s quite a radical thought that the monster is a vegetarian! I wonder how many vegetarians there were at the time the book was published and indeed if there weren’t many then if the readers of that time perhaps viewed this abstinence of meat as being strange so therefore this made them view the monster as even stranger? But personally (being a vegetarian myself) it makes me feel more sympathy with him and confirms my view of him as a gentle character, with him not wanting to take the lives of animals in order to eat. And I was interested in the region that the monster proposed to live in away from mankind, the ‘vast wilds of South America’, as I wonder if that area is now so wild and remote as it was then in the early 1800s? I imagine not and it’s quite fascinating to think how the world and its population has changed since that time.

Victor delayed beginning on his promised task, as he felt horror at the thought of what he must do and became depressed every time he thought about it. His father was concerned about this depression and suggested to him that the marriage with Elizabeth be arranged soon, which had been long talked about within the family, as his father thought that this would brighten Victor’s spirits. However, Victor had decided that he should travel to England and consult with some philosophers there who had made discoveries which he felt would help him in his task, and he also felt he couldn’t create another monster there in the family home, so he explained to his father that he would travel to England in order to raise his spirits and on his return he would marry Elizabeth, which he also viewed as a reward for completing the task, and he also presumed that the monster would then follow him to England which would ensure that the family were safe from the monster. His father arranged for Clerval to travel to England with Victor, and Clerval thoroughly enjoyed the journey and the scenery they passed through but Victor was blind to it all as he was absorbed by what he considered the ‘curse’ he must follow and his feeling that he was ‘a slave’ by having to do it. They arrived in London at the end of December and Clerval was very keen to see more of England, being unaware of Victor’s task, and convinced Victor to accompany him on a tour of the country, which he suggested could then finish in Scotland so they could then stay there with a friend of his. Victor agreed to this tour, and decided that he would take with him the bits for the task that he had collected so far and he could then work on the task in ‘some obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland’. When they reached their friend in Perth, Victor told Clerval that he would then tour Scotland by himself for about two months, while Clerval spent time with his friend, as he explained that he felt he would benefit from the solitude. Clerval reluctantly agreed to this, and Victor headed to ‘one of the remotest of the Orkneys’ in order to complete his task, an island where there were only five inhabitants. Oooh, even though Victor says he was unable to notice much about their journey from Geneva to England and the scenery they saw, he does mention some places which sound beautiful, such as Mainz in Germany with ‘many ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible’, and wow I’ve just had a peek on google and Mainz does look an incredible place! And (being English) I loved Victor’s mention of England and the places there that fascinated him, he mentions ‘the white cliffs’, and the Thames and Tilbury Fort (which he knows of in connection to the Spanish Armada), Gravesend, Woolwich, Greenwich, and St Pauls and the Tower of London, and then their plan to visit Windsor and Oxford and Matlock and the Cumberland lakes and Westmorland lakes and Edinburgh, it just makes me smile to see those places mentioned (and Victor’s impressions of them and his interest in English history) in such a book as this, particularly the places I know well. I am presuming the author is English and knows all these places herself. But I do feel slightly apprehensive that all this delay will be frustrating to the monster, and I can’t help feeling a little frustrated with Victor and his moaning myself, he’s always talking now about the ‘blight’ of this task, his ‘detestable occupation’ and his ‘debasing and miserable fears’, that he is like ‘a blasted tree…a miserable spectacle of humanity…intolerable to myself’, and that the monster is a ‘demon’ or ‘fiend’. I am trying to be sympathetic but really, Victor seems to be just constantly delaying and then causing himself more agonising thoughts, both about his part in this task and if his delay may be causing harm to his family from the monster. Just crack on, Victor, I can’t help thinking! He’s already done this task once, I know the first time he did it with hope in his heart of benefiting the world whereas now he feels he is being pushed into doing it by the monster, but he agreed to do the task because he felt it would attempt to put right the mistake he made by creating the monster in the first place, plus the completion of this task would benefit the world as it would ensure the monster (and the new mate which Victor creates for him) leaves mankind alone, which was Victor’s desire. And with me feeling quite sorry for the monster as well as admiring the better qualities in him which have now been revealed, I am a little uncomfortable with Victor calling him a demon and a fiend (though I guess Victor is still grieving for William and Justine and can’t forgive the monster for his involvement in their deaths). I’m also fascinated by the thought that the monster may be heading to England as well, and it reminds me of Dracula and how he seemed even scarier and real to me when he arrived in the familiar place of Whitby rather than being far away in exotic-sounding Transylvania! And I also wonder if this remote Orkney island is as famous for being the site of the creation of Frankenstein’s mate, as Whitby is for being the arrival place of Dracula. Although Victor doesn’t make this island sound like a nice place, with the poverty of its ‘gaunt and scraggy’ inhabitants and lack of amenities and it ‘being hardly more than a rock whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves’ and a ‘desolate and appalling landscape’! I tend to think of the Orkneys as really beautiful, but I guess that was a different time and I’m viewing them now as a tourist, not someone who had to survive there with little amenities. And I’m a bit concerned that Victor makes it sound like Clerval is now dead (at the point of him relating this tale to Walton), so I wonder what caused his death and if it was related to the monster.

