It sure is intimidating to review Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Percy Shelley. What could I possibly add to what has already been written? So let’s get this out of the way: 5 STARS!
Now onto more interesting things: as I reread the book for the third time, I read it with an eye towards the question of UPLIFT. And I realized what I must add.
(If you want to know what Uplift is, read the unofficial Uplift (science fiction) – Wikipedia or my own broader version in this blog https://www.theupliftblog.com/what-is-uplift/.)
The Use of Horror
Shelley’s tale of Frankenstein the doctor who created a monster had a specific purpose. She chose to horrify. But horror with a moral purpose. To horrify the public at these acts of discovery and creation. Acts that just because they can be done doesn’t mean they should be done. (I have another post coming on this soon, the idea of restraint in the moment of creativity.)
One major difference between the novel and most of the film adaptations: in the novel the doctor told his story to a man who rescued the doctor from the ice while on a trip to discover the North Pole. That man was also an intellectual, and re-told the tale of the monster in letters to his sister. Kind of convoluted, I know. (The film adaptation that is most true to the novel came out in 1994.)
In his many long monologues, Dr. Frankenstein often referred to the creative act as a bad thing. He argued that if the part of us that wanted to create were ripped from our hearts, we would have a very different world. The Monster is the ultimate example of this. I was stunned to read this quote:
If not for this burning in our hearts, “Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.” In other words, our world would be entirely different. While telling some of his tale to his rescuer, the doctor paused and said this: “Learn from me… how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world.” We should be happy with less.
Here’s what I think about this: just because the potential to misuse creativity exists does not mean all creativity is evil. And while being happy with simple things is lovely, ripping out hearts is decidedly not.
The Use of “Ugliness”
In the novel, how did Shelley horrify the reader? She made the monster unnatural and ugly. Also, taller, stronger, smarter. Because of this no one would listen to the monster. And he became Violent. Those he murdered were beautiful and innocent and lovely. Thus Shelley’s equation: Beauty=good, ugly=evil.
The doctor had gazed on him before animating the monster, and found “he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.” Why in the world would the doctor have chosen to make a powerful, threatening, and ugly creation? I do not know.
But the effects of that choice were quite powerful.
Plato’s POV
***SPOILER ALERT***
A first stab at the philosophy behind ‘Uplift’ in Frankenstein.
Some questions could be: Who?What?Where?When?Why?How?Meaning?
Who? One “monster” was uplifted. One person created the monster, hidden away from his peers who thought the effort impossible. The monster asked his creator to make him a mate and was refused. (Except in some movies. Gotta have a sequel, right?)
Why? The motivation of Victor Frankenstein was the pure thrill of creation. The thrill of becoming god?
On a practical level, is it a device of the author? To achieve horror by doing something that is wrong? Or does she believe that every evil thing will look ugly and horrific. If so, that leaves humanity in remarkable danger to evil things that are beautiful.
When and where? The time and place of the book and the time and place it is written are the same: early 19th century Europe. The society is struggling with issues of morality, slavery, and with inventions like electricity, industrialization. The Monster represents an amalgam of all these issues in one.
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