Reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

And people who write about Mary Shelley and gothic novels

[miseria-fortes-viros]

ultimately the truth about frankenstein is that we are all grotesque amalgamations of the best and worst parts of everyone who came before us. and sometimes the people who are supposed to love us because of and in spite of this will not. and we can kill them with hammers for that. and i think that’s beautiful

[miseria-fortes-viros]

my brother in christ frankenstein is the title of the book

[warlockofagnesi]

COUNTERPOINT

[miseria-fortes-viros]

well i can’t argue with that one

[quacksmith]

Ah yes, Mary Shelley’s monster.

[miseria-fortes-viros]

no mary shelley is the name of the monster not the doctor

[villainessbian]

common misconception! mary shelley's monster was actually lord byron

[weirdsociology]

this "negative" review of guillermo del toro's upcoming frankenstein movie is everything to me

"The Mexican director has chosen to emphasise the romanticism at the expense of the horror. Elordi plays the creature as a misunderstood, James Dean-like outsider with Oedipal issues rather than as an agent of evil and chaos. Even if his face and torso are latticed with suitably grotesque scars, staples and stitches, he is not only the most sympathetic character in the movie but the best-looking one too. It’s left to Oscar Isaac to provide the real villainy as the brilliant but egomaniacal scientist, Victor Frankenstein..."

HELLO YES IT'S ME, MARY SHELLEY CALLING, JUST WANTED TO ASK IF YOU'VE EVER SEEN A GUILLERMO DEL TORO MOVIE OR... I DON'T KNOW... READ MY BOOK?

"The film lurches between scenes of lush romantic melodrama and moments of Grand Guignol bloodletting."

*bangs fists on table* SIGN! ME! THE! FUCK! UP!

[midnightmadwoman]

"You drink lemonade? Ugh. Enjoy your lemon-water-sugar concoction, idiot."

Thank you, I will. It's why I ordered the lemonade.

[speciesbarocus]

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein manuscript.

[fridge-full-of-feels]

The timing… omg

[immediatebreakfast]

Sorry to be clueless, but is this good or bad? I know that Guillermo del Toro is a genius regarding movies, and that he will do the story justice... But horny? Why? Are those actors specialized in horny tension?

[fridge-full-of-feels]

I can’t say what their chemistry will be like together, but here’s what I do know about them:

Andrew Garfield has been wanting to play a bisexual Spider-Man for ages. He’s also been shown to be very comfortable kissing other men in public.

And Oscar Isaac really wanted a gay romance in Star Wars between his character, Poe, and Finn.

Then you have to factor in Del Toro’s monsterfucker energy, and this is a recipe for something very horny about to happen, if not in the film, then on AO3.

[immediatebreakfast]

Oh wow, it is the perfect recipe for the horny™.

[nehirose]

oh this is DEFINITELY going to awaken something in the collective conscience.

[victorfrankensteinsuggestions]

Custom booty shorts for you and your creature

[yoursoethereal-deactivated20230]

— Mary Shelley, from Frankenstein

[5weekdays]

i don't usually post my art online but guess who has a new favorite book

[whitepeopletwitter]

[mythosphere]

[chrisflemingslegs]

Victor Frankenstein: I’ve created life but I refuse to put any effort into helping that life develop. I won’t teach him, love him, or defend him even though I forced him into existence with a fully operational adult brain lol. Peace, bitch.

The Monster: Am Eloquent Baby

Boomers: He’S NOt thE ViCtIM, HE’s tHe MOnsTEr

[an-ace-up-your-sleeve]

An ironic parallel considering the idea of “tough love” parenting that plenty of boomers like to use. If they buy into the idea that their kids just have to toughen up and face the real world without guidance or emotional support, I’m sure it does scare them to read a story where someone who wasn’t given any support began to resent their creator and turn on them.

[firelxdykatara]

it’s like that post that’s like ‘knowledge is knowing that frankenstein is the doctor; wisdom is knowing that frankenstein is the monster’. like the whole point of the post is that frankenstein’s monster is a victim of viktor frankenstein’s own monstrosity.

mary shelley did not lose her virginity on her mother’s grave just for people to misunderstand her best known work over a century later.

[cockyroaches]

[biandanxious18]

Great post everybody

[earlymoderngothic]

Gothic Literature Recommendations

I read a lot of Gothic literature as part of my PhD research so I thought I’d put together a list of some of my favourite Gothic tales. These are mainly texts that I’ve worked on (which is why most of them are from the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries) and I’ve tried to provide links to free versions of each text as well as to the print edition I use. 

