Love at a Reasonable Price

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[This section starts in the latter half of the original’s seventeenth chapter. The monster murdered William, and by placing William’s locket in the dress of the sleeping Justine, framed that young woman — dependent and friend of the family Frankenstein. He demanded an interview with Frankenstein high in the icy mountains and has just finished outlining his sufferings and his crimes to and making his demands of (he wants a female monster) his creator. The italicized parts are lifted word-for-word from the original section. The regular font parts are the interventions.]

Chapter 17

The being finished speaking and fixed his looks upon me in the expectation of a reply. But I was bewildered, perplexed, and unable to arrange my ideas sufficiently to understand the full extent of his proposition. He continued,

“You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do, and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede.”

. . . . . .

“You swear,” I said, “to be harmless; but have you not already shown a degree of malice that should reasonably make me distrust you? May not even this be a feint that will increase your triumph by affording a wider scope for your revenge?”

“How is this? I must not be trifled with, and I demand an answer. If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice must be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my crimes, and I shall become a thing of whose existence everyone will be ignorant. My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor, and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being and become linked to the chain of existence and events from which I am now excluded.”

I paused some time to reflect on all he had related and the various arguments which he had employed. I thought of the promise of virtues which he had displayed on the opening of his existence and the subsequent blight of all kindly feeling by the loathing and scorn which his protectors had manifested towards him. His power and threats were not omitted in my calculations; a creature who could exist in the ice-caves of the glaciers and hide himself from pursuit among the ridges of inaccessible precipices was a being possessing faculties it would be vain to cope with. After a long pause of reflection I concluded that the justice due both to him and my fellow creatures demanded of me that I should comply with his request. Turning to him, therefore, I said,

“She will be built to match you as a woman to a man, but she’ll have no legs, she will be barren, and I shall require a year of study to construct a mind and spirit sufficiently gentle, loving, and kind.”

“I demand no progeny, though my companion must be shaped to answer the passions you endued whilst denying any means for their gratification. A good and gentle creature

who would nonetheless desire my affections is precisely what I request of you. With her I could perhaps, though otherwise friendless and driven into a savage and brutish existence, find the happiness whose absence has maimed my heart and marred my life. But legs she must have. What when I — as indeed must befall all mortals — perish or become myself disabled? How then should she protect and nourish herself?

“Europe you won’t quit, nor will you leave my side. We shall each accept our portion of your guilt and live out our lives beneath its intolerable weight. Every day from 6AM to 6PM we shall seek insights into the principles of human vitality and for cures to human ailments. Though I loathe chemical and anatomical studies, I shall nonetheless devote my waking hours to them. I cannot wish to forgive you your unpardonable evils. Working with you as my assistant will render my life a never ending misery. But better a life of constant anguish than shirk my duty a second time. Together you and I shall perform our penitence.”

For the space of five interminable minutes my monster stared at me, yellow eyes wild within twisted brow and black broken lips struggling against one another, twitching for speech but finding none. At length, he turned away from me, stooped low to the ground, rifled quickly through a coat lying by his feet, and, locating revolver, powder, and ball, made ready the weapon.

“Here, Frankenstein,” he said slowly and calmly, reaching me the pistol’s butt, “Free yourself. For as long as I live your existence remains naught but toil and fear. What guarantees that I won’t in time grow weary of our penitence and rip off your head, or that of your dearest friend? Shoot me now. I have killed twice, deserve to die, and cannot be trusted. Kill me now to save what remains of yourself and all you love.”

I took the pistol and, thinking of Elizabeth, my father, and Ernest, aimed between his eyes. From the tip of the gun to the beast’s braincage were not more than two feet. I fired and he fell backwards with a great thud. The broad matter that I’d quickened with heart, thought, and soul lay again inert and empty. The cave walls trembled. The sound of sliding rock and snow rustled behind me. I knelt and checked his pulse. Finding none, I placed the gun near his hand. I did not imagine the death of a monster would be construed as a murder, but still it seemed wisest to arrange the impression of a suicide. I searched through his possessions until I’d recovered every note written by either of us, and headed toward the cave entrance. But after a half-dozen paces, shame and sorrow took me by the hand and led me back to the monster. I knelt again beside him, closed his eyes with my two fingers, said a prayer for his soul and mine, and rose to turn again towards the mound of ice, snow and rubble now partly obscuring the cave entrance.

That night, my mind and body reduced to a raw kernel of exhausted passion, I burned every scrap of his story in my hearthfire. My slumber continued unabated

through the next day and night, and early on the following morning I began my homeward journey.

Since that night I’m as a shattered glass fitted back together again; every moment is equal portions heartbreak and joy. I cannot restore William’s happy carefree childish chatter, nor can I amend the tragedy and unjust infamy of Justine’s last days. Nor may I return to the monster’s birth and grant him the care his creator owed him. I cower and break beneath my dreadful secret and inexpiable guilt. And yet, the tender love of Elizabeth and the calm friendship of my other attachments buoys me up until I overflow with gratitude. Every morning I pray that God guide and inform me, that God teach me how I may become useful. “Bend me into a shape pleasing to you, Lord! Make of this failure a tool that serves you fully. And forgive me, please forgive me.”

[To Build a Better Monster #2 explores an alternative to this ending.]

Copyright: AM Watson

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[This section starts a ways into the original’s eighth chapter. The monster has murdered William, and by placing William’s locket in the dress of the sleeping Justine, framed that young woman — dependent and friend of the family Frankenstein. The italicized parts are lifted word-for-word from the original section. The regular font parts are the interventions.]

Chapter 8

…

A murmur of approbation followed Elizabeth’s simple and powerful appeal for Justine, but it was excited by her generous interference, and not in favour of poor Justine, on whom the public indignation was turned with renewed violence, charging her with the blackest ingratitude. She herself wept as Elizabeth spoke, but she did not answer. My own agitation and anguish was extreme during the whole trial. I believed in her innocence; I knew it. Could the dæmon who had (I did not for a minute doubt) murdered my brother also in his hellish sport have betrayed the innocent to death and ignominy? I could not sustain the horror of my situation, but I prayed divine support and guidance as I rose slowly up, determined to rescue Justine from the malevolent force which first my vanity and then my cowardice had unleashed upon the world. I trembled, tottered, found not the strength to unhinge my jaws; I beseeched anew the heavens, begging the blessed influences aid not me, undeserving wretch and bungler that I had become, but rather I prayed, “Oh, great God!, Make of me a vessel through which you would defend the unjustly maligned Justine! Destroy what is base in me, mold me to your purposes before it is too late!”

Thus steeled against my lower impulses, I cleared my throat and listened as my voice rang out:

“If it please the court! My name is Victor Frankenstein. William was and always will be my brother. Justine I have always and still now do trust with my life. Her possession of a trinket she might, at any time in the last several years, have easily purloined without risk of violence or suspicion; proves only that the impossible is here at work: Some crazed monster has murdered one innocent child and framed another one. It is true that we have not discovered the identity or motive of the true culprit; but if we pretend that the miniature demonstrates Justine’s guilt rather than the existence of a third participant, we merely exchange one impossibly strange conjecture for another. And, further, can someone satisfy me in this detail, one that I find strangely absent from these proceedings: Can anyone present here today describe to this court the evil wound that ended my brother’s happy, generous, playful existence? If someone could please candidly speak on this difficult matter —”

Slowly my father rose, his eyes red with sad and angry tears and his voice hoarse at my betrayal, “his windpipe was crushed! Closed and flattened like a slip of paper! That’s what happened to your brother! That is why we are here! This is the crime on trial!” Tottering he sank slowly back to his seat.

“Justine, how much do you weigh?”

“Sir?”, she began with large incredulous eyes. But immediately her eyes narrowed and brow furrowed in thoughtful understanding. “I weigh 92 pounds.”

“Justine is a small person, a young woman scarcely larger than my brother William. For her to overpower and kill William would be difficult. And she is not in any case strong enough to effect the fatal injury, which was clearly the work of a big, powerful man with large vice-like hands; not of a tiny girl. The pertinent question here is this: how can we find the man responsible for this crime? We know very little about him save that he wields tremendous physical strength. And that, to all appearances, he is cruelly insane. And, finally, that he was in the hollow when William died and quite likely — for what other supposition is left us? — in the barn when Justine slept.”

The courthouse erupted in a confused whirr of gasps and murmurs. The lead judge banged and called for order, which had little impact on the disorder, but which did cause all the chattering attendees to, for the briefest interval, cock one inquisitive eye towards his honorableness. Chaos reigned. And then occurred a most miraculous and wonderful event. The owner of the barn jumped to his feet, wringing his hat in his hands, bulbous pocked nose twitching, a grimace on his ruddy weatherworn face, “I, I, I ha ha have ss suh some something to s-s-s-say!” he stuttered, eyes shut in concentration and embarrassment. At length, through the heavy impediment for which he was known and because of which his wife generally spoke for the both of them, the shy stutterer gave his testimony.

Until hearing my speech, he’d not considered the matter relevant, as he’d not seen the giant near the barn but rather out in the field, and then not on the day of the murder but the day before, and then again not up close but from afar; but now he realizes that it had of course all along been his solemn civic and religious duty to report the appearance of a stranger so near in time and space to the heinous crime. A man uncommon large, so large and ill-formed that this witness could with conviction maintain that he, for one, had never before laid eyes upon the fellow.

Everyone began talking at once. My father caved forward, hands in his face, bawling. Elizabeth rested her hand lightly on his back. Justine’s shoulders curved inward like a rose closing in upon itself. A pained melancholy creased her soft shining slightly-bowed face, but still she looked towards me and caught my eye with her tearfully grateful ones.

A surge of malicious vindictive rage tore through me. Now! Now I had my mob! Now I had my weapon! Now I had my revenge! But as I cleared my throat to condemn the monster, a sudden wariness seized me by the shoulders, telling me that my cause could only be won within the bounds of just law and fair practice. “We do not know whether or not the man witnessed by M. Lemaitre murdered William, but we must do what we can to find and question him. And we should not detain Mme Moritz, for even had no one sighted another suspect near this place of infamy, she lacks the bodily might — to say nothing of her sweet and gentle temperament — of our murderer.”

In light of these new circumstances, the court declared Justine innocent of all charges. Elizabeth embraced her, both sets of tiny shoulders convulsing in the exhausted sobs of one who can endure no more. My father and brother stood perfectly upright, as if lightning struck, heads bent ever so slightly back, giant dazed eyes tending heavenward. Eventually my father, eyes downcast and lips and brow pursed, offered Justine his hand and his apology, intoning three times his shame at his previous conduct.

My head spun like a faltering top. My thoughts were swirling ghost ships of strangely luminescent pastels. Choked nausea scorched my chest and my breath suffocated within itself. I knew that no one in my family or indeed the world would be safe until the monster lay vanquished; but how could we hope to prevail over a superhuman demon?

I know not from what hidden stores of fortitude and willpower my resolve came, but I resisted the temptation to stagger silently home and into my bed; and instead informed my family members that, adverse to further excitements though we all surely were, we must now fly home and convene immediately behind double-bolted doors, from which stronghold I should relate information critical to our safety.

Once safely barricaded in the study, I drew them to the corner furthest from the door. Considering the actual facts too incredible, I explained merely that, though not currently at liberty to reveal all particulars, I had good reason to believe I knew the giant in question, and, further, that he was both deranged and brutally disposed towards myself and any I held dear.

Even this greatly abridged account was met with confused disbelief.

“But Victor!”, began my father, “You were three days’ journey from here when we lost William! Are we to believe this man discovered the whereabouts of your home, journeyed here alone, for days concealed his great bulk from us whilst lurking, awaiting a favorable opportunity; eventually found one and so crushed the windpipe of our dear William, a mere lad innocent of any offense and hitherto unknown to the fiend; and finally, having not yet acquired his fill of evil absurdities and ridiculous improbabilities, located and framed the wandering Justine? It’s all too fantastical!”

I consented that it was indeed impossible and yet at least some portion of that uncanny scenario had indeed transpired; for the behemoth had been seen by both myself and M. Lemaitre, and what other than the monster’s inhuman grip could have robbed William of his life and us our happiness?

After much deliberation, we agreed that the family — each of us at all times armed with pistol, knife, and cudgel — should live exclusively in the back guest house, with armed guards stationed liberally throughout our property. We swore a solemn oath to a simple and straight-forward command: If anyone over seven feet tall attempts to enter the property, shoot him dead.

Then passed the most miserable 40 days of my life. At every rustling, every thud, every creak and groan, my bowels twitched, fingers quivered over my pistol; mouth and throat became a desert, eyes a seastorm. Elizabeth tried to comfort me, but her boundless generosity and matchless beauty only intensified my torments: this angel, this godsend, this gift for which any man would be eternally grateful, this I had ignored, overlooked, as good as scorned that I might more heedlessly pursue my vain, unconsidered, hollow ambitions! She and all the others I now risked. And William I could never bring back. That stain on our happiness was not to be expunged. For no reason worth the name, I’d sacrificed my family’s blissful togetherness, permanently marring our blessed estate. True and just as they were, I fought against such debilitating reflections with all my might; in the future, I promised myself, there’d be time enough for self-reproach; but duty now demanded I concentrate solely upon the immediate security of my remaining family members.

On the 40th night of our vigil I was awoken in the middle of a thunder-split, downpouring night by a terrible clatter on the rooftop. I rang the large bell hanging beside my bedside, threw on my clothes, stuffed a dagger in my boot and two loaded pistols in my belt, picked up a cudgel and went out to the hallway to await the others. With all assembled and accounted for, we dispatched two guards to the roof, four more to secure the perimeter, and the remaining six took their places next to the windows and doors of the parlor, surrounding the family, with Ernst, my father, and myself in turn surrounding Elizabeth and Justine.

An aeon journeyed its semi-eternal course as we waited in hushed, panting, expectant silence. I felt the adventures of my life funneled as if through a whirlpool into this one dread moment within which lay my fate. Succeeding here I might perhaps yet bury my heart in the affections of human society and become again linked to the chain of existence from which my crime and its consequences had divorced me. Failing here, on the contrary, meant certain and irrevocable defeat, my eternal banishment from human faith and joy.

Suddenly with a tremendous crash and clatter the monster exploded through the shattering glass, tossed my father into the chimney, and, with Elizabeth scooped in one arm and Ernst in another, dashed towards the door. Pistols were worse than useless; they were more likely to destroy Elizabeth or Ernst than the monster shielded behind their writhing bodies. I stood in helpless dazed dismay, weapons at my side.

All would’ve been lost, but that Ernst and Elizabeth were yet armed. The former’s dagger found the monster’s side as the latter’s crudgel whacked his kneecap. He stumbled into a sofa and Ernst managed to get free. The fiend, however, still held Elizabeth in his vicelike grasp. With a cruel, twisted smirk he reached for her throat.

And was this how it should end? Would my creation yet wrest my beating heart from out my chest? For was it not my very heart, soul, redemption, and reason whose end he now prepared?

Valiant Elizabeth squirmed to one side and, illumined as if by lightning flash, I saw my opening. I lunged with dagger forward and, finding a small portion of the menace’s lower abdomen momentarily exposed, plunged in my knife with a crazed war-whoop. The monster howled and I struck his jaw with my fist, wherein lay concentrated the fury and desperation of all I’d done and suffered. The combined attacks were enough to momentarily loose the wretch from his intention, and I tumbled with Elizabeth backwards, away from our enemy.

The guards filled the monster with two volleys of pistol fire, and when the smoke had cleared, a great bleeding carcass with screwed-up eyes and twisted mouth sprawled across the beautiful Egyptian rug purchased by my great grandfather, a merchant and adventurer not insensible to the good opinion of the Ottomans.

Our casualties were slight. My father’s dislocated shoulder and broken arm we soon set right. Ernst and Elizabeth were battered and bruised, but only superficially. My fist had turned to iron while bestowing the miraculous blow that subdued our foe; I was unscathed.

For nearly a week silence reigned. Elizabeth and I held each other without exchanging five sentences. My father directed and thanked guards and servants, but greeted his kin with only a thin, gentle but exhausted and retreating smile. Ernst too kept his own counsel. The monster I in my mad ambition and heedless pride had constructed and ensouled our servants buried in a deep unmarked grave beside a weeping willow where I as a youth had spent many a happy hour stretched on my back, dreaming of healing potions and benevolent transmutations.

Five days after our near deaths, my father called me into his study.

“Victor, I do not want to disturb what little peace you’ve regained, but your family has a right and a need to know what stole our easy peace and carefree days.”

All color drained my face. Steadying myself on my father’s ancient mahogany writing desk, I responded with a slow and downcast nod.

. . . .

Was this monster more the product of my careless, arrogant, selfish science; or my stingy, fearful, selfish heart?

What did we kill that night? An enraged, confused beast? A mindless machine? A wounded, outraged man?

I cannot answer these and many other questions. I must wait a lifetime ere I know the full list and extent of my crimes.

Full virtue and happiness belongs only to those wise and/or lucky enough to do no harm. That complete satisfaction of the soul in nature I’ve forfeited. But please, God, take what is left of me and use it to your purpose — always, come what may, amen.

