In an issue of the show "Historically yours" devoted to monsters, Stéphane Bern tells the story of the true story of Frankenstein's monster, created from different corpses.
This character was born in the 19th century, in the world's first science fiction novel.
It is written by a woman, the British novelist Mary Shelley.
Frankenstein's creature has marked many young readers, and for many years Its howls in the dark night, its monstrous physique, its barbarism… Its story begins with that of the world's first science fiction novel.
It is written at the beginning of the 19th century, by a woman.
Her name is Mary Shelley.
A delicate young English girl, she nevertheless gave birth in 1818 to the most filthy creature that a book has ever worn: Frankenstein's monster.
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A monster without a name
This is how his character of mad scientist Victor Frankenstein describes the creature he created from human corpses recovered from nearby cemeteries.
"His yellow skin barely covered the assembly of muscles and arteries. His hair was jet black, his hair full, his teeth pearly white. Alas! His wonders accentuated the horrible contrast that offered. her watery eyes, almost the same color as the dark sockets in which they were embedded, as well as her tanned complexion and her straight, black lips… A feeling of horror and disgust filled my heart. "
The monster thus described will never have a name throughout the novel.
No sooner had this undead woken up than its inventor already regretted his experience between science and witchcraft.
He prefers to run away as far as possible.
The father is afraid of his son, his "hideous offspring".
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The various theatrical and cinematographic adaptations made Frankenstein's monster a barely human being, very often remained, and incapable of feeling the slightest emotion.
It must be said that the circumstances of the writing of this book, then unique in its kind, fit into a very dark context.
Born through a bad summer and a nightmare
In 1816, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, whose real name was, left London with her half-sister, Claire.
And especially with her lover, Percy Shelley.
Direction: Switzerland.
At the beginning of the summer, they join a friend who will mark the world of world literature forever: the poet Lord Byron.
The weather is gloomy and the small group rarely takes advantage of the surrounding nature.
But these young writers in their twenties have a fertile mind.
Far from letting themselves be discouraged, they spend their free time in less academic activities.
They read, of course, but rather unusual, even terrifying books.
They devour in particular
Fantasmagoria
, a collection of German short stories on ghosts, ghosts, apparitions.
One day Lord Byron, his mind probably stimulated by the opium he likes to get drunk on, challenges his friends to write a ghost story.
Following a bad dream, Mary Shelley begins writing what will become
Frankenstein or the myth of the modern Prometheus
.
A monster from the tumults of the time
The story is as follows: a scientist, Victor Frankenstein, manages to give life to a corpse of a man made from dead flesh.
Horrified by the monster he has just created, he prefers to abandon it.
The creature, left to itself, quickly realizes that it will be impossible for it to lead a normal existence.
Mary Shelley, barely 18, is inspired by the scientific world of her time, then in full swing.
With the Enlightenment, the idea that God would be the only creator is called into question.
Science is gaining more and more followers.
Mary's parents are among those thinkers defending new concepts.
Mary is particularly fascinated by the discovery of electro-chemistry, the creation of the battery by Volta, but also, and this is more unusual, Galvani's animal electricity.
The researcher had discovered that a dead frog's leg contracted when in contact with electricity.
It doesn't take more for Marie Shelley to transpose this experience to a reconstructed human corpse.
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A revolutionary creature?
But the creature created by the hand of a man turns into a formidable assassin.
She kills the brother, best friend and fiancee of Doctor Frankenstein.
The son wants to make his father pay for the horrible existence he is forced to lead because of him.
This monster then becomes the symbol of all past uprisings.
Thus the creature of Frankenstein is compared to the Sans-culottes who overthrew the monarchy, to the Irish who refuse English domination, to the slaves who fight against the colonists.
To reactionaries, these revolutionaries are like the monster in Mary Shelley's novel: they must be destroyed.
A question has remained unanswered for 200 years: which of the creator or the creature is the meanest?
While writing her novel, Marie Shelley, at the height of her 18 years, also writes a critique of human nature.
Because we must not forget the exact title of the novel,
Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus
.
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Mary Shelley has received a solid education and cannot help but make a reference to Prometheus.
It may be the Greek myth, this hero attached to Mount Caucasus who transmitted the sacred fire to humans.
Or the Latin myth: the Titan shapes man from clay.
In any case, Mary Shelley demonstrates the reckless risks taken by Victor Frankenstein to satisfy his irrepressible desire to master the power of creation.
Frankenstein, a lesson in benevolence
He would thus make a first mistake by giving birth to a deformed monster, unsuited to life among humans who are often wicked and cruel.
The scientist would make a second mistake by not taking responsibility for his actions and neglecting his offspring, leaving them to survive alone in a hostile world.
Still, Doctor Frankenstein's monster could have known happiness.
The son of the mad scientist, as repulsive as he is, asks only one thing: to love and to be loved.
He does try to ask his father to make him a wife who would love him.
But the scientist shies away and prefers to destroy this ultimate hope.
If it sees the day certainly ugly and already adult, the monster also has all the benevolence and kindness of an infant.
Over the pages, he also proves his greatness of soul.
He saves a woman from drowning, he befriends a blind man.
But his appearance still earns him persecution.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, so dear to Mary Shelley, was not wrong when he wrote: "Man is naturally good. It is society that corrupts him."