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764) [x] [x]

Sir Bertrand, a Fragment by John Aikin and Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1773) [x]

The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve (1777) [x] [x]

Vathek by William Beckford (1786) [x] [x]

A Sicilian Romance by Ann Radcliffe (1790) [x] [x]

The Romance of the Forest by Ann Radcliffe (1791) [x] [x]

The Castle of Wolfenbach by Eliza Parsons (1793) [x]

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe (1794) [x] [x]

The Monk by Matthew Lewis (1796) [x] [x]

The Mysterious Warning by Eliza Parsons (1796) [x]

The Italian by Ann Radcliffe (1797) [x]

The Midnight Bell by Francis Lathom (1798) [x]

Tales of Superstition and Chivalry by Anne Bannerman (1802) [x]

Zofloya; or, the Moor by Charlotte Dacre (c.1806) [x]

Zastrozzi by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1810) [x]

The Giaour by Lord Byron (1813) [x] [x]

The Devil’s Elixir by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1815) [x] [german]

Christabel by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1816) [x] [x]

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (1817) [x] [x]

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818) [x] [x]

Fragment of a Novel by Lord Byron (1819) [x]

The Vampyre by John Polidori (1819) [x] [x]

Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin (1820) [x] [x]

The Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats (1820) [x] [x]

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824) [x] [x]

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847) [x] [x]

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning (1855) [x]

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1872) [x] [x]

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886) [x] [x]

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890) [x] [x]

Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897) [x] [x]

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898) [x] [x]

Ghost Stories of an Antiquary by M. R. James (1904) [x]

*This post does not contain affiliate links*

[glumshoe]

Victor Frankenstein losing his shit and breaking an oath because the idea of potentially creating a mate for his monster and having them go on to reproduce was just too horrifying to him that he didn’t even realize he could just... not add a functioning womb...

[thesomervillegirl-deactivated20]

Fair, but on the other hand, do we really think Victor has a working knowledge of female anatomy?

Dude lives in his creepy cadaver basement. He’s clearly never heard of a womb in his life and couldn’t find the clitoris without at least six helpful diagrams, an encyclopedia, and a lengthy emotional breakdown.

[glumshoe]

I mean, he did complete like 97% of a second creation to be the first one’s mate, so he knew enough to build a whole-ass lady that he apparently believed would be capable of pregnancy. He could have just clipped a tube or two...

[corvigay-clutter]

i’m concerned by the fact that this all indicates he took the time to give the creature a functional penis

[glumshoe]

Well, yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t he? The monster was a monument to his ego and he specifically made him attractive and larger than average, for convenience. I can virtually guarantee you that Victor Frankenstein gave his creation the largest, prettiest, and most functional penis he could possibly craft. I’m sure he spent extra time on it.

[whitepeopletwitter]

[schmergo]

I don’t like to call Frankenstein’s creation a ‘monster’ because he seems pretty chill, so I just call him Frankenstein’s lil boi

[mxryshcllcy]

What Mary Shelley might have written under happier circumstances—during a less barren period in English literature, with a happier childhood, without the deaths of her children and husband which darkened her life—must, of course, remain a matter of conjecture....A world that considered real dead babies to be equally important in literature as universal plague or the male creation of life in the laboratory might have allowed Shelley to write very differently. Instead of 'my hideous progeny', Frankenstein, as she calls it, we might have had Mary Shelley dealing with the here-and-now—a better novelist perhaps, but then perhaps also a worse mythmaker. The question must remain forever open.

Joanna Russ, To Write Like A Woman

[mxryshcllcy]

There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand. I am practically industrious—painstaking;—a workman to execute with perseverance and labour;—but besides this, there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

[mxryshcllcy]

Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more, and that my day dreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

[macklesufficient]

but did victor frankenstein actually have a phd

[macklesufficient]

no one’s answered my question

[macklesufficient]

THIS MOTHERFUCKER WAS AN UNDERGRAD

IMAGINE HEARING ABOUT THE DUDEBRO LIVING NEXT TO U IN THE DORMS “yah dave dropped out cuz he built a fucking person”

[necro-romantic]

victor frankenstein was a little bITCH and he had no degree at all, he was at college for like, a year and then he was like “lol these bitches ain’t got nothing on me” and he just got an apartment and stopped going to school so he could build a person. i don’t think he even formally dropped out, he just kind of disappeared and nobody even questioned it because that’s what you expect when some cocky asshole comes to class like “i know more than everyone in this school and one day i’m going to prove it by ending dEATH ITSELF” 

fucking bullshit victor, come home and eat some goddamn soup you wussass teenager 

fucking trashass motherfucker 19 year old sin machine

go get ur liver pecked by birds u mess of a human being

[banal-adventures]

i am never going to let the world forget that victor frankenstein spent 90% of the novel moping instead of doing literally anything else. actual quote from emo kid victor frankenstein “my only solace was silence - deep, dark, deathlike silence” like HOW EXTRA

[manicpixiesdreamdragon]

You’d almost think Mary Shelly was taking inspiration from someone she knew….

[viohra]

Leave Lord Byron alone

[genericboringusername-deactivat]

Lord Byron deserves what he gets and he knows it

[pangaeastarseed]

*GROSS SOBBING AT HOW UNBEARABLY BEAUTIFUL THESE ILLUSTRATIONS ARE*

From Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein