10 QUESTIONS for John Kessel on his novel, Pride and Prometheus (2018), and its relationship to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
“Frankenstein and You” Question: Can you tell us about your own reading history with Frankenstein? When did you first encounter it?
As a boy I was only familiar with the James Whale-Boris Karloff Frankenstein and the many sequels and remakes, none of which have much to do with the novel. I did not read Mary Shelley’s book until I was in my twenties. In the 1960s and 70s the novel had not yet been recovered by feminist literary critics and none of the British lit courses I took even mentioned it. I can’t remember the circumstances under which I read it, but it might have been as a result of reading Brian Aldiss’ history of science fiction Billion Year Spree. In that book Aldiss argued that Frankenstein was the first true sf book in English. I think he was the first person to make this case—before him sf fans and critics all pointed to Verne and Wells as the creators of the genre. Serious science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov might mention Frankenstein as something to avoid, a gothic melodrama having little to do with real sf.
I read the 1831 edition and was quite surprised to see how little the movies took from the book. I was especially impressed by how intelligent, articulate, and physically agile the monster was compared with the shambling, grunting golem the movies portrayed. The way the novel engages with political and social issues of its time was also a surprise to me. The Creature in Shelley’s book is as much an incisive social critic as a threatening monster.
The “Frankenstein and Your Work” question: For “Pride and Prometheus,” and now your novel, did you need to reread, or even study, Shelley’s text? What returned you to her work? What did you find there that interested you?
I have been teaching a survey course on science fiction since 1982, and I have taught Frankenstein as the first book in that course for most of that time. I read and re-read the novel many times and become very familiar with it over the years. I have always been impressed by the way the book nests the various narrators one inside of the other, and the question of how much we should be prepared to trust the testimony of Victor and his Creature. It seems to me that the book seriously undermines Victor’s judgment of what he has done and why he did it, questioning his moral responsibility and objectivity. I find the Creature more sympathetic, but because of the violence he works on others an even more tragic figure.
I’m also interested in the issues of parenting. Victor is the Creature’s father and mother both, and the degree of responsibility he carries for the Creature, and what responsibility the Creature carries for his own actions, also make me think a lot. The relationship between the two, the ways in which they orbit around each other so tightly, their individual and collective solipsism, fascinates me. Despite their protests of engagement with the human race, the rest of the world might as well be shadows.
And of course all this does reflect on Shelley’s vision of science as a source of power and a test of the scientist’s psychology and ethics. Shelley sees science as potentially transforming the world, and the scientist as a possible Promethean benefactor, but is deeply concerned with the motives of the scientist and the consequences of discovery. That’s one reason the story has had so much effect on the culture.
But frankly, despite all those abstract considerations, I found it most fascinating to have to put myself into the minds of these two characters, to understand their motives and imagine their ways of seeing the world. I had to invent my versions of Victor and the Creature. I tried to stay as consistent as I could with the circumstances, settings, and time line in Frankenstein. I can’t claim any particular insight, and it was perhaps arrogant to borrow Shelley’s characters in this way, but I have done my best to imagine them well.
The “History of Its Reception” question: Shelley’s work has been so influential that some stories are based on influential retellings, like Whale’s 1931 movie. Did you consciously return to the original novel, or were you interested in some of the “common misconceptions” that have developed over time, such as the confounding of Frankenstein’s name with the Creature, or the belief that the Creature doesn’t talk, etc.?
I did not take much account of the filmed and other representations of the story, but intentionally drew mostly from the book. My Frankenstein is not a “mad scientist,” he is not a baron, he has no castle in the Carpathians, he has no hunchbacked servant, and there are no townspeople with torches, etc. etc. I wanted to throw all that baggage out and engage with the characters and the issues as they are portrayed in the novel. The movies are fun, and they have given powerful images to our culture—the novel may not have survived as it has if not for them—but for the most part I found them irrelevant except as they demonstrate how the popular imagination fixates on things that have little to do with Shelley’s concerns. Her novel has been very poorly served by its adaptations, in my opinion.
I wish that there were a filmed adaptation of Mary’s book more as she wrote it—if there is one, I am unaware of it. I wonder how the public would react to that story?
The “Genre” Question: Frankenstein is a key work in a number of linked genres. It’s a late Gothic production and perhaps the first science fiction story. It’s a crucial “sympathetic monster” tale in horror. And its transformation of humanity marks it as fantasy, too. Did you engage with Shelley’s work because of its place in science fiction or horror or another genre? Do you regard it as the first sf story? Is its place in the history of genre important to you and your writing?
Like Aldiss I do see it as the first sf story—at least the earliest that has had widespread cultural influence—one that establishes certain themes and characters that have been central to the genre ever since. I see it as also hugely influential in the horror genre, but that has not really been the thing that most interests me.
I believe H.G. Wells mentioned Frankenstein as a partial inspiration of his Island of Dr. Moreau, where he uses the creation of men from animals as an evolutionary parable and an assault on Christianity. I expect Karel Čapek had it in mind when he wrote R.U.R. Heck, even D. H. Lawrence, who had not much use for science, takes a backhanded swipe at Shelley with his “Dr. Frankstone” in The Rainbow.
