Frankenstein

Re-reading this with students in an English class.
Is it just because I'm middle-aged that teen Mary Shelley's MC Victor seems TSTL? Come on, dude: you've got every advantage, yet keep walking into the metaphorical dark alley because you won't trust the DOZENS of people who love you? And then you abandon Ernst?? Probably my strong reaction just connects to messages Shelley wanted me to get loud and clear...but what an annoying main character! The second time through, my sympathies are much more firmly with Victor's creation than Victor.

I'm also annoyed that this book barely passes the Bechdel test of having two women talk to each other about something other than a man (Don't Justine and Elizabeth have, like, 2 sentences to say to each other in the prison?). But, I am also annoyed on behalf of Mary Shelley that her teen-aged work of genius was produced in a context that shaped it into a work that barely passes the Bechdel test... I'm cheering for you, nineteenth-century proto-feminists!

Reading this the second time, I'm still impressed at Mary Shelley's achievement. My students (generally around 17-y-olds) found lots of things to talk about in this book–we read it alongside selections of Paradise Lost, so lots of good class discussions there about all sorts of things (theology & religion, gender & power, etc.).

A good book-club read so you can hash out with your friends all the things that are going on with family, nature, Romanticism, the relationship of the artist/creator to the creation, what makes us human, etc. And can hate on Victor for being dumb. Just sayin'.