I know that Mary Shelley intended this to be a scary story, but it does not scare me. I feel awful for the creature, but I do not have nightmares about a hideous man coming to strangle me. Shelley herself had nightmares about the idea!! Is this just the Romantic view here, or have I been so calloused by modern horror that this novel doesn't frighten me?
I love this novel. It illustrates the importance of childhood and good parenting and the danger of ambition. I just don't think of it as a horror story.
i donot know! but you such facts provided at the beginning?meaning why that modern novel written.if you know,then thank you.
You have to recall that Mary Shelley was a teenage newlywed, living with Percy Shelley as Lord Byron's houseguest in his villa in the Italian Alps (not far from the locale of her story). Dinner conversation revolved around Darwin's theories, very hot at the time, and a lot of half baked conjecture that posed as "science"; related to galvinism and spontaneous generation. The men talked, and the women listened; and Mary Shelley closed her eyes on this stuff at night. In her own prologue, she says that the idea of Frankenstein came to her full blown in a dream. We have all been calloused by modern horror, real and fictional.
A lot of ideas are discussed about Mary Shelley's motives. It's definitely a cautionary tale about bad parenting. Some have said she had unconscious fears of pregnancy. The book is monumental for the themes it raises. You don't have to guess how the author would feel about abortion, cloning or bio-genetics. The
book becomes intriguing when you recall that it was written by an 18-19 year old girl.
It certainly isn't a horror story in the modern sense--I think it provokes more of an intellectual horror (at the thought that ethics might be breached like this, or that such a miserable existence might be so carelessly brought about, etc.) than the cheap thrills of Stephen King's novels.
I wouldn't be too worried about not finding this book scary--it means you can better concentrate on it's subtler themes! =)
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