I just finished the Paper Mill Press version of Frankenstein, and had no idea that text changed so significantly between versions. My edition makes no mention of what version it's drawing from.
The thing that shocked me is how different the Shelley book is from the Hollywood adaptations I'd grown up on.
There’s no mention that the monster was made from corpses, only that Frankenstein visited charnel-houses to study bodies and at some point collected bones. But there’s no mention of using them in the monster. And there’s no electricity. And his laboratory is a little sideroom in his rented apartments in a university town with other students all around him.
He just has a bunch of beakers and alchemical mixtures, and he’s worried that if he gives the monster a wife they’ll breed and create monster babies that will take over the world. And Frankenstein is contantly fainting and having nervous breakdowns as a plot device — super victorian.
There’s no peasants with pitchforks and torches. And the monster doesn’t talk in grunts. He’s got the eloquence of a Shakespearean villain, all victorian-style compound, complex sentences that go on for paragraphs.
I guess there's a core idea intact between book and movie, but little else.
Wow! Love that illustration!
Thanks, Midjourney AI did the pic. I wish I could draw like that…
There’s something to be said for AI!
I just finished the Paper Mill Press version of Frankenstein, and had no idea that text changed so significantly between versions. My edition makes no mention of what version it's drawing from.
The thing that shocked me is how different the Shelley book is from the Hollywood adaptations I'd grown up on.
There’s no mention that the monster was made from corpses, only that Frankenstein visited charnel-houses to study bodies and at some point collected bones. But there’s no mention of using them in the monster. And there’s no electricity. And his laboratory is a little sideroom in his rented apartments in a university town with other students all around him.
He just has a bunch of beakers and alchemical mixtures, and he’s worried that if he gives the monster a wife they’ll breed and create monster babies that will take over the world. And Frankenstein is contantly fainting and having nervous breakdowns as a plot device — super victorian.
There’s no peasants with pitchforks and torches. And the monster doesn’t talk in grunts. He’s got the eloquence of a Shakespearean villain, all victorian-style compound, complex sentences that go on for paragraphs.
I guess there's a core idea intact between book and movie, but little else.
Great comment! Thank you.