I read Mary Shelley’s spellbinding novel in my youth before I was aware of myths and schizophrenia, so I was somewhat at a disadvantage.
The book’s first several chapters cleverly stack up like a geometric proof, each chapter contributing to well-defended arguments upon which subsequent chapters are arranged. More than a rehash of Mary Shelley’s story, it is Tropp’s analysis of her romanticism-on-the-rocks mind-set and the advent of Modernism that drew me in for a deeper read. There was much more to Mary Shelley’s unhappy life and her chilly, stoic persona. Interestingly, we are drawn to her intellectual thinking and writing, more than we might suppose.
Tropp sees Dr Frankenstein’s creature as a splintering off, independent, and autonomous function of the good doctor’s own mind and personality .The unstable split tracing back to a fictional childhood that involves the death of Victor Frankenstein’s mother and a semi-incestuous relationship into which she plunged her son and step-daughter. The creature is a projection or realisation of the Doctor’s repressed traumas and secret urges and desires. The drama between creator and creature becomes one of a single divided soul present in two bodies….aka schizophrenia.
The debt we owe Mary Shelley is immense when we consider the Frankenstein myth…mad scientist, the resurrected creature, the menacing threat of technology and the popular movies the book spawned…Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Heart of Darkness and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
The novel FRANKENSTEIN is often assumed to be the early precursor of science fiction considering the times that Mary Shelley witnessed in a world of Modernism that was seen as threatening. These broader implications make Tropp’s book appealing.
The second half takes a forensic dive into the evolution of Frankenstein myth in the era of celluloid. This certainly has staying power considering the plethora of shlock movies, although it touches on deep-seated archetypes in our psyches. It comes to mind, what degree the advent of the Bomb relates to how technology has gone out of control since the mid 1940s.
It takes a Freudian outlook on things with a solid grasp of cinema and the various renditions of the tale. Tropp makes the case that Shelley created a modern myth and this book attests to it very well.