[Return to original Frankenstein: Middle of Chapter 8]

Copyright: Andrew Watson

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[This section starts at the end of the original’s sixteenth chapter. The monster had demanded Frankenstein meet him in the mountains and is relating his adventures to Frankenstein. The italicized parts are lifted word-for-word from the original section. The regular font parts are the interventions.]

[Intervener’s Plea: For this one, the reader is urged to imagine a more measured and less coercive beginning to this conversation between Victor Frankenstein and his creation. They met in the icy mountaintops, and the monster bounded with superhuman strides up to Victor, but the monster’s entreaties were much more gentle. He begged an audience and that Victor hear his tale to the end. But he did not threaten Victor. Also: William did not die.]

Chapter 16

…

“But my toils now drew near a close, and in two months from this time I reached the environs of Geneva.

“It was evening when I arrived, and I retired to a hiding-place among the fields that surround it to meditate in what manner I should apply to you. I was oppressed by fatigue and hunger and far too unhappy to enjoy the gentle breezes of evening or the prospect of the sun setting behind the stupendous mountains of Jura.

“At this time a slight sleep relieved me from the pain of reflection, which was disturbed by the approach of a beautiful child, who came running into the recess I had chosen, with all the sportiveness of infancy. Suddenly, as I gazed on him, an idea seized me that this little creature was unprejudiced and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity. If, therefore, I could seize him and educate him as my companion and friend, I should not be so desolate in this peopled earth.

“Urged by this impulse, I seized on the boy as he passed and drew him towards me. As soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before his eyes and uttered a shrill scream; I drew his hand forcibly from his face and said, ‘Child, what is the meaning of this? I do not intend to hurt you; listen to me.’

“He struggled violently. ‘Let me go,’ he cried; ‘monster! Ugly wretch! You wish to eat me and tear me to pieces. You are an ogre. Let me go, or I will tell my papa.’

“‘Boy, you will never see your father again; you must come with me.’

“‘Hideous monster! Let me go. My papa is a syndic—he is M. Frankenstein — he will punish you. You dare not keep me.’

“‘Frankenstein! It can’t be!’ With thumb and forefinger on either side of his thin shoulder, I raised the struggling waif up until his eyes met mine. “‘Be silent boy, I must think!’

“Yet the child kicked, struggled and abused me with epithets which carried despair to my heart. A rush of venomous and sickly anger tore through my chest. I felt my diverse, confused and disorganizedly careening passions overwhelmed and led — as a tidal wave overtakes and commands any and all rivers, streams, ponds and puddles in its path — by a sudden hateful impulse to shake him silent. However, in tandem with that dreadful urge grew a dreadful calm. I perceived as if illuminated by a lightning flash the full certainty of my power over his life. The awful truth of my strength struck me as David’s stone upon Goliath’s skull. Queasy, weak, and lightheaded, I lowered the writhing boy slowly down to earth, and, bending low upon a knee while holding him now only ever so softly by his still resisting shoulder, I told him what he had taught me.

“‘You are too young to understand the cruelty of your words. Nor can I communicate to you, a small and frightened child, how forlorn and desperate I’ve become, how bereft of human comfort and support I have existed and how completely that trial has shattered my soul, twisted my thought, broken my heart. But now for the first I perceive what human beings find so unforgivable in my aspect.

“‘Ugliness they can forgive. A misshapen back, a crooked skull, crudely cobbled-together flesh — all these deformities instinctively elicit sensations of disgust and repugnance, and only the wisest exemplars of humanity possess a purity capable of entirely ignoring my appearance and, untainted by scornful contempt or a jeering self-congratulatory pity, observe the tender heart and ancient soul — for all souls reflect that ancient light which animates and ennobles all creatural watching — within this crooked hull chest. Yet ugliness alone were not sufficient grounds to effect my banishment from human society; and in time, as people grew acclimated to my hideous shape, the initial shock would fade, I would appear to them less hideous, and should receive some measure of sympathy and human fellowship.’

“The boy grew quiet and still, his scowling eyes having grown wider and softer. Watching me now with interest and heart-participation, I saw that already I’d become more than a soulless ogre to him. ‘What humans cannot forgive me is my terrific size and stupendous strength. Therein lies my monsterdom, therein my curse. Go now, small person. I apologize for detaining and disturbing you. Tell your Victor that his monster is a monster no more. Tell him no matter how inhumanely humans use me, I will not relinquish that within which raises me above the wild beasts.

“‘How close I had come to forfeiting what is noble in myself! And why? Because others had not seen it in me, and — fearing what they can neither control nor understand — had panicked, and from base salamander-like wrigglings and writhings of the soul, twisted their centers away from their own bright watchful soullight. Unmoored by their cowardice from the indwelling insight which would’ve permitted them, if they’d but hold a moment’s peace, to perceive — look into my eyes, boy Frankenstein, and judge for yourself! — that same ethereal light shining in and through me!

“‘Irony of ironies: to sacrifice wondrous beauty in myself because others had lost sight of the same, of our shared — for the light pervades all things and thus in all thinking things does it giggle exultingly forth in selfless self-knowledge — birthright! To surrender my dearest treasure because my physicality had induced others to pretend I did not already possess it! Does not the very pain I felt at their ignorance of my soul-light prove that I recognize it as the most essential and vital aspect of my being?! Sheer madness, then, to answer their soul-squelching cruelty with my own!

“‘No, young Frankenstein, I’ll not forfeit my birthright, but will guard and nurture it jealously with all my heart, mind, and soul. I had thought nothing mattered so much to me as human confidence and human friendship, but now I see those things are only valuable if humans are valuable, and we human-type creatures — we wide open plains wherethrough the raucous winds of soul-light tumble and roll, laughing and playing in their infinite frolics — are precious because we have the scope to perceive, follow, and ultimately in some sense and to some extent be the aware active love shining through all things. This soul-light, this boundless overflowing love — witness now my testimony, child — is the root of all mind and all matter, and as such, must forever remain the shared core of all conscious creatures.’

“The boy, his shoulder long since free, but caught now on my thoughtful, tender-turned eyes — watery, ill-fitting and poorly matched to their sockets as they may well be — stood for a space in silence, until, confident my speech had ended and it was now wont for his to begin, gave his reply,

“‘I don’t know who or what you are, or how you know of Victor, but I will tell him I have met you and you are not a bad ogre, but a gentle one, and not even an ogre at all, but a human being, however humongous and misbegotten your form. But what, sir, is your name?’

“‘Victor will know me only as his monster, but tell him I’d prefer another appellation. Something classy that rings fine when announced at a formal dinner; but also relaxed and homey. M. Ogre, perhaps?

“‘I will tell him that his friend M. Samuel L’Ogre sends his regards.’

“‘Samuel?’’

“‘Yes, from the Bible. Hannah prayed for a son and promised God that if He would honor her prayer, her son would live as a Nazirite and serve God all his life long.’

“‘Samuel, then, Samuel Nazirite L’Ogre — from the Bible.’

“For some days I haunted the spot of these scenes, sometimes wishing to see you, sometimes vainly hoping the boy would return and share with me something of your world. At length I wandered towards these mountains, and have ranged through their immense recesses, revolving the ten million thoughts inside my all-searching, all-sounding mind.”

Here he ceased his tale, and a glance in his eyes assured me that I’d fulfilled his request and was free to reply.

“I knew my mistake and your grace the very moment I glanced my father’s mention of William’s incredible fancy — a tale my father was at pains to disavow, explaining that he included the strange anecdote for my brother’s appeasement, and only secondarily in the most likely barren hope that I might hold a clue to this confounding and slightly disturbing riddle.

“I am a young man. Too young, uninformed, and unwise for what I wrought in creating you — a living, breathing, thinking being. My notes will have informed you that not so much my conscious intellect drove my work, but rather a kind of demonic or fiendish lust for knowledge; or, better said: lust for victory, disguised to myself as a quest for knowledge. Is it any wonder, then, that my mind, feverish and self-obsessed as it was, rejected you with shallow, cowardly judgements?

“I ask your forgiveness and forbearance for my conduct, and entreat you to join me in my home. Come meet my family. Let us be the family you have longed for. I am not your father, but merely a poor fool that, driven by a wild inhuman and inhumane fever, stumbled across a means for animating lifeless matter. Some might joke that that’s true of many a biological father as well! Be that as it may, and setting all vulgar humor decidedly aside: I was out of my head and beyond my senses when I created you.

“Indeed, as I’ve previously intimidated, I’m often persuaded that you were built not so much by me as by a demonic urge which prowls always in the shadowy recesses of consciousness to haunt the soul of man and which for some months conquered my truer self — or, in the language of your elegant metaphysics, diverted my inner watching away from the light that loves. As such, and especially considering how cheaply and rudely I behaved towards you from the moment of your birth, I’ve no right to call you a son; but perhaps, in time, through patient devotion and earnest effort, I will win the right to call you my brother.”