When Victor was working on the second monster late one evening, it suddenly occurred to him that the two monsters may have children and he could then be responsible for the creation of a new race which could wipe out man. He then looked up and saw the monster looking through the window at him. The shock of this combined with his thought about them creating a new race, caused Victor to instantly destroy the creature he was working on and he vowed to himself that he would never begin this task again. The monster witnessed this destruction and howled with ‘devilish despair and revenge’ and left, but he later came back to Victor’s hut and demanded an explanation, saying he has endured cold and hunger and exhaustion following Victor to this remote place and has now witnessed Victor destroy all his hopes. Victor told him that he would not create another like him, and the monster stated that he would have his revenge on Victor and that if he cannot be happy then Victor would also never be happy, and as he left he threatened Victor that he would be there on his wedding night. Victor then felt fear for who the monster might be hurting at that moment in his rage. As it was night time, Victor gathered up the remains of the new monster and sailed out in his boat and dropped the remains into the sea. He then fell asleep in the boat and awoke to find he had drifted far from his island and he finally arrived at Ireland, extremely hungry and thirsty and exhausted. However, the locals who had watched his arrival then acted in an aggressive and suspicious manner towards him and told him that he must be taken to the local magistrate because a man had been found murdered on the beach there last night and the murderer been seen to sail off from the site in a boat similar to Victor’s boat, so they suspected he was the murderer. Well, this tale gets more and more complicated and goes off into yet another different and surprising direction, sounding indeed very dramatic with Victor stating that the situation he is about to describe was a ‘calamity that was…to overwhelm me’! And I was also surprised when Victor suddenly destroyed the new monster, changing his mind from seeing its creation as recompense for creating the first unhappy monster and as an insurance that the monster then left mankind alone, I can understand Victor’s concern about the monsters breeding but I think Victor has now potentially unleashed an angry vengeful monster onto mankind so done far more damage than any that creating a mate for the monster could potentially have done!

Victor was taken to see the body of the murdered man in order to see if his reaction indicated his guilt and Victor was horrified to see that the body was Clerval, strangled! Victor immediately presumed that it was the monster who did this as revenge for Victor destroying his mate, and in his shock Victor raved about his own feelings of guilt (because he created the monster who committed this crime), which resulted in Victor being put into prison as the locals thought he was admitting guilt of the murder. He fell unconscious with the shock of it all and then into a fever which lasted for a few months and from which he nearly died. He finally awoke to find that his father had come to care for him, and when his case went to court the inhabitants of the Orkney island vouched for him having been there at the time of the murder so Victor was then freed. He and his father stayed in Ireland whilst Victor continued to recover, but Victor several times tried to commit suicide in his despair before he finally decided that he had to live in order to protect his family from the monster’s revenge, and he then demanded that they go home to Geneva with the hope that he could manage to kill the monster at some point. Omg, Clerval is dead!! I didn’t see that coming, even though I had noted earlier that Victor had spoken of Clerval in the past tense which made me wonder what had happened to him. And oh dear, it looked worse and worse for Victor when his shock and feelings of guilt for Clerval’s death because he had created the monster who had presumably killed Clerval, then made the Irish people think Victor killed Clerval, I was a bit concerned for him there wondering if he was going to hanged! But I wonder why the monster left Clerval’s body on that beach in Ireland, as he wasn’t to know that Victor would end up there, it was surely completely random where Victor floated to in his boat, or that he went out in his boat at all, so if Victor had just stayed in his hut on the Orkney island after the monster had left or had gone straight back to Perth as he had decided to abandon his task, then he would be entirely unaware of Clerval’s death, never mind being suspected of his murder. And is Victor right in presuming that the monster killed Clerval? I’d still like to think better of the monster than that. And I was quite shocked at Victor frequently trying to commit suicide after his release from prison but I guess it is more understandable when he says ‘The cup of life was poisoned forever…I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness’. But this must have been so very distressing for Victor’s father and so hard for him to understand, whilst he himself is presumably still grieving for William and Justine and now no doubt also grieving for Clerval himself, poor man.

