A (0:00)

Hello and welcome to Storytime for Grown Ups. I'm Faith Moore and this season we're reading Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Each episode I'll read a few chapters from the book, pausing from time to time to give brief explanations so it's easier to follow along. It's like an audiobook with built in notes. So brew a pot of tea, find a cozy chair and settle in. It's story time. Hello. We made it. We're finally here. It's time to start a new book. Welcome. I'm so happy that you're here and I'm so excited to be reading Frankenstein this season. If you're new here, if this is your first ever episode of Storytime for Grown Ups, we're welcome. I am absolutely thrilled to have you here. Thank you for joining us. If you're not new, welcome back. I'm so glad you're here that you haven't left us. Believe it or not, this is season four of Storytime for Grown Ups. I started it in January of 2024 and it was just me. That first episode was just me reading a book into the void, and I could not possibly have imagined what it was going to become. So thank you for being here and thank you for supporting this show in all the ways that you've been supporting it. And I cannot wait to get started on this season. So this is our intro episode. I do this at the start of each new book. We always have one episode where I just kind of set the scene a little bit. So we're going to talk about a bit of historical context, like when the book was written, what was going on, what was important, that sort of thing. I'll talk a little bit about the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, who she was, what her life was like, and we'll talk a little bit about the book itself. But. And those of you who've been here for a while have heard me say this a lot, but it always bears repeating. I will never do spoilers. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever. And I won't even come close to spoilers. Like, I won't tell you what to think in advance or what to look out for or anything like that. I want you to experience these books in the wild and have your own thoughts and feelings about them. And my job is to give you the tools you need to experience them fully. Since the whole premise of this show is that we read books that might otherwise fit, feel sort of hard to access from our vantage point here in the modern world. So this will be our intro episode, which means you won't actually start the book today, but this will be the intro and then we'll start the book on Monday. And then episodes will be every Monday and Thursday from here until the end of the book, which will be at the end of October. So for those of you just joining us, here's just a very quick overview of the show so we can orient ourselves. Okay, I'm Faith Moore. Hello. This is Storytime for Grown Ups. And it's a show where we read classic books aloud. So unlike other close read or deep dive literature podcasts or whatever you want to call them, I actually read these books aloud to you every single word of the book, a few chapters per episode. And I say that it's kind of like an audiobook with built in notes, because if things come up that are confusing words or sentence structure or like a long, dense paragraph or something, I pause very briefly just to tell you what that means. I don't analyze during the read alouds. I don't offer commentary at that point. I just say like a frog is a dress or he's mad because he can't be with his girlfriend or whatever it is. And then I move on. I only do it when I think it's necessary. And mostly we're just reading the book. So that's how we read these books. And by the way, if you are interested in the other books that we've read, they're all still there. We've done Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, A Christmas Carol, and the Woman in White so far. So you can just scroll down through your podcast feed and find them. Or you can check out the Spotify playlist that our Lovely list listener, a.m. burke has created for us there on my website, which is faithk moore.com. and you can click on the tab called Storytime for Grown Ups. And there you'll find each book as its own playlist. So you can check those out if you would like. But also at the start of each episode, I read some of your questions and comments about the chapter we read last time. So if we read chapter one on Monday, for example, on Thursday, I'll read some of your letters about chapter one, and then I'll use those as a jumping off point to discuss what we read. And that's the part of the show where I, I do do some deep dives, some commentary, some light analysis and that sort of thing. So we're building an understanding of these books both through reading them together and also through discussing them and talking about what might be going on sort of below the surface. But of course. And I always give this caveat as well, but it also bears repeating. I believe that the most important thing that a novel can do for you is entertain you. I think the whole point of these stories is to suck you into new worlds, introduce you to new friends, and let you walk around in these wonderful narratives. These books are stories. They're meant to make you feel things. They are not dusty old tomes that you're supposed to, like, analyze to death. Analyzing these books to death is, I think, one of the main reasons why people give up on the classics. Okay, so no death analysis here on Storytime for Grown Ups. The only reason we discuss these stories is to try to deepen our enjoyment of them. Okay? So