Who wrote Frankenstein?
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The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein is a 2007 book written and published by John Lauritsen, in which the author argues that the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, not his wife Mary Shelley, is the real author of "Frankenstein" (1818), that the novel "has consistently been underrated and misinterpreted", and that its dominant theme is "male love". Lauritsen maintains that handwriting cannot be used to determine the actual author of "Frankenstein". His work received positive reviews in gay publications. However, some commentators in other publications rejected Lauritsen's views and supported the conventional view that "Frankenstein" was written by Mary Shelley.
The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein
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"The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein" was praised by the critic Camille Paglia, who wrote in "Salon" that "Lauritsen assembles an overwhelming case that Mary Shelley, as a badly educated teenager, could not possibly have written the soaring prose of 'Frankenstein' ... and that the so-called manuscript in her hand is simply one example of the clerical work she did for many writers as a copyist." Paglia compared Lauritsen's work to that of the critic Leslie Fiedler, concluding that, "This is a funny, wonderful, revelatory book that I hope will inspire ambitious graduate students and young faculty to strike blows for truth in our mired profession, paralyzed by convention and fear."
The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein
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Lauritsen argues that Percy Bysshe Shelley, not his wife Mary Shelley, is the real author of "Frankenstein" (1818), that the book "has consistently been underrated and misinterpreted", and that its dominant theme is "male love" or homoeroticism. Lauritsen criticizes feminists for constructing "a Mary Shelley myth, according to which she was a major literary figure, one whose genius had been overshadowed - not only by her husband, but also by the other "male" Romantics: Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats." According to Lauritsen, Percy Bysshe Shelley did not want his authorship of "Frankenstein" to be known to the public, and for unknown reasons decided to attribute authorship to Mary Shelley, thus helping to begin a "hoax" that has persisted up to the present. Lauritsen maintains that revisions to "Frankenstein" made in 1823 and 1831 weakened the work, and that while it was ostensibly Mary Shelley who revised "Frankenstein" into its 1831 form, it may primarily have been revised by the political philosopher William Godwin.
The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein
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Kennedy wrote that Lauritsen was "unafraid to go against accepted opinion and the entrenched literary establishment" and that his work was "intriguing and very readable", based on a careful review of the relevant evidence, and a welcome contribution to literature on the subject. He endorsed Lauritsen's argument that the quality of "Frankenstein" is inconsistent with that of works known to have been written by Mary Shelley, suggesting that the work was not by her, and also credited Lauritsen with refuting the argument that the fact that the surviving parts of the original manuscript of "Frankenstein" are in Mary Shelley's handwriting shows that the work must have been composed by her. He found Lauritsen's view that the novel's theme is "male love" persuasive, and predicted that it would appeal to gay men. However, he also predicted that while Lauritsen's thesis that Percy Bysshe Shelley is the real author of "Frankenstein" might be accepted by readers with no vested interest in the issue, it would be "vehemently rejected out of hand" by the "literary establishment".
The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein
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Screenwriter Robert Florey wrote a treatment entitled "The New Adventures of Frankenstein — The Monster Lives!", but it was rejected without comment early in 1932. Universal staff writer Tom Reed wrote a treatment under the title "The Return of Frankenstein", a title retained until filming began. Following its acceptance in 1933, Reed wrote a full script that was submitted to the Hays office for review. The script passed its review, but Whale, who by then had been contracted to direct, complained that "it stinks to heaven". L. G. Blochman and Philip MacDonald were the next writers assigned, but Whale also found their work unsatisfactory. In 1934, Whale set John L. Balderston to work on yet another version, and it was he who returned to an incident from the novel in which the creature demands a mate. In the novel Frankenstein creates a mate, but destroys it without bringing it to life. Balderston also created the Mary Shelley prologue. After several months Whale was still not satisfied with Balderston's work and handed the project to playwright William J. Hurlbut and Edmund Pearson. The final script, combining elements of a number of these versions, was submitted for Hays office review in November 1934. Kim Newman reports that Whale planned to make Elizabeth the heart donor for the bride, but film historian Scott MacQueen states that Whale never had such an intention.
Bride of Frankenstein
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Herrick commended Lauritsen for presenting a large amount of evidence, and found much of that evidence persuasive, including the difference in quality between "Frankenstein" and works such as "Valperga" and "The Last Man", as well as that between the original and revised editions of "Frankenstein" itself, and Mary Shelley's lack of interest in the themes of Percy Bysshe Shelley's work. Herrick credited Lauritsen with carefully examining the "extra-textual evidence", and agreed with him that the fact that the original manuscript of "Frankstein" is in Mary Shelley's handwriting does not show that she composed the work. However, while he agreed with Lauritsen that Percy Bysshe Shelley had homoerotic feelings and deep friendships for men and that "Frankenstein" "contains potential homosexual relationships", he disagreed with Lauristen's view that "Frankenstein" was primarily written for gay men.
The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein
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The feminist Germaine Greer dismissed Lauritsen's thesis in "The Guardian", writing that while he argues that Mary Shelley was not well educated enough to have written "Frankenstein", his argument fails because "it is not a good, let alone a great novel and hardly merits the attention it has been given." Lauritsen replied that "Frankenstein" "is a radical and disturbing work, containing some of the most beautiful prose in the English language ... a profound and moving masterpiece, fully worthy of its author, Percy Bysshe Shelley."
The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein
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In 2004 Dost wrote the surreal and tragicomic book "Mensch Frankenstein". The fantastic, mystical novel is the story of an honest, belligerent human creature born in a subway in the San Francisco, who is arrested and made to fit in with the rules of the predominant form of society; he receives a character mask and then a sculpted plastic body armour and rises to become a successful monster in the world of politics and industry. Self-revelation, the love of a courageous woman and the encounter with a mystic in Zurich save "Frankenstein the Man" and allow the natural true being to re-emerge. The US Administration sentences the creature, whom it regards as a danger to the state, and disposes of it in a branch of Guantánamo.
Bernd Dost
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Green wrote and directed segment "The Diary of Anne Frankenstein" as part of the 2011 comedy/horror anthology "Chillerama", which consists of four short films by four different filmmakers. The parody "Anne Frankenstein" is shot in black and white and made entirely in German to look and feel like a lost 1940's foreign film. While Green cast authentic German speaking actors for all roles, the lead role of Adolf Hitler is portrayed by Joel David Moore, who does not know how to speak German and purposely fakes his way through the film by using a combination of gibberish and random words thrown to him by Green, such as "Boba Fett", "OshKosh B'Gosh" and "Goldie Hawn". Kane Hodder portrays the film's hero Meshugannah – a Hassidic Jewish take on the classic Frankenstein Monster, who ultimately turns against his master and kills him.
Adam Green (filmmaker)
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Though it is unrelated to the Universal series, the later "Frankenstein 1970" has the scientist Frankenstein, here played by Karloff, animate the Monster using a nuclear reactor.Although Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant is often referred to as "Igor" in descriptions of the films, he is not so called in the earliest films. In both "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein", Frankenstein has an assistant who is played both times by Dwight Frye who is crippled. In the original 1931 film the character is named "Fritz" who is hunchbacked and walks with the aid of a small cane. Fritz did not originate from the "Frankenstein" novel, and instead originated from the earliest recorded play adaptation, "Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein", where he was played by Robert Keeley.
Frankenstein (1931 film)