Being a Martyr to Victor's Misery.

I haven’t said much about Frankenstein yet, have I? OK, let me say a few words now before I wash the dishes and go for a walk.

Frankenstein is a first person narration by Victor himself, told to the owner of the ship which has just rescued him from the Arctic ice. The first thing we get is a long exposition of him telling his audience how miserable he is, and then he begins the story.

Well, I’m about a third of the way into the main narrative, and I would say that approximately 80-90% of it so far consists of Victor telling us how miserable he is. Just occasionally we get a bit of action – two fleeting glimpses of the creature, the murder of his kid brother, and dear Justine being wrongfully executed for the crime. The rest is page upon page upon page of Victor telling us how miserable he is. Occasionally he tells us how miserable somebody else is, but never tires of concluding the account by telling us that the other person is not as miserable as he is. In fact, he labours unceasingly to ensure that we are left in no doubt that nobody in the whole wide world holds a candle to Victor Frankenstein in the Being Miserable stakes.

Frankly, this is undoubtedly the dreariest novel I’ve ever read. The only good thing I can say about Mary Shelley is that she’s endlessly inventive in finding different combinations of words to say the same thing over and over and over again:

‘I’m the most miserable person who has ever lived. It’s a shame for me, isn’t it?’

And in so doing, she probably enjoys the distinction of having created the whingiest character ever to have found its way onto the printed page.

I still intend to finish it. I'm hoping that Victor will prove to have a second dimension.

Dishes.