FRANKISSSTEIN

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

It is not meant to give definitive answers but only  possible ones, supported by textual references and analysis.

To start with the title, it recalls the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1816-1818). Therefore the reader may understand it is a science fiction with the creation of something new. Since  the title is formed by the words “Fran” , “kiss”, and Stein” the reader can imagine the novel to be a love story. 

Moving to front cover, the reader can notice that the blue color of the  wallpaper reminds a mysterious sensation. The writings are blood red ( flood  is life’s essence)  and fuchsia (symbol of inspiration and sensuality). Moreover in the front cover there is a white line : it  may be Frankenstein’s scar covered by three red XXX which may be stitches to cicatrize. 

“A love story” is small written to make the reader understand that love is an important novel in the story. The back cover has the same colors.  There is an important 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 topic is  identity. It  is not one and unique but people have multiples identities changing 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 to the book’s covers the intelligent reader understands the novel is a revisitation of Frankenstein. Consequently it conveys the idea that the past influences the present and that the novel is a science fiction about the creation of something new. Moreover the reader understand that an other 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 before reading the book.The novel is based on doubleness and duality.

Opening the book, there is a quotation: We may lose and we may win though we will never be here again” Eagles, “Take It Easy”. As it is clear, it belongs to Take It Easy  by Eagles, a rock band from Los Angeles born in Seventeens. The quotation’s meaning may be that life is in people’s mind and during it they could achieve  success or not, but anyway it when you are born and ends when it decides to end. Therefore it is impossible to live forever. From the quotation the reader could understand that the novel is about some tentatives to extend life to make people live forever. 

Moving now to the structure, it is organized into two plots: the first one is about Mary Shelley writing her novel Frankenstein and in the second one J. Winterson gives voice to Ry Shelley, a transgender doctor dealing with Artificial Intelligence. 

There is a parallelism between the two parts interacting  in a silent dialogue. They are introduced by subtitles to be distinguished.

Frankissstein constantly shifts between the past and the present: the first part is set in Lake Geneva (Villa Diodati) in 1816 and 1818. Therefore  it represents the past. The second part is set in Great Britain at Brexit Time and across the Atlantic in Phoenix and Arizona in the 21st century representing the present.

There is a parallelism between the characters of the two plots: in the first part there 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 (a doctor). Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein after visiting a castle in Geneva with her husband. There  a man told them the story of a monster. In her novel the main topic is victor Frankestein’s creation of a new life form. He creates a monster which may be the symbol of people’s fear about new technologies and new world’s progression. In addition MARY SHELLEY is a woman who believes in the power of the abstract substance of life. she shows herself through nature, desire, language and she believes in the power of the soul and of the mind. 

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

Moving to narrative techniques and strategies used by Jeanette Winterson, there is a first person narrator: in the first part J.W gives voice to Mary Shelley while in the second part the speaking voice is RyShelley. They are both protagonists. She uses a mixture of formal and informal register with postmodernist attitude making the narration suitable to the context. The language is rhetorical:  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 topics, to allow full comprehension and to create a specific atmosphere . last but not least there is frequent use of double meaning expressions to convey the meaning of doubleness. Jeanette Winterson uses both telling and showing and many descriptions to create visual images in the reader’s mind. In addition there is body language to express characters’ emotions, feelings and intentions. The use of different expressions according to the situation and words belonging  to the semantic field of: sex, science, mystery, innovation. There is the stream  of consciousness (not the 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 the World is made of one’s interpretations of reality.

According to the novel’s topic, the reader may notice that along the whole novel both Mary Shelley and Ry Shelley ask them the same essential life questions such as “How are men and women different?”, “Is reality concrete or is it just a human mind interpretation?”,  “How can A.I. help the human being?”, “How is man 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.  During the whole story nowadays problems and news are explained, such as cryogenics and 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 trans humanism, dualism and doubleness, the nature of humanity and love and the presence of intertextuality.

All things considered I think that Jeanette Winterson wants to make clear the concept that the future is not as far as people think and that the world is a changing reality. In addition people want to create new forms of life but they are not always  aware that artificial intelligence (or what they create) may escape man’s total control. In addition nowadays most of the people appeal to cryogenics to extend their life. there are a lot of bodies  iced waiting for science to be able to make them live an other time.

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