7. Frankenstein: Horror, Humanity, and Hubris

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“They revisit our favourite stories and ask how they ought to feel through design, illustration and materials.”

Frankenstein, the subject of this episode is one of their carefully reimagined titles. Frankenstein lives between fire and ice. It's about what happens when ambition outruns restraint, when brilliance untevits itself from responsibility. And two centuries on, it still has that unsettling power. From the cover to the introduction, the story is woven into every detail, deliberate, restrained, but quietly unsettling.

It's Frankenstein shaped with intention, holding its chill to the very last page, and never quite thawing.

You can order Frankenstein and explore the other books we keep coming back to. At foliosociety.com/thebookclub, that's foliosociety.com/thebookclub. Egalobstudium, Job, or Unzug. A stint? Cras?

Furtig gar nicht wie steuernern. Steuern erledigt? Save. Mit wieso steuern? I suddenly beheld the figure of a man at some distance, advancing towards me with superhumes beat.

I perceived, as the shape came nearer, sight tremendous and appalled, that it was the ret whom I had created, his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes.

But I scarcely observed this, rage and hatred had first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered

only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious, detestation and contempt. Devil, I exclaimed, "Do you dare approach me?"

“And do not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm, wreaked on your miserable head?”

Begone, while insect, or rather, stay that I may trample you to dust. And oh, that I could with extinction of your miserable existence restore those victims, who you have so diabolically murdered. "I expected this reception," said the demon, "all men hate the wretched, how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things?" yet you, my creator, detest and

spurn me thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only disoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life. To your duty towards me, and I will do mind towards you and the rest of mankind.

If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace, but if you refuse, I will clutch them more of death until it be satiated with a blood of your remaining friends. So, everybody, that is a glimpse behind the curtain of the book club, because that is how tabby and I usually speak to each other.

It's uncanny. I will clutch them more of death, and also the number of times tabby has said to me, "begone vile insects." So you're comply with my conditions. Exactly.

So, this is a tremendous scene from Mary Shelley's chilling novel "Franconstein," which was published anonymously in January 1818, and it's a scene in which our hero Victor Frankenstein, the scientist, finally confronts his monstrous creation, the terrifying creature that he has brought to life, or animated, with his experiments in chemistry and in galvanic electricity.

In that scene, you get a sense of Victor's horror and loathing for his own creation, basically his son, you might say. But also the creatures, slightly unusual combination, have extreme violence. I will clutch them more of death, and reasoned argument. He's like, "Tommy Fury."

Yeah, he's like, "I expected this reception.

“I think that's a sort of Roger Moore lie lying over."”

Yeah, it is. So, tabby, this is one of the foundational texts in the modern imagination, isn't it?

It's known to millions of people who've never read the book, the idea of the scientists

creating the monster is one of the most influential in all literature and all popular culture. It's arguably the first true science fiction novel, and then it's heart is this brilliant creation, this reanimated corpse, which is Frankenstein's monster. Yeah, and it's interesting because most people think of him, the corpse, the creature, as he's known in the book, as Frankenstein.

is the mad scientist who gives him life.

“But there's definitely something in that because the two of them share this strange, dualistic”

relationship. They are intertwined, they're like foils for each other, and they're also like two sides of the same coin, but the creature itself, I mean it's such an iconic image. It features it every Halloween, it's the square head, the green face, the bolts, and because of that, because it's so iconic, it's been used time and time again to represent various

things. It's kind of a psychological campaigns, to personify both political opponents and kind of massive societal concerns or dangers. It's become a by-word for kind of the dangers of scientific progress, the idea of the creation, destroying the creator, you know, untamed hubris, but it's also just a symbol of horror,

plain horror.

Yeah, horror, and obviously a lot of that has to do with Hollywood doesn't it, so the first

film of Mary Shows Frankenstein was made in 1910, and actually the monster has appeared according to Wikipedia. Give yourself a way, though. Yeah, I took it myself away, but I mean I'm not going to count them personally. 433 different films, and most of those actually bear no relation to Mary Shelle's novel,

at all. And the most recent, the end of 2025, the Guillermo del Toro film with them Oscar Isaac and Jacob Awardie, I know you're a friend of the show, before you give, put in your little criticism. He is, in fact, a huge friend of the show.

Harry Hades Jacob Awardie, no, I'm his biggest fan, but I didn't love that film, or altogether. I thought it messed with the plot a bit.

“I had this glorious aesthetic to it, which I think was very Gothic, and obviously we'll”

explore later how to categorize Frankenstein as a Gothic, or as it's something else. But for me, one of the most fascinating parts of having red Frankenstein and started doing a bit of digging on it was its writer, Mary Shelley, and she is a remarkable woman. She's something of a literary titan, a legend herself, she's very, very famous, and yet she's also been totally outshone by the monster, her own creation, ironically.

And her life was one which is very complex and unusual itself. She was only 18 years old and she wrote Frankenstein, which is extraordinary, I mean, when I think about what I was like when I was 18, it makes me shudder. And she was very, very famously married, possibly one of the most famous literary marriages of all time to Percy Shelley, the great romantic poet, and we will dig into all of that a bit

more later. But also the wonderful story about how she wrote Frankenstein, because that too is almost mythical. But before we get to that, I'll tell us, Dr Frankenstein, what did you make of the book when

you first encountered it?

So I read at a university, and I was surprised, I think, a lot of people who haven't read Frankenstein will be surprised by how unhorrifying it is. There's a lot of landscape, there's a lot of nature writing. You feel the weight of the late 18th century, kind of romantic description and so on. It's quite pensive, isn't it?

Yeah, it's very contemplative. It's very contemplative. There's a lot of philosophizing, a lot of reflection about kind of enlightenment and romantic ideals and ideas. And I didn't really, you know, I wasn't led to believe that.

I thought it would be much more gothic novel, storms overhead, carcels, crumbling, sellers, and people locked in dungeons. And there's actually much less of that than you might expect if in your head there's all the Hollywood stuff. What about you, Tabby?

Yeah, I had a very similar response to it, so I read it when I was a teenager. I was very, very into reading the classics of the time. I thought I would love it. I knew of it. I loved the idea of it.

I did like it, but I, like you, was kind of disappointed by the fact there was no horror, but it wasn't very romantic. It wasn't frightening, I thought at all.

“So that was a bit disappointing, but I loved, I think I was slightly in love with the idea”

of it more than the reality. But I, and I was then, and I still am now, I was in awe of Mary Shelley herself. I loved her whole story. I loved Herodation with Percy Shelley, so that was a big part of it for me.

And actually, as we'll discuss, I think the idea of it is, to me, is still more powerful.

I totally agree. Than the narrative and the writing. I think it's the genius of Frankenstein as a book, is the concepts and is the interplay of ideas rather than the propulsive narrative. Yeah, and that part of it is astounding, you know, it's both a really, really impressive

and thought-provoking, kind of philosophical, fable, but also just the idea of it, written when it was by an 18 year old girl, totally original, then, you know, we say it wasn't frightening, but to audience is reading it, then it would have been quite frightening. It is astounding, and you can't undermine that at all. All right, well, let's give people a little sense of the, this astounding idea.

Yeah, I've, I've exactly what is in the book, because I think people know there's a, there's a scientist, there's a monster, but there's actually so much more than that. So, what's started? Yeah. So, basically, the novel begins with a series of letters. It's an epistolary novel, which is exactly what a lot of readers in the late 18th century

And that definitely adds to the tension of it, because you're slowly, you're being drip-fried. Yes, information. You know, a series of escalating events, yeah. Yes, exactly.

So we know that Mary Shelley had been reading Samuel Richardson's great 80th century book, Clarissa, a couple of years before she started writing this. So this is clearly this bears the imprints of her own reading. Yeah. So the letters are by a guy called Captain Walton.

And he's an English explorer, and he's trying to discover the North Pole, basically.

