On Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"

Reading any universally agreed-upon "classic" brings predictable anxiety. What if it's bad? Worse, what if it's boring? Worst (!), what if it doesn't matter???

But, notwithstanding a few eye-rolling decisions by Mary Shelley in her 200-year-old sci-fi progenitor (she cites her husband's poetry a bit much), "Frankenstein" is the kind of work that isn't just good, or great, or a verified "classic"—it's the kind of thing you are humbled to read, if only because another member of our species captured so much of ourselves in so few pages.

This book has everything in it and it's remarkably confident in its ability to say it. This is maximalist, romantic storytelling, with two primary narrators who tell you exactly what they're thinking, feeling, and concluding about one another. And if that sounds trite, it somehow isn't. I think this can be explained by the evolution of writing—we can all accept that the novel has changed drastically in 200-plus years—but also by Shelley's wondrous characters.

Victor Frankenstein serves as an unforgettable and wildly emotional narrator, incapable of bottling even his most precarious feelings. For instance, he has a terrible habit of openly telling anyone in his company that he is at fault for the deaths of his little brother, his family's lovely maid, and his best friend (because he believes he is guilty by association in creating those victims' actual assailant), but he recognizes near the end of the novel that he must restrain these outbursts, else he draw too much scrutiny from his father. And right after he reflects on his need to stay quiet, when his father asks why he's so glum, he again insists he's killed everyone around him! He can't help it! So of course he tells you everything he thinks, it's simply in his nature.

Likewise, the Creature/Monster/Daemon/Wretch grants us the rare and extraordinary opportunity to relearn human history (albeit Christian and White) as an outsider. Shelley grants three seminal texts to the monster ("Paradise Lost," "Plutarch's Lives," and "The Sorrows of Young Werther") which equip him with a framework to measure his own life against the world. And while you could argue that Shelley over-explains or lacks any appreciation for subtlety, it doesn't matter in the construct of the novel because obviously the monster says exactly what he thinks and feels—he's just learned the capacity of speech. Like, yap on brother!

Actual masterpiece, phew!