On their journey to Geneva, Victor often lapsed into feverish fits and spoke during these fits of his guilt for the deaths of William and Justine and Clerval, which his father heard but put down to temporary insanity after all the trauma Victor had gone through. Also on their journey, Elizabeth wrote to Victor saying she would release him from their engagement as she suspected that his habit of solitude and travel was because he had fallen in love with someone else. Victor thought about not marrying Elizabeth in an effort to keep her safe from the monster but he then presumed that the monster would still kill her as he already knew how important she was to him, plus Victor still hoped to kill the monster himself so it would therefore be useful to be able to plan this knowing that the monster would come to them on their wedding night. He therefore wrote back to Elizabeth and assured her of his love for her, but admitted to having a dark secret and said he would tell her of this secret on the night after their wedding. When they arrived in Geneva, Victor and Elizabeth married shortly afterwards and travelled by boat to Lake Como in Austria for their wedding night, Victor having ensured that he was armed with pistols and a dagger. Oh, so Victor is presumably going to tell Elizabeth about the monster now, eventually he will share his secret and I can’t help wondering what her response will be, although presumably he will tell her after he has attempted to kill the monster and I guess if she ends up witnessing some of this attack then she may well be expecting some kind of explanation, tee hee! But, eeek, what dramatic words of foreboding from Victor on his wedding day, ‘Those were the last moments of my life during which I enjoyed the feeling of happiness’, omg, what will happen?! 

Elizabeth retired to their room while Victor continuously checked the area expecting the monster to appear at any moment. He then heard a scream and ran to their room and found Elizabeth dead! He then saw the monster’s face looking in at the window, grinning and pointing at Elizabeth’s dead body. Victor rushed to the window and fired his gun but the monster ran away and leapt into the lake. Victor and the staff searched the area for several hours but no trace of the monster could be found, and the staff seemed to doubt if Victor had actually seen anyone at the window. Victor then suspected that the monster would next be heading to harm his father and brother, so immediately rushed home to them where he found them safe but had to deliver the news of Elizabeth’s death. His father was greatly shocked and died a few days later as ‘he could not live under the horrors that were accumulated around him’. Omg, omg, omg, again the author surprises and shocks me! I hadn’t expected Clerval’s death, and I certainly hadn’t expected Elizabeth’s, omg, I am completely reeling from that! And I was still hoping that it wasn’t the monster who had killed them both, but with him grinning through the window and pointing at Elizabeth’s body then it seems there is no option but to believe it! And poor Victor, I know I have been annoyed by him at times throughout this book but I do feel desperately sorry for him now, to have lost both his best friend and the woman he loved, and now his father too, omg, the author has been cruelly hard to him, as Victor says ‘no creature had ever been as miserable as I was’, bless him. But I’m surprised there seems to be no search for who had killed Elizabeth, and indeed that suspicion hadn’t fallen on Victor with them being strangers in the area and him being the only person there that Elizabeth knew. Even Victor’s father didn’t seem to ask anything about who had committed this crime, obviously I realise the poor man was shocked and grieving but surely the natural anger that grief leads to would ensure he wanted to see someone punished for the crime so would at least ask about who was suspected of it.

