What Does Bride Of Frankenstein Mean?

I first read ‘Frankenstein’ when I was 13 years old. It broke my heart for the ‘creature’, because he was abandoned immediately upon resurrection. My adolescent anger toward Victor Frankenstein made me feel he got everything coming to him, for not taking any responsibility for what he had done. And, as an adult; the lack of responsibility of certain scientists still concerns me. As you said, ‘Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should’. Remember the thoughts of Oppenheimer upon sight of the first atomic blast? ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’.

I love how neither the doctor or the monster is fully in the wrong. They were both completely mislead and misunderstood the other. The doctor was afraid of the monster because their first real encounter was when the monster killed his brother. As for the monster he gets angry at the doctor for all the neglect that paints him as a selfish deadbeat.

An Interesting point is that Victor Frankenstein; who in his youth followed the philosophies of the ancients: found in University a more modern scientific methodology. And thus shamed he supposedly left the old ways behind him. But the vague technique used in creating life by harnessing the elemental forces of nature(although neither lightning or some galvanic principle unknown was named)suggested that he never entirely abandoned the ways of the alchemist. Regardless; Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, is rightfully considered by many to be the first Science Fiction story.

Find it extremely interesting how Mary Shelley was at a ‘show’ of possibly Andrew Ure where he tried to revive the recently dead with electricity. What he was really doing was just applying a current to the still functioning nerve endings and having them constrict and retract; returning them to ‘life’ and that was where Shelley’s nightmare of Frankenstein came from. Not so far fetched to the people who would have read it during that time which made it more terrifying.

And when time shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will be born to replace those of whom we have so cruelly deprived. – Frankenstein I have read this book two times since losing my son. I relate to the grief woven in this book. Now I know the history of Mary Shelley makes since why I had such a connection.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I only just recently read the novel. I had seen a bunch of different adaptations but now I see that it’s never really been really faithfully adapted. The part with Justine breaks my heart. I always found the scene with the old blind man in Bride of Frankenstein to have been amazingly tragic, but in the novel it’s so much more so. I did shed tears a few times. It’s such a beautiful story. I really wasn’t expecting going into it that a 200 year old novel would be able move me so deeply. I simultaneously related to both Victor and the Wretch as he’s mostly refered to in the book. In the last 3 years I’ve experienced the loss of three close family members. One every year. This year was my father. I’ve also been through a few tragedies in childhood. I also have a deep interest in science. In those respects sometimes I felt I was Victor. On the other hand, I myself am not a particularily attractive person, growing up I was always treated as the weird kid, the outcast by my peers. My father and I did not get along very well and even in the endtimes, I always questioned whether my father really did love me. In the shared disapproval of our makers, I found myself also relating to the Monster also. While the James Whale versions will always have a special place in my heart, The novel is by far superior.

💚💚💚 thank you for covering my favorite monster/favorite novel. not only an essential in any science fiction book list, but also just a great way to begin to understand how romanticism and iluminism clashed and at the same time showed two sides of what was to come; the overwhelming scientifical discoveries and technological advancements, and the angst, fears and anxiety that would surge from a fast-changing world.

I absolutely love the moment of eloquence from the 1994 cinematic Frankenstein’s monster, portrayed by Robert De Niro, when the creature stated, “I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.”

A great, and very concise analysis. I felt sorry for the creation as depicted by Boris Karloff, who gave it such humanity. That tragic sequence when he and the little girl throw flowers in the river, to watch them float….. and in his limited mind he thinks she will do the same…. it clutches at my heart whenever I see it. (See my comment on the ‘role reversal’ of this, in the silent film version of ‘The Golem’.

Nothing I didn’t already know (other than the background of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley), but still eloquent and well stated for those who are still in the dark in regards to Dr. Frankenstein and his creation. “I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your wedding night,” is still one of the most chilling lines ever written, IMO.

I read the Frankenstien novel when I was in college, and I was kinda surprised at how much the story had been changed in movies since it had been published. It does make sense where her inspiration came from and it makes a very heady and complicated tale, but the main thing that keeps coming to my mind is that I don’t think people can truly create something artificial that is considered a life. People do make a lot of things and we have come a long way technologically, but I just don’t think we’ll ever have that ability. Life comes from a soul and none of us has the ability to give an object that. We can put our hearts into something that we make, and we can continue to make wonderful, helpful, and in some cases terrible things, but there are some things that we don’t have control over. That I don’t have any control over.

