FRANKISSSTEIN

The object of the present text is to provide my personal interpretation of Frankissstein, a postmodern novel written by Jeanette Winterson in 2019.

It is not meant to give definitive answers, but I am going to make some possible conjectures about Frankissstein, supported by textual references and textual analysis.

To start with the title, it reminds the novel “Frankenstein” written by Mary Shelley in 1816-1818 , since the title “Frankissstein” is a revisitation of “Frankenstein”. The reader may understand the novel is a science fiction one in which there is the creation of something new, and since the title is formed by the words “Fran”, “kiss” and “Stein”, it provides the reader with the idea that the novel may be a love story between two people.

Moving now to covers, there are a front and a back one; for what concerns the front cover the reader notices that the wallpaper is blue (the color blue could arouse him a mysterious sensation or something unknowable) with red and fuchsia writings; red may refer to blood which is life’s essence, while fuchsia is the symbol of inspiration and sensuality. Moreover, in the front cover of the book there is a white line which may be Frankenstein’s scar covered by three red “X”, which may be stitches to cicatrize, and “a love story” is written smaller to make the reader understand that the love story is not the novel’s main topic. For what concerns the novel’s back cover, the reader has to focus his attention on colours used, which are blue with red and fuchsia writings too, as the front one. An important aspect of the back cover is the quotation “I AM WHAT I AM, BUT WHAT I AM IS NOT ONE THING, NOT ONE GENDER. I LIVE WITH DOUBLENESS”. It makes clear that one of the novel’s main topics is the identity, which is not one and unique since people have multiple identities, which change according to the people they meet and through a web of discourses (as Robin said in “Nice Work” by David Lodge).

Therefore, according to the title and the book’s covers, the intelligent reader understands the novel is a revisitation of “Frankenstein”, consequently it conveys the idea of past influences present and that the novel is a science fiction one which is about the creation of something new. Moreover the reader understand that another novel’s topic is the love story between two people, it is difficult to understand if the two people are a man and a girl or two men or two girls by reading the title and looking at the covers only, as it is difficult to understand that the novel is based on doubleness and duality.

Opening the book, the reader is in front of an introductory quotation, which is “We may lose and we may win though we will never be here again” by Eagles, “Take It Easy”. As it is clear, the quotation belongs to the song “Take It Easy”, written by “Eagles”, a rock band from Los Angeles, born in the Seventeens. The quotation’s meaning may be that life is in people’s mind and during it they could have success or not. Anyway, life starts when you were born and ends when it decides to end, therefore it is impossible to live an eternal life. From the quotation the reader could understand that the novel may be about some tentatives to extend life in order to make people live an eternal life.

Moving now to the novel’s structure, it is organized into two plots: the first one is about J. Winterson’s remake of Mary Shelley’s circumstances during the writing of her novel “Frankenstein”, and in the second one J. Winterson gives voice to Ry Shelley, a transgender doctor who deals with Artificial Intelligence.

There is a parallelism between the two parts which interact in a silent dialogue. The two parts are introduced by subtitles to distinguish them, indeed, during the whole novel they are mixed.

Frankissstein constantly shifts between past and present: Mary Shelley’s part is set in Lake Geneva (in Villa Diodati) between 1816 and 1818, therefore it represents past, while Ry Shelley’s part is set in Great Britain at the time of “Brexit” and across the Atlantic in Phoenix and Arizona in the 21st century, therefore it represent the present.

There is a parallelism between the characters of the two plots too: the main character of the first part is Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein”’s writer. She wrote “Frankenstein” in 1816 when she was at Lake Geneva (Switzerland) from 1816 to 1818 with her husband; with her stepsister Claire Clairmont; Lord Byron, an English politic and poet and Polidori, who was a doctor. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein after a visit to a castle in Geneva with her husband, where a man told them the story of a monster. In her novel the main topic is the creation of a new form of life by Victor Frankenstein; he creates a monster which may be the symbol of people’s scares about new technologies and about new world’s progression. In addition, MARY SHELLEY is a woman who believes in the power of the abstract substance of life, she shows itself through nature, desire, language and she believes in the power soul and mind.