And he tells his sister, you know, we have been on this great expedition, and we've discovered, we've rescued this desperate, sickly man who's called Victor Frankenstein. Yeah. Victor Frankenstein in the letters, tells Walton his story. This is why I'm here, and this is the terrible thing that has happened to me.

“And basically, well, why don't you take us into a, he's from Geneva, isn't he?”

Yeah. From Geneva, he grows up in a very, very happy family. They are all extremely fond of each other. It's a mother, a father, they're quite well off. He has two brothers, a younger one called William, and an adopted sister called Elizabeth

who his mother takes on as a ward, and who is basically destined to be his future bride. He is a massive, massive science nerd from a young age. He's upset with concepts like the philosopher Stone. Yeah. And then as a result of that, he goes and studies at the University of English start.

Yeah. He's scientific interest shift a bit, and he becomes obsessed with discovering the secret of life and creating a perfect being. So he does create this living being, doesn't he? He basically gets the dead body parts of criminals.

The scene, very famous, this is the one scene from Frankenstein, everybody knows. Or they think they know. They think they know because it owes more to Hollywood than to the book. I've basically, Victor, sewing together bits of these bodies and creating his creature. That's, that's really what the monster is called throughout the book, the creature.

The creature comes to life, Victor is horrified by it. This very famous scene. He's like, "Good God. Well, I thought this was going to be beautiful." And it's actually really horrific.

Yeah. He wanted to create a perfect, beautiful being, and then for the minute he claps eyes on it. He's repulsed. Yeah. He basically has a sort of breakdown and runs away in abundance, his creature.

Then he goes off to back to Geneva. And he discovers that his little brother, who you mentioned, William, has been murdered. And he knows almost instinctively, this is the work of this creature. Basically, I've created this being that is now going to dog me and haunt me forever. And innocent woman is accused of the murder and she is actually hanged for it.

Yeah, because Victor actually there's only one point in the whole book that Victor admits

“to creating this thing because, you know, who would believe him?”

Anyway, as a result of this, he goes to hunt down the creature, to have his vengeance on him. And there's kind of these long passages, very, very romantic, traveling through the mountains, sort of out in nature. And then he finally discovers the creature and he confronts him. And that's the scene that you and I read so beautifully at the beginning of this episode.

Right. So now we've got a story within a story within a story. So the creature is telling Victor his story, and Victor is telling this to Robert Walton and Robert Walton is telling it to his sister in the letters. Because at this point, when Victor and the creature meet, the creature then tells Victor his story.

In almost, it's always like a justification for why he is the way that he is.

So the creature says, look, you cast me out, you create, the creature is very, very articulate. So this is a big difference with the Hollywood movies. The creature is extremely well spoken. The creature basically says, well, I went off, you abandoned me. I became a vegetarian, will he start life as a vegetarian?

He wanders around the world. Yeah. Not knowing who he is, why he came from. He starts eating berries and nuts to survive. He actually is a vegetarian.

Yeah. And then he comes across this kind of fairy tale like little hut in the woods inhabited by a very poor, but very noble family. And he kind of falls in love with them a bit. And he spends his time listening to them from their shed to them talk and discuss and debate. And fairly implausibly, he learns through this eavesdropping about the nature of the world,

about the nature of philosophy, the human condition. And he learns to speak and to read.

I never quite got how he learnt to read from listening anyway.

“Yeah, he sort of pieces together because he also steals some books from them, doesn't he?”

Ah, he does, he does, that's it. He learns to recognize. So like Plutarch's lives and paradise lost and whatnot. Yeah. All books that Mary Fisheli was a massive fan of. Exactly. So he basically goes on this sort of education course.

Anyway, eventually they see him. Yeah, he decides that he's going to talk to the blind patriotic old father of it. That's right. Yes. Because he thinks he knows that he looks different from them. So he thinks, well, I can earn the grandfather's kind of trust and fondness and respect if I speak to him.

And then they do talk and they do get all very well. But then everyone else comes back sees that he's a terrifying monster made of so of sewn together. It's of dead bodies. Yeah, exactly. And naturally they freak out and he runs away feeling abandoned, feeling rejected once more.

Because then it's at this point that he thinks I've got my lives in ruins.

“I've been very hard done by it's all the full to my creator.”

He goes in search of Victor. He goes in search of Victor, murders Victor's brother. So this is the story that the creature tells Victor.

And then after this, he basically persuades Victor.

He says, look, I will behave myself if he will make me a mate. If he will make me, you know, I'm Adam and we'll go on to this later on. I would like you to make me an Eve, a female creature. Miss his Frankenstein. Exactly, Mrs. Well, Mrs. Creature. Mrs. Creature. Mrs. Monster.

And Victor says he'll do this, but then Victor changes his mind. Doesn't he think so? This is a terrible idea. I'm not going to do this. Yeah, because he's afraid of what they, you know, if they breed. Yeah. What will do to the world? What it will do to the world.

And poor behavior from Victor, I think he dumps the body of this. That he's been working on a female in the sea. So the monster's like, okay, well, all bets are off now. And he murders Victor's best friend. My Victor marries his adopted sister, Elizabeth.

He murders her. The creature murders her as well on the wedding nights. Yeah. Which is harsh. Yeah, that seems that seems like an extreme step to take. Personally, my sympathies as listeners would discover a slightly with the creature. I think the creature has been heard done by True. And Victor has behaved poorly.

And he's got it coming, basically.

“Yeah, I don't know if you should murder us a result.”

Okay, so Victor now says, well, fine, I'm going to hunt you down. Yeah, all bets are off. And he hunts the creature down. This is basically why they've ended up at the North Pole. Victor has tracked the creature ever further north.

And this is the point at which Robert Walton finds Victor and Victor's a sort of, he's a wreck of a man. Frostbitten, depressed. Exactly. Having an existential crisis. And so then Walton continues to write letters to his sister.

And he says, well, what happened was actually Victor ends up dying, you know, cold, misery, exhaustion, illness. Yeah, I like this bit. He sees a vast form. Yeah.

A kind of hankered over Victor's body. This is the very end of the book. And actually, rather than being triumphant, the monster is the creature, is miserable. He's morning, Victor.

He's morning, Victor. He is feeling repentant for all of the wrong that he has done. The murders he has committed. And then, you know, morning, the loss of his father. Of, I mean, Victor is essentially the creature's father.

He goes off. And he tells Walter, he's going to go off and throw himself on to a bonfire. So that no one like him can ever be made again. And nothing like this can ever happen again. And that's the end of the creature.

The end of Walton's story and of the creature. That's the story of Victor Frankenstein and his lovable creation. His pet creature. Now, the story behind the story is, as you say, Tabby, just as good, if not better.

Yeah. Then Frankenstein itself. So this is the story of Mary Shelley. So tell all, please, Tabby, because you're a massive Mary Shelley fan. So Mary Shelley was born in London in 1797 to William Godwitt,

who was a very famous radical philosopher in his own day. And a pioneering feminist called Mary Wastoncraft. Yeah. And Mary's mother made her name by writing a vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792, which kind of highlighted the secondary status of women in society,

which at that time was rarely, if ever, acknowledged. Anyway, this earned her a lot of admiration among a certain type, kind of the radical intelligency of the day. But obviously, the dislike and contempt of kind of the public at large. But both Mary Wastoncraft and William Godwitt were heavily influenced

by the ideals of the French Revolution. And I thought this was so interesting. She actually went to France to partake in the Revolution and it's height. And they were part of a small radical group in England,

which they were called the English Jacobins. I'm a big fan of them. And this included people like Thomas Payne and William Blake. OK, wow. My absolute favorite person ever. So Mary Shelley obviously grew up aware of being kind of the progeny

of two extraordinary, unusual people. And she acknowledges this, which I also think is admirable, because a lot of writers, maybe they'd like to kind of say that they're born some kind of divine talent in the Naked Genius. But she says, it is not singular that as the daughter of two persons

of distinguished literary celebrity. I should very early in life, a thought of writing.