we may discuss some themes. Okay? In fact, in Frankenstein, I guarantee you we will discuss some themes, but only because they make our experience of the book deeper and they give us even more to think about and feel about. There will be no, like, analysis of sentence structure or weird philosophies that have nothing to do with what's actually on the page or anything like that. Okay. But I've come to feel that your letters and the discussions that come out of them are really what make this podcast what it is. You are what make this podcast what it is. And I really could not do this even a little bit without you. Then it would just be me reading these books out into the ether, and that's no fun at all. So that's why I'm so glad you're here. That's why I'm so happy to welcome all of you who are new and welcome back my old friends and get started on this journey. Before we go too much further, I do want to just mention a couple of housekeeping details and then we'll get into the nitty gritty of what's up with Frankenstein. Okay, the first housekeeping thing is that I was just saying that this show would be nothing without your questions and comments. So I want to let you know how to get in touch with me. Okay? The way to do that is to go to my website, which is faith k.moore.com and then you click on Contact. You'll find a little form to fill out there with your message that goes right to my email and I will get it. You can also find a link to that contact page in the show notes of this episode. And also every episode, the show notes are the description of this episode. So wherever you're listening to this, if you've clicked on this episode so that you can listen to it, so scroll down and you'll see a bunch of text telling you about this show. And some of that text is links. And one of those links is the link to the contact page. And I really do mean it when I say to get in touch. If you're new, you might be like, wait, really? But this is an interactive podcast. You write in, and I take a few of your comments and questions each and every episode. So if you've got something to ask or something that you want to bring up about the book, then send it my way. Do not hesitate. Okay? So, speaking of these links, there are a few other links in the show notes that I just want to mention briefly. One is the link to our online community. So we have an online community called the Drawing Room, not because we like to draw there, but because every lovely old Victorian house would have had a drawing room, which is short for withdrawing room. And it was the place where the family and their guests would withdraw after dinner to discuss books and play cards and play music. They would read, they would talk about life, whatever it was. And so I. I like to think of this podcast as the main room of our Victorian house. And the drawing room is where we withdraw after the show. It's an online space where we do all the things that you might do in a drawing room. We talk about the books we're reading, we talk about life, we ask questions. It's very active over there, and it's become a really lovely community. I love checking in over there. And in addition to that, once a month, we have tea time. And tea time is a voice chat, sort of like a group phone call where I'm there and you're there if you want to be. And we talk for about an hour about the book that we're reading. We talk about other things that are on our minds. I take questions, so you can ask me anything. And it's a really fun, cozy time. I always enjoy myself very much. So if any of this sounds interesting to you, you can click on the link in the show notes to find out more about this. These are membership tiers, I should tell you. So there is a monthly fee, but it's pretty minimal, and you can learn more there if you want to. Another link you'll find there is the merch store, the merchandise store. We have story time for grownups Merch. You can buy all sorts of things. There's T shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, tote bags, baby clothes, all kinds of stuff. And we have a number of different designs. We've got the storytime Logo. We've got designs for each of the books we've read. There isn't a Frankenstein design yet, but that will be coming. So check out the merch store if you'd like to grab some merch. And that's a great way to support the show as well, because in addition to helping out financially, if you wear your merch around or carry it around or whatever, someone might ask you what Storytime for Grown Ups is. And you can spread the word and you can make a friend. Speaking of supporting the show, the last link I'll mention before we actually start talking about Frankenstein is the Buy Me a Coffee link. Or as I always prefer to call it, the Buy Me a Tea link. That's our donation page. It's kind of like a tip jar. If you're willing and able, you can give as much or as little as you'd like. But of course, no obligation there. This show is free. It will always be free, and you are welcome here regardless of which links you click or don't click. Okay? Other than that, please just make sure you're subscribed. If you like what you're hearing, please consider tapping the five stars, leaving a positive review, telling a friend, or spreading the word in whatever way feels best for you. Okay, let's start talking about Frankenstein. So if you listen to the trailer, you will know that there's quite a story behind the origins of this book. Okay? It was essentially written on a dare. Lord Byron, the famous romantic era