Despite being an English major at Hillsdale College, I had never read Frankenstein. Truthfully, I had always avoided it. I thought it was just a gothic novel, like Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, and I hated that book. I also hated Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. I just do not care for ghost stories or creepy stories of any kind. I can read Flannery O’Connor and beg for more, but not creepy stories about ghosts or monsters.
This is not a story about a monster. Or at least not the kind of monster I was anticipating. There is no brainless creature terrorizing the countryside. The “Monster” was a created being with human thought and reasoning, emotion, and the capacity for ethics. But, the real monster in this novel is Dr. Frankenstein himself who created this being and then cruelly abandoned him. It is a riveting tale of the human condition.