Trivia / Frankenstein

• Anonymous Author: On the book's initial publication, Mary Shelley chose to go anonymous to hide that she was a woman.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!:
  • "It's alive!" is never said in the original book, instead being a line in the 1931 adaptation.
  • Victor doesn't have any assistants in the original book, and carries out the experiments on his own.
  • Instead of being portrayed as Dumb Muscle, Frankenstein's Monster is presented as a Genius Bruiser in the original, both extremely strong and impressively smart.
  • Electricity is used as the catalyst to bring the creature back to life in most modern portrayals. Electricity was never mentioned in the book's scene; in fact, Frankenstein makes a point of telling Walton he'll keep how he created the monster a secret. The Other Wiki states the electric use can be traced to the 1931 movie of Frankenstein. (Though the book does specifically mention Victor's childhood fascination with "the subject of electricity and galvanism", so it's really not a bad guess.)
  • "I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy one, I will indulge the other" is often touted as being a quote from the book, except it's actually from Kenneth Branagh's 1994 movie adaptation.
• Creator Breakdown: Many literary historians consider the monster's creation scene in Frankenstein to be an allegory on childbirth. Not long before writing the book, Mary Shelley had given birth to a premature, illegitimate child who lived only days. Victor Frankenstein's misshapen, partly-formed 'monster' is created in 'filth' and when first brought to life is jaundiced, as most premature newborns are. This allegory may be less obvious to us because most movie adaptations don't follow Shelley's text that closely and turn the creation of the monster into a more scientific and less earthy event than Shelley imagined.
• One-Hit Wonder: Only one of Mary Shelley's novels is well-known today: Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus. Although she was taken very seriously in her day, nowadays it's either Frankenstein or being the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley (even though it was her efforts after his death that kept him from being considered a One-Hit Wonder).

---