“Your words are sincere and are gratefully accepted” was his simple reply, and the beginning of our work together, the most wonderful and fortunate collaboration of my life.

What a miraculous, multi-soul salvation has the invisible yet all-pervading divinity here effected! A soul caught within blind animal rage and lustful raving, trapped within the mere happenstance of the merely wild; a heart abandoned, a mind untutored, a spirit splintered. Here the divine triumphed; this cruelly outraged, mangled soul was seized by divine grace, was coaxed towards aware clear conscious thought and action, towards the Good — which is in no wise random, but rather abides in the eternal and infinite necessity of Loving Kindness and Gentle Wisdom! And this grace, extended to one I’d blithely deserted, travelled then through the offended one back into me, the villain, granting me an undeserved but gratefully accepted salvation. For I’d known I had been wrong but had not recognized in what manner nor to what degree.

Intervention authored by Bartleby Willard, edited by Amble Whistletown, and copyrighted by Andy Watson

[Return to original Frankenstein: End of Chapter 16]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[This section starts at the end of the original’s fifteenth chapter. I guess it would take the place of the original’s sixteenth chapter. The italicized parts are lifted word-for-word from the original section. The regular font parts are the interventions.]

Chapter 15

“The old man paused and then continued, ‘If you will unreservedly confide to me the particulars of your tale, I perhaps may be of use in undeceiving them. I am blind and cannot judge of your countenance, but there is something in your words which persuades me that you are sincere. I am poor and an exile, but it will afford me true pleasure to be in any way serviceable to a human creature.’

“‘Excellent man! I thank you and accept your generous offer. You raise me from the dust by this kindness; and I trust that, by your aid, I shall not be driven from the society and sympathy of your fellow creatures.’

“‘Heaven forbid! Even if you were really criminal, for that can only drive you to desperation, and not instigate you to virtue. I also am unfortunate; I and my family have been condemned, although innocent; judge, therefore, if I do not feel for your misfortunes.’

“‘How can I thank you, my best and only benefactor? From your lips first have I heard the voice of kindness directed towards me; I shall be for ever grateful; and your present humanity assures me of success with those friends whom I am on the point of meeting.’

“‘May I know the names and residence of those friends?’

“I paused. This, I thought, was the moment of decision, which was to rob me of or bestow happiness on me for ever. I struggled vainly for firmness sufficient to answer him, but the effort destroyed all my remaining strength; I sank on the chair and sobbed aloud. At that moment I heard the steps of my younger protectors. I had not a moment to lose, but seizing the hand of the old man, I cried, ‘Now is the time! Save and protect me! You and your family are the friends whom I seek. Do not you desert me in the hour of trial!’

“‘Great God!’ exclaimed the old man. ‘Who are you?’

“At that instant the cottage door was opened, and Felix, Safie, and Agatha entered. Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me? Agatha fainted, and Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung, in a transport of fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick. I might have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope. But my heart sank within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained from any movement. His blows had but little effect on my frame, but each angry, snarling attack shattered my heart into a finer and finer dust. After a time, I turned to watch him ready the next blow, and, though overcome by pain and anguish, found the strength to raises my hand and hold the stick aloft. He howled with eyes crazed and terrified like a hounded cat. I averted my head and wept bitterly into the crook of my free arm.”

“‘Felix!, what is going on?’ demanded the old man in a firm but calm and even voice. “A monster, father! The monster! Are you alright? I saw him attack you. But …”

“‘He did not attack me. He requested my protection; our protection. And now?’”

“I looked up, tears soaking my coarse, uneven features. I felt Safie’s tiny hand on my lumpy shoulder. I saw Felix’s rage turn to mystification. ‘What are you?’, he implored of me, ‘What are you?’

“‘I don’t know!’ I cried, ‘I don’t know! But I am lonely.’

“The old man leaned towards my voice, ‘You have come in peace. You have not harmed us. You do not deserve violence and you will get no more violence from us.’

“‘Oh thank you!,’ I gushed. ‘Thank you!’ The heavens opened before me; God’s dove descended: I was permitted inside the kingdom of human fellowship and would henceforth be a man among men; no longer must I wander the world alone. Though Felix had landed his blows with ten times the strength he otherwise possessed, they had scarcely stung my thick hide and square bulk. One touch from Safie’s soft, sympathetic hand, then gently patting my shoulder, would’ve been ample recompense for a thousand such hen pecks. As I rolled off of my side and sat upright, Felix offered me his hand, still trembling with emotion, in an awkward but sincere apology.

I felt finally free, infinitely more free than any wild roaming animal or heedless berserker — I was free to know and be known by human hearts and minds; free to share myself with others and so expand my being into the collective conversation and endeavor, free to accept my responsibility and stand by my word, free to be a human person.

“‘Where did you come from, friend?’ Asked the old man.

“‘You’ll not believe the truth I have to tell! But let your sighted relatives describe my countenance, and perhaps then will you will credit the possibility of my impossible story: I was not born, but wrought by a human mind and hand.’

“‘What? How can that be? Let me feel your face. Let me try to understand.’

“I slowly rose to my feet, crossed the space in a stride, and sunk to my knees before him, carefully taking his hands in mine and setting them upon my face. His fingers recoiled in a frantic palsy as they took in the dimensions and contours. ‘I don’t understand this. Who could create such a being? And where is your creator now? I do not understand.’

“I retreated to the empty wall half a dozen feet from the blind man; and, seated on the wooden floor, back against the plaster wall, I pulled out your notes and reached them in Alex’s direction, ‘If you could be so kind as to read these notes written by my creator.’

“As Alex read your notes aloud, a somber hush settled over the cozy room. I could not lift my bowed head, so heavily weighed the shame of your disapprobation. Alex’s voice wavered and he paused as he reached your exclamations of disgust, your complete rejection and disavowal of me, your creation. I looked up and saw his gentle eyes sparkling, searching me questioningly, asking if he should continue. I responded with one small nod, jaw set, hands upon my knees, heart again snapped in two and gut once more kicked through my skull. Agatha sobbed. Safie stood motionless and completely silent; for a moment I wondered if she’d departed; but when I glanced up towards her, I saw a wide river of tears running over her beautiful, golden brown, heart-shaped face.

“I began to feel what it is to have one’s sorrows felt and shared by one’s fellows. I began to feel what it was not to be pitied — for pity is just a tender form of abhorrence — but to be sympathized with, accepted and cared for. My agony did not evaporate, but rather flooded out of me in all directions, becoming at once wider and thinner. No longer would I own only my own emotions. It is in the compassionate sharing of emotions — by gently sharing of mind and heart — that humans together transcend the human.

“And so began my life as a man. I’d received life from you, but no acceptance, no fellowship, no caring, no humanity.

“I consider no sacrifice too great for Safie, Agatha, Felix, and the kind old man. Owing to their generous natures and relatively comfortable arrangement, they’ve asked nothing of me but my company. I therefore considered it my first and foremost mission to discover a means by which I could improve their lot. Gardening, building projects, animal

husbandry, all manner of rough outdoors work I gladly perform for my protectors. But, in time, having discovered that my mental capacities also far outstrip the usual scope of human endowments, I’ve studied skills useful to Felix’s fledgling trading business, and it is the greatest pride of my life to know that here I am truly of assistance and that my assistance is sincerely appreciated. For it is not just fellowship and camaraderie that makes one a human, but also mutual service and collaboration.

“I’ve made this pilgrimage not to ask acceptance or friendship of you, goods I can neither desire nor trust; but only to inform you of these few essential facts: I live, I am well, your notes have been destroyed. I hold no resentment towards you, who I now understand as merely one man within a world of men. Would I have behaved more kindly to you had our roles been reversed, had I been creator and you creature? I cannot answer this, and I shall not judge you.”

The monster said no more, and I looked into his large scarred face, eyes too small and loose inside deep cadaveresque sockets, tightly closed lips like two beams charred black, the shape of his giant head pocked and dented by my unartful patchwork. I could, I thought, improve his appearance. Given a few weeks to plan and execute, I might make that face more handsome than grotesque, those limbs passably well-formed and free-flowing. His great bulk precluded a fully normal appearance, but loathsome he must not be.

He seemed to read my mind, for he gave a low laugh, and said, “I ask nothing more of you. You’ve done your baser, earthy work, Felix and his family have performed their higher, holier service, and I am satisfied with the outcome.”

Realizing that he’d not once mentioned his name, I asked him what his friends call him. “Jules — named for a friend of Agatha’s who died young, and who had also been a particular favorite of the family. A name is a magical thing. It is merely a few sounds and a scribblings, yet somehow it becomes you — it grows to describe you perfectly, to answer exactly and definitively for you. A name is a magic talisman with which even the most hideous wretch has a home in human hearts. A name — no you did not grant me that much.”

