Frankenstein-Episode #1 - Meet Mary Shelley and her classic gothic novel! - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

Frankenstein-Episode #1 - Meet Mary Shelley and her classic gothic novel!

 

Hi, I’m Chisty Shriver

 

And I’m Garry Shriver- and today we are starting our discussion of one of the most beloved if not THE most beloved gothic novel in the world.  Of course, we were always going to analyze this book, but I have to admit that we moved up the timetable because we’ve had such a large number of requests.  In fact, I have to admit,  for us this has been THE most requested book for us to discuss.  The second most requested, if you’re wondering is The Great Gatsby, which we’re doing in the fall, so if you have a request- never hesitate to connect with us.  We’re always willing to take requests.  Now on to  the world’s most celebrated female/teenager writers!- Christy, do you have ANY idea why this book is so popular.

 

 There are a lot of potential reasons, and we’ll get into all of those as we go through the book, but one BASIC reason, in my mind, is that people like to be scared- fake-scared- and so for all of its philosophy, criticism, deep penetrating themes- as we think through these we can also be scared- but not really scared- and perhaps on that ost basic level, it is one of the classics that we can read but also enjoy the same kind of enjoyment we see people going crazy today with horror movies or in our country- although not everywhere but with the phenomenon that is Halloween.  And I have to make a disclaimer here- I do NOT like to be scared- and I know ethis will make me unpopular but Halloween is my least favorite holiday.  I don’t like to be scared AT ALL,   Stranger Things and Scooby Doo is about as scary as I’m willing to go- and I think that’s scary.  I tried to watch Nightmare on Elm St when I was a kid, and had to give it up.  My daughters, BTW, either inherieted this from me or were just raised to share this fear.  I have a funny story- one time, their father and I went out to see a movie and left them with a baby sitter- who for whatever reason, thought they’d enjoy watching Chucky.  They were 4 and 6 at the time.  When we got home, my girls were SO horrified, to this day we talke about it.  We had to cover Lizzy’s eyes when we went past a chucky poster (which were all overt he place bevause chucky 2 was coming out).  If anyone said Chucky someone was destined to cry- they were absolutely terrorized.  It’s funny now…sort of…but here’s how it ties into Frankenstein and the genius of mary shelly.  Why were the girls scared of Chucky?  Because they had baby dolls- and I’ve never seen the movie, but I assume in this movie a baby doll becomes a killer= that’s the horror of it- And on the top layer of this book is the most basic gift of Shelley because that’s what Mary Shelley is able to do for her audience- she KNOWS what everyone is scared of- and she taps into that- but in that safe sort of movie way that you can walk away from and laugh about later.  Of course, being fun doesn’t get you into legendary- and Mary Shelley attained legendary status even during he on life time- and the reasons for THAT go so so much deeper, and obviously we want to explore every bit of that, but before we do that- I think it’s worth just mentioning for a second how popular this book, or really this character/ legend/ this idea has really become.  There is a sense in that, mary shelley did not create the Frankenstein and his monster in the same sense that Joe Ruby and Ken Spears created Scooby Doo- she gave birth to him, but his mythology has FAR outgrown anything conceived by Frankenstein alone- in some sense it is still alive and evolving into something that honestly, I think she would probably like- and I’ll tell you what I think that later as well, but  Garry, tell us just a little bit about the immensity of this mythology…

 

Mary Shelley did write a book that today we would said went “viral” and took off in ways she couldn’t have created if she had tried.  It actually was turned into a play during her lifetime and was very popular- in fact, she went to see it and turned to her father and remarked, how she had gotten famous- almost like- how did that happen.  As of today, that I could find on Wikipedia= there are more than 62 movies and they are all over the place.  There’s some that are just classic and accepted as art, the most famous being Boris Karloff’s movie- Frankenstein that came out in 1931- and of course it’s sequel the Bride of Frankenstein which came out in 1935- many critics have said that movie is the best horror sequel of all time- and there is no shortage of horror movie sequels.  Anyway, the Curse of Frankenstein from 1957 is highly acclaimed and Jane Seymour’s Frankenstein, the True Story is also really well-regarded as well as Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein…and then there are the rest of them.  Frankenstein General Hospital is considered by Leonard Maltin the film critic to be the absolute worst of them- but it’s a competitive category.  I was a Teenage Frankenstein, Frankenstein unbounded, Alvin and the Chipmunks meet Frankenstein- but the one that got me was, and I’m not kidding, this movie was made by someone who thought it would be a good idea’ Frankenhooker”- where the plot of that is a man accidentally kills his girlfriend with a lawnmower then tries to put her back together again using body parts from dead prostitutes.  And that is just movies, if you look at plays, songs, parodies that USE the character as a part of a larger work- the number 62 jumps into the hundreds, maybe thousands.  Even authors like Stephen King and Dean Koontz who are known as spectacular horror fiction writers in their own right have used this character in their works.  It can be said, with unequivocal authority, that Frankenstein, Shelley’s creation, however you want to define it, roams the world and has roamed the world continuously since its original creation.  So, Christy, let’s see how that happened.

 

Of course, and I want to say- maybe more than any other book I’ve ever analyzed, in this case the author’s story is absolutely fundamental in understanding and really enjoying the many layers of this book.  And I want to say, that’s what makes a book timeless, at least for me, there are books that I read and never cre to read again- you say- okay, I got that.  But then there are others that deeper you plunge, the more you find- and what is remarkable is that that is the case with a book written by a teenager, an 18 year old girl.  And of course, when think about what that actually looks like, we have to ask- HOW did that happen?  What happened to that girl that made her create the world’s scariest idea.  But once you see her life and really understand her raw genius- it’s possible to see how it happened and really what do we say about going all the way back to 1797 and the birth of Mary Godwin who would, by the age of 18, come up with one of the world’s  

 

It is truly remarkable that a girl as young as Mary Shelly could even imagine a book and a character so seminal- but really when you think about her upbringing- perhaps that explains it a little.  Her parents were extremely unusual people. 

 

That’s very true.  Her mother is the more famous of the two.  I think a lot of us read in school exerts from her famous work, “A Vindicastion for the Rights of Women’ where she argued that women were made inferior because of a lack of education.  She really ultimately argues for a re-organization of all of human society in some sense.   However, Shelley’s father obviously had the stonger influence on on her simply by the fact that her mothr died while giving birth to her (an idea we see through the character of Elizabeth in Frankenstein0.  But her father, Godwin, was a very progressive man at the time.  He was an outspoken atheist and he had a household wehre dissenters of all kinds would congregate and discuss their ideas in the living room.  Mary Shelley knew Coledidge, and Wordworth and ultimately Shelley who absolutely was in love with Mary’s father before he became romnticlly involved with mary.  Mary Shelley because of her father’s insistence was self-educated (exactly like the three narrators in her book, Victor, the monster and Walton).  She read tons of philosophies and absolutely loved gothic novels which were super popular and commercial at the time (the Netflix of their day, if you will).  When she described what she was doing with Frankenstein she says she was writing a “philosophical romance”- so basically a serious book but with all the gothic stuff she loved so much- something really interesting and perhaps not as outlandish when you think about her upbringing.  She was consuming philoslphy on a regular basis from her earliest years- and of course, by the time she runs way with Percy at age 16- she’s had a vast amount of questions about the origin and nature of man thrown at her- all of which we see in this book.

 

 

 

 

 

Further episodes of How To Love Lit Podcast

Further podcasts by Christy and Garry Shriver

Website of Christy and Garry Shriver