Frankenstein: the Curse of Creation

Mirko Božić
6 min readJul 25, 2024
Boris Karloff in The Bride of Frankenstein, from 1935. Photograph: Allstar/Universal/Sportsphoto/Allstar

There are many books that pass through my reading list. Some because of my work as a literary critic, some by necessity of education and some by chance. As I get older, some gain more prominence than they used to or manifest out of thin air as something that sticks to your mind much longer than I’d like to admit. I’ve got no idea how to explain it, but one of them is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. For many of us today, the first thing that comes up in your mind when talking about it isn’t the book but the 1931 movie with Colin Clive in the leading role. A cult classic in its own right and directed by James Whale, it established an aesthetic that’s been canonised by his appearance in the Addams Family franchise. But their Frankenstein is much more benign, without the tragic predicament of the literary hero.

That’s especially consequential if you’re lucky enough to be a writer. It’s much more texturised that way, pun intended. In terms of his work, every serious writer is Victor Frankenstein. On the other hand, if you’re just a reader, you’re the embodiment of his monster. You’re the creation without even knowing it because we have the same urges like the anti-hero that pays the price for something he didn’t commit. There are countless examples of equivalents to Shelley’s showstopping concoction. In order to understand its roots, we must go back to one fateful, dark night at Lord Byron’s villa in 1816. It was a gathering of people who were to become cornerstones of Victorian literature: Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Polidori etc. Mary allegedly had a nightmare that inspired her story.

If you’re ignorant, it will be just a jumpscare that’s not even trigger-worthy compared to the gore we are relentlessly served in cinemas. No bizarre torture devices or human centipedes. Readers invested in deeper layers of Shelley’s tale might recognize a predecessor of George Orwell’s prophetic 1984, from one of the many possible viewpoints. In 2024, Frankenstein’s monster could be the algorithm. It’s your digital fingerprint, much more consequential than the carbon footprint. While we all obsess about the environment we neglect to recognize that AI will render many of us disposable. That’s the ultimate barrier where you get from George Orwell to George Lucas and his Death Star. What all of them share is destruction driven by the urge to overcome the lack of fulfillment and purpose.

Mary Shelley (GETTY images/biography.com)

Writing is a craft that certainly has a purpose, not necessarily material. An acquaintance said the primary function of paintings is to make your wall prettier. It’s hard to argue with this, because what we admire as the pinnacles of visual arts are ornaments: the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, the Parthenon marbles or the stained glass windows of Notre Dame in Paris. A Corinthian column, regardless of its elegance, is primarily a support for the roofline above it. What makes it stand out so much is the architect’s need for creation of something new and extraordinary. Because there were various styles already anyway: Ionic and Doric. That reduces the Corinthian to more of the same, with a different aesthic DNA. Reinventing the wheel but by no means redundant, for there’s no such thing in beauty.

That turns the proverbial wheel back to Mary Shelley: what’s the purpose of Victor’s creation? Was it a challenge to test his own limits? And what sort of limits would those be? They’re scientific, but as his project develops, they get a profoundly moral dimension too. Unlike Greek columns, this is something unpreceded, risky and puzzling. It’s hard to believe the author simply took all of this out of her sleeve at once. Whatever kind of shrooms those people had at the villa on Lake Geneva, I need it too because I’m desperate to finish a book that should have been published by now. The original manuscript of her story still exists. Due to bad weather, the group spent three days at the house and wanted to overcome their boredom. Not exactly COVID, but I’d argue there’s no such thing as boredom in literature.

However there was a backstory here as well: Byron rented villa Diodati to escape his debts in England, never to return home after he crossed the Channel. Call me crazy but I can’t comprehend how someone running from scandal, gossip and creditors is able to afford a villa in Switzerland, unless they’re a Russian oligarch. If there’s ever a need for shelter from problems like those, you’ll sooner find me in a homeless shelter. Mary was 18 at the time when she drafted the first version of the story, with annotations by her husband Percy. The Victorian age was famous for its taste for darkness: horror stories, dark arts and spiritualism. It attracted even Queen Victoria, after the tragic loss of her husband, prince Albert. It was a method of summoning the dead back into the realm of the living.

Villa Diodati (Robertgrassi/ Wikipedia)

This is more than a horror story: it’s about responsibility,hubris and frustration. The inventor is portrayed as a godlike being which let the tree of wisdom grow too big. Now that the tree is turning into its own forest, Victor is trying to control the damage by undermining his monster’s every attempt at self-realisation, individuality and looking for a partner to complement him. Essentially, those are human traits as well. We want to love and be loved in return. Devote our lives to things we value and cherish and develop our own mind instead of using the blueprint of someone else’s. Or a perfect metaphor for the relationship between parents and children: inevitably, there comes a time when they grow up and cut the leash keeping them safe from the evils of real life outside the comforts of home.

There are three narrators: Victor, the Monster and Captain Walton, from the ship that encounters the doctor’s body and tries to nurse him back to health. Each of them tell their own version of the story and the epistolary style elevates the reader’s impression. Walton is the equivalent of readers while the other two present their case as both cautionary, touching and philosophical in its essence. The antagonist’s cardinal sin is his wish to help others and find love in a companion. All of which is denied to him because of his brute appearance that instills fear into those he’s trying to befriend or approach. In turn, they react with disgust and violence which triggers his urge to punish humans for refusing to see the good in him. This touches on our obsession with beauty as a virtue, while everything opposed to our own vision of it is treated with disrespect, ridicule or downright agression.

The Monster is the vision of fear from a future we won’t be able to control and the risk of the leash we hold in our hand ripping off and trapping those holding it instead. I really wonder what Mary Shelley would make of Elon Musk. Is he the godlike man she warned us about? Or one of those invisible, mobbed students who turn on school bullies with a rifle when it becomes too much to handle? The enduring appeal is the fact that we’re no different than this dark creature. We crave the same things. Having a beating heart comes with having a soul too and that’s where the trouble begins. There’s all kinds of nasty we’re willing to do to achieve our goals. How far is too far? That’s what this tale of horror is about. The singer Tasmin Archer put it perfectly into verses in her song Sleeping Satellite:

Did we fly to the moon too soon?
Did we squander the chance?
In the rush of the race
The reason we chase is lost in romance

I don’t have the answer. Maybe we did: the vast mystery out there distracted us from looking into the future this Victorian masterpiece encapsulated so perfectly. We wanted it all. We still do. Victor’s warning to the Captain still rings true : to “seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition”. I wish I could, but I can’t. Because writing is not just a calling, but an obligation. Like giving birth to a child, the delivery is painful and the postpartum depression takes on a meaning of its own. Once the fruit of your mind is out there, you release it into the wild. A boat without an anchor. This what having the urge to transliterate yourself feels like. Painful, yet rewarding. The ultimate relief after having paid the necessary price.

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Mirko Božić
Mirko Božić

Written by Mirko Božić

Author, critic and founder of the Poligon Literary Festival. If you enjoy my work support it through Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mirkobozic1

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