“Jules, asking your forgiveness is too grand a request. But I do beg your leniency, and I hereby pledge you and your friends my aid, should the need ever arise.’’

His head tilted to one side, lips puckering, eyes narrowing in consideration. For the first time in our conversation his kneaded brow relaxed and a gentle smile flickered up to

claim his face, filling it with merry crinkles until almost handsome, and certainly, I owed, much more his own than any I could now craft. I saw for the first time beyond the melodrama of my earlier recriminations of myself and my monster: I had erred. I’d abandoned my responsibility and endangered this unique and sensitive being and the world for which I’d failed to prepare him. But the world is more than Victor Frankenstein, and for this I am forever grateful.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: Andrew Mackenzie Watson

[Return to original Frankenstein: Beginning of Chapter 16]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

[This section starts at the end of the original’s third chapter, and continues through the original’s fourth chapter. The italicized parts are lifted word-for-word from the original section. The regular font parts are the interventions.]

Chapter 3

…

“The ancient teachers of this science,” said M. Waldman, “promised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pour over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.”

Such were the professor’s words — rather let me say such the words of the fate — enounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being; chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein — more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.
I closed not my eyes that night. My internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil; I felt that order would thence arise, but I had no power to produce it. By degrees, after the morning’s dawn, sleep came. I awoke, and my yesternight’s thoughts were as a dream. There only remained a resolution to return to my ancient studies and to devote myself to a science for which I believed myself to possess a natural talent. On the same day I paid M. Waldman a visit.

. . . . .

“I am happy,” said M. Waldman, “to have gained a disciple; and if your application equals your ability, I have no doubt of your success. Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made; it is on that account that I have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time, I have not neglected the other branches of science. A man would make but a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone. If your wish is to become really a man of science and not merely a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics.”

He then took me into his laboratory and explained to me the uses of his various machines, instructing me as to what I ought to procure and promising me the use of his own when I should have advanced far enough in the science not to derange their mechanism. He also gave me the list of books which I had requested, and I took my leave. As I turned, he cleared his throat, bringing me back round. “A final thought — one I wish I’d received at your age, as I believe it would have spared me many years of wasted effort, and at least one great regret.” Involuntarily I clenched my fists, ready to steel and shield myself against any wisdom, be it ever so sound, that might dissuade me from my fixed purpose. Forcing a grin of expectant interest, I steadied my wobbling eyes and met his gentle gaze.

“Always remember that science — indeed anything — has value only because True Goodness exists, endowing this earthly life with a spiritual — and thus solid and nonrelative — meaning. Moreover, True Goodness’s most fundamental Knowledge is that we are here to be kind to one another, help one another, enjoy one another’s company and together make life better for everyone. Any action contrary to this principle is self-defeating. Knowledge for its own sake is as useless as it is impossible: useless because only ideas and actions grounded in aware, clear, honest, competent kindness add anything to an individual life or to the totality of human lives; impossible because the only completely True and useful human knowledge is an in-dwelling Knowing Light of infinite kindness that — to the extent one nurtures and heeds this most sacred of human birthrights — wisely arranges all thoughts and actions around its benevolent designs. Absent a loving heart, no undertaking has any meaning, for the meaning of life — the only meaning that could ever be truly meaningful to any human — is a loving heart.”

I relaxed my fists. The tension trickled out my shoulders. Sound advice! Nothing new, but smartly and charmingly phrased. I thanked him for his counsel and time, and left for the open air, bright and dry.

Thus ended a day memorable to me; it decided my future destiny.

[Go to the original Frankenstein: Beginning of Chapter 4]

Chapter 4

From this day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the most comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation.

. . . . .

As I applied so closely, it may be easily conceived that my progress was rapid. My ardour was indeed the astonishment of the students, and my proficiency that of the masters.

. . . . .

When I had arrived at this point and had become as well acquainted with the theory and practice of natural philosophy as depended on the lessons of any of the professors at Ingolstadt, my residence there being no longer conducive to my improvements, I thought of returning to my friends and my native town, when an incident happened that protracted my stay.

One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life. Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery; yet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. I revolved these circumstances in my mind and determined thenceforth to apply myself more particularly to those branches of natural philosophy which relate to physiology.

. . . . . .

Remember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not more certainly shine in the heavens than that which I now affirm is true. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the discovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.

. . . . . .

No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs. Pursuing these reflections, I thought that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption.

These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of certainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or the next hour might realise. One secret which I alone possessed was the hope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.

Yet M. Waldman’s advice never completely departed, but rather lined the back of my thoughts, glowing, however faintly, like a beacon of safe haven through the mad fevers swamping my sobriety and overturning my humanity. As if imbued with a gravity of goodness, his words pulled me all the while gently back to my better, truer self.

One day I found myself powerless to quit my bed. My body seemed an infinite mass, no more capable of relocation than a mountain. I saw in my mind’s eye the half-assembled pieces of my creation likewise strapped onto its gurney. My mind reeled, recoiling from my gorey work and drifting involuntarily over paths long banished: recollections of my loving family; the beauty of certain walks enjoyed in earlier youth; the duty, consistency and support of my parents and mentors; and of the wholesome and abiding pleasure of real friendship, which I had once considered the most precious and sacred of my many earthly blessings, but which I had now, for the sake of my macabre ambitions, scorned as an unacceptable interruption.

Fessled thus inside an internal rebellion against the mania imposed by my heedless hubris, which I then recognized as a much more external and less vital aspect of my totality, and floating in an inundation of heretofore suppressed wholesome and gentle thoughts, M. Waldman’s words began circulating around and around as if written out and hovering above my head:

“Knowledge for its own sake is as useless as it is impossible. Absent a loving heart, no undertaking has any meaning, for the meaning of life is a loving heart.”
I began to consider the prospect of a day outside my attic laboratory. Immediately the possibility overwhelmed my senses with joyous release; but yet vaguely, as the impossible dreams of free skies and his old familiar haunts might tantalize a condemned man.

Against this manna from heaven I fought, contrary to all sense and decency, to keep myself in chains. Gathering up all my bile and vainglory as if these moral sludges were my true and heroic strength, I forced my mind back upon my glorious work, finding many and sundry arguments why the project at this stage permitted no delay:
What if another were at this very moment on the brink of the same discovery?! Who remembers, what histories celebrate the second to the summit? Or, if that consideration must be dismissed as the vainest of glories: What if, as seemed only too likely, a day of inactivity would exhaust the final reserves of my flagging momentum and turn me irrevocably from my current course of action? Was it desirable, or even forgivable!, to consign years of effort and an incomparable — yes even godlike! — insight to the rubbish heap? Or what if the bodily elements necessary for life were not stored as adequately against decay as I’d thought? What if success or failure hung upon one day’s industry or rest?

However, try as I might, I found I could not sustain these objections. Deeper, wider, wiser reflections continuously reasserted themselves, and gradually I had to concede that the circumstances warranted but one conclusion: a day outside in the fresh air, where my caged soul might breathe free and proclaim itself, however fatal its counsel might prove to my progress. Immediate upon this resolution, the infinitude of mass fell off my body; my limbs again obeyed my commands. I sat bolt upright. A rush of relief and elation convulsed my breast until a torrent of suppressed passions burst through and I folded over in heaving sobs.

Taking a few slices of buttered bread for my breakfast and lunch, I dashed down flights of shaky, creaking, rattling wooden steps. Outside the fresh, sharp, soft spring air worked wonders on my frame. I felt the cool indifference of nature lifting me up, pulling my shoulders up and back, expanding my chest and back, holding my head aloft, uncoiling and relaxing my cramped and angry muscles. I walked quickly, head high, arms swinging, along the wide Danube.

What was this escapade I’d lost myself within? What had I, my family and the world reasonably to hope and fear from my creation? What life would I, crowned with the success I’d so fervently sought, forfeit? Questions long overrun with mindless efforts and fantastical daydreams of only the rosiest and most glorious scenarios now swept irrepressibly through. I opened as best I could towards them, praying God’s good counsel that I might serve what was worthy, preserve what was better, and avoid what was worse.

A human creature made by my own inexpert and unenlightened efforts. A thinking person much larger and more powerful than any such creature ever before formed. Was it not the nature and indeed right of all thinking beings to decide upon their own beliefs, thoughts, aims, and actions? What if my giant chose not to help humans, nor even live peaceably amongst them, but, consequent biological and/or spiritual particulars which I could neither control nor guess, preferred rather to hurt his fellows? For, while my knowledge of ligaments and the gross stuff of organs including minds was sufficient to form a living man, I despaired of ever discovering those principles — if indeed they exist in a scientifically locatable, quantifiable, and controllable fashion! — underlying the manner in which a human’s thoughts fit together.