Victor initially struggled to cope, but then focused all his mind and strength on revenge, ‘I had formed in my own heart a resolution to pursue my destroyer to death’. He went to a magistrate in the town and told him everything, from the creation of the monster to the crimes the monster had committed, and asked the magistrate to use his power to pursue and capture the monster which Victor presumed would be close by. The magistrate did not believe Victor’s tale however, viewing Victor as mad, so Victor retorted that he would have to destroy the monster himself. Oh, so finally finally Victor has told someone his tale, but he was right in thinking that he wouldn’t be believed, although I still feel he could have perhaps been believed if he had told someone sooner (and then so many of these events could have been avoided) ideally telling Clerval when he took him back to the apartment where he had just created the monster, as I feel sure that Clerval would have believed him and there was a chance then that action could have been taken. And I’m not sure if Victor had been put into a mental asylum immediately after the death of Elizabeth and his father, if I’ve understood correctly what he meant by being released from ‘a solitary cell…for they had called me mad’, wow, poor Victor, that seems extreme, or perhaps it was for his own safety if he had been trying to kill himself again? 

Victor decided to leave Geneva in order to pursue and kill the monster but on the day of his departure he first went to the graves of William and Elizabeth and his father and promised them that he would preserve his life until he had killed the monster, speaking of the ‘despair that now torments me’. He then heard the monster laugh loudly and mockingly, and the monster then told Victor that he was pleased that Victor had decided to continue living his miserable and suffering life. Victor followed the monster along the Rhone and the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and to Russia and finally onto the ice of the Arctic, and the monster constantly taunted him by leaving food for him with mocking messages carved into trees such as ‘you live, and my power is complete…follow me…come on, my enemy…your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting hatred’. As Victor travelled across the ice with a sledge and dogs, he seemed to be gaining on the monster and actually reached the point of viewing him in the distance but then the ice cracked and Victor was left drifting on a piece of ice, which was when he saw Walton’s boat and was rescued. As Victor concludes his tale, he begs Walton to promise that he would kill the monster, if Victor dies before having achieved this himself. Wow, I can hardly believe how far Victor travelled in pursuit of the monster! And it all seems so tragic really with both Victor and the monster having descended into this all-consuming desire for revenge, both suffering and yet both wanting to punish the other for their own sufferings. I can’t help thinking how things could have been different if they hadn’t both followed this path of hate, it really is a tale full of darkness and hatred and revenge, it makes for quite uncomfortable reading, if I’m honest. And Victor describes the monster to Walton as ‘his soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and fiendlike malice’, but part of me still feels sorry for the monster and I view Victor as perhaps responsible for all the monster’s actions. And now Victor’s tale is told and it is back to Walton again, which I’m quite relieved at as I like Walton and he also seems a far more balanced and calm individual in comparison with the other narrators of Victor and the monster, tee hee! 