“I think that's more dearest. I heard my at that.”

She's very much in the shadow of her parents, as she goes up as she is. So you mentioned Mary Walsh and Craft, who's pretty well known now as a pioneering feminist. Definitely she is. Yeah.

But at the time, probably better known, actually, was William Godwin, this sort of radical writer thinker. He was a celebrity. He wants a celebrity. He'd been a sort of dissenting minister.

And then he became an atheist. He wrote this very celebrated attack. Well, I say celebrated, but much criticized attack on institutions like the law, government, marriage, all of these things.

And he said, basically, they hold people in chains.

This will be important for Frankenstein. Yeah. Godwin thought that people were born basically good, and innocent, and in a state of nature, and that they are corrupted.

It's Russo and it's very Russo like.

who thought similarly that people are basically good

“and they're corrupted by society and institutions.”

This is what Godwin thought as well. And actually, tabby, I see one of your notes. You wrote the tell tell words. I suspect that dumb an example would not care for him. And actually, you misjudge me because I read William Godwin's book,

Caleb Williams at the University of Spurliance. And it's a precursor of Frankenstein. So Caleb Williams, there's this chase where this guy, Caleb Williams, the hero, has uncovered secrets about this aristocratic bloke, who basically pursues him across the world.

And this idea of the pursuit of the clearly ends up as a sort of in Frankenstein, as Victor and the creature. But let me explain myself, because the reason I thought that you wouldn't necessarily approve of Godwin is because I know that you are, you know, you've load hypocrites.

Yeah, thanks enough. And there is a hypocritical portion of Godwin in that, even though he decried marriage, he and Mary Walston Croft did eventually get married. I don't know, that's necessarily hypocritical though.

I think that's about harsh from you. No, possibly not, but he did say he was very against it.

“But he said it was so that you know, to make her happier,”

because Mary was pregnant with Mary Shelley, the future Mary Shelley. Anyway, he was definitely definitely a brilliant, brilliant man. And as you say, his writing and his political views would influence all of Mary Shelley's works, a whole life, not just Frankenstein.

Anyway, her mother, Mary Walston Croft, tragically died, just after Mary was born, releasing, you know, complications to do with the birth. And this left Godwin totally, totally bereft, and Mary, and her half-sister, who was born from an affair that her mother had earlier, were left to him.

And he therefore got married again. To their neighbor? To their neighbor, exactly. Mary Jane Claremont, because he thought that, you know, the girls needed some kind of motherly warmth to raise them.

And she wooed him. She chastened him up with the famous line. Is it possible that I behold the immortal Godwin? That, who wouldn't fall for that? I mean, that would do for me, for sure.

Yeah, definitely definitely. So now Mary Shelley's been brought up by William Godwin, who's pretty chilly as a father. Yeah, he's invested in her for sure. And cares a lot about her, but he's a very cold on emotional man.

And also this stepmother, who's sort of, you know, slight elements of the wicked stepmother about it, because Mary Shelley grows up to loath her. But also the stepmother brings with her a daughter called Jane, who basically, Mary absolutely loathes.

She's the worst person ever, I don't blame Mary. Mary said of Jane, she had the faculty of making me more uncomfortable than any human being. I love that line. I really like that.

So Mary, you know, she's very bookish. She reads loads of Gothic novels and epistolary novels and stuff growing up, you know, as a teenager.

But she's always very much in her father's shadow,

because her father is always trying to educate her and encourage her to be high-minded and stuff. And he's also got this huge, kind of, contact-s book of mates, you know, the Samuel Taylor Cold Origin, very writers and stuff, who were pitching up at their house

and talking about ideas and radical views and the French Revolution and stuff. So Mary, that's always going on a Mary's head. I mean, it's an extraordinary environment in which she'd been brought up.

Some of the greatest minds of that time spent, you know, were in that house chatting stuff. There's a wonderful story about how once when she was a little girl, she wanted to, she was told to go to bed. But Samuel Taylor Cold Origin was reciting the rhyme of the ancient

mariner, which is obviously really, really, really long. And, you know, Gordon was trying to get married to bed. And then slightly desperately courage beg to that she and Mary's sister were allowed to stay up to hear the rest of it. Which I really like.

So obviously, all of this will have had a massive influence on Mary. And her father attested to the fact that she was very, very clever. He wrote it in a letter to a friend. But he also said that she would make castles in the clouds, which I really, really liked, she'd kind of get easily distracted.

And then she was singly bold, somewhat imperious and active of mind. So there you go, her desire of knowledge is great. And her perseverance and anything she undertakes, almost invincible. So I like that. That's a really, really nice sketch of her.

“But then he also added, my daughter is, I believe, very pretty.”

Yeah, a bit weird. You find that a bit weird. I do, I find that slightly sinister. I mean, everyone thinks that by their own daughter, didn't they? Yeah, maybe.

Anyway, talking about her being very pretty. And also, Godwin, having all these friends and disciples. So when she's in her early to mid teens, it's not exactly clear when, probably at 1812, so she would be 14 or 15.

She first sees a bloke who's turned up,

he's in his very late teens, probably 19 or 20. Who's a huge fan of her father, who is himself a poet, who is himself very sort of hotheaded and excitable and romantic. And who's himself very radical. So, suffused with the idealism of the French Revolution.

And this is a young man called Percy Bisch. Shelley, the poet. Yeah. And he's crucially, for Godwin, he's rich, isn't he? So he's going to lend Godwin loads of money,

which is great for Godwin. Yeah, he's a well-born and rich. She's going to inherit a barrenacy,

Yeah. And basically, he and Mary end up falling in love,

which is a slight problem. A because Mary is very young, so when they definitely fall in love, she's 16. Mm.

“The other big problem, he's also married, isn't he?”

He's married a woman called Harriet to hold her, she's 19 or so? Yeah. So this is poor from Percy. Yeah, especially as Harriet would later go on to drown herself in the serpentine, which was only 21.

Because of this affair, right? Yeah, because Percy left her. You know, by the end of June, she'd basically think of such a short time now that's passed between Mary and Percy's meeting. Mm.

Percy Shelley has essentially abandoned her, even by that. And he's been most of his time at the Godwin's house, visiting daily. And the two of them, Mary, then, Godwin and Percy Shelley, would go on searing hot dates to a graveyard. The graveyard where her mother was buried to whispers sweet nothings over her grave.

And they were always accompanied by their famous third wheel.

Mary's loathed step sister Jane. Right, so Jane's now described as she's now calling herself Claire very confusingly. Yeah, she does go on to rename herself Claire. Finally, on the 28th of July in 1814, Mary and Percy finally

eloped to the continent, obviously once more accompanied by Jane, now at this point, Claire. And there's always been some speculation that because Jane was Claire was always there. She and Percy were also lovers, but there's absolutely no evidence to back that up. Right, the Percy was carrying on with both of them. Yeah, anyway, I'd be like that scene in the famous scene in the graduate when you get to the end of the movie.

And Dustin Hoffman's character and his love and trust is sitting on the bus and they run away from her wedding. They kind of sit there and they suddenly look kind of a bit depressed and bleak because they've done the shocking thing. The allotment, this tour of Europe turns out to be a total disaster. The three of them are penniless. They travel from place to place, friendless.

It's just a disaster. This is the worst kind of honeymoon ever, although crucially, they are not married because Percy Shelley is still married. At this point. And they end up coming back to England. They've got massive money problems.

Yeah, they're in huge debt. Mary has a child. She has Percy Shelley's child a girl, but the child dies after a few days. This is a tragic part of Mary's life as well. Yeah, she has a lot of bad luck, right? Yeah, of the four children that she has, only one of them survives.

And there's this very touching dream that she recounts on her journal about when this first baby dies.

And she dreams that she's sitting in front of the fire holding it and the baby dies. And then she robs its corpse and the heat of the flames brings it back to life. And there's something kind of very human about that. Yeah, but the idea of reanimating somebody who's dead, I mean, exactly. Why that would be on her mind.