poet, challenged his friends to come up with their own ghost stories. And Frankenstein was Mary Shelley's contribution to this challenge. But before we get any deeper into that, I do want to begin with a sort of disclaimer. I know that some of you are a little wary of Frankenstein because you're not into horror. And I did make the trailer kind of spooky. And Mary Shelley wrote this in response to a prompt about ghost stories. And we're reading this book in September and October, right around Halloween. And if you've seen a movie of Frankenstein, maybe it was scary. And so I want to both acknowledge that, yes, this story is appropriate for Halloween. And it's going to be really fun, I think, to read it at this time of year. But also, it is in no way horror in the way we think of horror now in a modern context. It's not gory, it's not disgusting. Nothing's gonna jump out at you. No one's got a chainsaw. It's not horror in that sense. This is not Stephen King or Night of the Living dead or anything like that. There are parts that might be a little spooky. There are elements of the plot which, when you think about them, might be sort of scary to contemplate, like, as ideas. But if you've never read this book before, I guarantee you that it is not at all what you think it is. This book is poignant, it's sad, it's deep, it's thoughtful, it's exciting. It can be kind of over the top and melodramatic in all the best possible ways sometimes it has characters you can really care about and characters you can hate. It's moving. It's a really different kind of book than you might think it is. So if you're worried about the horror aspect, I really urge you to listen to a few chapters before you decide to give it up. It isn't horrific. It's really beautiful in a lot of ways. And there's so much, much there to discuss and to think about and to unpack about it. If you were here for A Christmas Carol, remember at the very beginning we talked about Christmas ghost stories and why people would tell ghost stories at Christmas. It's that same vibe. It's a spooky, cozy, delightful, sitting by the fire with your friends kind of story. It is not a jump out and scare you kind of story. So that's the first thing. Now, let's set the scene. This book was written in 1816, and it was published for the first time in 1818. Mary Shelley was in Switzerland when she wrote this book, and it takes place in Switzerland and other parts of Europe. But Mary Shelley was British. So for those of you who've been with us for a while, we are back in Regency England. In terms of the time period, this is the era of Jane Austen. So it's not Victorian England, where we'd been when we were reading our most recent book, the Woman in White, but about a generation or so before that. For reference, Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, so three years before Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. And this was a kind of interesting time because while the world of Jane Austen, with its, like, rigid social rules and etiquette and bonnets and ladies needing chaperones just to be in the same room with a man and all of that, while that world was in fact going on, it was also the Romantic era, which was a great literary era, particularly of poetry, when poets like John Keats, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron and Percy Shelley were writing. And the Romantic era, in a lot of ways, was sort of the Opposite of the world of Jane Austen. If you want to kind of deep dive into the Romantic era, you can go back to last summer session. So not the one we just finished, but the one that happened in the summer of 2024. And you can hear me interview my dad, Andrew Clavin, all about the Romantic era, but just as a sort of refresher or an intro. The Romantic era was defined by a kind of spiritual connection to the natural world. There was a sense that nature and the beauty of nature was incredibly important and powerful, and that we should sort of commune with nature and that it could speak to us of bigger things that perhaps we couldn't put into words. There was also a focus on emotions and sensations. So the idea that your emotional experience and the experience of your senses was more important than reason or your intellectual. There was a focus on the individual and his passions and his creativity and imagination, and that these things, if they were big enough and important enough, could kind of break the bonds of etiquette and you could behave in ways that maybe were frowned on by, like the Jane Austen set, for example. So you might believe in free love, meaning forming romantic attachments with whoever you wanted, regardless of marital status, and putting the focus on love and desire, rather than social rules, rules around matrimony. So what this means is that at the same time that for some people, this was a time of very rigid social rules and etiquette. For other people, this was a time of great freedom of expression, freedom from the rules of etiquette, experimenting sexually and kind of communing with nature. And this interest in the natural world also led the Romantics to be interested in the supernatural world. This sense that perhaps there is something beyond what we can see, some force that's out there that might be causing this natural world to be more than what it is, more than what meets the eye. Some of the Romantics were Christians, but some of them weren't. And those that weren't were sort of trying to figure out the world of the supernatural without Christianity, although