'Frankenstein' by Mary Shelley

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (3.5)

As with many of the classics given the Hollywood treatment, we all agreed that ‘Frankenstein’ the book was much deeper and more interesting than its movie counterpart. The beginning was a bit slow – it starts with ship’s Captain writing letters to his sister about meeting and befriending a strange man (Victor Frankenstein) who tells him a story that has a story told within it by the ‘monster’. It was not easy to follow the story within a story, within a story! We also unanimously found ‘Dr.’ Frankenstein quite abhorrent. His treatment of his creation is reprehensible. It is thought that Mary Shelley actually rewrote the story in her later years to have his circumstances be more fate driven than choice driven – possibly due her belief that fate affected the tragedies in her life. The monster himself is a sad character, but with more to his story than was ever shown in the movies. Overall the book drove a good discussion about the story and about the author. Mary Shelley wrote this under a pseudonym and the author was believed to be a man as it was felt a woman could neither write about science nor use such gore. If the beginning had moved faster, I think we would have given this a ‘4’ for its depth.