And as you're talking of that, let's get on to the writing of the book. Yeah, I caught it. So basically, they go back to Europe, don't they? She has a son called William at the beginning of 1816. And they after that decide they're going back to Europe.

They go to Geneva in Switzerland. And they meet up with Shelley's, another of Shelley's great heroes. Another romantic poet, Lord Byron, who is staying at Villa Diodati on the shores of the lake. And extra little free song here, because Claire, formerly Jane, is now having an affair with Byron. So there's a real sort of menage, kind of, yeah, kind of feel to this.

It's all you would expect of the romantic poet. It is. They're on the lake, but it's actually fun at first. They're going having parties outside, they're going swimming and whatever. But 1816 notoriously is the year without a summer. There's been a volcanic eruption in the Dutch East Indies as they would then were.

And that means there's basically no summer. It's very wet and cold and stormy. And so actually, as the weeks pass, they spend an awful lot of them cooped up inside in this villa. And they've got nothing to do.

And this is the context for the writing of Frankenstein. Yeah, it's absolutely wonderful. So at night, they've been sitting around reading loads of German ghost stories.

“And one evening Byron, and I think this is a brilliant idea, Byron says,”

"Well, to pass the time, let's all try to write our own ghost story." So they, how will have it go? Shelley, Percy Shelley starts by writing a story about himself, and that fiddles out. Right.

Byron then starts telling a story about a vampire, which is friend and doctor, John Pollardori, who's also there, later adapts and turns into a short story called The Vampire. And then Mary is desperate to, and I quote, "Make it to write a tale that makes the reader dread to look around

to cuddle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart." But nothing comes to her. She can't think of anything. And every day they ask her, "Where's your story, Mary?" And she's like, "Oh, I still don't have one."

Yeah, she's got his zig. She literally says, "You know, they would say have you thought of a story." And each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative. Because she wants something really good. And she doesn't want to just phone it in.

“Yeah, she wants to be equals with them as well, I think.”

Of course, she's young and they're much older. And she's a woman, and she doesn't want to be patronised by these frankly very

I don't, I'm not sure. Romantic poets. But at one point, she's listening to Percy and Byron, and they're littering on about science and about the principles of life. And basically they say, "Well, talk about this in the second half."

"The scientific idea is behind Frankenstein."

“They say, "You know, what do you add as life come from?”

How can you animate it? Could it be something to do with electricity?" "Could you with galvanic experiments? Could you manufacture a creature and give it life somehow?" And she listens to them talking about this.

And then she goes to bed, and she basically has a waking nightmare, doesn't she? She can't sleep, so it's not like she's asleep. It's, but her mind is running a mock. And she has this vision. Tell us about the vision.

Oh, it's wonderful. She sees this pale, she calls it a pale student of unhaled arts, kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out,

and then on the working of some powerful engine show signs of life,

and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. So you can see right there from the start, that she sees this as something that's dangerous, which is the opposite from Baron and Shelley, who are excited by this idea, the idea of mankind being able to engineer life.

And she also writes, "Frightful must it be, "for supremely, frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor "to mock the stupendous mechanism of the creator of the world." So she's frightened by it, by this vision that she has a pale student, creating a terrifying monster.

And she says, you know, she thinks that the student would be terrified of what he has created, totally understandably. - Because the student is really interesting. Baron and Shelley, you know, among the romantic poets, it was fashionable to affect a kind of atheism,

and a kind of cynicism or what not. But, you know, the teenage Mary Shelley is saying to mock God, to play God, gosh, that would be overwhelming and terrifying and awful, and you would be appalled by the consequences of what you were done. And she says the artist would surely,

then essentially because she calls it the artist, rather than the artist. The artist would rush away from his odious Andy work, and she imagines that the artist asleep, and then the curtains of his bedside opening, and this yellow watery but speculative eyes of the creature,

staring down at him. And this is the inspiration for the story. - I love that origin story, and it's actually true. You know, there are so many myths around about how people write, legendary books, but it's actually true.

She recalls in her own journal, it's brilliant. So she says, Swift is light, and as cheering was the idea, the broken upon me, I have found it. What terrified me will terrify others? And I need only to describe the specter,

which had haunted my midnight pillow. So there you go, she's got the ghost story, to tell Biron Shelley and the rest of them. - Yeah, so she tells them the story, doesn't she starts writing it down?

- Yeah. - And she starts with the words, it was a dreary night of November. - Yeah. - Which actually, that's basically, she uses that exact phrase in the book. And at first, she thinks, oh, this would just be a short story,

but actually they say, God, what a brilliant story this is, this is incredible.

“And Shelley says, oh, I think you should turn this into an awful.”

You know, there's definitely a book in this. And this is what she does. And so, when they go back to England, she's working on the book, and in 1818, Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus. Again, we'll talk about this Prometheus aspect.

- Crucial subtitle. - This is published.

And honestly, she doesn't tell anybody that she's done it. And actually, do you know what? The reviews are very good, are they? People don't like it. - I know. - They actually, a lot of them reminded me of the reviews

for Wuthering Heights, which we did a couple of weeks ago. They kind of say that it's almost immoral. They basically say it's kind of, it's fiendish and outrageous. - Yeah. - There's one wonderful review by a guy called William Beckford.

- Gothic writer. - Yeah, a Gothic writer. So, I mean, that's quite telling in itself. He doesn't acknowledge this as kind of a Gothic work. But he writes, this is perhaps the foulest toe stall that has yet sprung up from the reaking

downhill of the present times. - Wow. - So out there. - Yeah. - I've had worse reviews than that though, it's be fair. - But on the plus side, Walter Scott is actually quite positive about it.

And he's a huge inspiration for Mary, as he is too, Emily Bronntay, similar kind of genre.

“Anyway, the key takeaway from Ruthering these reviews is,”

they don't know that Mary Shelley has written it. So they assume that it must have been written by either her kind of legendary father, this famous radical, or her husband, another famous radical. - Yeah, Percy, yeah. - Yeah, exactly.

And then it's only in the addition,

the second addition that comes out in 1823,

that they realize it was written by women, and they're absolutely shocked by this. And this shockingly patronizing line is written in blackwoods. For a man it was excellent, but for a woman it was wonderful. Oh, blackwoods led itself down there.

- Yeah, so come from a woman, it's really good. Wow, well done, you Mary, well done you. - But you see there's a lot of controversy at the time

actually wrote it, or you know it was kind of,

her hand was guided by the two main men in her life.

“- And I think actually you still see this even now.”

I actually saw somebody writing about this in social media actually about a week ago saying, you know, obviously Percy Shelley wrote Frank and Stein. It's obviously nonsense that Mary wrote it. I mean, this is rubbish.

- Yeah, we're gonna put the record straight once and for all. - Totally, so we have the evidence of her journals. We have the evidence of Byron writing about it. Byron says it was a wonderful work for a girl of 19. Now that is patronizing and going to sending,

but at least Byron is admitting that she wrote it, not his mate. - And for Byron, who is often quite briefed about women. - Yeah. - That is high praise indeed. - But also, I've been to, in the Bodlin Library in Oxford, they have the manuscripts of Frank and Stein.

They have the hand written manuscript and I've seen it, because I was filmed with it for a series about science fiction on the BBC about saying here's the game. If you look at the manuscript, the handwritten, you can see Shelley's suggestions, his notes,

and you can see where Mary has ignored them, and you can see all the stuff written in her own hand. - Yeah, Shelley definitely advised her, helped her all the way through the process, but it is her work and it is her words and it is her writing. But there is one way in which Percy Shelley was

had a massive impact upon Frank and Stein. And that is in the character of Victor Frank and Stein himself, because there's a lot suggest that Percy Shelley was kind of the original model for Frank and Stein. - Yeah. - A lot of the characters that Percy Shelley writes about

his own writing in poetry, they are themselves kind of echorus characters, they fly too close to the sun, they're overreaching, they're really ambitious, they're really invested in the idea of themselves as kind of creative forces and the creative powers within them.