some of them did then become Christians later in life. And it's possible that this interest in the supernatural is part of what led them there. So exploring the natural world might take the form of examining all its beauties and the sense of the divine that we might derive from it. And many of the Romantic poets explore this almost minutely. But another avenue of exploring the natural world and the supernatural is the idea of the weird and the strange. What happens when things go wrong in the natural world? What happens when supernatural forces go awry and that is essentially what Mary Shelley is exploring in Frankenstein. So Frankenstein exists within this Romantic era world, and Mary Shelley herself was very closely aligned with the Romantics. In fact, the reason that her last name is Shelley is that she eventually went on to marry the Romantic poet Percy Shelley, but she started out as his mistress. So here again is this concept of free love, sexual expression, even having multiple partners and things like that. Percy Shelley was a big believer in this. And so even though he was already married, he abandoned his wife and took up with Mary, his first wife, then committed suicide. And then Percy and Mary got married. So not the best circumstances under which to get married, but they did get married in 1816. So right after this whole episode with the ghost story contest that resulted in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's life was full of ups and downs. And it's really a fascinating life. But I'm not going to give you her, like, full biography here, because I don't know that it's necessary to our understanding of Frankenstein. But you can look her up or read a biography if you'd like to know more. But I will tell you a little bit about her and I will try to focus on the parts of her life that I think might be relevant to Frankenstein itself. I've said before that I don't necessarily think you need to know anything about an author in order to enjoy a book, and that if the book can't speak for itself, meaning if you have to look stuff up about the author in order to understand what it's saying, then it's probably not a very good book. But I do think it can be interesting to know a little about the author. So I'll just give you a few important details here and you can go away and learn more on your own if you are interested. So Mary was the daughter of the famous early feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, who we talked a little bit about in our first summer session when we were discussing Jane Eyre. Wollstonecraft's famous book was called A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and it puts forward the idea that women should be equal to men, particularly in terms of education and social rank. But Wollstonecraft died right after Mary was born, so she didn't necessarily influence Mary's views. Although Mary's father, whose name was William Godwin, he was a philosopher, a novelist and a journalist, he raised her to respect and love her mother's memory. Mary Wollstonecraft also had had affairs and had an illegitimate child. Not Mary, a different child. And William Godwin was Among other things, an advocate of the philosophy of anarchism, meaning he wanted to get rid of all government and all hierarchy. So Mary Shelley grew up in this atmosphere of early feminism, free love, and these radical political ideas. So one thing that's really interesting here, if you've been with us a while and read Pride and Prejudice with us, or if you've read Pride and Prejudice on your own, one thing that's really interesting, I think, is that now we have these two women authors writing in basically the exact same time period in the same country, but one of them is putting forward this world of rigid social etiquette, manners and institutions, and the other is steeped in this ideology of. Of freedom and nature and rejection of rules of etiquette and all of this. And these two women are kind of indicative of the time period, I think, because both of these impulses really were going on at the time. None of this is to say, though, that Frankenstein is a book that promotes free love or anarchy or even feminism really, as we know it today. In fact, I would say that in a lot of respects, it's the opposite. It's a book that uses the Romantic era fascination with the natural world and the supernatural natural world to deeply explore the world and our place in it. And I would argue, I will argue as we go along, that it puts forward a vision that's much more aligned with, let's say, Charlotte Bronte's worldview than with Percy Shelley's. But I think there are indications that while Mary Shelley existed within this world of the Romantic poets, and while Percy Shelley was a huge believer in free love, even so, Mary Shelley seems actually to have just wanted to be with Percy. And there was this one time, for example, when it seems like Percy was trying to convince Mary to sleep with their friend. And while Mary sort of said she was open to it, she never really did because she didn't actually want anyone but Percy. Percy, on the other hand, was definitely sleeping around, even though he seems to have actually genuinely loved Mary. There was also a time when Percy tried to convince Mary to strip naked and jump in a stream. But this offended her because it went against her principles. So Mary was someone who lived in the world of the Romantics, but wasn't necessarily completely aligned with them, though she often said she was. Mostly, though, it seems like she