Wow. I don't remember finding Victor Frankenstein quite so irritating the last time I read this. Must be getting old and cranky (me, not Victor, obviously), but I'm sorely tempted to go back and count how many weeks/months out of the approximately six year period which are the focus of the book and during which the Creature is alive which Victor spends in bed, incapacitated by fever and hysteria. Good grief! Every time the poor Creature needs some attention and causes a ruckus you can absolutely count of Victor to start swanning and swooning and feeling so sorry for himself that he requires some tender nursing and a few weeks in bed. And when his friends and family start being killed by or on account of the Creature (he can't even be bothered to suggest to the magistrate that he had seen a malevolent looking stranger the police should look for before hanging poor Justine), he is just sure that their sufferings aren't a patch on his. He weeps and faints practically nonstop, and, and this is the part that just gobsmacked me, no one ever seems to find his behavior annoying! And they don't even Know what we, the readers, know, which is that he's caused all this death and destruction through being an utterly negligent, selfish nincompoop. Abandoning his poor Creature the moment it opens its misty little eyes, refusing to make it a companion (and the business about worrying about baby monsters was absurd – even if he supposed his mishmash creation was fertile, why on earth couldn't he make it an infertile companion?), never mentioning to his family or friends, not to mention law-enforcement officers, that they might want to keep an eye out for a murderous giant! Aack. I've read some reviews which suggest that Victor is meant to be seen as a tragic hero, but as far as I can see he's just a self-centered, incompetent coward.

Hmmm. Well, at least it moved me! Anyway, it is a great story, even if the protagonist is a useless rat, exploring issues of the responsibilities of parents to their children, children to their parents, science to society, etc., as well as promoting tourism in the lovely Swiss Alps.

For this reading I had The Annotated Frankenstein, edited by Susan J. Wolfson and Ronald Levao, and, while I would not recommend it for a first reading (all the notes and pictures do disrupt the flow of the story), it added a Lot to my appreciation this time. I've read some about the Shelleys before (most recently Young Romantics), so I was already familiar with Mary Shelley's story, but the notes here discuss, among other things, how Mary's reading around 1816, and the politics and views on science, women's rights, etc. which would have been discussed in her social circle, played into the writing of Frankenstein. While the swooning and melodrama made me think very much of The Sorrows of Young Werther (which was, obviously pretty influential, since it was one of the Creature's three books), Mary Shelley makes her protagonist even more extravagantly self-indulgent than Young Werther (which takes some doing!) to the point, I think, of parody. Even on his deathbed, having caused the deaths of his brother, his wife, his father, and two friends, our “hero” says

”During these last days I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor do I find it blameable. In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature, and was bound towards him, to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well being. This was my duty; but there was another still paramount to that. My duties towards my fellow-creatures had greater claims to my attention, because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery.”

He doesn't find his conduct blameable??? (Sputter, sputter!) And... the fact that he didn't do anything to “assure his happiness and well being” at all? I mean, we're not talking bottle-propping here. Creature opened his eyes and his creator ran. Pretty danged pathetic. But, in case the reader fails to see the connections (as I'm sure I did last reading), the editors bring William Godwin's fathering failures to our attention here. Mary had a pretty good idea of how it felt for a child to be poorly parented. She also could hardly fail to be aware of her sweet Percy's abysmal track record as father to the children he sired with his first wife, Harriet, at the same time he was canoodling around with Mary. Again and again, the notes in this edition helped me appreciate Shelley's clear insights into the self-indulgent, melodramatic personalities of men who bring children into the world and then fail to guide or care for them, and the self-pitying justifications which allow them to see themselves as victims/under-appreciated geniuses. She also, and not incidentally, presents the women who coddle these drama-kings, enabling their irresponsible behavior (how many of the Shelley's babies died because Percy insisted on traipsing all over Europe with infants in tow? Three, I think. Gah!). Anyway, probably because Mary was so absurdly young when she wrote Frankenstein, my tendency would be to read many of the over-the-top speeches of our protagonists straight, as though she really meant us to admire their “romantic” nonsense. Victor's speech to the sailors, for instance, in Volume III, Chapter 7, where he is trying to talk them into dying in the northern ice because he finds having their boat convenient for his purposes. He says:

”You were hereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species; your name adored, as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honour and the benefit of mankind. And now, behold, with the first imagination of danger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your courage, you shrink away, and are content to be handed down as men who had not strength enough to endure cold and peril; and so, poor souls, they were chilly, and returned to their warm fire-sides. Why, that requires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far, and dragged your captain to the shame of a defeat, merely to prove yourselves cowards. Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes, and firm as a rock...” etc., etc.

He's really piling it on (I'm pretty sure that even the dimmest witted of sailors would realize that it wouldn't be his name that got adored!), but... well, people do. Fortunately, our notes remind us that “The Shelleys despised this rhetoric of honor and glory in military recruitment, often to serve the personal vengeances and ambitions of national leaders,” and point again to Satan's speeches (Percy gave Mary a nice copy of Paradise Lost) to his followers, as well as to Dante's Ulysses's speech to his men in Inferno. So, our author is not condoning this stuff – she's letting us see Victor still using his powers of persuasion to try to manipulate those around him, all the way to the end. He is, at least, consistent.

I find the creature less plausible (I guess that's not surprising) and not terribly sympathetic. Initially he is, of course, poor fellow. Only just “born,” and immediately abandoned, in November, and, unlike most “babies,” he's not even cute and cuddly. His response to universal rejection, while not, perhaps, shocking, is... poorly implemented. I thought his request to Victor was quite reasonable, although Victor's point, that a female creature might not be on board with the whole “going off to South America to live in isolation on roots and berries” thing, was a fair one. Still, his rather graphic demonstration to Victor of how it feels to be bereft of family and friends, however emotionally satisfying it must have seemed, is over-the-top. Creator and Creature share this tendency for excessive drama, though I imagine they'd both deny it.

Anyway, I enjoyed this, and especially this annotated edition, which has, as well as excellent notes, beautiful illustrations. Four stars. ( )

Awesome. ( )