Jess of the Shire
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Some more Frankenstein thoughts
🕑 Added 2023-11-11 20:00:03 +0000 UTCHi folks! Sorry this is coming so late. But I'm here to share some Frankenstein Mini-essays! As a little bonus, here's a playlist of my favorite tunes I used in that video: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb_4WMXIe9h85Ut4PwA2B4QCixLGrQhEB&si=_ccFIUPXz7UWTtrC
My sister asked for it, so I thought I'd share it with any of you who want some nice background listening! Anyway, here's my thoughts on the Name Frankenstein, Death in the story, and the recurring theme of fire. Enjoy!
P.S I've gotten used to reading my scripts out loud instead of having people actually read them on paper, so if my grammar is atrocious, please do not think less of me
Names
Everybody’s probably heard something along the lines of “erm, actually, the doctor is named Frankenstein, not the monster,” and you know what, that’s totally true. But the confusion between Frankenstein and his monster illuminates some much deeper truths to this conversation. Because, in reality Victor Frankenstein has always been the monster.
The creature he created was not evil–not truly. When examining his shameful fall, the monster mentions his “high thoughts of honour and devotion,” and his ”excellent qualities” (Shelley). He was a blank and innocent Tabula rasa, marveling at the beauty of the world even if it was a cold and confusing place to him. If he’d had his creator to guide him, teach him and love him, he may have turned out perfectly well adjusted. But it was the monstrousness of the doctor, his cowardice, and recklessness that drove his creation towards monstrousness. So the monster was always the doctor.
It’s interesting then, that popular culture began to call the monster “Frankenstein,” but it wasn’t just a mistake. Filmed versions of Frankenstein in the 20th century made the doctor much more forgivable (especially in the Universal version). The monster was pliable, but he was always distinctly a monster, fumbling and harmful by his very nature.
In the book, the monster kills a child, but he does that intentionally. In the Universal film, the monster drowns a girl out of an innocent misunderstanding. In the book, the monster is lashing out towards his creator, an intentional act of revenge that even Victor can admit is his fault. He calls William and Justine his “first hapless victims,” highlighting his own monstrousness (Shelley).
The universal film, meanwhile, makes Frankenstein’s actions fumbling, which could, in some ways, be traced back to his creator, but the film does not make that explicitly clear, as Shelley did in the book. Thus, I’d argue that in the films, they really do make out the monster to be a monster. A tragic figure, but one who indeed earns the monstrous title of “Frankenstein.”
Later versions do little to dispel this idea. In The Curse of Frankenstein, the doctor is obviously quite cruel and monstrous, but so is the monster, killing immediately and without reason. Young Frankenstein instills a little bit more sympathy into the character, but he is still a monster, a wild animal trapped in the body of the man.
They removed all traces of humanity from the monster, so how are we to see him as anything but monstrous? The intelligence of Shelley’s creature is what allows for the truth to be revealed. He acts cruelly, but we’re well aware that it’s because of what Victor, the real monster, did to him. Most modern tellings of this tale seem to straddle the line, making both creator and creation reprehensible.
Perhaps the reason the modern eye has always considered the monster to be Frankenstein, is that we don’t like the idea of the real villain being the man. It’s much easier to call the horrible, pierced together, unnatural thing “the monster,” ignoring the much more terrifying notion that it is a thing’s creator that defines what it is. Frankenstein’s monster is only capable of being monstrous because of the inherent monstrousness that lay in the heart of its creator.
This subtle, seeping, psychological dread is the horror generated by Shelley’s original novel and it is a horror that is (in my opinion) unfortunately lost in most modern tellings of the tale.
So the next time that somebody calls the monster “Frankenstein” maybe you could ask them how that came to be. Why we, in the modern age, struggle to accept that the real monster was the man that chose to create one. Or don’t do that because people will think you’re really pretentious. But that’s your call.
Death
The treatment of death in Frankenstein is one of the first things that stuck out to me when I was watching the adaptations of it. Primarily because, out of all the themes in this story, that was the one they brutalized the most.
Adaptations of Frankenstein seem obsessed with the idea of death, making it one of the most prominent through-lines of every re-telling, which seems absurd to me when it was a barely present notion in the original. But I think that this treatment of death in Frankenstein adaptations speaks to much larger trends in the way that our society thinks about death and the bodies of the dead.
