Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

[X Q mano]

Mary Shelley was married to the great romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was herself a part of the romantic "club" together with her husband and also the famous poet Lord Byron. It was in this group that the idea for Frankenstein was conceived. They all agreed that they should try to write a horror story. However, Mary Shelley was the only one who completed her story with any level of success.

For an 18 year old inexperienced girl to write a book that is so important in literary history is quite an accomplishment. She did have help from her husband, but there can be little doubt as to who actually wrote the story. Percy was never very interested in the horror-story project. Although Frankenstein struggles with some stylistic difficulties, such as excessive use of descriptive adjectives etc. it really scores on the great way the themes of the book is laid out in the course of the story. One thing that is interesting to note is her break with many of the common romantic principles. Endless aspiration and heroic demise are some of the things that many romantics valued highly, but in Frankenstein (who by the way, is NOT the Monster, but the man who created it) Mary gives us another picture. One where endless aspiration is not something good, but something that leads to death and destruction.

One of the main themes of the book is solitude. All the narrators (Captain Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein and the Monster) suffer from deep and excessive and more or less self-inflicted solitude. This is especially evident in the case of the Monster, who blames his forced solitude for his vices. Not only are we given evidence of the theme in the conversation and narration, but symbolism and setting and many other things play a vital role in painting the picture of solitude in the reader's mind.

Despite the annoying stylistic "errors" Mary Shelley commits, one can't help but be impressed by the maturity and skill that she is writing. And it is definitely a book one should read. If not for any other reason, one should at least read it to banish the misconception that so many films and TV-series has created.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Thanks for writing that up again XQ.

 

[ravenus]

Mary Shelley was married to the great romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was herself a part of the romantic "club" together with her husband and also the famous poet Lord Byron. It was in this group that the idea for Frankenstein was conceived. They all agreed that they should try to write a horror story. However, Mary Shelley was the only one who completed her story with any level of success.

It was at a weekend get-together with Percy and Mary Shelly, Lord Byron and John Polidori. They had been reading each other German ghost stories on a stormy evening and it seems Percy who had dozed off woke suddenly from a nightmare in which he had seen a woman with eyes in place of her nipples. This led to the challenge in which each of them was to write a macabre story.

Of this Polidori wrote The Vampyre which was a success in its time and quite likely the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula. But apparently his story contained many elements of the story that Byron wrote at that same gathering, which led to a cooling of relationship between the 2 men.

 

[Morning Star]

Never having read Frankenstein, would one of you be able to tell me how close the film with Deniro and Branagh (I think it was) was to the novel? Was 'the monster' not the mindless shambling wreck as is the popular view?

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I understand that Branagh's movie was an attempt to stick closer to the original than before. I may be wrong.


In Shelley's novel, the irony is that Frankenstein wanted to create a physical and mental paragon, but the end result was so horrendeous in appearance that the creature only elicited fear and revulsion, despite the fact that it was at first neither mindless nor evil.

 

[Morning Star]

Aaah, ok thanks JP. Unlike the utterly off the mark, but interesting nonetheless Hammer version with Peter Cushing. "The Curse of Frankenstein." If you have not seen it, Cushing had gotten his hands on the brains of a brilliant and benign man. Then the brain got into an accident and had pieces of glass stuck in it, which he removed. Regardless, Frankenstein used it anyway.

The result? An unhinged and mindless monstrosity. Intent on killing Frankenstein...though this could have been some memory of the brains owner, seeing as Frankenstein pushed him off a landing so he could get at his grey matter.

 

[X Q mano]

The Monster is definitely not shambling and mindless. Rather eloquent and smart actually...

 

[Morning Star]

I guess the whole relying on cheap thrills craze in the 40s and 50, plus the boon the unrivalled popularity of the cinema at the time, meant that the producers figures nobody would go see a horror with an intelligent and eloquent monster.

Thus it seems to have become almost accepted that his creation was little more than a savage.

