Book #41
Frankenstein
By Mary Shelley
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a classic that has been on my reading list for a long time, and Halloween felt like the perfect season to read it.
Two things struck me about this book:
- The beauty of the writing
- The richness of the inner and outer worlds that Shelley conjured
(This post will contain spoilers.)
Adapting to Mary Shelley’s Writing Style
Since this book was written in the early 1800’s, it took some time to orient myself in the writing style. Shelley’s writing embodies the cadence and character of her time:
Romanticism
In the late 1700’s, the Romantic era was beginning in Europe. It involved deep emotional intensity, reverence for nature, and philosophical questioning. Which are all major themes in this book.
Gothic Style
Frankenstein also expresses the Gothic fascination with the sublime, the uncanny, and the limits of human ambition- all of which were major preoccupations in Shelley’s era.
Philosophical Context
When Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Europe was wrestling with the moral and scientific anxieties of the industrial revolution and she captured that uneasy sense of “science gone too far” perfectly.
Adjusting to Old Literature
While reading this book, my mind felt like a buggy driving down a very bumpy and unpredictable cobblestone road in a land I had never been before. Each sentence jostled against my inner voice which has a much more modern rhythm. But I eventually came to really enjoy the devastating descriptiveness of this writing style.
Mary Shelley’s World Building
The illustrative writing made it easy to fall headfirst into the environment and characters’ mental states. She described these poetically and yet with vivid sharpness. It was easy to lose myself in this book.
Each of the book’s characters felt wonderfully and painfully present in their own experiences, for better or for worse. Their joy was electrifying and their pain was overwhelming. It felt in sharp contrast to our current world where people (myself included) often zone out or misdirect our emotions rather than look at them deeply.
In order to better understand this style, I spent a few days studying Gothic art. When a friend asked me how my research was going, I jokingly said that it was “scary”. He laughed. “Why?” he asked.
My response was something along the lines of: “Because people of that era embraced emotional intensity and questioning of life often in dark ways. They stewed in these emotions.”
My friend is an expert in psychology and had a very interesting observation. These days, there are many resources such as therapy, antidepressants, and so on to keep people out of a dark mental place. But in the early 1800’s they didn’t have access to these. Art became a way of coping.
They waded into their emotions and allowed themselves to be consumed by them. Whereas I try to flee my emotions like a person escaping a burning building.
Feeling Present in Your Mind & Emotions
In this book, even when the narrator was depressed, he still seemed deeply present. I often feel the opposite- as though I am scattered across time and space, never fully here.
Inauthenticity Leads to Inner Distance
In my post about The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle, I talked about how I have long felt cut off from my “true” self. My genuine mental and emotional states feel out of reach to me.
This is partially due to the fact that I felt told what to think and feel for many years. Sometimes this was in oppressive ways but other times it was just due to well-meaning people telling me how I “should” think and feel. For example, trying to reassure me when I am feeling down about something or telling me I should forgive someone.
They were trying to help, but it can make you lose track of your genuine emotions. Which, ironically, makes happiness or forgiveness more elusive in the long run.
It is hard to address emotions from a place of confusion and inauthenticity. And if you can’t recognize your sensations, then there is no ability to interpret, express, heal, or act on them.
And when the outside world becomes too loud, sometimes it feels like your inner world screams just to be heard. But that simply adds to the cacophonous noise. I think anxiety often comes from this disconnected frenzy.
In contrast, there is a peacefulness that comes from being able to recognize and sit with your inner state; whatever it may be.
So in that way, the honesty of this book made me feel strangely at ease- even when the characters were describing their dark, macabre emotional states. I appreciated their truthfulness.
A Metaphor For Complex Themes
Through its deep sense of emotional honesty, this book explored many themes of the human condition. The two that struck me the most are:
Isolation & Ostracism
Frankenstein feels strangely relevant to the modern world. The creature wanted to integrate himself into society, but after being repeatedly rebuffed, he turns into a monster seeking revenge.
These days, we often hear stories of people who feel excluded from society and then take this anger out on those who rejected them.
The story of Frankenstein artfully depicts the complicated pattern that happens when an individual is shut out from society; how this can turn them more wicked. And as their wickedness grows, society turns from them further. The distance and resentment accumulate on both sides. And understanding and grace become further out of reach.
An Enemy of Your Own Creation
Similarly, this book also deeply symbolizes the wretched and weighty struggles that a person might have with a thing of their own making.
Victor Frankenstein and his creation were locked in a life-or-death battle and there is a complexity to the relationship. The monster only exists because of Victor Frankenstein, and by the end of the book, Frankenstein only exists because of the monster. Neither is entirely slave nor master.
This sounds similar to the monsters that we may face in our own lives; whether it be a substance addiction, mental health issues, a serious illness, a toxic lover, an eating disorder, a gambling problem, etc.
We can start journeying down these paths innocently enough but then be dragged into a perilous struggle in which we may lose our fortune, friends, and family. Just like Frankenstein did.
And the deeper these struggles entrench themselves in our lives, the more we tend to loathe ourselves and our circumstances. The foe of your own making drags your mind to a place where you no longer see yourself as worthy or capable of a good life.
It robs the person of everything they previously held dear. So recovery feels simultaneously less valuable and more difficult.
More than 200 years after its original publication, this book demonstrates that tragic inner duet perfectly, and its devastating outer consequences.
Have you ever faced a monster of your own making?
Messy Bun Book Lover
I read the ARC Classics edition, but I highly recommend this edition as well → https://amzn.to/4o4eXjy
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