In Shelley’s original novel, death really isn’t that important of a theme. Certainly, many people die, and it is acknowledged as tragic, but the concept of death in itself is not seen as horrifying. Certainly, the creature is made up of the bodies of the dead, but this is more or less brushed over, a simple practical reality of making up a new creation.
This casual approach is reflective of the perspective on death at the time of the novel’s writing, in the first part of the nineteenth century. For most of humanity’s existence, death has been incredibly present, common, and pedestrian. Without modern medical advances, it happened often, and was rarely able to be explained. Fevers and infections and invisible illnesses would sweep through, leaving you with more questions than answers, and a corpse. The body was almost always handled and buried by the family themselves, as a way to say a final goodbye to the lost loved one.
By the nineteenth century, death had taken on an almost Romantic color. Christianity taught that death was not something that the just and righteous should fear, but rather that it was a chance to reunite with God. In art and literature, graceful deaths from “beautiful” diseases such as Tuberculosis were often portrayed as tragically lovely. So certainly, death was something sorrowful–it meant that you would no longer be able to speak with your loved ones on the earthly plain– but it was not something that would outright draw disgust and horror.
Likewise, there was much less fear associated with dead bodies, especially in medical circles. By then, it was well acknowledged that the only way for medical science to advance was by the study of real samples: cadavers. This was even accepted by the government, who allowed hospitals to take the bodies of convicted and executed criminals to study.
An issue arose when the demand for bodies exceeded the number of executed criminals. To solve this, many medical practitioners illegally hired body-snatchers to take fresh bodies from graves, and bring them to the hospital. Though this activity was looked down upon by the public, and technically condemned by the law, there was a very particular leniency allowed by the government, who understood that demand was exceeding supply.
Body snatchers would actually leave the body’s belongings and clothes in the graves, delivering them totally naked, because the laws against grave robbing, (taking a person’s belongings) were much harsher than punishments against folks stealing the bodies themselves. You typically wouldn’t even get jail time if you were caught, just a slap on the wrist.
So, while nineteenth century audiences may have squirmed a bit at Frankenstein’s morbid use of the dead, it wouldn’t have really come as a shock that a medical practitioner was making use of cadavers. It was, more or less, an accepted practice of the day.
Of course, by the time we get to the Universal adaptation of Frankenstein in 1931, much had changed.
The civil war, in particular, marked radical changes in our popular conception of death. It launched the modern funeral industry, and made common the practice of embalming in order to preserve corpses. It became popular for dead bodies to be handled by professionals who would clean them and care for them, making them as sterile as possible before the family ever came face to face with them. Cremation also became widely accepted, where the body, in its whole, would never be handled by the family at all.
This, along with advances in the medical field, shifted our views on death dramatically. No longer was it everyday and pedestrian, everyone knowing someone who died and likely cleaning and burying them themselves. Now, death was something remote. Something to be handled by doctors and funeral homes, the bodies frightening and disgusting, needing to be sterilized before they could be seen. Corpses became alien and frightening, death something to be avoided and pushed away at all cost.
This would be seen loud and clear in twentieth century Frankenstein adaptations. The retrieval of cadavers, once commonplace, became sensational, and well…horrifying. The 1931 version opens with the doctor and his manservant digging up a grave themselves, cutting down a hanged man, all in the dark of a gothic cemetery. The implication is clear–the things they are digging up are disturbing, and their acts unholy. The fear comes not from the doctor’s upheaval of the natural order but from the now inherent disgust of a dead thing walking.
Their dialogue throughout the movie and its sequel, constantly reinforce the idea that Frankenstein is an abomination because he is made out of dead things. They talk about the “brain of a dead man waiting to live again,” and the Doctor’s “insane desire to create living men from the dust of the dead” (Frankenstein). It changes the emphasis. The doctor’s crime is not creating against the wishes of his god, it’s choosing to put life into dead tissue.
This shifting perspective is hammered home in the 1994 adaptation, which though it certainly gets the closest to the plot elements of the original story, butchers its themes. From the get-go, Victor is not inspired by a longing for knowledge, discovery and power. He is very specifically driven by a fear and avoidance of death. The inciting incident of the whole movie is his mother’s death, and from the trauma of this event, he is inspired to try to supersede death, and more particularly, to bring the dead back to life.
In the novel, Victor wants to create anew, but in this version, he wants to bring the dead back to life. It is a subtle change that has massive thematic ramifications.