The main character of the second part is Ry Shelley, who is a transgender doctor. His name comes from the last two letters of Mary and it is a name which does not define a sex gender, indeed Ry is a transgender who has to live all his/her life with doubleness; Claire is a secretary; Victor Stein is a cryogenesis scientist and an artificial intelligence doctor who has to find some methods to extend people’s life (as Victor Frankenstein, he has to create new form of life); Lord Ron is a sex robots’ creator which only uses artificial intelligence to have fun and, last but not least, Polly D., who works for Vanity Fair. Moreover, RY SHELLEY is an open-minded transgender attracted and scared at the same time by the unknown and progress, a transgender who makes his body what his soul and his mind want it to be and a transgender who believes in the power of desire, while VICTOR STEIN is a man who believes in human mind’s power and human desires, who wants to make human brain immortal.

Moving now to the narrative techniques and strategies used by Jeanette Winterson, it is clear she used a first person narrator: in the first part J.W gives voice to Mary Shelley, and in the second part she gives voice to Ry Shelley; indeed it is clear she gives voices to the protagonists of her novel; she used a mixture of formal and informal register, which is a postmodernist attitude, in order to make the narration suitable to the context. Also a rhetorical language is used, indeed there are hyperboles, metaphors, similes, alliterations, irony; there are litotes to make concepts clear, to add meaning to narration, to provide a more effective image of the different topics, to allow full comprehension, to create a specific atmosphere and ,last but not least, there is a frequent use of double meaning expressions, in order to convey the doubleness of the novel. Jeanette Winterson used both telling and showing, dialogue and a lot of descriptions to create visual images in the reader’s mind. In addition there is body languages’ exaltation in order to express characters’ emotions, feelings and intentions. The writer uses different expressions according to the situation and words belonging to the semantic fields of sex, science, mystery, innovation. The “stream of consciousness” is present (there isn’t a linear concept of time but a simultaneous one —> the present you live is affected by your past memories and future expectations and you grow up accordingly to your past experiences, you are embedded in a net of discourses, the ones of your family, community, society and circles you live in), self reflexivity, retro, the concept of relativity: every mind is a world and World is made of one’s interpretations of reality.

According to the novel’s topics, the reader may notice that along the whole novel both Mary Shelley and Ry Shelley ask themselves the same essential questions about life such as “How are men and women different?”, “Is reality concrete or is it just a human mind interpretation?”, “How can A.I. help human beings?”, “Is man the possessor of his future?”, “Can man know all the secrets of human mind?”. In addition, the writer wants to focus the attention on people’s interpretation of consciousness as something which is both mysterious and significant in human mind because it shows what you tend to be. During the whole novel some nowadays problems and news are exposed, such as cryogenesis and the new efforts to extend life, individual freedom and freedom of expression , man’s desire to create and control his own creation, the double faced nature of Artificial Intelligence, gender identity and transhumanism, dualism and doubleness, the nature of humanity and love and the presence of intertextuality.

All the things considered, I think that Jeanette Winterson wants to make the concept that the future is not as far as people think clear and that the world is a never changing reality, in addition people want to create new forms of life, new creatures, but they are not always aware that artificial intelligence (or what they create) may escape man’s total control. In addition, nowadays most of people appeal to cryogenesis to extend their life, there are a lot of human being’s body iced waiting. Science will be able to make them live in the future.

Last but not least, one of the main topics is that reality is water-soluble and it exists in people’s mind only where everything is settled (memories, suffering, pains, emotions, situations, hope…) and the presence of rain in the whole novel reminds the analogy between reality and water. Since reality exists only in people’s mind there is not a unique world, but it constantly changes according to people’s interpretations.