Frankenstein – not the story you think

Most people think they know about Frankenstein. Everyone’s seen multiple TV and movie representations and countless references to Frankenstein and his monster in all forms of media (including chocolate). However, if you haven’t read the novel you may be very surprised by the story you would read.

Here’s some reasons why:

Lightning

“Victor Frankenstein stands over the lifeless body he has stitched together from decaying pieces of cadavers, grey-green and grotesque. The storm lashes about the tower he shouts in god-like power and glee; lightning strikes the rods set about the spire, crackles down cables and machines and the body is imbued with life; twitching and writhing given life by the power of nature, harnessed by science.”*

This probably comes close to most people’s idea of the pivotal scene where Frankenstein’s Monster is given life. But, there’s no lightning giving life in the book. Lightning destroys. The first reference to lightning occurs in Frankenstein’s recollections of his youth, a tree has been destroyed by lightning, it has power but it is of destruction. As in Tarot though, destruction (death) can also be a portent of rebirth. Lightning evokes a mood of turbulence and upheaval too; in the mountains, a symbol of the wild and the untamed.

Probably the most important theme of the novel is science Science harnesses nature and the many movies have taken this and the recurring lightning appearing inconsequently in the book and had Victor harnessed this wild, visceral power as the ultimate symbol of science over nature. The idea of using electricity for reanimation is a later idea which would resonate with audiences in the early 20th century far more than in the early 19th when it was published. Although Benjamin Franklin (described by Immanuel Kant as ‘the modern Prometheus’) was reputed to have dangled his key from a kite and thus proved lightning was electric 66 years before the novel’s publication there was significant paranoia in the late 19th and early 20th century which made the use of electricity so much more of a powerful an image.

The Monster

Grunts, groans, slow, stupid, ugly, stitched together from body parts.
Nope. None of those.

The monster reads Milton, quotes the bible and a significant chunk of the book is written from his perspective, including extensive philosophical introspection. Oh, and he’s vegetarian.

Most adaptations make the monster monosyllabic at best, portraying an unintelligent creature barely able to function. The novel’s monster, however, teaches himself to speak, travels undetected throughout Europe and challenges Frankenstein intellectually as well as physically.

Location, location, location

Created and imprisoned in Frankenstein’s castle. No, he actually created him in his student digs. Frankenstein pieces his monster together in the attic of his student accommodation

Dies in a burning windmill. Actually dies in the Arctic on a ship, or does he? When Frankenstein dies on a ship trapped in the Arctic ice after pursuing the monster into the frozen wastes the monster is discovered mourning his creator and leaves the ship after swearing to the ship’s commissioner to destroy himself.

During the book Frankenstein and his monster also visit Ireland, Scotland, Italy, Switzerland, France and Russia in a cat and mouse chase across Europe.

The Monster (Again)

The famous image is of a monster stitched together from body parts, chunks of cadaver poorly sewn together lurching grotesquely. The novel’s monster is made from the minutest parts, built from muscles, sinews, and blood vessels. The parts ‘from the dissecting room and the slaughterhouse’. He is strong, agile and fast. He was designed to be beautiful but ended up grotesque; eight feet tall, strong with flowing black hair.

“His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.”

The popular representations of Frankenstein’s monster then have dumbed him down, slowed him down and made him less threatening. He loses his cunning and intelligence as well as his vindictiveness and penchant for cold blooded murder.

The lose ‘scientific principle’ of the novel is made more specific to a key early twentieth century fear; that of electric, tied to the theme of the use of lightning in the book.

And the locations are Disneyfied with the addition of a castle, windmill and villagers with pitchforks.

In conclusion, if you’ve never read Frankenstein, you should, it will offer you more than you think.

*this is not a quote from the book, it is an incorrect, imagined version of this scene.

Darren Ellis is a teacher, creative and owner of Rotten Poetry. He reads classic literature, fantasy, sci-fi, literary fiction and history.