just loved Percy Shelley and would follow him anywhere and do anything to be with him. After his death in 1822, she spent the rest of her life working to publicize his writings. Mary also suffered the death of several Children, which I think informed her writing. And I would argue you can see traces of that experience in Frankenstein. Only one of her children survived into adulthood. I said a moment ago that I think Mary Shelley and Charlotte Bronte have a lot in common in terms of themes and images that you'll find in their writing. For those who don't know, Bronte is the author of Jane Eyre, which was the first book we ever read here on storytime. And you can find that to listen to if you haven't already. And we also did a full summer discussing Jane Eyre and Bronte. So if you don't want to listen to the book, but you're interested in that, that's there as well. But one of the reasons that it's possible to trace those similarities is that Frankenstein, like Jane Eyre, is often considered a Gothic novel. Jane Eyre is usually thought of as a Gothic romance, whereas Frankenstein is sort of straight Gothic, or sometimes you'll see it called Gothic horror, or sometimes even science fiction. But the basic principles of the Gothic are definitely there in the book. We talked about Gothic fiction when we discussed Jane Eyre and a little bit when we talked about the Woman in White. But just to remind you, Gothic books are characterized by isolated or ruined settings, like old castles or desolate moors or craggy mountaintops and things like that. They usually include some kind of romance, sometimes a doomed romance or a romance with all sorts of. Sorts of perils. There's almost always the suggestion of the supernatural, or even the overt supernatural, and there is usually a sense of unease, of something that's not quite right, or some sort of secret that's waiting to be revealed, something that's beyond the pale in some way that eventually comes to light. With Gothic novels, you're going to get a lot of atmosphere, many vibes, many vibes here, a lot of psychological tension, a lot of. Of exploration of human emotions and fears, and that's all there in Frankenstein in all its delicious glory. I'm doing my best here not to give anything at all away. I assume that most of you have some basic notion of what this book is about, but I'm going to act as if I assume that you know nothing, because I would hate to reveal something and have it be a spoiler. So some of the ways that the Gothic genre plays out or the ways that Mary Shelley's life is inspire this book and all that will come up as we go along instead of here, so that I don't reveal anything. Also, even though you may have a sense of what this story is about if you haven't actually read this book, my guess is that a lot of what you've heard or seen in movies or whatever is completely wrong. Not through any fault of your own, but because the movies that have adapted this book have changed it significantly. So I think it makes sense to kind of of wrap up this intro with the story of how Mary Shelley came to conceive of and write Frankenstein. This is the story I told in the trailer, but I'll tell it again here because I think it kind of sets the scene for the sort of ride we're about to go on. So it's 1816. Mary, who at that point was Mary Godwin. So Mary was 18 years old. She and Percy Shelley had gone to visit Lord Byron, who was another one of these Romantic poets who believed in free love and all of this. So they went to visit Lord Byron at his house near Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Also with them was John William Polidori, who was a writer and a physician and would later be recognized by some as the creator of the vampire subgenre of fiction. So there they are, these writers, sitting around by the lake. They spent their days boating and talking and writing. But it was a particularly cold and rainy summer. In fact, this summer would later be dubbed the Year Without a Summer because it never really seemed to get warm and sunny. And there was a reason for this. The year before, in 1815, a volcano on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia called Mount Tambora had erupted. This was a huge disaster. It killed 10,000 people and another 80,000 died of disease in the aftermath. The sulfur dioxide that was thrown up into the atmosphere spread across the globe and it caused a general cooling all over the earth. According to one study, it was the coldest year in 250 years. So this was the atmosphere that summer near Lake Geneva for Mary Godwin, later to be Mary Shelley and her friends. Since it was raining so much, the friends often sat around the fire reading ghost stories. What I love about this is that this was real, this really happened. But it's exactly the setup for a Gothic novel. It's great. So, okay, they're reading these ghost stories around the fire as it rains and storms outside. And one day Lord Byron says that they should each write their own ghost story. So off they'll go to get started. But Mary can't think of anything. And the days go by and everyone keeps asking her for her ghost story and she keeps saying she can't think of one. And it's getting kind of embarrassing for her. But then one night, as she's lying in her bed, unable to sleep, this vision comes to her. She sees in her mind's eye a scene which will eventually become the basis for Frankenstein. I will not tell you now what it was because it'll give away part of the. Of the book. But eventually I will tell you and I'll read