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 only some possible conjectures supported by textual references and textual analysis.

To start with the title, it recalls the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley in 1816-1818. Therefore, since the title Frankissstein is a revisitation of “Frankenstein”, the reader may suppose the novel is a science fiction slightly different from the classic one. Indeed, the title formed by the words “Fran” “kiss” “Stein” may suggest the novel is a love story between two people.

Moving to the front cover, the reader notices that the wallpaper is blue (the colour of mysterious sensations or something unknowable) with red (the colour of blood, life’s essence) and fuchsia (the symbol of inspiration and sensuality) writings. Moreover, there is a white line which may be Frankenstein’s scar covered by three red XXX and stitched to cicatrize. The reader can understand love is not the novel’s main topic by looking at the small subtitle “A love story”.

Turing the book over, the reader notices the colours of the front cover are the same of the back one. The quotation “I AM WHAT I AM, BUT WHAT I AM IS NOT ONE THING, NOT ONE GENDER. I LIVE WITH DOUBLENESS” makes clear that one of the novel’s topic is people’s multiples identity and how it changes according to social interactions 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 science fiction is about the creation of something new.

Moreover, the reader also understands the love story between two people is another topic of the novel, where is difficult at first to understand the two lovers’ and that the novel is based on doubleness and duality.

Opening the book, the reader finds an introductory quotation of the song Take It Easy written by Eagles, a rock band from Los Angeles born in Seventeens: “We may lose and we may win though we will never be here again” Eagles, “Take It Easy. It may mean 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 deduce that the novel may be about some tentatives to extend life in order to make people’s life eternal.

Moving 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 two parts 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 the past in Lake Geneva (in Villa Diodati) in 1816 and 1818, while the part of Ry Shelley is set in the present in Great Britain at Brexit Time and across the Atlantic in Phoenix and Arizona in the 21st century.

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, with her stepsister Claire Clairmont, the English politic and poet Lord Byron, the doctor Polidori. 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 which may be the symbol of people’s fears 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 main character of the second part is the transgender doctor Ry Shelley. His name comes from the last two letter of Mary and 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 cytogenesis scientist and an artificial intelligence doctor who is working on 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. Last but not least Polly D. is a worker for Vanity Fair. Moreover, RY SHELLEY is an open-minded transgender attracted and scared at the same time by the unknown and progress. He/she makes his body what his soul and his mind want it 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 and 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 protagonist of her novel. 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: t hyperboles, metaphors, similes, alliterations, irony. Litotes make concepts clear, add meaning to narration, provide a more effective image of topics, allow full comprehension and create a specific atmosphere. 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, body languages’ exaltation expresses 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 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 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 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 both mysterious and significant in human mind because it shows what you tend to. During the whole novel, 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 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. 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. In addition, nowadays most 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 another time.

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...). The presence of the rain in the whole novel reminds 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.