Man, the more I think about the movie Frankenstein the more sorry I feel for the monster. All he wanted was a friend in the world. If Frankenstein’s monster actually existed I’d probably be his friend. I know how it feels to be an outcast and being judged for it. Being an outcast has made me who I am today and I love being myself.

I just found and am loving the Monstrum series. One little extra bit about “Frankenstein” is the reason it’s considered the first Sci-Fi story. The hallmark of sci-fi is to explore the theories and experiments of the time and expand on their ideas in sometimes fantastical ways in order to ask “what if science could bring us to this?” Through most of history, cutting up bodies for the sake of knowledge was considered horrific and taboo. At the time the story was written, modern medicine as we know it was beginning to form, and the ethics of teaching doctors in medical school how to operate, experiment, and perform autopsies on corpses was one of those topics people debated. The Frankenstein story is the first popular story to ask “could this science lead to this?”

Cards on the table….at the base of the hill where Burg Frankenstein sits is a cemetery (friedhof). Mary Shelly was told about an alchemist and his quest to further his medical knowledge….Johann Conrad Dippel was a grave robber….It was common…ref…Johann Conrad Dippel (10 August 1673 – 25 April 1734) was a German pietist theologian, alchemist and physician.

The novel was about the dangers of unchecked ambition. It was a literal metaphor for the navigation of the Northwest Passage which is directly referenced in the novel.\r Great novel by the way, one that should be read by everybody. My favourite modern retelling is X-Men First Class, which is incidentally one of the few superhero films I like. While Magneto was born with his genetics, not physically put together, the story of Sebastian Shaw’s ambition and the monster he created fixated on vengeance is all intact, simply with a protagonist/antagonist role reversal.

3:05 Funny fact: John William Polidori’s, personal physician to Lord Byron-both of whom were at the spent the summer of 1816 with the Shelleys at Lake Geneva-contribution to the dare was a tale that eventually was published as “The Vampyre”, the first vampire story published in English. It would later influence gothic horror, providing the archetypal vampire, as well as influencing Bram Stoker’s “Dracula”.

I have to take one exception to this otherwise very accurate article — nowhere in the novel does it say or even imply that Frankenstein stitched his creature together. That was Hollywood’s idea. Mary Shelley was very vague in her description of the process. Of course she was! She didn’t know, herself. Yes, he obtained “raw materials” from morgues and slaughter houses, and bones are particularly mentioned; but nowhere does it say what he did with them. It does say that he wanted to work in a larger scale due to his lack of familiarity with what he was doing. The creature ends up being eight feet tall. In order for him to have stitched together an eight-foot tall man, he would have to have worked with parts from eight-foot tall corpses. Not really a possibility. The text describes him with yellow, tightly-stretched skin. But nowhere does it mention stitches, scars or wounds. Carry on.

My favorite version was the 1994 TNT produced TV movie version. It followed the basic plot of the book almost exactly with two key differences: he had found a way to COPY life, not like how we think of clones but by using a unique electrical frequency, any living thing subjected to a unified field of this energy for a certain amount of time (varying by mass), would project a “ghost” copy of itself nearby that would draw into itself from the surrounding environment similar elements. Frankenstein then had the brilliant idea to fill a big glass tank with an organic slurry, mostly water, but with all the constituent raw ingredients found in living things. He would then website the bioelectrical projection into the tank, and a nearly perfect copy of the animal would eventually cohere into living existence, except it would be stronger, smarter, more resilient, a BETTER version of the original. The only caveat is that during the copying process, the energy coursing through the original HURTS!! It causes no actual damage but greatly stimulates pain receptors throughout the body, making you feel as if on fire. Subsequently, he had to build the creature in stages or layers, instead of all at once which no man could endure. It escaped just before it was to be finished, just some missing skin on his face, really. The other difference was that he only abandoned the creature by accident, forced to give up searching for it to attend to his family. He really did want to help him. After that, it followed the book again until the time came to make The Bride.

