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 analysis.

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

Moving now to covers, there are a front and a back cover; according to the front cover the reader notices that the wallpaper is blue, where it could remind to him a mysterious sensation or something unknowable, with red and fuchsia writings. The color red may refer to blood which is life’s essence and 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 XXX which may be stitches to cicatrize and the expression “a love story” is written in small to make the reader understand that the love story is not the novel’s main topic. Turing the book the reader has to focus his attention on the novel’s back cover which is also blu with red and fuchsia writings, 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 topic is the identity which is not one and unique but people have multiples identity 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 to the book’s covers the intelligent reader understands the novel is a revisitation of Frankenstein. Consequently it conveys the idea that 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 an other 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 only reading the title and looking covers and if 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” 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 Seventeens. The quotation’s meaning may be that life is in people’s mind and 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 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 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 which interact in a silent dialogue and 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 and it represents past. While the part of Ry Shelley sets in Great Britain at Brexit Time and across the Atlantic in Phoenix and Arizona in the 21st century and it represent the present.
There is a 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, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron an English politic and poet, Polidori who was a doctor. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenssstein 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 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 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 letter of Mary and it 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 (as 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 fun and last but not least Polly D. who worker for Vanity Fair. Moreover RY SHELLEY, attracted and scared at the same time by the unknown and progress, is an open-minded transgender who makes his body what his soul and his mind want to be and believes in the power of desire. 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, the protagonists of the story. She used a mixture of formal and informal registers, which is a postmodernist attitude, in order to make the narration suitable to the context. It is also used a rhetorical language indeed there are hyperboles, metaphors, similes, alliterations, irony and 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. In addition there are 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 steam of consciousness (not linear concept of time but a simultaneous one: the present 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 asks them the sameessential 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 mysterious and significant in 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 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 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. In addition 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. Nowadays most of people appeal to cryogenics to extend their life, there are a lot of human being’s body iced which are waiting science will be able to make them live an other 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 minds there is not a unique world but it constantly changes according to people’s interpretations.