This is very poor from Percy Shelley, but when he was younger and a child, he would call himself "victory," which-- - Nice. - Yeah. - Yeah.

- You did that too, didn't you? - Always.

- Yeah, always. - Still do, do, do, do. Victory, Sambrook, Sambrook, the conqueror. - Yeah, I like it. - It sounds right. But this is what Mary Shelley was originally going to call Victor Frank and Stein. - No, right, she was going to call him "victory."

Victory, yeah, she was going to call him "victory." Like Frank and Stein, Victor Frank and Stein, Percy Shelley was obsessed with the natural world as automatic poets are. If he had this habit, which is kind of ironic given that he later drowned

in a boat, but he had this habit of lying at the bottom of boats and looking up at the clouds and it would kind of make him think and give him peace, that's exactly what Victor Frank and Stein does in Frank and Stein. - And also, Percy was, I mean, I remember doing a thing on the rest of his history,

“another book on Stein, who's ever heard of that book on Stein?”

- No. - Which I can remember your first episode, Debbie, when you were producing was about boarding schools and how people would pursue Shelley around Eaton, shouting the Shelley, the Shelley, they'd go on Shelley hunts and try to beat him up. And one reason was that he was too interested in science,

which they thought was weird. - Yeah, he was a science nerd, which people wouldn't think when they think about romantic poets, because they're often kind of juxtaposed, aren't they? Science and romanticism. - Yeah, they're seen as as polar opposites,

but actually, the romantics were very interesting science. Shelley, when he was at Eaton, then at Oxford,

he'd be always like, have batteries coming over his pocket,

saw something being doing in electric experiments or whatever. - Yeah, stuff like that. - Yeah, or a funster, he was. - But the weird thing is the friend of his wrote an account of the kind of experiments he used to conduct. And they bear a weird resemblance to the way that the creature's birth

and creation is portrayed in the movies that have been done of Frankenstein, because it's all about kind of big jars full of water and electricity and batteries and stuff. You know, he charge, there's a friend right,

he charge the batteries, several large jars, laboring with vast energy, and just coursing with increasing vehements of the marvellous powers of electricity. It speaks about thunder and lightning and how channeling this thunder and lightning into the water,

whatever it is, would create something marvelous. And that is so, that looks exactly how you imagine the creature's birth. - And it also captures the curiosity, the vision, the ambition, the excitement of science, and indeed of anybody interested in the kind of the world of the intellect

in the 1790s and 1800s. You know, this sense that you're kind of breaking through frontiers of understanding and leading mankind into this wonderful new age. And that vision is so central to Victor Frankenstein's sense of what he's doing when he makes the creature.

It's totally, totally, but ironically, bears very little resemblance to that scene, the idea of jars, lightning thunder, bears very little resemblance to the creatures birth in Frankenstein itself.

And we will touch on that later. - So we've probably had enough about Mary and Percy, because I think this is really one,

“is they want Victor Frankenstein as monster, right?”

- Yeah. - Right, so after the break, we will discuss the question that haunts the producers of this show, which one is the real monster? We'll find out after the break. - Welcome back to the book club.

all how hurt you would be by some of the comparisons that we made

in the first half of the episode.

So going forward, I will restrain from comparing you to Frankenstein. - Yeah, it was very, very hurtful to me. - I know, I know you're practically crying to our producers, but I have one final request to make a view in the guys of Victor Frankenstein. - Yeah.

- Would you please use your scientific powers to bring the man, the myth, the legend that is Victor Frankenstein, and his monstrous creation back to life? - Okay, well this is brilliant, bad night. - It is. - So let's start,

actually let's start not with Victor, but counterintuitively with his monster, because they'll be honest, when people think about Frankenstein,

“it's the monster that they actually think of first, isn't it?”

- Undoubtedly, yeah. - So he is born in the lab. So if you see the films, you can imagine the electricity fizzing rather like a Reparty in this episode. - Yeah, just animated. - Just as animated exactly. And actually, in the book, there is no electricity fizzing.

It is much a sort of darker, more intimate scene. And actually, tabby, why don't you read "Remile listeners" of this, of this scene, because it's the sort of physicality of it, but also the shock of Victor when he sees the monsters,

one of the most memorable scenes in the book. - Well, we should also say that we don't see anything to do with the practicalities involved in his creation. Everything, all of that happens off stage. There's no illusion to fast jars full of green liquid or anything like that.

We come in from the moment that the creature is born. So he says, "How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form?" His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful,

beautiful, great god. His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath. His hair was of a lustrous black and flowing, his teeth of pearly whiteness, but these luxurances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes

that seemed almost of the same colour as the done white sockets in which they were set. His trivals complexion and straight black lips. - Yeah, so he has, I mean, Victor thought the creature was going to be a beautiful, he chases features accordingly.

“But a really important point is something that Victor and indeed Mary Shelley”

hammer home again. He is utterly repulsive when left in no doubt whatsoever that this creature is absolutely repugnant. You see it and you are repelt. So when he comes into the boat, towards the end of the book,

Captain Walton says he was gigantic in stature, yet distorted and uncouth in proportions. I mean, he's not unlike the Orcs in the Lord of the Rings, in Tolkien's vision, which is again, of a kind of distorted, perverted humanity.

That's what the creature is. And yet, one of the key things about the creature that I think the Hollywood Frankenstein obviously completely misses is this. He is articulate, he's sensitive, he's very well spoken,

he's thoughtful, he's reflective, he's curious. - You know, Tabby, you're actually a big fan of the creature on you. - I am, I'm a massive fan of the creature. I see myself in him frankly. - Wow. - Because he is very, very intelligent.

He learns that a ridiculously fast rate. He is contemplative, he's fiercely curious, he's actually very gentle at the beginning of his life. He's really, really thoughtful and rational actually. And the seven central chapters of Frankenstein,

which are the creature telling his story, they're kind of the moral heart of the book. They provide the moral underpinning to the whole story.

And interestingly, that is the bit that is always

cut out of movie adaptations, because I think he'd be able to find it a bit boring, but also because it's the part of the novel, the humanisers, the monster, it turns him into kind of a thinking feeling, being, because the thing is, though, he looks like a monster,

through learning, through eavesdropping on this family. He develops the emotions and the moral compass of a human and he feels like a human. - Yes, he absolutely does. - And so I think that by putting those chapters on screen,

you don't get the hammer horror monster, short-cropped hair, bolts that maybe you're going for. You get a really interesting, quite sympathetic person, almost. - Of course you do. - Absolutely you do. I mean, I think when you end those chapters,

you get Mary Shelley's a lot of her philosophical vision, a lot of her vision for the character. - He did, yeah.

“- He does. - That's what you're trying to say.”

So when he's fled the lab, his creator, he doesn't know who his creator is, or why his creator has abandoned him. - Or why he's there, like, we all kind of slightly want to know why we exist. - Of course.

- It's what inspires people to kind of look to God, or whatever it may be, but he has no idea. - Yeah, this is getting to the humanity of the creature,

to his essential humanity, the creature wakes in the forest,

like man in the garden of Eden. He looks around with wonder. He goes in search of berries, he's naked,

He's delighted by what he hears.

“He tries to imitate the singing of the birds and so on.”

- So sweet, it's child, like, actually. - It is child, like he's actually, he's like a child, you know, awaking into life. And then he sees this family that people who live in the cottage, the cottages, and he thinks they're wonderful,

and he wants to emulate them. But this very moving scene, very sad scene, he looks in a pool, and he starts back in horror. I was unable to believe that it was indeed eye, he was reflected in the mirror, because he's so loadsome,

and horrible, but basically it's like,

what I feel like when I look in the mirror, it's Abby. - I know. - He's got my fragile self-esteem. - You are nothing but a sensitive Frankenstein's monster. - Thank you. - But that also echoes the garden of Eden, you know, when Adam and Eve become self-aware,

and they try to cover themselves with fig leaves. - Exactly, and he curses the self-awareness that comes with knowledge, and he says at one point, "Oh, that I had forever remained "in my native wood, nor known or felt beyond the sensations "of hunger, thirst, and heat."