 

[ravenus]

Branagh did try to make a version closer to the story...but he also ended making IMO a very stodgy and dull film on the whole.

In Hammer's Revenge of Frankenstein, the 'Creature' is basically a scientist's brain transplanted into another body (not the trademark jumble of glued-up appendages) and, as portrayed by Freddie Jones, comes across as a tragic eloquent figure who hates Frankenstein for having alienated him from his wife who does not recognize him anymore and is repelled by his obviously mutilated visage. It's by far the most brilliant and touching interpretation of the creature I've seen.

 

[Foxbat]

Branagh did try to make a version closer to the story...but he also ended making IMO a very stodgy and dull film on the whole.

I agree. His film was a perfect example of why some films have to differ from the book.

 

[Morning Star]

Interesting though, that Coppolas version of Dracula was very VERY close to the novel. Word for word in a lot of parts.

I really like that film.

 

[ravenus]

Interesting though, that Coppolas version of Dracula was very VERY close to the novel. Word for word in a lot of parts.

I really like that film.

This cannot be the same film I saw, which had a corny melodramatic love story wedged in the most ugly and forced manner into the plot. The movie I saw also had atrocious performances by the bulk of the cast. Even the ravishing visuals could not quite contain my distaste and disappointment with the onscreen proceedings.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Frakenstein would always be a difficult story to dramatise - but a big problem with the Branagh filming was a sometimes over-focussing on the melodramatic. Somehow there seemed a sense of trying to over-glorify elements of the story for mass appeal.

 

[Foxbat]

Frakenstein would always be a difficult story to dramatise - but a big problem with the Branagh filming was a sometimes over-focussing on the melodramatic. Somehow there seemed a sense of trying to over-glorify elements of the story for mass appeal.

I think you may be right. But there was also some serious mis-casting going on. De Niro just did not hack it as the monster (and neither did Branagh as Frankenstein - he should stick to what he's good at).

Despite Whale's interpretation being very different in many ways from the book, it is still the best Frankenstein on film as far as I'm concerned

 

[ravenus]

Branagh as Frankenstein was a laugh...somehow horribly overwrought and utterly dull at the same time.

Foxbat check out some of the Peter Cushing Frankenstein films, they're quite good, especially Curse of Frankenstein and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed.

 

[X Q mano]

I think it's questionable to use the name of Frankenstein if you're not going to make an honest and good filmatization of the book. It feels like they only want to earn money from the name, and I feel that's wrong...

 

[ravenus]

'Honest' has its limitations XQ. There's no point in just lifting the pages of a book and pasting them on screen unless you're making it for the benefit of illiterate people.

Every enterprise must have its creative freedom even if its an adaptation of another work...otherwise what's the point of doing it, just to satisfy a fanboy's ego?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I don't remember Branagh's version being all that faithful to the original, but perhaps it got better as it progressed -- about halfway through it became so annoying that I stopped watching. It really was quite overblown and dull.

But I don't think the stylistic problems mentioned in the review should be laid at Mary Shelley's door. That's the way everyone wrote in the early 19th century, and compared to lots of other writers of the time her prose was pretty lean.

It is an amazing story, and it must have been even more amazing to people who hadn't grown up with the basic storyline as all of us have.

The question that has always intrigued me is whether Victor Frankenstein's great "sin" was in creating the monster, or, having done so, rejecting it -- or perhaps creating it when he must ultimately reject it. It's hard not to feel sorry for the monster, but we only have its own account of certain events as evidence of its finer feelings.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I'm under the mipression the "sin" Doctor Frankenstein committed, was trying to create life, when the creation of life is the perrogative of the Divine. With the gears of genetic engineering warming up, it remains a very real concern even after so long a time - that humanity's attempt to imitate the realm of the Divine are doomed to birth parodies that will ultimately hurt us.

 

[Foxbat]

I'm under the mipression the "sin" Doctor Frankenstein committed, was trying to create life

I agree - and hence the subtitle 'Or The Modern Prometheus'