One correction, as a nerdy author looking to inspire other nerdy authors: NOT ALL OF THE FRANKENSTEINS DIED. There was one that everyone seems to forget that he existed: Victor’s younger (well, not as young as five-year-old William; yes, the monster killed a five-year-old in cold blood and yes it’s both sad and horrifying, as it is meant to be) brother, Ernest Frankenstein. Ernest doesn’t show up in the story much because he’s very sickly, and has been from birth. Victor seems to forget entirely that Ernest exists until he’s recounting his story to Captain Walton, which inadvertently saves Ernest’s life as the monster doesn’t find out that Ernest exists. I was just as bewildered as the average person when I found out about the last Frankenstein (whoops, dropped a potential novel title), but he exists and was honestly the luckiest out of all his family…yay fragile pre-Victorian-era constitution for the win? As for my source, here’s one: mary-shelley.fandom.com/wiki/Justine_Moritz,_Ernest_Frankenstein,_and_William_Frankenstein Good luck and, to all my fellow authors, happy novel-ing!

There’s no confirmation in the novel that Victor Frankenstein builds the Creature out of dead body parts. That shows up later, in the 1931 film and subsequent versions. In the novel, Victor does collect these things, but he only describes them as his “materials”, and by this he seems to just mean materials of study. There’s nothing, as in later versions, about sewing things together, or finding the right brain. Later, when he’s building the female creature, he makes no mention of grave-robbing, supporting the idea that the Creature is synthetic, not a collage of corpses. He doesn’t need to rob graves for her because he gained all the knowledge he learned from his previous work. When he speaks of having “tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay”, we get our only hint about what making a synthetic creature might mean. It’s vague and insufficient, but I believe we’re to assume the Creature and his aborted companion are made of this “lifeless clay” and other inanimate material.

It’s a really common talking point when folk talk about Frankenstein to say the whole thing about wisdom being knowing the creator is the monster and I’ve always thought that was a gross oversimplification since the creator is proud and gets in over his head without thinking about the consequences while the monster actually murders several people. They’re both monsters, just at different points in the book and even then by the end they both regret the series of events that lead them to that point. All that said I’m really glad this took the more nuanced take on it thats more accurate! Also fun thing for ya: if anyone says “Frankenstein is the scientist, not the monster” remind them that the monsters name is canonically Adam Frankenstein. So technically, Frankenstein refers to both!

definately one of my favourite books. i dont want to sound like a hipster, especially because the karloff movie is a classic and rightfully so. but i think the book was even better than the movie. the part where the fiend spent the day and night in the woods and was scared that the sun might not come back! it was one of the most moving things, ive ever read. mary shelley must have had a great sense of empathy.

Does anyone remember the movie Frankenstein Conquers the World by Toho (and its sequel, The War of the Gargantuas)? This was perhaps the strangest adaptation of Frankenstein’s Monster (who was also adapted as being fully heroic, albeit misunderstood), and the sequel featured his clones, Gaira (the evil Gargantua) and Sanda (the good Gargantua).

I personally am excited for an upcoming graphic novel adaptation by Bernie Wrightston as I love visual film/comic adaptations of classic stories. I think book Adam (the creation’s name in the book) has never really had a 100% accurate depiction. I think it’s unfair that Dracula can have multiple fantastic film adaptations, but Frankenstein only gets one decent adaptation (to my knowledge) that leaves a bunch of things out.

The fact that Shelley wrote of Frankenstein making the creature larger because it was easier to work on and that he used organs and bones from a slaughterhouse as well as human parts always made me think Frankenstein was interested in “making” a man rather than reviving the corpse of one. I’ve always seen the monster as being a bizarre combination of human and animal where proportionality was discarded in favor of making all the parts fit and then live. So far the closest movie version of the story where Victor Frankenstein actually “creates” the monster is the 1992 television version where the monster is a malformed clone of Frankenstein. It totally discards the method Shelley describes but the monster isn’t just a resurrected body with some stitching. One day I would love to see a movie or stage production where the creature is the huge amalgam of human and animal.

In the beginning, Victor convinces himself that being able to grant the dead life would be beneficial. Murder victims could point out their murderers, illnesses wouldn’t take away loved ones, fatal accidents wouldn’t be so tragic. But he was just some kid playing with something he didn’t fully understand. He created a man-sized baby and abandoned it. I don’t think he ever apologized either