“In other words, the more I know about myself,”

and the world, the unhappy air I become. - And as we said, that's very, very Russo, a Geneva and Philosopher, so no coincidence, that large ways of this book are set in Geneva, because he idealises the innocence, you know, innocence and nature.

He believed that humans were, as you said, born good, born innocent, but society and institutions corrupt us. And Russo was a massive influence on Mary's father, Godwin, who also believed that institutions crafted by human society were destructive forces

and ruined the human heart, the human soul. So these chapters are just pure Russo, a state of innocence, the garden in Eden, the more the monster learns, the more corrupted he becomes. - Yeah, I mean, the monster has begun life

as basically a member of the Green Party.

He's eaten berries, he's been kind, he's got very poor self-esteem, all those kinds of things that we associate with members of the Green Party, and then he becomes evil. So he crosses the political spectrum, and he becomes-- - Yeah, he becomes a member of reform.

- Ah, we've got to have a company there. - You've thrown it away, you've thrown it away. - She's literally, at that time, our reform voting listeners, I mean, you know, just as well sort of from末 remarks. - And I apologize to our three Green Party listeners.

- Right, I mean, we've got three members who are, three listeners who are all members of the Green Party, what are coincidences, which are 50% of our audience, to be Green Party members. Anyway, he becomes evil, he does become corrupted,

and because he becomes a killer of women and children, I mean, he's literally a child murderer. - That is definitely definitely not something that you can defend their creature on. He springs to violence so quickly and so instinctively,

and actually one of the things that I really came away from reading this again was, was the sensation of those hands around a neck, he's strangulation of his victims, is terrible in terrifying, but having said that, he's not just a pantomime villain, he's conflicted,

he's full of remorse for the murders that he commits, and he says of himself that he is a wretch, and that's definitely not what you get in, in quantity of the classic horror films, in which he plays a big part, and that makes him pitiful.

- Yeah, he's got a self-loathing. - He's the eternal outcast, yeah. - Yeah, one of the most moving things about the creature actually is that is a very human feeling, which is his feeling of loneliness, of isolation.

Frank says once it doesn't even have a name, which is sad. - No, exactly. - The fact that everyone calls him Frank and Steinem, and that's the ultimate, that would be gutting for the monster. - Of course it would, I mean, he, he, it's like he doesn't have an identity,

his identity is only, his creator is created, doesn't even want him, so because of all that, and in spite of his appalling violence, I did really pissy the monster at the end of it all. - Yeah, and the monster Odyssey does have a four-runner. He has a model who has a very famous name,

so the title page of the book is a, has a quotation from John Milton's 17th century epic poem Paradise Lost. - One of my favorite poems ever, I love it. - Wow, really? - Yeah.

- I'm very, I've never read the whole of Paradise Lost, so.

- I want to do it on the show one day. - Yeah, we should. - Anyway, we digress. - So the quotation, as as follows,

“did I request the maker from my clay to mold me, man?”

Did I solicit the from darkness to promote me? And basically, this is Adam, the first man, talking to God in the Garden of Eden saying, did I ask you to make me from clay? Did I ask you to awaken me from darkness?

Now, Mary, you know, she loved Paradise Lost, like you, Debbie. So read it twice in 1815 and 1816. John Milton had actually stayed at the Villa, the Villa, the Dirty, on the banks of Lake Geneva, where they were staying, when she comes up with a story, and the theme of Adam

and God runs right through the book. The monster himself eludes to it at one point. So he steals Paradise Lost from the cottages, he reads it, and he says, I am basically a worse version of Adam. Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence.

Adam was created by God at perfect, happy and prosperous, guarded by the special care of his creator. But I, I'm wretched, helpless and alone. I have no creative looking after me as Adam did. Yeah, so I mean, in that, he's kind of like a mannequin,

Adam, who is a different version of the Adam in the Bible. But he, he chastises his maker for making him rather than kind of being, being grateful. Yeah. But there are other points in the level where he's compared to another character in Paradise Lost,

and that is Satan. He actually refers to himself time and time again as a fiend. And Satan is the angel in Paradise Lost, the former angel, who falls from heaven because he rebels. And therefore lives out his life in hell.

He lives in hell. And the creature actually says, many times I consider Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition. For often like him, when I viewed the bits of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me. And that ambiguity is undoubtedly central to the book.

You know, is the creature an innocent Adam,

“or a cruel and vindictive or certainly rebellious Satan?”

You know, is he the first man, Adam, which would make him like us?

Or is he the devil essentially? I agree, this is the ambiguity that has been so enduring about Frankenstein. To me, it's actually, in some ways, the deeper meaning, the story that is not just a story about man playing God, which would be, you know, a man pretending to be God and the creature as some terrible aberration.

I think the idea that the creature is us and Victor is God, or Victor, you know, that this, that the story is man's horror and rage and resentment at his own creator. And that's the idea that so many science fiction, you know, let's think of Blade Runner, for example. Yeah, Blade Runner, the replicants, their fury at their own creator, you know, who's made them and put them in the world and they have a shellfly for which will

and they will expire. Their horror at their condition clearly echoes the creature's feelings of incomprehension and alienation and abandonment and whatnot from Victor. It's interesting though, it occurs to me that Mary Shelley must have a very cynical view then of humanity in the human heart because it's implies the man corrupts man and, you know, the longer that we live among humans, the kind of fowler and more degenerate we become.

But in a way that's her father and his ideas about institutions corrupting us and whatnot. Yeah. I mean, these radicals, they had this sort of idealised view of human innocence, but at the same time they believed that the world was forced, you know, they're obsessed with all the things that were wrong with the world and all the inequality and all the injustice and whatnot and all the things that we had, that the prison we have built for ourselves, I guess.

Yeah, but it's interesting then because if the monster therefore is man is us in the story,

“what then does that make, Victor, is he God or is he emblematic of human institutions?”

So I mean, I think this is a good point for us to talk a little bit about Victor because his name is probably the most famous part of this novel, but people very rarely know much about him. They just think of the monster. Yeah, we don't even get a description of him, right? No physical discussion, he's just described having wild eyes, which is why I think Oscar Isaac was a very, very good choice for him physically.

Also the way that he played him is very controlling and proud and kind of bent on his own selfish ends. Yeah. Because Victor currently is dying in the novel, he's not entirely likable. He's incredibly ambitious, he's a bit of a glorious seeker, his name Victor points to that. His creature described him as self-divided and I think he is, I think he's a very selfish man.

He never considers for a moment that his creation might do bad rather than entirely doing good.

You know, he thinks of himself as a bit of a savior and he doesn't think much about what he has done. Think much about how his creature has destroyed his family. Yes, he feels very guilty about what his creature does, but he doesn't stay with his family and kind of mourn with him. He's just constantly running off to chase the creature again. Well, the creature lives in his head round free, right? I mean, he's obsessed with the creature.

But he's, he's definitely brave. He is loving. And I think those elements of him, this pathos makes him kind of a tragic figure, a bit like a figure from Eastglis or something like that rather than entirely evil. There's an element to the Greek tragedy about him, undone by his own, by his own hubris, I guess. But there is, I mean, you talk about Victor and his family. There's one relationship that he can plea in the Glecks. And that's the paternal relationship.

Because he never feels any responsibility towards his creature. He never shows the creature any mercy or compassion. He's maddened with hatred. He talks about his abhorrence of the creature. He says, you know, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds and moderation. Victor feels guilt about creating the creature. But he doesn't feel any obligation. And actually, you could argue Victor is

“its father. Yeah. And Victor should embrace it. I mean, that's what the creature wants, right?”