How does flesh and blood give rise to passions and reasonings, and what then decides how these mental objects hang upon or loose themselves from that kind and gentle fire that M. Waldman rightly named the true and proper center of all human activity? Surely I could not create a new species of thinking creatures without answering these unanswerable riddles — or at least discovering adequate safeguards and protocols; perhaps, for example, if I could be assured that my activity amounted to no more than rearranging the existing, heaven-consecrated raw material of conscious thought and moral life, and that, further, this monster-sized humanoid would be of a calm and peaceable disposition. But where would such assurance be found?

Why had I not given further thought to the dimensions of my monster? Why had I not reflected upon the dangers that his bulk and power posed to himself and others? Through the long months of single-minded toils, I’d implicitly recognized my seething, unreflective, forward-lunging frenzy as the motor of my success; but was any success worth submitting to this state of mind, or to the unknown and unchecked consequences of action without reflection?

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Cæsar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.

I returned to my laboratory. I severed my creation’s limbs from his torso. I removed any trace of sex. I enlarged his brain, heightened his sense of smell, of vision, and hearing. I prayed for a companion whose thought would aid my own. I sought to create a mind so large and even that it would consider a limbless sexless life just as good if not better than a normal one — so devoted would he be to study and contemplation, to a safe and steady application of gentle thought.
With heavy feet I found my way upstairs, collapsed on my bed, fell into a deep deathlike sleep.

I awoke with a deep melancholy seeping through my whole being, weighing my limbs, scarring my throat, tearing my heart. Who was I to give this creature half a life? Who was I to declare it an invalid mystic? Who was I, for that matter, to put either the world or the creature at risk? I found any thought of destroying my work unbearable, like murdering my babe in the womb; and yet, was this murder not the sole means to reliably avoid burdening myself, the world, and this unfortunate creature with consequences that might be the undoing of us all?

What to do? What was the difference between my creature and a thinking machine? Or must a thinking machine — no matter its fabrics and origins — be of necessity no machine at all, but a living, ensouled being? What is thought? How does it relate to the soul? What is the soul? Do we each have our own or do we all partake of the one soul that wears here now the waddle of a duck, here now the violent strides of a warrior, here now the measured pacings of a philosopher?

A man and a woman join to create a child; have their desperate art and mindless secretions more right to a child than my brainstorm? But the question is not so much one of rights as of right and wrong: Does this undertaking help or hinder myself and my fellows? How am I to tally the possible harms against the possible benefits? Most particularly when I admit how greatly my conjectures may fail to anticipate the results of my experiments.

What is our goal? What is the proper goal of we humanthings? To keep to the Light. To live in and through and for the Light that Knows we are all in this together and must treat ourselves and others with respect and kindness, growing together ever more in the joyful wisdom of how to help without hurting, how to love wholly and effectively. And my monster? Frankenstein’s monster? What is its proper place within this noble goal?

I resolved upon another day out of doors. But the sweet soft cool spring air brought no succor. I felt only the loneliness of the past year suddenly all over and through, crushing me; this utter isolation of the spirit had pulverized and wrecked me all along, but now, with no mania monopolizing my attention, I felt myself driven as if by anvil blows into the cold smooth cobblestones. No friends. No love. No clarity. Only blind, raging ambition, detached from all sense of my true and rightful center — that clear kind joy with which all is bearable, and without which nothing is.

I wandered into a cafe to hear the chatter of others. The lively jostling chattering clanking humanity lifted my spirits, buoying me up beyond my immediate hopes and fears. I knew then that my torn and tattered spirit longed for Elizabeth as wildfire longs to snuff itself out upon barren ash; that without reuniting my strength with hers, I possessed no purpose that I could inhabit. We two were bound by a thread more powerful than all my ideas, and in forgetting her for them, I’d ignored that holy power that holds all us humans together. I needed to tell her I loved her and to hold her and be held by her.

Insgold I must flee. Perhaps I could study medicine in Geneva. Perhaps with gestation my ideas might yet yield results useful and safely employable.

I destroyed my work and notes and took the next train home.

Author/Editor of interventions: BW/AW
Copyright of interventions: AM Watson

[Go to the original Frankenstein: Near the end of Chapter 4]

[Fixing Frankenstein chapters]

Of course, of course, of course is Mary Godwin Shelley’s Frankenstein a timeless classic in no need of fixing. However, while reading it I could not shake the sense that it needn’t have turned out so bad for everyone, and that, the story being fictional, there was no reason why gentler, less disturbing outcomes might be sketched at various key points in the action. Such alternative narratives offer several benefits:

1. They allow readers a respite from the pain of the original, completely-tragic version.

2. They remind readers that fiction is fictional and as such is an interactive and malleable tool for examining the human experience. The meaning of Frankenstein cannot be summed up in words or formulas, but is rather comprised of whatever you the reader and Mary Shelley the author together discover within your shared contemplation of her youthful brainstorm.

3. They remind readers of the dreadful power of unchecked narrative. Frankenstein is devastating because Mary Shelley willed it towards catastrophe. Reading it, the reader cannot help but get swept up in the story and come to believe in the inevitability of its progression. But it is an invented story, and with a little tweak here or there the characters could’ve both demonstrated and drawn conclusions from wiser and better ideas and feelings. At many critical points, such tweaks result in completely different stories. Likewise with the stories told to us about our lives, our desires and satisfactions, our world, our political realities, etc etc: often do they sweep down upon us and carry us away with the authority and inevitability of their tone. But this is no proof that they are indeed the necessities we ofttimes imagine them to be.

4. They help us reflect upon what adjustments are required to push the flow of human events away from the wretched and towards the kinder, gentler, more effectively helpful and truly joyful.

5. They’re kind of fun.

This volume contains the entire original Frankenstein, with hypertext jumps to eight alternative trajectories inserted in critical moments of decision and action. Each alternative narrative begins with a slight introduction, which, if need be, also (candidly: nothing is hidden here!) slightly bends the preceding story so that it more snugly segues into our emendation.

If you already know the story backward and forward, you might profitably skip to our contribution to the fun: simply go to the table of contents, find the “Frankenstein Emendations” section, and read the chapters in order.

However, skipping along like that is not particularly encouraged, as we believe there’s beauty in over and over again undoing and then redoing the constituent tragedies of this terrible tragedy. One feels both the wonder of human freedom’s ability to change course for the better, and the terror of the consequences when we fail to use our freedom thusly. It’s neat, and worth contemplatively experiencing.

The introductory letters which provide the setting for the frame story are ignored by all our alternative versions. The frame story assumes the worst and thus begins the story with the tragic outcome that we’re endeavoring to escape; therefore, we cannot possibly accept the frame story. That’s not to say you shouldn’t read these introductory letters; just to inform you that we’ve no intention of abiding by them, and indeed act as if they weren’t there at all. This might create some confusion at the end when the frame story’s gone full circle and the reader is on ship with the doomed letter writer. Here and elsewhere we request that the reader shrug off any inconsistencies like we do: we’re not actually redoing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but merely considering ways in which things might have turned out better.

It seemed to this reader as if a will to tragedy damned the original narrative to the most dismal of outcomes. Maybe it’s a high and fine example of how the tragic flaw of Victor Fankenstein’s hubris cast him down from his high estate into one of abject and utter desolation. But it’s also possible and even kind of pleasant to imagine what would happen if a narrator with an equally desperate bent towards happier resolutions were allowed the reins at critical junctures throughout the book. And that’s the game we here play.

In the final chapters, we imagine the very happiest outcome: Victor Frankenstein, his monster, his monster’s companion, and everyone in Frankenstein’s family and circle are alive and well, and, having learned the secret of avoiding tragedy in their own fictional reality, travel into Goethe’s The Suffering of the Young Werther to rescue Werther from his own self-defeats; followed by a depiction of the evolution of the monster’s companion and the monsters’ courtship; and then the “Fixing Frankenstein” portion of this book concludes with a monster dance.

A note on style: We decided the transition between the original story and our departures should not be jarring, but we didn’t go so far as to try and perfectly match Mary Shelley’s language. It seemed too difficult a goal and that our failures would glare and so detract from the reader’s enjoyment.

A note on the natures of the characters: The characters are fictional and often it feels like the original narrative tweaks them away from clear thought, good sense, and wise kindness; we sometimes take the liberty of tweaking their characters in the opposite direction. The inhabitants of a fiction reveal and shape their characters in their actions, so if we sketch ways in which the characters might have behaved better, we simultaneously sketch improvements to their ways of feeling/thinking/acting (ie: their dispositions/characters/personalities).