Walton’s letter to his sister is continued, dated 27th August. He describes Victor’s tale as ‘a strange and terrific story’ and admits that it made his ‘blood congeal with horror’, and he describes the emotions of sorrow and anguish and indignation and rage that Victor displayed during the telling of it. Walton states that he believes Victor’s tale is true, and particularly so as he has seen the monster on the ice and also seen the letters from Felix and Safie which Victor showed him. Walton says he has tried to convince Victor to fight to live on, offering his friendship and support to him, but that Victor says his only consolation now is to see his loved ones again when he dies. Walton’s letter continues dated 2nd September detailing the dangerous situation they are now in with their boat enclosed by ice which could crush the boat at any moment, and them suffering from the extreme cold which has already killed several members of his crew, and that he feels responsible for bringing the crew with him into danger and also for the distress it would cause Margaret for him not to return, though he adds that Victor tries to keep up Walton’s and the crew’s spirits by reminding them of how the same situation has happened to other boats in this sea and they eventually escaped. Walton continues on 5th September saying that the crew have appealed to him to promise that if they get free from the ice that they will then head south for home rather than going further north on their planned course into more danger. Walton is heartbroken at the thought of returning home having failed in his mission, but the crew are immovable and on 7th September Walton records in his letter, to his shame, that he has promised what they ask, though he feels his ‘hopes are blasted by cowardice and indecision’. Hmmm, so Walton believes Victor’s tale, I had half wondered if he would view Victor as mad and then the reader would be left with the question of whether it was all true or not. Although I do bear in mind how Walton seems to almost hero-worship Victor in his desperation for a friend (and bless him, he writes to Margaret ‘I have longed for a friend’) so his strength of feeling for Victor makes me wonder if he is then able to consider things clearly regarding if the tale is true or not or if he is predisposed to see things from Victor’s point of view due to wanting to please him, although I guess Walton (as he reminds Margaret) did see the monster himself on the ice (I don’t much regard the letters from Felix and Safie as evidence, as Victor could have written them himself). Walton describes Victor’s ‘fine and lovely eyes’ and imagines ‘what a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity’, hmmm, he certainly feels strongly for Victor! And it must be upsetting for Walton when he offered his friendship to Victor as a reason for him continuing to live and yet Victor rejected this in favour of dying and seeing his loved ones, poor Walton, I imagine he doesn’t offer his friendship to people often or lightly so for him to do this was probably a big deal for him, and he obviously felt that his own life would be enhanced with Victor in it so I do feel for him hearing that his friendship isn’t valued enough for Victor to want to live for, although I can understand Victor feeling this way after everything he has gone through and how long he has held onto the idea of the peace and relief he believes he would gain in death. I did also wonder if Walton would perhaps disapprove of Victor’s actions and decisions regarding the monster (as I have), of Victor’s carelessness in racing on to create the monster and being consumed by the power and recognition he expected to earn rather than considering the consequences of what he was doing, but it seems Walton doesn’t feel this. I was interested in Victor’s eloquence in trying to boost the spirits of Walton and the crew when they were despairing at ever escaping from the surrounding ice, we’ve not really seen Victor thinking positively throughout this story so this was a nice change, and perhaps helps to explain the attraction and admiration that Walton feels for him. But omg, I’d quite forgotten Walton’s danger surrounded by the ice and the imminent risk of dying, I am really fearful again now that Walton won’t survive and his letter to Margaret detailing everything that Victor told him will just be found years later, and it was a bit heartbreaking to read his words to Margaret feeling for her distress that ‘years will pass, and you will have visitings of despair and yet be tortured by hope’. But I have to confess I am very relieved that he agreed to his crew’s demand to head for home if they ever get free of the ice, even though he is distressed and ashamed by this, though I doubt they will get free (sob).

On 12th September, Walton writes that the ice began to move a few days before so their boat became free and they are now heading back to England. But he adds that Victor has continued to deteriorate and is now close to death. Walton writes that Victor has been examining his conduct regarding the monster and feels that he made the right choices because he had to protect mankind against the evil tendencies that the monster displayed, and Victor also worries what harm to mankind the monster may still do but he said that Walton must decide for himself whether to continue the pursuit of the monster or not, as Victor feels that his own feelings on the subject may be ‘misled by passion’. Walton adds that Victor dies shortly after this. Yay, yay, yay, they are free from the ice and Walton is returning home, I am unbelievably relieved, phew! I feel again that I care far more for Walton and his welfare than I have ever done for Victor, even though the book is about Victor! And the ice moving sounded scary and dramatic, with ‘roarings like thunder…the islands split and cracked in every direction’, the power of it all sounded immense and for them to be sat powerless within it, omg! And Victor is dead, sigh, I know I have admitted I don’t care for him as much as I care for Walton but it was still a bit of a blow to read Walton’s words ‘I have lost my friend’, and I feel so much for Walton with how he will be grieving for Victor. And hmmm, I don’t agree with Victor’s view of his conduct regarding the monster! He states that he created ‘a rational creature’ and that he was bound to ensure this creature’s ‘happiness and well-being’ but that he couldn’t do this because he owed more to humanity and because the monster ‘showed unparalleled malignity and selfishness in evil’, well I don’t see it quite like that, I don’t remember Victor ever making any attempt to aid the monster’s happiness or to care for his well-being, in fact the first words and impressions that the monster received was Victor’s disgust at his appearance and then Victor immediately running away and abandoning him! How different the monster might have turned out if Victor had stayed with him at the start of his life and ensured that the monster’s first impressions were tenderness and love and then educated the monster in the ways of mankind and also educated mankind about the monster and taught them that his physical differences weren’t a reason to be horrified and scared of him, perhaps then the monster wouldn’t have turned out (as Victor calls him) malign and selfish and evil. And I feel that even those labels are Victor’s harsh judgements on the monster, I still feel that the monster didn’t set out to kill William or Justine, he was just confused and scared and lonely (admittedly, he did mean to kill Clerval and Elizabeth, but could it be said that he had been shown the example of Victor killing his mate, so could we not blame Victor again for this?). And I also can’t help being a bit annoyed at Victor with him appealing to Walton to kill the monster, admittedly Victor doesn’t directly instruct Walton to do this but he urges Walton to consider his duty and Victor must surely have realised how highly Walton regarded him and how Walton is likely to want to please him. And I’m desperate for Walton to not try and kill the monster, partly because I don’t want Walton to risk his life doing so and partly because I don’t view the monster as evil and I don’t think he would seek out humans to kill them so I’m hoping he could just be left alive to retreat somewhere quiet in the world.