you her own description of what it was like to get that idea. But she sees this scene playing out in her mind, and the next morning she begins to write what she thinks will be a short story. But it turns out it's actually a novel. A short novel. This book is only going to take us two months to read. Remember, it's short, but it is a novel, which she ends up calling Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus. Prometheus, by the way, is a character from Greek mythology. He was a titan, so a sort of of godlike being, though not actually a God. And he tried to help early human beings by stealing fire from the gods and giving it to them. Usually the fire is seen symbolically as representing kind of all of technology or innovation or whatever. So the idea is that Prometheus basically made humans more godlike. He took them from a more animal type creature to the creatures that we are now. And this angered the gods, as you might imagine, and they punished him by chaining him to a rock and allowing an eagle to come and peck out his liver, only to have his liver grow back each day so that the same thing could happen again over and over and over again. So a pretty severe punishment. But more generally, Prometheus has come to represent the idea of striving for more. More knowledge, more technology, more understanding of the world, and potentially also overreaching, going too far in that quest and doing something that kind of upends the natural order of things. In another version of the Prometheus myth, he actually creates the first human beings from clay. So I'm not going to tell you now why Mary Shelley titled Frankenstein the modern Prometheus. But now you have a sense of who Prometheus was. So as you read, you can decide if it's a good title or not, and we'll talk more about it once we've gotten into. Into the story and discovered why she might have brought Prometheus into the whole thing. But anyway, she started writing this story and her husband, Percy Shelley, our soon to be husband, cheered her on, and she eventually credited him with the fact that she finished it at all. The book was published anonymously at first, in 1818. Many people assumed at first that Percy had written it, but eventually Mary's identity became known and she wrote the introduction to a new edition of the book, which came out after Percy's death in 1831. For those of you wondering, Frankenstein isn't actually a ghost story, as we would think of it. There aren't any ghosts in it, but this gothic, supernatural tale filled with this kind of unsettling atmosphere. These are often called ghost stories, even when they don't include ghosts. So her contribution to the writing contest that Byron proposed is still valid. And you may also be wondering what the other people in the contest ended up writing. So Lord Byron wrote a fragment of something that had to with vampires. Polidori wrote a short story called the Vampire, and Percy didn't really write anything. He started something but then gave it up again. So, really, even though she couldn't think of something to begin with, Mary's contribution was by far the most successful. So there is no doubt about it, we are about to enter the world of the Gothic, the world of the Romantic era, the world of the supernatural. This book is wonderful. It is over the top, it is spooky, it is heartbreaking, it's beautiful. And I really hope that you will stick around for the ride. As I say, the book will take us through the end of October, so just two months. And then Christmas is going to come early here on Storytime, and we're going to extend the holiday season from November through December, and I'm really excited for that as well. Next time, we'll begin with your reactions to reading Frankenstein, since we won't yet have any questions or comments on the book, because we won't have read any book. So keep those comments coming. And also, please do write in about this episode and tell me your thoughts now that you've learned a little bit about the historical context of the book and its author. So we'll begin with your reactions and thoughts about starting Frankenstein next time, and then we'll dive right in. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for all the ways you support the show. And don't forget to check out the links in the show notes and get in touch. All right, have a great weekend. I'll see you on Monday for Frankenstein. Thank you so much for listening. I'd love to know what you thought of the chapters. Is there anything you'd like me to clarify? Did something particularly interest you? Please go to my website, faithkmoore.com, click on Contact and send me your questions and thoughts. Or you can click on the link in the Show Notes to contact me me. I'll feature one or two of your entries at the start of the next episode. Speaking of links, don't forget to take a look at the other links in the show notes. You can learn more about me, check out our Merch store, or become a member of the Storytime for Grown Ups online community. Before I go, I'd like to ask a quick favor. This is an independent podcast. It's produced, recorded and marketed by me, so I need your help. Spread the word about the show by posting about it on social media or texting a link to your friends. Subscribe, tap those five stars and leave a positive review wherever you're listening. If you are able to support the show financially, there's a link in the Show Notes to make a donation. I would really, really appreciate it. Alright everyone, story time is over to be continue.