I can’t deny that in writing Pride and Prometheus I am trading on the vast reputation Mary Shelley’s novel has earned, to say nothing of that of Jane Austen. I can’t argue with those who might think such an enterprise unseemly. I hope they will forgive my presumption.
The “Gender of the Writer” question: In Mary Shelley’s own time, that a young woman, a teenager, wrote such a “hideous” book shocked some. Attempts to see Percy Shelley as the “true” author continue. Does Shelley’s gender, especially in relation to her solid place in literary and genre history, matter to you and to your interest in her work?
I like it that this first work in the genre was written by a woman. One of the things I like about Pride and Prometheus is that it is in some ways a metafictional piece about the two great mothers of modern fiction: Mary Shelley gives us science fiction, and Jane Austen gives us the modern novel of manners.
Your questions focus on the way my story derives from Frankenstein, but it derives from Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice just as much. The hero of my story is not Victor or the Creature, but Mary Bennet. The novelet version is told entirely from her perspective. My novel version, which should be published in February 2018, expands the story forward and backward in time and adds the viewpoints of Victor and the Creature, but it is still fundamentally Mary’s story. I see her as an Austen character who falls into the world of Shelley’s novel.
The “Gender and the Story” Question: Yet Shelley wrote a story all about men: it seems to be a profound critique of gender. Because of her remarkable approach, her story has drawn interest from Feminist, Gender, and Queer scholars. Were you interested in her complicated gender commentary for your own work? What can you tell us about that?
I am very interested in the feminist issues raised by the story. The fact that the women characters are not at the center of Frankenstein is a little misleading, as the book does, it seems to me, have things to say about the responsibilities of parents.
I chose Mary Bennet as the main character of my story so that she might in some ways act as an observer and critic of the characters and action of Frankenstein from the perspective of proper English Regency society. She sees Victor and the Creature from the outside, and she comes to judge each of them—their characters, their motives, their actions, even their morality—through her interactions with them. I loved the incongruities and displacements that arose from crashing together the world of Austen and the world of Shelley.
In both of those worlds women have less agency than men.
The issue of marriage and finding a spouse was also on my mind as I wrote. All of Austen’s novels turn on the ability or inability of her female characters to find a proper mate. In the process we learn a great deal about British society and the roles of women and men. One of the things that launched me into writing my story was my realization that the monster in Frankenstein, like Austen’s heroines, is also seeking the proper mate. That opens up all sorts of questions: why do individuals need a mate? What expectations do they have? Are such expectations reasonable or unreasonable? Does having a mate solve one’s problems?
Sex is of course an issue in Austen, and it lies very close below the Creature’s reasons for blackmailing Victor into making a bride for him. Once you start thinking about these issues, the subject grows and reaches into every part of the narrative and the characters’ lives. I find it fascinating.
The “Reception of Your Story” Question: Can you tell us about the reception of your story? Did reviewers or others remark on your story’s use of Shelley in any ways you find interesting?
The original novelet was very well received. It was nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson Awards, and it won the Nebula and the Jackson. It even spread, by world of mouth mostly, to some readers of Austen who might never otherwise have read a science fiction story.
Most reviewers seemed interested by the premise of the story. It’s probably the most “high concept” idea I have ever had. To the degree that readers were familiar with Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein, they could appreciate what I was doing with the material and characters I borrowed. Some of them remarked on the incongruities that arose out of putting Austen’s characters into Shelley’s narrative. I took some legitimate criticism for not being as witty as Austen and for some wobbles in my prose style.
One of the things that bothered me was the appearance, soon after my story, of the novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I very much disliked my story being put into the same category with that book, which strikes me as nothing more than a stunt. I hope that what I did engaged more seriously with the characters and issues of those two great writers, and showed them more respect.
The “Connecting Characters” Question:
“Victor Frankenstein” and “The Creature” from Shelley’s original appear in in your story, existing in the interstices of Shelley’s novel. Can you tell us about these characters and their relationship to Shelley’s work? Were there important “revisions” or comments you wanted to make on her original ideas when developing these characters for your works?
In both writing the original story and in the novel version, I really enjoyed fitting my story into the interstices of Shelley’s. I pored over the text of Frankenstein, especially that part of the story beginning when Victor leaves Geneva to travel to England and Scotland with the ultimate purpose of creating a bride for the monster, through his decision a year later in the Orkney Islands not to follow through with this plan, and the consequent murder of Henry Clerval by the Creature. My novel basically takes place during the first four chapters of volume III of the 1818 edition.
One thing that I felt I had to revise was to “correct” or rationalize some details of Shelley’s novel that don’t make sense. For a trivial example, on one page of the novel Victor says that he and Henry arrived in England at the end of December and a page later he says they arrived at the beginning of October. More significantly, after Victor refuses to complete the bride for the creature, he sails off in a skiff, gets caught in a storm, and in a single night gets blown from the Orkneys to Ireland—a distance of over five hundred miles—where, completely coincidentally, the Creature has arrived just ahead of him and strangled Henry, who equally coincidentally happened to be there on the beach when the Creature landed (when we last heard of Henry, he was touring Scotland). I had to alter this sequence of events to give it at least a veneer of plausibility.
