(editing an earlier post)
Just finished this morning! Spoilers below. If you intend to read the book, do NOT go any further. You need to take this ride with no hint of what's coming.
Nothing from the movies or pop-culture prepared me for this mess.
We don't get a solid description of the monster, but apparently he's horrifying to behold. What? Did Frankenstein make him ugly on purpose?! We're not told where or how he came up with the biological material, no grave robbing mentioned. An 8-foot humanoid just sorta appears on Frankenstein's work bench.
So the monster wakes up (we're not told what caused this), Frankenstein is horrified at what he's created...
Let us pause a moment. Frankenstein knows what the fuckin' thing looks like, he made it! He set out to create artificial life and accomplished it. And now he's scared shitless the moment his goal comes together?! Y'all, he had plenty of time to think on this.
...runs out in the street for 2 days, his bff spies him and takes him home. Frankenstein (who's not a doctor BTW, he's a college kid) runs upstairs and is relieved the monster has ambled off.
"Oh thank Heavens that 8-foot abomination before God is wandering around loose. Not my problem! LOL!"
The monster spends over 2 years in a shed outside of an exiled, French family's shack in Switzerland. And in all that time no one ever looked in there?! Guess he's got some sort of cloaking ability, because he runs all over Europe without ever being seen. "Oi! Luv! Was that an 8-foot humanoid monster in the woods?" "Nah, probably another hill giant. Damned illegal Norwegian troll immigrants!"
Monster has a tiny peephole to watch the family and learns French by listening to them. So where did he learn the English he later uses?! Also, he learned to read from the family teaching a beautiful Arab girl that shows up. Whole 'nother story there.
Frankenstein is such a panicky little bitch that every time he gets upset he goes into a fugue and goes nuts for months on end. He does this at least 3 times, if not more. "Boo!" "I have to go to the sanatorium."
The monster has already killed Frankenstein's little brother and framed a family friend, getting her hanged. He threatens Frankenstein to continue fucking his world up if he doesn't make him a bride companion. Frankenstein and bff are going to Scotland where Frankenstein is going to secretly do this thing. He takes nearly a fucking year touring about. "We spent 3 weeks looking at cobblestones." "Hadn't you better hustle up in case the monster gets impatient?"
Frankenstein spies the monster watching him work on the bride, freaks out and destroys her right in from of him. Um, I would not piss off an 8-foot monster with superhuman speed and strength. Monster says, "Catch you on your wedding night! K I love U bye bye!" Frankenstein, while looking around the house for the monster on his wedding night, sends his bride upstairs, alone. Guess what? Chicken butts.
Core of the story is Frankenstein and his monster making the same exact mistakes, over and over and over again. Then they lament for 10-pages about how sorry they are. Then they do it again. You can find the plot on any given shampoo bottle, "Lather, Rinse and Repeat."
So much more weirdness. And BTW, I think Frankenstein should have married his bff instead of his cousin, seemed way more into that guy than her dumb ass. Hell, I'm straight, but that dude sounded pretty tight!
tl;dr: Every single person in the book is a drama queen. 150 pages of drama queen. Makes one wonder what young Shelly was like IRL. Starts and ends with an exciting dog sled race across arctic ice! Everyone dies in the end.
To Mary Shelly's ghost; You did fucking awesome for a teenager! Most impressive! Next time, get an editor, dial it in. Great arctic chase though! Also, nobody in 2025 gives a shit what Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, or John Polidori wrote for that contest. Smoked 'em girl.
One more thing. Why did you blank out the dates? August, 8th, 17__? 1701 was a very different time than 1799. What were you hiding?!
This was my third attempt. Never made it past page 8 before. Decided to man up and choke it down. What a ride! A ride interspersed with, dare I say, monstrous boredom.
2025: "Ay yo! What up bestie!"
1816: "You have been my finest love and best friend for all the years of my life! When we were mere children frolicking on the bounteous shores of Lake Geneva, observing as Apollo drug his fiery chariot under the brow of (whatever mountain that was), I knew our fates would forever be entangled! No homo, but I would sleep in your arms at any time you requested such embrace! <4 more pages to say, "All good in the hood.">
Shelly wrote like she was being paid by the word instead of entering a writing contest.
Two things:
Back then, authors were paid by the word.
In Victorian times, at least, people actually DID talk like that. The privileged class were taught extensively growing up on how to talk in overly flowery language and how to debate and express thoughts. Saying simple things in a very pretty way was a skill people practiced. The reason all books of that time have people talking like that is because some people did talk like that. It's weird for people of our time to hear it, since it sounds so contrived and excessive.
I'm drawing from some pretty old memories, but from what I recall, Edgar Allen Poe is a bit overly descriptive like that sometimes, which makes me think the wordiness is part of the writing style for the time. It almost reads like the author is trying to do the "paint a picture" thing, which makes logical sense for the genre, a bit like a literary jump scare: paint a pretty picture, so that the spooky stuff is even more scary by comparison. I think my problem is that I tend to get bored with all the overly flowery writing and my brain wanders off (especially because Shelly likes to reference a bunch of geographic scenery that I don't really have the personal context to draw up a mental picture for).
That does make me wonder if a version of the book in a more modern writing style would be more palatable.
I wonder if that had to do with far fewer entertainment options back then? I can see long descriptions being more acceptable prior to video.
We have an over abundance of entertainment options now, but back then options were few. If I only had a few books I could use for escapism as my only way to check out of reality, I'd probably prefer a 10 page story stretched out to 150 pages.
Writing has become far more terse and succinct over time. You can see it just going from 1900 to 2000, as the shift is fairly dramatic. 19th century English lit was incredibly overdramatic. French and Spanish were also overdramatic, but not quite to the degree of English. Late 20th century American/English lit is pretty straight-forward, and so there's not nearly as much difference between say, Hitchhiker's Guide or Discworld and the Expanse as there is between even Lord of the Rings and Discworld.
2000s on has stayed more or less consistent even if style has changed a little bit.
It's an interesting shift, and affects more than just literature. A little over a hundred years to go from overdramatic, long-winded page fillers and in-depth explainers to 20 second TikTok videos. Storytelling is quickly becoming a lost art.
You got me thinking! Maybe that style of writing was like medieval art. We look at the lack of perspective and wonder how the artists could be so lame. Maybe writers of the Romantic Age were finding their way around the same way, in fits and starts.
In any case, I refuse to believe humans spoke to one another in that fashion. Probably more like Shakespeare. (Not in exact words, but in brevity and tone.)