Most people know “Frankenstein” through its basic premise and its many adaptations. Man creates human creature from parts of dead bodies, and, in true horror fashion, everything goes wrong. But not so many people are familiar with the actual original story.

In a format that was not unusual for the nineteenth century, this story is told in a frame story format. The first speaker is a sea captain writing letters to his sister. He has taken on a voyage north, for no other reason than discovery, apparently, and finds a man adrift on a floating icefloe and in a bad way. This is the titular character, Frankenstein, who then tells the captain his story. So, for the bulk of the novel, Frankenstein is narrating.

The scientist Victor Frankenstein is apparently a genius. He goes to university to study, and excels in his classes, until he gets the (frankly rather bizarre) idea that he could potentially create a human being, out of body parts, and give it life. He proceeds to do precisely this.

The world was to me a secret which I desired to devine.

The author does not attempt to give much in the way of scientific explanation for how this is done – the huge batteries and lightning conductors of the movies do not appear in the book. The method is beside the point, really. However he does it, Frankenstein succeeds. He immediately decides the creature is so ugly looking he simply cannot bear it and abandons him.

“Man,” I cried, “how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom!”

As a reader I find this immediately confusing. He has put this creature together, so he knows what he’s made. He’s been looking at it, after all. So why does he have such a strange reaction to something that he created to look hideous? Secondly, why did he create it to look hideous? If he could put a body together, he couldn’t put a decent face on it? But no, he runs away and then proceeds to tell himself the thing is just going to go away and he just needs to forget about it. (He’s also made himself quite unwell in all this working around the clock – he seems a very excitable, histrionic type of personality.) When looking at this story, many reviewers will talk about the overreach of science as being a theme. Honestly, I did not really see that when I was reading it. What Frankenstein does in creating the creature is not well thought out, true. What he does next, and continues to do, is his crime.

Frankenstein abandons what is essentially a new-born baby to his fate. He has apparently constructed the creature extremely well in terms of intelligence, strength, and the ability to learn. The creature almost manages, in spite of Frankenstein, to learn goodness from his private watching of a good family. However, this falls away as even the good family cannot bear the sight of the creature. Why did he make the creature so ugly that no one could cope with its appearance? This question is never examined openly. However, it leaves me wondering, did Frankenstein fear to make the creature too good, albeit subconsciously? I don’t think the narrative answers this question, so this remains conjecture.

Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?

When Frankenstein meets and speaks to the creature, he hears the story that the creature was capable of love and affection, and it was destroyed by the fear people had of him. This in no way absolves him of the murder of a child and the setting up of the servant Justine. Frankenstein, however, ignores the obvious implication (that the creature learned to react how he did because it was all he knew.)

You are in the wrong,” replied the fiend; “and, instead of threatening, I am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable; am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me? Would you not call it murder if you could Precipitate me into one of those ice-rifts, and destroy my frame, the work of your own hands. Shall I respect man, when he contemns me? Let him live with me in the interchange of kindness, and instead of injury, I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care: I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart , so that you curse the hour of your birth.”

Frankenstein is just as guilty of Justine’s death as the creature, because he makes no attempt to speak up and at least try to save her. He excuses himself, saying no one would ever believe him, but as a reader I was thinking he could have told them something, he could have tried. There is much anguish and handwringing, but no action, and Justine dies.

Again, and again Frankenstein is found wanting. He initially agrees to make the creature a wife, and then backpedals, due to his (unfounded) belief that the creature is malevolent by nature and not by nurture.

I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.

The creature tells him he will see Frankenstein on his wedding night. The implication is obvious to the reader, but Frankenstein assumes the creature will murder him. He also assumes the creature will do nothing else until then. The character is supposed to be a genius, but this is the single most stupid assumption of the entire story, leading initially to his friend Cherval’s death, and then to his wife Elizabeth’s. He leaves her alone, and she dies for it.

If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.

After the poor father dies of shock, Frankenstein ‘nobly’ vows to hunt down the creature and kill it. It is his responsibility and he will hunt him to the ends of the earth. This leads us to an aspect of this story that has me a little baffled, because I am unsure if the author forgot a character or if she intended it to be another aspect of Frankenstein’s selfish and oblivious personality, his failure, in fact, to take responsibility. Frankenstein has another brother, Ernest, who is still alive, and Frankenstein abandons him, just like the creature. It leaves me wondering about Ernest’s life, if he ever knew what happened to his brother, if he ever found out the whole story. How might he have been affected by the circumstances? But his big brother did not give him another thought. It certainly is in keeping with everything else Frankenstein does, so the probability is the author did not forget about Ernest.

Frankenstein doesn’t even have the excuse of being brought up in a bad way to explain his appalling self-centeredness. His parents are depicted as good, loving people. His father goes to great lengths to look after his son. Frankenstein’s friend Cherval is very devoted, has accompanied him on his travels and looked after him when he is sick. Elizabeth waits patiently for him to get around to agreeing to the marriage, and never wavers in her love for him. His other brothers seem equally nice. He has had wealth and privilege, and yet he thinks of nothing but his own circumstances. He has more than one opportunity to turn things around with the creature and he refuses. If he continues to insist the creature is bad by nature, he can blame himself for the creation, but absolve himself of his real crimes of neglect and abuse.

I find it interesting that the author at no point depicts any other character as seeing through Frankenstein’s self-centeredness. Even the captain of the ship that finds him seems to be immediately smitten with a weird and unfounded hero-worship. Frankenstein is an unreliable narrator – he excels at hand wringing, but never for the things he did wrong, such as abandoning the creature, despising the creature, not trying to save Justine, and not protecting his family and friends by warning them of the danger. At the end the creature regrets Frankenstein’s death, showing that he has learned one thing from his creator – the capacity to blame himself for the wrong things (Frankenstein’s death) and not for the right things (everybody else he killed).

“Frankenstein” is in many respects a very odd book. It’s style and language can make it potentially difficult for a modern audience. It is also, however, a fascinating insight into the extreme self-absorption of a man and how it is this that destroys his entire world. It might be framed in a fantastical plot, but in my opinion, Frankenstein essentially destroys his own family and life.