Chapter 23
Victor and Elizabeth spend their wedding night wandering the gardens, but Victor is in constant fear of the monster and his promise. He feels it best to implore Elizabeth back into the cottage so he can search the grounds, afraid that Elizabeth may react more worryingly from seeing the creature and their battle.
Whilst searching, he hears the screams of Elizabeth and it quickly dawns on him that the monster never intended to kill Victor, but rip his one source of happiness away, leaving Victor like himself, alone.
Victor is terribly distraught over Elizabeth’s death and hurries to tell his father of the harrowing news, news that shocks Alphonse so much that, a few days later, he dies too.
Victor decides it is finally time to let his secrets be known and he tells a magistrate in Geneva all about the monster and its murderous ways. The magistrate, naturally, doesn’t believe him and so Victor, lost of any other purpose, devotes his life to finding the monster and killing him.
Frankenstein
Frankenstein is the classic gothic horror novel which has thrilled and engrossed readers for two centuries. Written by Mary Shelley, it is a story which she intended would ‘curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart.’ The tale is a superb blend of science fiction, mystery and thriller.
Victor Frankenstein driven by the mad dream of creating his own creature, experiments with alchemy and science to build a monster stitched together from dead remains. Once the creature becomes a living breathing articulate entity, it turns on its maker and the novel darkens into tragedy.
The reader is very quickly swept along by the force of the elegant prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multi-layered themes in the novel. Although first published in 1818, Shelley’s masterpiece still maintains a strong grip on the imagination and has been the inspiration for numerous horror movies, television and stage adaptations.