Yeah, I mean, Victor is God. People always refer, you know, Christians always refer to God as the

unchecked ambition or the depths that science might plunder in the world. I think she's also saying that if we do, if humanity does use science to create, we have to be shepherds of our creation. You know, we are responsible for it. And Victor neglects his creation entirely from the moment of its birth.

I mean, that famous scene where they confront each other on the glass of the first time.

And the creature is telling Victor his story. The creature says to Victor, I'm asking basically I'm asking you for recognition and affection. You might create a detest and spurred me like creature. Do your duty towards me and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. And then Victor rejects him and says, you know, I'm not interested in you, you're horrible,

“you're terrible person, whatever. And then I think actually quite moving lines, the creature says,”

oh, Frankenstein, remember, I am thy creature, I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the foreign angel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, make me happy and I shall again be virtuous. And that basically is the creature's story and not shall. He's desperate for a father. He says, I was born good, but I've been driven to evil. I've been made vengeful. Please show me a crum other

affection and then I'll be a good person and Victor can never bring himself to do it. But the book

isn't just about the responsibility of the creator. It's also about hubris and humility. So this introduces another major theme, which is the consequences of man playing God and kind of unleashing his creation upon the world of, you know, terrible force of destruction. Yeah, and this has made very obvious in the subtitle, which is the modern Prometheus. So in many ways, this is one of the real keys to the book, the idea of Prometheus.

“That's how you're the classicist. So Prometheus, you're a over-prometheus, I assume.”

Yeah, love it, love it. So there are two Prometheus myths. There's the one that's more famous from Greek mythology in which the Titan Prometheus steals fire from the Olympian gods and gives it to man who his modeled out of clay. Both Byron and Shelley loved this version of it, and turned Prometheus into a romantic hero. But then there's another later addition of the story from Ovid and we know that Mary had been reading Metamorphoses in 1815. And this is a Prometheus

who kind of manipulates men into life from clay. So in this sense, Franger times are very Prometheus and figure. He's a maker of men. And while Prometheus in that version of the story does it with magic, Victor obviously uses science, which is obviously music to your ears. Yeah, I love science. Yes, I love science. I absolutely love science. I think actually this book is a warning about what happens if you take an unhealthy interest in science. I think good.

That's a comfort to me because I take very little interest in science. Yeah, great. Well, this is one of the, I mean, this is, this is why we're a good team because neither of us knows anything about science. Yeah, they complement each other in that way. So Victor is a boy like Percy Shelley, obsessed with chemistry, all of this kind of thing. What's to learn the secrets of heaven and earth? He's very clearly reflecting the mood of the late 18th, early 19th century, the Enlightenment, this idea of

of curiosity, of progress and so on. And you know, they would have these arguments. People would have these arguments. They're so common at the time. People would have them publicly in the newspapers or whatever. What is life? What makes life different from death? Does it have anything to do with electricity? Is there some sort of spark that animates the body like an electric current? And you can see all of that reflected in the book. Yeah, you totally can. And we know that Mary Shelley

was fascinated by these arguments because she would often attend lectures on them. Anyway, there are all kinds of experiments going on in the 1780s and 1980s and 1800s to see if you could bring a corpse back to life. You know, it's so interesting that the minute that human

science advanced enough, the first question to bring into people's minds was life animation,

like what gave us all life? Anyway, so they sort of digging into this a bit. And they tried to see if you could bring corpses back to life using electricity, which had recently been discovered. And you can see why this would interest someone like Mary Shelley who'd been afflicted by death a whole life. And then remember again, the dream that she had about warmth, bringing her baby back to life. So in 1781, I thought I'd be giving a science lecture. In 1781, an Italian surgeon

“was dissecting a frog and next to some big static electricity machine. How did that machine work?”

Do you want to explain how the static electricity machine worked? I could, but I don't feel like it, because I've got a lot to say about unit books and stuff. So just like, yeah, okay. I'll tell you after. Yeah. I'll tell you after. Anyway, so because this scalpel was near this big electric machine, when he started, when he put it on the frog's leg, the frog's legs started twitching. Right. And you know, this was huge. And then his nephew, a guy called Aldini, took it a whole lot further,

a whole lot further in 1801. And what he would do is he would tour Europe. And he would publicly try to animate the corpses of murderers or criminals using electricity. And this is so

and I did read it a little bit of one, there's this kind of creepy, the same creepy relish

“in his, the way he describes these very gory experiments, as Victor has the fanatical, you know,”

scientific twinkle. But then one day he inserted metal rods into the jaw of one criminal and the corpse, the jaw of the corpse began to quiver and can talk. And it's left eye actually opened. This scene is done brilliantly in Guamadal Toro's new movie. I have to say. So there we have it. In real life, the origin of the experiment that Victor Frankenstein conducts to bring his

monster to life. But obviously, it's much, much more literal in the book. We never get anything

this direct. Yeah, because we don't really see all this. I have to say that would be kind of interesting to see. Oh, totally a word. Yeah, I mean, I know it sounds a bit gory and a bit macabre, but I would be, I'm sorry, I'm giving myself a way here, but I would actually pay good money to see people. It's interesting though. I made me wonder, do you think there are still kind of scientific experiments going on in the world where people sound just desperately trying

to do this? Because it's funny that we started at the very beginning, you know, huge strides and science that's bringing people back to life. But you know, here a lot about that these days when we've come a whole lot further. I don't know, just made me wonder. You know, you're very rarely really

about scientists trying to bring people people both shoving metal rods into it. Yeah, it's their

job. I feel like in that sense, we've regret. We've regret, we've gone backwards as a science. We've gone backwards. Well, anyway, I guess the point that Mary Shelley though that's so interesting is that she thinks all of this is so dangerous that she is not as enthused about it as so many people are. Because for her, Victor's enthusiasm for this and his thirst for knowledge and his thirst for kind of mastery over the laws of nature, plundering nature. Yeah, she finds this

apparent and she thinks this will have terrible consequences both for Victor and for society, for humanity at large. And in that sense, you know, again, you can see how this foreshadows so many of the warnings that you get in modern contemporary science fiction, that our hubris,

our enthusiasm for science is what will destroy us. Yeah, and also obsession, Victor's

thoughtless obsession is a massive red flag in the book. But as you mentioned earlier, thinking about the influence of this on later fiction, not even just science fiction, you can see a lot of this in law of the rings, can't you? Kind of the wizard, saraman, plundering, middle earth. Yeah, completely. So I was thinking, there's a bit at the beginning of the book when Robert Walton. So even Robert Walton, the guy who's telling us the story, the sort of sea captain, he says to Victor,

you know, I'm really desperate to find the North Pole. And he says, how gladly I would sacrifice my fortune, my existence, my every hope for the further and so many enterprise. And he says, life and death is nothing to me because what I want is the knowledge, the dominion, I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race, the element of the foes being the laws of nature and why not. And that is the kind of thing that you can imagine when the Tolkien's

villains, saraman, saron, whatever, or any mad scientist in any number of films saying, that the

“threat here is not so much I think science per se. No. It's arrogance. It's the first for mastery”

and for knowledge at any cost, which is again, is a very Tolkienian, if that's a word, which it isn't sort of theme. But you know what else it reminded me of, having recently watched the finale, it reminded me of Stranger Things. But not just, yeah, totally it did. You know, mad scientists, plundering the laws of nature and as a result unleashing unforeseen dark terrors on the world. It's also a very drastic park. It's very the terminator. And because Victor's initial intention

in creating the monster, so he says, is to find cures for diseases. Just as for Al Dini, Al Dini said that his, the reason that he was conducting his experiments was to save people from drowning, to bring people from drowning back to life. But people even say that of AI today, you know, they say it'll change the world. Not necessarily for the better, but it's all okay, because it will revolutionise medicine and that will save lives. So that, you just got it,

it's extraordinary what Mary Shelley was doing when she wrote this, the precedent that she said, like, these ideas were totally original when she was writing this book. Yeah, it's what makes it

