Title: Better Dead
Author: Basil Cooper
Date of First Publication: 1994
Place of Publication: The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein (Robinson Publishing, UK)
Type: Short story
Characters: No Character
Themes: WOMEN WRITING MONSTERS
Critical Summary: “Better Dead” follows a married couple, Robert and Joyce, who are experiencing marital problems. Mainly, Joyce feels snubbed by Robert’s obsession with his old movie collection. His favorite collection is James Whale’s Frankenstein series. Joyce feels unappreciated as she struggles in a meaningless secretarial job in order to support him and his irksome hobbies. As result of her loneliness, Joyce begins an affair with a man named Conrad. And while she feels increasingly detached from Robert, she is still bothered when Conrad presses her to end the marriage. After a secret date, she returns to another movie playing and another lonely moment. Later, while attending a dinner party, Robert and his friends embarrass their wives with their movie talk.
Time passes and Joyce fears her husband’s “disease” is starting to affect her, as she sees herself as a tragic movie actress in a melodrama. She resents Robert’s expensive passions and goes to investigate his expenses. She is outraged by what she sees but hides everything back where she finds it, avoiding a confrontation.
After completing the yardwork Robert neglected to do, Joyce goes to confront Robert in his private cinema. She sees The Bride of Frankenstein is on the projection. Watching some of the key actors on the screen, she believes she sees Robert’s features in Karloff’s Creature. The music blasts on and she sees the Creature in Robert’s chair: big, tall, and green. Terrified, she attacks the figure with her gardening spade and kills him. She throws the movie off the projector and discovers that she has killed her husband instead of the creature.
She buries the body in the backyard. The next day, she plans a new life for herself and Conrad.
One theme Cooper includes from Shelley’s work is women and monsters. Joyce is a strong woman, the eventual killer, and she controls the situation. She is under no one, and her delusion of the monster may be a justification of her crime of passion. In the end, she is the monster, killing her husband in a fit of rage and fright. Her husband’s obsession was his life’s work. He spent every hour on it, his only real passion. He’s not mad scientist by any means, but he shares Victor’s obsessive personality.
Rebirth through death is also a theme carried from Frankenstein. Though it’s metaphorical, Joyce is reborn out of her husband’s death. She is once again passionate and free to live on her own where before she was damp and energy-less. She had no passions, where now she feels free to do so.
Administrative Notes: Noelle Simonne Zaffiro, CSUF; Mark LaMonica, CSUF (editing)