Mary Shelley isn’t the only author possessed of a mania for disaster. After we’ve fixed Frankenstein, we do the same for Shakespeare’s King Lear (well, Act 1, Scene 1 of Lear), a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Lewis Carrol’s “Jabberwocky”. You might argue that the latter already had a happy ending, since he slew the Jabberwock, was called a “beamish boy”, and invited into his father’s arms. But here we must disagree: the Jabberwock was murdered because the father’s fear and hatred infected his son’s worldview. What is an evil celebrated as a great good but a moral tragedy atop a tragedy of errors??

This volume ends with a few Abouts:
“About the Originals”, “About the Cover”, and “About the Author & his Works”.

We hope you like the book.
We’re just goofing and kidding around.
But we are also pleading quietly, hunched over our naked toes, rearranging pebbles in a dry creek bed in a forest of bristly pines with twisted red-flaking arms high in the blue-sky Arizona mountains: “oh please, oh please, oh please, a better way for me and you and us and all, oh please, oh please, oh God please … “

Bartleby Willard, Author
Amble Whistletown, Editor

Copyright: Andrew Mackenzie Watson
In this work, all the parts not authored by long-dead famous authors are Copyright Andrew Mackenzie Watson.

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul.

Here take my hand and we’ll go dancing the round.
Time cannot hold the moment where we turn round and round.
I don’t know how to save this world or my own soul
From the fires that leap swirl lick and crunch us down.
But in the scent and sound of you I am clear and I am whole.

They spoke in ancient tongues of a love that is divine —
alive beyond the body’s pulpy, fleshy time.
I don’t know how to heal this world or my own heart
From the mires deep and cool that pull us down the line.
But when your eyes shine into mine I feel a kind’a start;
I catch myself aware, getting ready for my part.

What love is pure and true? What love does fully be?
Bend thy will to mine while I mine to thine. Bend with me.
I don’t know how to speak of love in a way that’s pure enough
to keep us out of harm, out of the twister’s reach.
But when you giggle bright and shiver like a leaf
I know a joy beyond all bounds, beyond all beliefs.

Take this thing that I’ve become, this cloak that I have worn.
Take everything I ever grew. Shake me back to the truth,
back past the hurt that blares, past ribbons lost and torn.
Take me home with you where you are going — let us loose
upon the sprawling wilds, with creatures on all sides.
we’re as a rescued child — no more need of a place to hide.

author/editor: bw/aw
copyright: AM Watson

Long ago, in the days of yore, when mankind was yet young and supple and had not yet firmly established his dominion over nature, in the days of old, when knights rescued princesses from dragons but could not save themselves from the plague,

There lived a beautiful princess in a great castle on a jut of land whose rocky cliffs were night and day assailed by the curling waves of an energetic northern sea. The castle walls were tall and thick and strong, and her father was as just as a petty warlord in an unsettled feudalism could be. That is to say, he didn’t exult in his little bit of power. He was faithful to his wife and took care of his children and was as fair and careful with the lives of his subjects as he thought he could be without endangering their collective safety, which felt always and was indeed always very tentative — touch and go — maybe and maybe not — here today, gone tomorrow — precarious.

A time like this requires real faith. Not in empty symbols and stories about God and man. But a faith in the Light within that alone Knows that and in what way it is True to say we are all in this together.

The princess’s name was _____, and she spent her days in prayer, study, and at needlework and learning how to manage household in expectation of the day when she would be married to a prince worthy of her hand and possessing lands and means worthy of her father’s alliance. She was dainty, shapely, tender little thing. The world seemed to her strange and impossible, but she let it in, let it pretend that it was real.

The politics of the time and place were rather coarse. The princess’s kingdom was on the smaller side, but fortunately quite distant from and — with rather rocky soil and a short growing season surrounded on either side by months and months of short days and cold skies — unattractive to the larger, richer, more powerful and fashionable kingdoms. The big fun of the era was feasting, holding tournaments with jousts and other violent contests, swearing oaths, drinking deep, stuff like that. Political alliances were formed by gifts, oaths, revelry, and, wherever possible, marriages. It was understood that a prince must dream of finding his princess and a princess must dream of finding her prince, and that both must remain true to that ideal until someone, some perfect combination of beauty health virtue and political connection would appear and curtsy prettily or bow courteously. Noble families generally aimed for one son with some kind of warrior political position and one son in the church. The remaining sons were free to pursue wealth as merchants or prestige and connections as lawyerly administrators or honor as knights. A lesser noble family might actually have to settle for a knighthood as their warrior political position. Daughters were married to warrior political figures, clergymen, and, better options lacking and the prospects looking pretty good enough, merchants or lawyerly administrators of noble birth. Things were always changing as they always are, but not so fast and crazy fast like nowadays. So people were able to settle into their roles pretty well, and as the generations wore on they tended to get their sitting britches on and the centuries rolled on.

Of course most people weren’t nobility — they were tradesmen, peasant farmers or common laborers, educated nobodies like scribes, merchants with no titles, or doctors who didn’t really know all that much, or healers who knew a little more, or — and this is not many people — entertainers: musicians, actors, poets, fools. This final category of profession/station either survived by wandering from town to town and pleasing commoners and nobility alike for a few tuppence — or, and this tripped up many an undisciplined minstrel — food and drink; or they thrived by getting themselves installed at one of the grander courts. While it is true that Beyonce & Jay-Z may have gone from poor to a billion dollars in the span of a few decades worth of singing and dancing, the entertainers of this time and place had no such prospects, and no princess in her right mind would spend so much as two seconds dreaming about one of them.

Our princess was gentle, sensible young woman. She dreamed of a prince, but with a certain ambivalence. A prince, a home, a marriage bed, a family, the satisfaction of one’s deepest longings for love, touch, and affection. That would all be heavenly. But how do you know who to dream for? Even a good, strong, wholesome man shaped in body heart and mind to match your stride — even such a man’s love was only as safe as his future. And in this life, life seemed to hang by a thread. How many aunts, uncles, cousins, and more had she already lost to disease, accident, violence? And, anyway, how does one know who one is really getting? How many giddy bridesmaids had she seen grow weary and frustrated by their lot as wife, companion, mother, helpmate? There are things people don’t say aloud, but still the lines around their eyes and mouths and the dash of broken light in their eyes: all this testifies loudly and plainly to any who would be quiet and listen.

The kingdom, being smallish and as we’ve said more secured by its inconvenient location and relative poverty of resources than anything else, had not the resources for a large court. But there was a man, not exactly a young man, but at the time of this telling still a youngish man, employed by the king as a sort of all-purpose courtier. A scribe by training, he made copies of important documents. But how many important documents can a kingdom like this have? And so he had time. Time to copy the Bible. But isn’t that really more for the monks? Time to help out with administration, but that was a delicate balance since the bulk of that activity had to be carried out by noblemen. Time to compose poems and set them to music. And so, among other duties, this young man, well perhaps not quite young, but a man and not old anyway, would play music and read poetry — his own and other more famous works — for the entertainment of the royal family and their guests.

What did he think about it all? He didn’t know what to think. He never had. It had all taken him by surprise and he’d never really adjusted. His arrival had coincided with the princesses’s ascension from a kind of naive girlish womanhood into a more self-possessed young womanhood. Or so he imagined to himself. The truth was he never spoke to her very much and always addressed her as her majesty, and with a bow and eyes that fled the moment after they entered hers — lest they might disclose what he could not contain. He’d always loved her. From that day when, still new at court, he’d been asked to explain to the princess how ballads function.

“Your majesty.”

“Thank you.”

“Your father has communicated to me your wish to examine more closely the nature of common poetic forms, beginning with the ballad.”

“Yes. I enjoy listening to them, but I feel always as if I am missing something.”

“Well, poetry is something of a trick.”

“How do you mean?”

“It follows simple rules. There is no magic involved. And yet by playing upon the body’s natural inclination towards motion and rhythm, and towards passion bounded by order; well — poetry can cast a kind of spell over one.”

“Yes, it mesmerizes.”

“Exactly, but the form more than the content mesmerizes. If the content is also beautiful, then the spell is complete, for beauty also bewitches — because the experience of Beauty is awe at Truth paired with a longing for home and completion.”

“You know much, then, of truth and beauty?”

“Not as much as I’d wish.”

“An empty answer. Who could state the contrary?”

“Indeed. But let us pass on to the ballads. I mustn’t keep her highness from her more essential studies.”

“What could be more essential than Truth and Beauty?”

“Nothing, but neither Truth nor Beauty can be taught, nor even can the knowing of them be quantified. I aim only to explain to your majesty the structure of ballads.”

It was here that it began, but only as a muted confusion — a pinprick of uncertain origin.

But in time!