Walton hears a noise in the cabin where Victor’s body lays and he finds the monster in there, distraught at Victor’s death and expressing regret for his actions against Victor and begging his forgiveness. Walton can barely look at the monster, so horrified is he at his ‘loathsome yet appalling hideousness’, however he is filled with ‘a mixture of curiosity and compassion’ at the grief the monster displays at Victor’s death. But Walton accuses the monster of being a hypocrite and only being sorry at Victor’s death because he has been cheated of killing him himself, which the monster denies, saying he feels degraded by the crimes he has committed and he can hardly believe how he came to commit them, and says how alone and miserable he has been, reminding Walton of the girl’s life he saved and how he helped Felix and his family survive by secretly providing them with food and fuel, adding that he only ‘desired love and fellowship and I was still spurned’. He assures Walton that he will not hurt anyone else and will kill himself, adding ‘your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself’. He leaps from the cabin window and sails away on the raft out of sight. This is the end of the book. Eeeek, omg, the monster came onboard the boat to visit Victor, wow, I didn’t anticipate that, this author really is incredible for throwing out shock after shock and surprise after surprise! And I feel I am justified in my defence of the monster with the grief and sorrow and begging for forgiveness that he displayed on seeing Victor dead, and him saying that his natural feelings were of ‘love and sympathy’ but that he was driven to ‘vice and hatred’ by Victor and humankind, and that whilst committing these violent acts he suffered ‘agony and remorse…anguish’ and that he committed them because he was ‘wrenched by misery’. Yes, I do feel it’s not wrong in me to try and think better of the monster than the picture painted by Victor. And my heart bled for the monster when he talked about killing himself, to ‘consume to ashes this miserable frame’ so that no-one could ever create another like him, and that once he would have wept to miss the ‘cheering warmth of summer…the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds’ but that now death is his only consolation. Oh god, it’s just so tragically and awfully sad, he asked for so little and was delighted by such simple natural things as the birds and the leaves, and his life could have been so different and happy if he wasn’t judged on his appearance by Victor and the rest of humankind, oh god, it’s so sad, such a waste! And I feel a little sad that the book ends without us knowing if Walton felt sympathy for the monster, I was hoping hoping hoping (desperately hoping!) that Walton wouldn’t kill the monster and I was so relieved he didn’t but I wonder what Walton would have done if the monster hadn’t assured him that he would kill himself and then swiftly left, I wish the author had given me the comfort of believing that Walton felt kindly towards the monster and that the monster felt this tiny bit of kindness in his (presumably) last contact with mankind, especially given his hatred of himself which was so heart-breaking to read. And I’d have quite liked an update of Walton’s return to his sister too, I was quite gutted that the book ended so abruptly.