It’s interesting to me that, in all the scholarly criticism I have read, while whole books are written about themes and psychology, this sort of logical issue with the story line is never mentioned. Of course such things are trivial in comparison, but they are the kinds of concerns that a writer like me obsesses about.
Likewise, I got to explore certain practical issues that Shelley slides past. For instance, the Creature follows Victor from Switzerland all the way to England and up to the remote north of Scotland. I wondered how he managed to cross the ocean from Europe to England. Likewise, he must have had to learn English. He had to find Victor and Henry and follow them without being seen. He undoubtedly had to spend some time in cities and towns. All these practical questions presented me with both problems and opportunities as I told my own story.
More seriously, I had to enter into the psychology of Victor, and the Creature, and of Mary Bennet. In Pride and Prejudice, Mary is a figure of fun, the butt of the joke. In her every appearance in the novel she is presented as a clueless, moralistic girl who has no understanding of how she is regarded by the others in her family and the world at large. She does not recognize that Mr. Collins is a pompous and self-involved hypocrite. She does not understand that, though she has studied hard and is technically skilled, her piano playing and singing are tedious and unwelcome. She serves up moral platitudes as wisdom and is out of step with others’ emotions.
I sought to give her an interior life and full humanity. In my story she is thirteen years older, and a little wiser, but she still is unable to see Victor clearly. She recognizes some things about him that others miss, but she misreads him badly in other ways.
Plus she is confronting a situation that no heroine in an Austen novel would encounter. Pride and Prometheus starts as an Austenish novel of manners and slides into a gothic. It was very interesting, and at times difficult, for me to merge the two forms, which do not naturally fit together. To say nothing of the prose styles. I think I can manage an idiom that resembles Shelley’s, but getting into the ring with Austen, whose wit and deft social implication are far beyond mine, was scary. In the end I did not try to reproduce either Austen’s or Shelley’s styles, but attempted to deploy a style that alludes to their while being fundamentally modern.
As a writer, I am a grateful to Mary Shelley for putting so many important and interesting things into such a crafty package. I hope that Pride and Prometheus is something that both Mary Shelley and Jane Austen would find interesting, but I get a little nervous talking about them like this: “me and my pals Jane and Mary.”
The “Byronic Hero” question: The “Byronic Hero” appears on our Frankenstein Meme website as a keyword, a crucial theme with many iterations in literature and sf. Victor is a famous embodiment of the dark, brooding, superior, charismatic Byronic Hero; so is, say, Heathcliff in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights from the same time period. But the figure is not, usually, associated with Jane Austen’s work. What did you want to achieve by bringing together Shelley’s horror/sf and Austen’s sharp social commentary? What did you take away from Shelley’s work about the Byronic Hero—and what new “take” did you want to make on this enduring icon?
I agree that Austen’s novels do not contain Byronic heroes, but I suspect that her young women protagonists would have been familiar with, and some of them very much attracted to, such heroes, or at least to any mysterious, inscrutable, handsome suitor who carries a secret. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Wickham is an attractive figure who purveys a tragic history of having been denied his patrimony by Darcy. It turns out he is lying about that and came close to ruining Darcy’s young sister. There are many men like him in Austen’s novels—they look attractive and dashing and are considered to be quite likely marriage material—but in the end it turns out they are not what they seem. They may have admirable qualities and intentions, but they have some event in their past that belies their superficial attractiveness: they are already engaged, or have traduced and abandoned some earlier lover, or they need money to support their manner of life, or they lie about or conceal their history.
My intent was that Victor in my story could serve as such a character in an Austen novel. Victor, despite his brooding and melancholy, seems to Mary Bennet like the answer to her dreams. Like Austen’s ethically challenged Wickham or Willoughby, Victor doesn’t let on to Mary that he is already engaged to Elizabeth back in Geneva. But he has the additional secret that he has a monster following him around and he needs to collect a female body from somewhere to get the thing off his back so he can go home and marry his girlfriend. Not exactly the situation that might arise in an Austen novel, but one that presents some lovely possibilities.
The “Anniversary” question: The 200-year Anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein approaches. (Cue lightening!) Is there anything more you can tell us about what it means to you that she and her work have become so crucial to modern culture? Is there something about Shelley and her work you wished we had asked, or that we should note, now that we are celebrating her work?
We could do a lot worse than contemplate seriously the questions raised by Frankenstein. I think that it’s marvelous that Shelley’s literary reputation has grown over the course of my lifetime, and that she has received so much serious study over the last fifty years. The reputation of Frankenstein in popular culture has been assured for a hundred years or more. It is interesting how that popular image of Victor and his monster differ from their portrayals in the book. I think that the differences tell us a lot about the beliefs and fears of the audience.
The Frankenstein story has come to have the quality of myth, and some of myth’s power. This has positive and negative consequences. We are still fighting battles about whether science is a positive or negative influence on society. It’s really a question about whether human beings have the capacity to deal with the products of their ingenuity. I think the jury is unfortunately still out on that one. As long as that’s the case this book will be relevant.