CHAPTER I
— Great brief depiction of the descent into depression (Beaufort re:poverty/unemployment). Mary suffered from bouts of depression her whole life (although especially after writing this novel and the death of her children). Also gives off vibes of her own father’s situation.
— “No creature could have more tender parents than mine.” The irony! Victor understood parenting too late!
— Hello to the classic trope of hoping your poor orphan ward will marry their adopted brother/sister. This happens too often in period lit to be weird. (ALTHOUGH gothic as a trope does love incest as a taboo.)
— Clerval was always my fave character in this book! <3
— The kids’ learning through play!! Study not being made odious to them through punishment! Mary’s mother wrote so much incredibly modern-sounding stuff about educating children according to their own individual needs/natures, I would bet Mary was inspired by her mother’s work. (Her mother didn’t live to raise her herself.)
— on Agrippa: “it is sad trash.” lol.
— Young Victor trying to raise devils and learn esoteric science is delightful.
CHAPTER II
— Liked the line “why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel?” re: grief.
— (my spotify daylist “dreamy cinnamon tuesday evening” is playing Switzerland - Soccer Mommy, very appropriate for the setting lol)
— The women in this are (as society expects them to be) very self-sacrificial and selfless. (Victor = all ego.)
— I do feel for Victor having that embarrassing moment with his university professor where the professor echoes that “stop reading sad old trash” conversation. Victor takes it well but I’d have dropped out then and there.
— You get the feeling Victor kind of likes being the loner/outcast/rebel a little bit though. He’s ~stifled by convention.
— Y’all should know Percy Shelley dabbled in chemistry and spent his time at Eton and Oxford doing weird experiments and blowing up his bedroom.
CHAPTER III
— This is just the importance of finding a good teacher really. Finding the professor you really gel with is as good as finding your soulmate. I get it.
— I have just realised he’s said ardour/ardent like three times on one page :') Guess I know where I get it from.
— Gah I love the bit about him studying death and decay!! Also the way he says “forced to spend” his time digging around in graveyards. Sure, buddy. Who forced you? (He’s just a slave to the ~pursuit)
— Here’s the moral of the tale, ~his story is a warning~, etc
— Victor contemplates what form to give life to, doesn’t want to start small, decides to run before he can walk.
— “Too fiddly to put his parts together if he’s small. I’ll just make him 8 feet tall, it’ll be fine.” His logic <3 “Proportionably large”... just wondering how many dead men’s dicks he considered in this process? Hoping Guillermo Del Toro will entertain this question in the new movie.
— Conceive. Bear. Labour. Confinement. Past!me was obsessed with the birth/creation words in use here. Writing a novel is also a similar act of creation. (And Mary’s mother died from complications giving birth to her, so this feels Loaded.)
— Okay but why is the “Victor Frankenstein Has a Hyperfixation” sequence so relatable??
look ANOTHER beautiful bee!set <3