W: LP: GRP: MS: Frankenstein 03

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

{Update}
I just finished this novel, what a magnificent achievement for the first novel of a nineteen year old writer!!!
I want to quote a sublime soliloquy from the monster of Frankenstein, but before looking at that elevated passage, I'd like to relate the following intelligent feminist thought:

{Safie related that her mother was a Christian Arab, seized and made a slave by the Turks; recommended by her beauty, she had won the heart of the father of Safie, who married her. The young girl spoke in high and enthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born in freedom, spurned the bondage to which she was now reduced. She instructed her daughter in the tenets of her religion, and taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect, and an independence of spirit, forbidden to the female followers of Mahomet. This lady died; but her lessons were indelibly impressed on the mind of Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again returning to Asia and being immured within the walls of a harem, allowed only to occupy herself with infantile amusements, ill suited to the temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble emulation for virtue. The prospect of marrying a Christian, and remaining in a country where women were allowed to take a rank in society, was enchanting to her.}

--You see here proto-feminist thought but with the recognition that the status of women is indeed elevated in a Christian culture. Thus wherefore is this artificial divide between the humanizing of women brought about by the Christian faith and the modern alien propaganda against the faith? This doesn't have to be.


But now on to our soliloquy:

{"Oh, it is not thus--not thus," interrupted the being; "yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow-feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow and that happiness and affection are turned to bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure: when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

[Is not this description above not the picture of all human hearts? If everyone is honest deep down in their soul, without pretense or excuse, to remember our omissions and our commissions, this poetic passage above aptly describes us.]

[There is more to this soliloquy, but I'm out of time for this post. See pages 240 to 242 in the hardbound edition referenced in the picture of the cover.]