Phew, what a powerful book, I feel quite drained and exhausted now, it certainly was an incredible read and a fantastic tale but so very dark and depressing! I felt Victor’s line ‘mine has been a tale of horrors…my hideous narration’, and also Walton’s line of ‘the strangest tale that ever imagination formed’ are certainly true, it is indeed a very strange and very horrible tale but a very intriguing and fascinating one!! And I wonder again what the reception of this book was when it was released, I feel quite blown away by it and yet I had prior knowledge of the basic storyline, so how on earth did the readers at the time respond to it?!

And it inevitably makes me consider the conception of the term ‘monster’, as he was just a human, wasn’t he, created of human parts, he was just larger and a bit rough-looking, but he was still a human? And although his behaviour was monstrous in his killing of people, was he not driven to this by people’s cruel treatment of him? I wonder again if the author was trying throughout the book to make the point that we shouldn’t judge by appearances and ostracise what we don’t understand or what doesn’t seem to fit the norm. And perhaps also that if we do judge and ostracise, then the result could be hatred towards others (and self-hatred) and further terrible damage could then be caused by this.

The monster being nameless feels like a big factor too, and it’s intriguing to wonder why the author made this decision. I guess it makes him seem more monster-like and less human without a name, and perhaps makes it more of a challenge to empathise and identify with him, and of course him having no name gives Victor free reign to insert powerfully critical names for the monster which could influence the listener/reader, such as ‘demon’ or ‘fiend’ or ‘depraved wretch’ etc. But for me, him being nameless makes me feel more sorry for him, that he has been cheated of an identity and how this must have made him feel even more alone and different from humankind.

It is interesting to consider why the author introduced Walton to relate Victor’s tale, rather than just having Victor relate it himself (although admittedly it kind of feels like he did do this throughout the majority of the story), was it to create a distance between the reader and Victor, and if so was this in order to create doubt about the veracity of the tale? I guess with Victor not surviving then there would have been the issue of how his written tale would reach civilisation if there was no-one else with him to write it down, but he could have written it himself and it just have been found in a hut somewhere. I wonder if one of the reasons why Walton was introduced into the tale was that his loneliness and desperate need for friendship was similar to the monster’s loneliness and desperate need for friendship, them both seeming quite vulnerable when seeking friendship and struggling to properly judge people’s motives and character and actions, and both being at risk of being taken advantage of? And both wish for love and approval of Victor and both are denied this by Victor’s death. But then there is the hope that Walton could find another friend due to him fitting the norm and looking like what humankind expects a person to look like, which contrasts even more sadly with the fact that the monster had no chance of this (even if he hadn’t killed himself).

I’m intrigued if the author’s other books are similarly as dark and fantastic. And I see her other books were all published after Frankenstein so it’s even more amazing to consider that Frankenstein was her first work, and I also see on Wikipedia that she was only 18 when she first began writing it, wow, such an imagination at so young an age, and this also makes me wonder that if there was a shocked and negative reception to her first book if this then influenced her later books and she perhaps made them less dark? Her book The Last Man sounds particularly interesting with it being about a pandemic (very apt for what we’ve all been through a few years ago!), and I’m very interested in the sound of her The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck as this was the man who said he was one of the Princes in the Tower (and I have a bit of an obsession with Richard 3rd and thoroughly believe in his innocence of that crime).

And although this book feels so unique and unlike anything else I’ve read, aspects of it did put other books into my mind and makes me want to read them or re-read them, I was reminded particularly of HG Wells’ book The Invisible Man with a person being determined to test the boundaries of what could be achieved but without thought of the possible consequences and then regretting his actions. And the author mentioned other books within her story which makes me consider reading those too (although I suspect they could be hard-going and perhaps difficult to find) such as Paradise Lost (and Wikipedia mentions several themes in this book which may have influenced Mary Shelley’s choice of character names and descriptions), and The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Plutarch’s Lives, and Volney’s The Ruins of Empires which the monster read. But wow, I need to recover from this book first, I suspect it is going to rattle around in my mind for quite some time with its disturbing themes and imagery, I feel I probably need something quite light-hearted to read next, such as one of the Harry Potter books I’ve been reminded of!

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