“so foundational. It's what makes it, I think, without any question, one of the two or three”

foundational science fiction texts, because so much of science fiction, science fiction tends to ask, what if science fiction also, you know, a huge theme of it is what we do with our power and our knowledge and how far will we go and how much will we destroy in the sort of pursuit of progress? Yeah. And Frankenstein and the idea of creating life, I mean, so any story about a sentient robot or a computer that comes to life or a creation or something, you know, advanced

that humanity has made that ends up having disastrous consequences. They all at some level, I think, come back to this book written by this effectively by this teenager. Yeah.

slightly annoying meets. Yeah, and her ghastly steps are still looking on. But it is, it is not just a trailblazing science fiction novel. It's also more retro than that, because it's also undoubtedly a romantic novel. You know, it's full of scenes of nature, the bliss, the sublime bliss of nature, the healing force of nature. That's very, very romantic. And also the romantic movement believed that you could shock. It's all about emotion. It's a very emotional book. Yeah. But they

believe that you could shock emotion out of people and that was important. And some of the more chilling scenes in the novel do just that, you know, the idea of this terrifying monster with its hands around small boys neck, the idea of animating life. But it's not just that. It's also very much a gothic novel. And you mentioned how Mary Shelley was reading a lot of gothic fiction. She read it all throughout her life, but also around the time that she was writing Frankenstein.

Books like the mysteries of Adolfo, the monk, these are the gothic novels of the period. Yeah, the canonical gothic novels. Exactly. And this book is just, it's full of the gothic, full of suspense, full of storms and sudden appearances, isolated gloomy settings, gradients, channel houses, the psychological torment of Frankenstein and, well, pretty much all the characters in the book. The, the relentless pursuit by Frankenstein

of his creature. This is all very, very gothic, but having said that, it is formal pensive. It is far more ideological. It's far more philosophical than most gothic novels are. It's not driven by plot. It's driven more by ideas. Yeah, I think that's definitely show it's driven more by ideas than my plot. And I think it's the blend of those three things that makes it so remarkable as a book that is clearly a romantic element to it. There is clearly this sort of

supernatural haunted, you know, this little stuff engraviards and all of that. There was played that up in the movies. Yeah, that draws so with the films often do draw on the gothic element very heavily. But I think it's the, to me, the most enduring elements is definitely the science,

“the more philosophical science fiction one. And that's why I think it lives on.”

Those gothic books that you mentioned, the mysteries of Adolfo, or the monk,

nobody reads them now. And I'm guessing the majority of our listeners have never really heard of

them. Yeah. Frankenstein, if it were merely a gothic novel would be forgotten. But I think it's the ideas and the science fiction elements that have ensured it's kind of placed in the popular imagination. The idea of, you know, what are the moral costs of the pursuit of knowledge? What responsibility do we have to wear creations? The idea of the creator who is undone by his own hubris and whatnot, all of that kind of stuff. I think that's why it lives on. And the twisted

progeny as well. And you can see that in anything from Edward, this is a hands-to-ex machiner. But I do also think it's that. It's the science fiction element of it, but wedded to kind of the soulfulness, the tender soulfulness of the romantic. I love that. It's on my favorite passages in Frankenstein, are the kind of reflections on the natural world. But then wedded to this dark,

“you know, shocking creator, scientific element. And I think that's why you can also see”

its influence and books I never let me go, which is so thoughtful and emotive and sort of moving. Yeah, melancholy. There's a melancholy to it, right? Yeah, it's a huge melancholy to it, which I think is very romantic. But then wedded to the fact that never let me go is about creatures kind of. But they're searching for their creator too, aren't they? Suffering as a result of their creators. Yeah, exactly. So we should wrap up by talking very

quickly about Mary Shelley. So Percy drowned in a boating accident, didn't he? In 1822. And that

basically was, that was a trauma from which in many ways she never really recovered. She was

devastated by that. Yeah, she kept his ashes. She famously kept his calcified heart. And she preserved that for the rest of her life. And she never remarried. She had opportunities too, but she never did. And she spent a lot of her, the rest of her life kind of protecting his legacy and curating and editing his, his works. But she did leave her nearly penniless. With only one surviving child, a guy called Percy Florence Shelley. She was a bit of an outcast

when she returned to England in 1823, because of her own orthodox marriage, because for her infamous parents, all of this. And Percy's father, a barren at refused to meet Mary, personally, and would only provide her with very small allowance hinged on the fact that she wouldn't write anything at all controversial or immodest. So she lived very carefully. She wrote very carefully. So it's not outrage him. And a lot of this was in part to protect her sons inheritance,

“which again, I think is admirable. Finally, when her son Percy Florence Shelley inherited”

Percy Shelley's barren at sea in 1844, Percy Shelley's father's barren at sea in 1844, her financial woes was slightly eased. But she suffered from illness and depression all of her life and then she died in 1851, at the age of 53, probably people now think from her brain tumor. So pretty tragic end. Yeah, sad story. But she did write for the rest of her life independently.

But never anything to match this extraordinary work that she produced.

under the weird pressure of these extremely well-known writers, sort of looking at her respectively and saying, "Well, come on, where's your ghost story?"

“And then she comes out with this, extraordinary. All right. So how did she do?”

I mean, this is, I mean, who cares what barren and Shelley thought?

Well, everyone wants to know is what Tabi and I think. So Tabi, we always mark these things out of

appropriate index. You have chosen to mark this out of, so it's murderous, reanimated corpses out of 10. How many murderous reanimated corpses out of 10 do? You give Mary Shelley's masterwork. I'm so shocked about scale of chosen. Anyway, I am going to give it, shockingly, a seven because the harsh. I know it is a bit harsh. Oh, yeah. But the, I'm kind of, I'm confused with the remorse, like Victor Frankenstein, his creature.

But the relentless self-flatulation of just all of the characters from Victor to the creature to

Victor's family, it got a little bit exhausting after a while. I know that was very of its time, but nevertheless, I did find it a bit exhausting. The endless chasing thing, I found a little bit boring. The fact that none of the characters are massively fleshed out. They're kind of more ideals of people. They're all representations of different philosophical stances. But having said that, the fact that she makes you able to hate and sympathize with both Victor and his creature throughout

the novel is an extraordinary achievement. And I love that the, the nature passages and just this, the sheer, like this idea, it's just mind blowing. Sometimes I would catch myself when I was reading it

and just be staggered by the fact that she came up with this. Never mind being a woman at 18

years old. It's just the fact of it. But still only seven out of ten. Yeah, all right. I don't hammer around her. So I'm actually going to give it eight out of ten. Oh, thank you. So I tell you what,

“I think some people reading this for the first time may find bits of it to do drag a bit. I think”

the stuff with the cottages is feels very 18th century. I love it. Perhaps a little bit too slow and expensive to use your word. I find the chases and the murders. Yeah, they are a little bit repetitive. I think some of the process is a little bit. I'm not a massive fan of that overwrought sort of capital hour romantic style. I think it was slightly more sort of bear than some of the books of that time. Yeah, I mean, I guess by the standards of books of the late 18th century. Yeah,

it's less anguished. Yes, maybe. So I'm, I'm marking it mainly actually on the idea. They found

“it the central idea, which I think is so foundational. I like all the stuff about Paradise”

Lost and Prometheus. And I think there's no question, Frankenstein is one of the core books of the Western canon. I think so much of our popular culture would be unthinkable without it. So although I think it is surprisingly unscaring and unhorrifying as a book, I do think everybody should read it. Very good. And with that, we put the corpse to bed. We'd do you come with the corpse to bed. What corpses are we disintering in the weeks to come to be? What's next week's corpse?

Next week, we will be doing the Northern Lights. So the Golden Compass in the US by Philip Paulman, then normal people by Sally Rooney and then east of Eden by John Steinbeck with lots more exciting corpsey treats to follow after that. That is exciting. So on that bombshell, thank you everybody for listening. We'll see you next week. And thank you, Terry. Bye. Bye.