Throughout the novel he talks constantly of “cheating death,” and when Elizabeth is killed because of him, he reanimates her in an effort to bring her to life (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). In the book, this is never present, never even a notion in his head. He doesn’t consider the monster to be a reanimation of dead pieces, but a new creature. In the 1994 film, the monster is nothing but that, even asking the doctor “who are the people of which I am comprised?” (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein)
The 1994 film was clearly influenced by both earlier film adaptations of the tale, which are obsessed with the sheer body-horror of a dead thing, as well as modern sensibilities which believe death is something that should be feared and avoided.
Shelley’s novel highlights the hubris of man, setting him at odds with God as a creator, and highlighting the importance of consideration and thought in creative acts. Modern Frankenstein adaptations highlight a fear of death and the alienation and innate horror of dead bodies which simply would not have made sense when the novel was originally written. It illuminates our modern obsession with death in a rather unflattering light, and the twisting of Shelley’s narrative to cast shadow on our disfigured fear of death and corpses is rather a shame in my opinion.
Fire
Fire is an unavoidable theme of the Frankenstein story. After all, he is the Modern Prometheus, and fire is at the core of the Titan’s story. Prometheus’ great crime, the one that caused him to be bound and tortured was that of giving fire to mortal man. This fire stands as a representation of enlightenment; with it comes knowledge, medicine, philosophy and art. “To sum it up in the briefest words: All arts that mortals use come from Prometheus” (Aeschylus).
Mary Shelley was distinctly aware of this when she wrote her Modern Prometheus. The only hint that we get at the actual craft used to bring the creature to life is as follows: “I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.” (My emphasis) Though it may not have been the blazing gift of Prometheus, Victor gifted fire, a tiny spark to his being all the same.
Even after the monster has left his creator’s home, this theme of fire pursues him. “One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars and was overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it” (Shelley). The Monster, even after discovering that the fire can burn him, cares for it, learning that he must find dry wood and tend to it even through the night. It makes his food more edible and warms him, and for a time, this fire is his sole companion.
It’s through this fire, gifted to him by chance that the Monster learns what care and stewardship mean. It makes sense then, that at the end of his journey, with his creator dead, he seeks out fire as his final act of stewardship.
“[I] shall seek the northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile, and consume to ashes this miserable frame…I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames” (Shelley).
As the spark of life once infused the monster, and maintained it on cold nights in the wilderness, the fire shall also be his final act, cleansing him from the earth so that he will never be replicated. The Monster had been given the gift of fire, of wisdom, and knowledge and free will, but the Modern Prometheus twisted this gift into a curse. Victor bestowed it recklessly, with no consideration for what came after that first spark, and thus, the Promethean fire will consume his creation in the end, a final act of the free will bestowed upon him.
The importance of this theme is largely lost in later adaptations.
Indeed, in the Universal film, fire is made to be the monster’s enemy. Fritz, the doctor’s manservant, threatens him with it, and Frankenstein is immediately repulsed and afraid of it. The fire, and Fritz’ teasing is what causes the monster to snap and commit his first murder. Fire continues pursuing the monster, as he’s trapped in a burning mill at the end of the film. It’s the same concept as the original novel: the monster being killed by fire, but in the book, this is a choice made by the creature, an intentional act. However, in the film, this fire is caused by the rage of the villagers, their fire of wisdom wielded against the outsider to grim results.
The Universal Monster’s repulsion to fire is a clear representation that he does not have access to that Promethean flame, that wisdom, knowledge and free will. He’s doomed to be senseless and brutish to the end of his days, burned to death by the Promethean fire granted to the villagers, and not him. It is, in its own way tragic, but as always, it doesn’t come near the pain of the original tale.
I can’t really say if this shift comes from a mere misunderstanding of the original text or if it was intentional, but it speaks to the way the modern lens looks at this monster. Twentieth century retellings seem to see ignorance and brutality as the real thing to fear. The monster must not have human intelligence and will. It must be a true outsider, not granted the same rights as a human being. Shelley, however, believed that a truly monstrous creature required Promethean flame. It had to be given the same gifts of knowledge, wisdom and self awareness that mankind has, because only then could his fall from grace to disgrace be fully impactful. It demonstrates changing tastes in horror throughout the ages, and is a clear reflection of what we fear, and what we, as a society, want to find fearful.
Comments
TimberWolf
Wow, that was incredible, thank you for sharing that. You surprise me more and more, with the subtlety and nuance of your vision.
Tim Wingert
Made me think
Tim Wingert
Ditto
John Christopher DeRobertis
Insightful and excellently written
