Frankenstein
or "The Modern Prometheus" by Mary Shelley
by
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“I busied myself to think of a story—a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror—”
From the 1831 Introduction to Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley.
I’ve always found that there is tactility about terror, when it is inside, nestling in a reclusive cavity that aches and bleeds, cleanly, icily. It blinds one when one is alone, and it blinds one when one is not. It suffocates and freezes the breadth, yet it makes one need the cold. It binds human loneliness. It binds “individuality.” The pleasure of being frightened and unsure, yet daring and questioning, forcing one to break out and expand beyond “normalcy,” speaks to our most profound emotion; it appeals to the sensation of living and the constant nagging questions that have forever plagued the human race, “Who am I?” and “How am I perceived?”
Existence in Mary Shelley’s world is about relativity. It is about loneliness and the need for identification. It is about projecting and reflecting one’s inner life upon a vast world, a vast universe which at once reflects our unconscious, that underlying force of emotion and state of being, breathing, walking, talking, living, loving, hating. The world is vast. (How did Marcus Aurelius conquer it?) The landscape is enormous, and we are alone, asking, “does identification with another human being afford us comfort, when we cannot know comfort if we are to achieve the fullness of our potential?”
From this human well of loneliness, and questioning, and need for identification springs Romanticism. It is a movement which has known many lives and incarnations throughout history, although it is the cluster of writers who lived during the late 18th and early 19th century which has particularly gripped the modern consciousness.
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About the Book
It was on a dreary night in November,
That I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that
almost amounted to agony, I
Collected the instruments of life around me—
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how
Delineate the wretch whom with such infinite
Pains and care I had endeavoured to form?
FRANKENSTEIN or THE MODERN PROMETHEUS by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley is considered a masterpiece of gothic horror and science fiction. The novel was first published in
Melding the surreal and the real, the conscious and the subconscious, the nightmare and the dream, Mary Shelley, guided by the literary ambitions of her husband Percy, the philosophical legacy of her father William Godwin and the ghost of her feminist mother Mary Wollstonecraft, gives us Victor Frankenstein, a hero reminiscent of Ahab, in dark pursuit of the hideous progeny which is also his alter-ego, the Monster.
In the end, FRANKENSTEIN is a tale of madness and longing, the bonds of parent and child, friends and lovers. It is one of literature’s greatest psychological stories in its ability to capture human insight and desire, and the depths to which that desire might lead us. Mary Shelley’s greatest novel is, ultimately, an undisputed classic for all ages.
About the Author
Christina Tumminello, niece of novelist Robert Leuci, is a retired American ballerina. She holds an MA in English and European Literatures from