Frankenstein

Wuthering Bites Book Club Review at a Glance

What We Said

This book was picked by our group to be read around Halloween. To be honest, I wasn't personally expecting much from this book. I thought it would be a plain horror story. We were all surprised to find the book was so much more. We discovered that the monster is an intelligent man who knows what he wants and the man who created him is just as smart. The book follows the main character through his life, past, and present and somewhat into the future. With exciting twists and turns and climatic events, Frankenstein will keep any reader interested. This book will make you think, use your imagination and have sympathy for the main character.
-Sue

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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born in 1797. Mary first met Shelley in 1814. He was estranged from his wife at the time and their relationship prospered. In 1816 they spent the summer with Lord Byron in Italy, during which time Frankenstein was begun. In 1816 Shelley's wife died and he married Mary. In 1819 their son was killed, and in 1822 Shelley himself was drowned. Mary was heart-broken as her diaries show, and in 1823 she returned to England with her younger son. She died in 1851 and was buried at Bournemouth near her son's home.

• History of Six Weeks Tour, 1817
• Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, 1818
• Valperga, 1823
• The Last Man, 1826
• The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, 1830
• Lodore, 1835
• Falkner, 1837
• Tales and Short Stories, 1891
• The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 1983
• Journals of Mary Shelley 1814-1844, 1987

From the Publisher

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein begat another monster the frequently cartooned, green-skinned Frankenstein of popular culture who roams the streets on Halloween in the company of mummies and skeletons. In the novel, the monster is nameless, and Victor Frankenstein is the creature's creator, an earnestly romantic, idealistic, and well-educated young gentleman whose studies in "natural philosophy" (p. 40) and chemistry evolve from "a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature" (p. 41). However, it is a tribute to the power of Shelley's work a masterpiece that it has spawned a parody, no matter how skewed, much as Frankenstein's creation parodies the divine creation of Adam.
There is some logic, too, in the popular tendency to conflate the monster and his creator under the name of "Frankenstein." As the novel progresses, Frankenstein and his monster vie for the role of protagonist. We are predisposed to identify with Frankenstein, whose character is admired by his virtuous friends and family and even by the ship captain who rescues him, deranged by his quest for vengeance, from the ice floe. He is a human being, after all. However, despite his philanthropic ambition to "banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death" (p. 42), Frankenstein becomes enmeshed in a loathsome pursuit that causes him to destroy his own health and shun his "fellow-creatures as if...guilty of a crime" (p. 57). His irresponsibility causes the death of those he loves most, and he falls under the control of his own creation.
The monster exhibits a similar kind of duality, arousing sympathy as well as horror in all who hear his tale. He demands our compassion to the extent that we recognize ourselves in his existential loneliness. Rejected by his creator and utterly alone, he learns what he can of human nature by eavesdropping on a family of cottage dwellers, and he educates himself by reading a few carefully selected titles that have fortuitously fallen across his path, among them Paradise Lost. "Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come?" (p. 131), he asks himself. Like Milton's Satan, who almost inadvertently becomes the compelling protagonist of Paradise Lost, the monster has much to recommend him.
Despite his criminal acts, the monster's self-consciousness and his ability to educate himself raise the question of what it means to be human. It is difficult to think of the monster as anything less than human in his plea for understanding from Frankenstein: "Believe me, Frankenstein: I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me nothing? they spurn and hate me" (p. 103). When his anonymous acts of kindness toward the cottage dwellers are repaid with baseless hatred, we have to wonder whether it is the world he inhabits, as opposed to something innate, that causes him to commit atrocities. Nonetheless, he retains a conscience and an intense longing for another kind of existence.
By their own accounts, both Frankenstein and the monster begin with benevolent intentions and become murderers. The monster may seem more sympathetic because he is by nature an outsider, whereas Frankenstein deliberately removes himself from human society. When Frankenstein first becomes engrossed in his efforts to create life, collecting materials from the dissecting room and slaughterhouse, he breaks his ties with friends and family, becoming increasingly isolated. His father reprimands him for this, prompting Frankenstein to ask himself what his single-minded quest for knowledge has cost him, and whether or not it is morally justifiable. Looking back, he concludes that it is not, contrary to his belief at the time: "if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, 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" (p. 56). Passages such as this one suggest the possibility that Shelley is writing about the potentially disastrous consequences of not only human ambition, but also a specific kind of masculine ambition. The point of view here may be that of a nineteenth-century woman offering a feminist critique of history.
Far more than the simple ghost story a teenaged Shelley set out to write, Frankenstein borrows elements of Gothic horror, anticipates science fiction, and asks enduring questions about human nature and the relationship between God and man. Modern man is the monster, estranged from his creator sometimes believing his own origins to be meaningless and accidental, and full of rage at the conditions of his existence. Modern man is also Frankenstein, likewise estranged from his creator usurping the powers of God and irresponsibly tinkering with nature, full of benign purpose and malignant results. Frankenstein is both a criticism of humanity, especially of the human notions of technical progress, science, and enlightenment, and a deeply humanistic work full of sympathy for the human condition.

Reading Group Guide

These questions and discussion topics are offered to enhance your discussion of this book.

• Is Robert Walton's ambition similar to Frankenstein's, as Frankenstein believes?
• Why is the fifteen-year-old Frankenstein so impressed with the oak tree destroyed by lightning in a thunderstorm?
• Why does Frankenstein become obsessed with creating life?
• Why is Frankenstein filled with disgust, calling the monster "my enemy," as soon as he has created him? (p. 62)
• What does the monster think his creator owes him?
• Why does Frankenstein agree to create a bride for the monster, then procrastinate and finally break his promise?
• Why can't Frankenstein tell anyone—even his father or Elizabeth—why he blames himself for the deaths of William, Justine, and Henry Clerval?
• Why doesn't Frankenstein realize that the monster's pledge "I shall be with you on your wedding-night" threatens Elizabeth as well as himself? (p. 173)
• Why does Frankenstein find new purpose in life when he decides to seek revenge on the monster "until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict"? (p. 206)
• Why are Frankenstein and his monster both ultimately miserable, bereft of human companionship, and obsessed with revenge? Are they in the same situation at the end of the novel?
• Why doesn't Walton kill the monster when he has the chance?
• Was it wrong for Frankenstein to inquire into the origins of life?
• What makes the creature a monster rather than a human being?
• Is the monster, who can be persuasive, always telling the truth?

If you have read this classic novel, you may think of Frankenstein differently than the media has historically portayed him - that doesn't stop us from sharing these spooky-Halloween inspired recipes. More menus and recipes

Monster Cookies - delicious peanut butter, chocolate chip and M&M candy cookies
Popcorn Balls - a classic treat that my mom used to make for Halloween
Chocolate-Dipped Caramel Apples - another homemade treat for Halloween