What is human life that a man can fall completely for a woman while she forms only a soft regard for him? What does it mean that he can stare all night at the darkened ceiling high overhead whispering desperately over and over again to the cold castle airs: “I love you, I love you, I love you” while she falls asleep easily, thinking nothing at all of the man whose soul she’s accidentally split apart?

The years passed. The princess grew more beautiful as she grew wiser and calmer — wider in the scope of her thought and more exacting as to her desires, duties, and abilities. The bachelor courtier had been almost a young man when she arrived but now was not a young man. He had treasured hopes of another sort of life in a larger kingdom, but he’d never been able to decide whether he was supposed to be a poet and accept whatever poverty and loneliness might grow along that quasi-mystical path, or if he was really better suited as an administrator, perhaps with an income that would allow him to marry and enjoy the happiness that comes of living fully as a man — of being a husband and a father. The years passed. He couldn’t anyway pull himself away from the princess and her little kingdom. Though he knew he was wading into the abyss. For someday and it must come soon, someday her prince must come and he must lose her forever instead of just always being without her touch, her answer to his needs, her acceptance of those recesses within the soul shared only husband to wife and wife to husband.

Indeed, suitors came. Men a little or quite little older than the princess. Men of noble birth with titles, treasures, lands. Men well-spoken and yet ready and able to thwack off an opponent’s head while leaning to one side of an armored charger. Men well-spoken, daring, sure of themselves. But some of them also thoughtful, reasonable, able tacticians and organizers of the state. Certain days the princess’s eyes would shine for one man. He seemed the chosen one. And the courtier felt himself dying, accepting the death of all his hopes, understanding that he’d been wrong to hope and always known himself wrong to hope. But then he thought, well, soon it will be over; she will leave and I finally feel the loss that I’ve always pretended wasn’t already mine; I will feel it straight through in the way I never could when she was near and unattached; and then, then I will see what is left of me; perhaps God will more easily guide the empty hull I am becoming than this hopeful fool I have been.” But then for reasons sometimes clear, sometimes guessable, sometimes simply unknown, the princess’s eyes would look impatiently past her dashing would-be lover. The courtier would breathe a sigh of relief, but also feel himself sink down a little deeper into what he now understood to be the defining sin of his life. For people, creatures, kingdoms, the world: everyone and everything needs attention and kindness, needs wisdom and gentle resolve. But all he ever thought about was holding the princess just beyond his reach, was marrying her, being good enough for her, giving her what she needed and accepting from her the love he needed.

One day, in between suitors, the courtier resolved to ask the king for a letter of recommendation to another kingdom where he might be a functionary in a richer king’s larger bureaucracy, hopefully something more than a scrivener and scribe — something more than a copier of other men’s words and a chronicler of other men’s dealings. And then, when he was leaving, he could turn to the princess and tell her that he loved her, and that he knows he cannot be a prince and thus not her husband, but still if she could know that he loves her, then he could accept this fate with equanimity. And that, he thought, that, why that would set him loose upon the world. Perhaps it would help him to move beyond this selfish love that so possessed him. Perhaps God would find space within him, space enough that God might guide his heart, mind, and hand to some deeper purpose than the mere sustenance of his body and the empty exercise of his mind.

Then what happened? I do not know. I can’t watch anything to the end. Every show — no matter how relaxed — is too stressful, awkward, painful to me. I can’t watch anything for very long before I have to escape into another show for another little while. So I don’t know what happened here.

When can a man and woman join together in holy matrimony?
What systems foster goodness?
What systems reward and grow goodness and punish and shrink evil?

Author: Bartleby
Editor: Amble
Copyright: Andy (Watson)

Apparently there’s been some kind of a mix-up.

I wanted to know you.
To marry you.
To be a good choice for you.
I thought maybe I could figure out a way to put it together for you so we could be together and love each other and be happy and safe.
I thought maybe
maybe

But now it feels like I can’t do anything except watch walls of rolling waters rushing to sweep me out to sea.
And I feel so tired.
So sleepy.
And vaguely wrong, or at least refuted — even though my thought is too blurry to follow the proof.

Why does this person end up with that person?
I’ve never understood the process, or the logic.

I try to let the God guide me, but there’s a serious risk of self-deception with that method.
I try to go with what feels right, but there’s a serious risk of self-deception with that method.
I try to tell the truth, but there’s a serious risk of self-deception with that method.

It takes two hearts to make a love story.

The Knight of Faith VERSUS the plain old lunatic VERSUS the self-deluded would-be Romeo VERSUS a nice, wholesome, well-intentioned, good-natured, understandable mix-up.

It must’ve been some kind of a mix-up.

We’ll say it was love, but also a mix-up.
In any case, it’s okay.
I want you to be happy.
I don’t want anything that is not good for you.

The portal is closing.
I have to enter.
They’re expecting me over there.
I love you.

Let’s not say Goodbye or Farewell.
Let’s just remember that all sentient beings are mixed up together forever, and while it might be nice to rest one’s head upon a special somebody’s physical shoulder, we all belong to everyone and no one. We all belong to each other and to God and to the Nothing At All.
Ah! But I sound like a foghorn in the desert!
Goodbye! Farewell!
You, you, oh, but Camus was right when he said that those beings that prick our souls and overwhelm us with beauty, confusion, and longing are great benefactors: You don’t need to win the princess for her to show you what Love is like.

Wait a minute!
I have it now!
We need a system.
Against the Evil.
Pure Love.
We’ll coat the entire enterprise in Pure Love.

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW

I love you. All I want is to love and be loved by you, to give you what you need and get from you what I need. All I want is to be a man while you be a woman. All I want is to know you. To know you better ever moment.

So I see. That I am like the rest.

The world? The people of the world? Everyone in the world? Nuclear Armageddon? The collapse of democracy? The rise of evil regimes where only evil behavior is rewarded? The fulfillment of blind-cynicism’s/-following’s (you alternate as it suits you, don’t you?) promise?

Well, yeah, that’s a shame.

But

All I want is to sneak away from the fray and be safe with you, somewhere nice.

Everyone has their price.

Maybe if the Fates came right out and said, “you either have to serve your family or the needs of the many”, some of us would choose the needs of the many. But the questions are never put to us so simply, and in the end we always just love our little world and let everyone else go down the tubes. We always end up letting things slide to our advantage.

But of course, “your family or the world” is almost always a false dichotomy. Still one can most fundamentally serve Love for all or love for one’s cozy situation and those that make it feel like home; and we all choose the former.

But of course, the most evil comes when we sacrifice the normal, human-sized loves for grand notions. There is perhaps a faith that put the needs of the many above one’s happy little home; but that faith does what it can to preserve one’s happy little home — it isn’t this grandstanding faith that sacrifices kindness towards one’s nearest and dearest for giant daydreams about being RIGHT.

I don’t want you to go. But what is right for you? For me? For us? For everyone else?

I hurt inside. The loneliness eats me from the inside out. I see hear smell sense you and I feel like a drowning man suddenly so close to shore. He panics. He takes on more water in his lungs. He throws his feet down over and over again — they have to hit ground! They just have to. Because he is too tired and confused to swim any further. Anyway, part of him is certain it’s a mirage. After all, he’s seen the shore before only to find out that he hadn’t; or maybe he had but somehow he lost his way from it; or somehow something anyway he’s still out there in slipping over and stumbling beneath the frosty waves.

How can we organize ourselves, our communities, our nations, and our world so that we serve and live in accordance with the Love that, no matter the circumstance, always gently and humbly seeks, finds, and chooses kind shared joy? Does such a wisdom exist? And, if so, how can we organize the structures within which we feel, think, and act so that that wisdom flourishes?

Evil is when systems for feeling/thinking/acting — individuals, groups, communities, governments, etc — make decisions (self-consciously or not) that make feeling/thinking/acting in ways that are aware/clear/honest/accurate/open-hearted/-minded/competent/win-win/kind/sharing/joyful more difficult, more dangerous, and less rewarding.

Doing evil = corrupting systems for feeling/thinking/acting. Evil is discouraging systems from facing, opening up to, and flowing off of the Light within and through all thins — the Lovelight that alone Knows what is going on, what really matters, and how we should behave.

How? How to move away from more evil and towards more good? It must involve being true to the True Good (aka: The Light / Love / you know). But so much evil has been done in the name of this or that name for the True Good.

How to strike the right balance? We must awaredly prioritize is beyond ideas, rules, and deeds. But we must also use ideas, rules, and deeds as boundaries to keep us from getting carried away and mistaking vague conglomerations of feelings and ideas for insights so grand that they justify most anything. How to put God first without forgetting that our ideas and feelings about God are not the same as God?

Bartleby against the Evil!
Bartleby has no chance against the Evil.
He’ll have to change the game.
How?

Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson