FRANKISSSTEIN
The purpose of the present text is to provide my personal interpretation of Frankissstein, a Postmodern novel written by Jeanette Winterson in 2019.
It will not give definitive answers but I will try to make possible conjectures about Frankissstein, supported by argumentations and textual references.
Starting with the title, it reminds me of the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley in 1816-1818. Since the title, Frankissstein is a revisitation of “Frankenstein” the reader may understand that the novel is a science fiction maybe where something is created.
The title is formed by the words “Fran” “kiss “Stein” which may link to a possible love story between two people.
Moving to the book covers, the front one is blue (the colour could remind me of a mysterious sensation or something unknowable) with red and fuchsia writings. The color red may refer to blood, a symbol of life’s essence and fuchsia is the symbol of inspiration and sensuality. Moreover, in the front cover, there is a white line which may be Frankenstein’s scar covered by three red XXX which may be the stitches. Lastly, “a love story” is written in small to convey the reader it is not the main topic.
The novel’s back has written the quotation “I AM WHAT I AM, BUT WHAT I AM IS NOT ONE THING, NOT ONE GENDER. I LIVE WITH DOUBLENESS”. It becomes clear that one of the novel’s topic is
"identity", which is not one and unique: people have multiples identities that change according to people they meet and through a web of discourses, as Robin said in Nice Work by David Lodge.
Also, the reader understands one of the topics is the love story between two people. It is difficult to understand if the lovers are of different or the same gender.
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” 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 meaning may be: life is in people’s minds; during it, they could have success or not but anyway life starts when you 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 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 in writing 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 and they interact in a silent dialogue, they are introduced by subtitles to distinguish them, indeed in the whole novel they are mixed.
Frankissstein constantly shifts between past and present: the part of Mary Shelly is set in Lake Geneva (in Villa Diodati) in 1816 and 1818, therefore, it represents past while the part of Ry Shelley is set in Great Britain at Brexit Time and across the Atlantic in Phoenix and Arizona in the 21st century, therefore, it represents the present.
There is parallelism also between the characters of the two plots: the characters of the first part are Mary Shelley, the writer of Frankenstein. 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 politician and poet, 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 from Victor Frankenstein; he creates a monster that may be the symbol of people’s scares about new technologies and the new world’s progression. Also, 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 of the soul and of the mind.
The characters of the second part are 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 life (like Victor Frankenstein, he has to create new form of life), Lord Ron who is a sex robots’ creator which only uses artificial intelligence to make funny and last but not least Polly D. who worker 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 and VICTOR STEIN is a man who believes in the power of the human mind 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 RyShelley; indeed it is clear she gives voices to the protagonist of her novel; she used a mixture of formal and informal registers, which is a postmodernist attitude, to make the narration suitable to the context. It is also used a rhetorical language indeed there are hyperboles, metaphors, similes, alliterations, irony; there are used 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 and last but not least there is frequent use of double meaning expressions to convey the doubleness the novel. Jeanette Winterson used both telling, showing and dialogue and a lot of descriptions to create visual images in the reader’s mind. Besides, there is the body languages’ exaltation 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. It is present the stream of consciousness (not linear concept of time but a simultaneous one —> the present you live is affected by your 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 asks 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 a man know all the secrets of the human mind?”. Also, the writer wants to focus the attention on people’s interpretation of consciousness as something which both mysterious and significant in the human mind because it shows what you tend to. During the whole, there are explained some of nowadays problems and news, such as cryogenics and new efforts to extend life, individual freedom and freedom of expression, man’s desire to create and control his 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 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 an ever-changing reality, also, people want to create new form of life, new creatures but they are not always aware that artificial intelligence (or what they create) may escape man’s total control. Also, nowadays most people appeal to cryogenics to extend their life, there are a lot of human being’s bodies iced which are waiting for science will be able to make them live another time.
Last but not least one of the main topic 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 the rain in the whole novel remind to 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 interpretation