Frankissstein

Mary Shelley is both a character in the novel and the real author of Frankenstein, introducing an element of historical fiction into the text. Though the novel follows the true details of Mary’s life, such as the trip to Lake Geneva, Mary’s children’s deaths, and her life up until Percy’s death. Mary’s mother is Mary Wollstonecraft, a notable feminist writer and philosopher known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Winterson’s conception of Mary Shelley is influenced heavily by Mary’s mother’s work, with Mary frequently imagining what her mother would think or do in each situation. When Percy notes the protests in Manchester, Mary imagines her mother dropping everything to travel to join the protests. Mary is herself a dedicated feminist in the novel, often finding herself defending femininity against attacks from Polidori and Byron. Mary is regularly put in a position where she needs to justify herself, her feelings, or her profession, which aligns her with Ry beyond their physical and factual similarities.

Mary is the secondary protagonist of the novel, as she is the protagonist of the historical portion of the text. Because Mary is not a fictional character, there are limits on how Winterson presents Mary that do not limit Ry. As with many works of historical fiction, Mary provides a foundation on which Winterson builds the remainder of her novel, as Frankenstein provides literary inspiration for the work. Nonetheless, Mary serves as a creator character in the text and in real life, creating Frankenstein, creating the physical Victor Stein, and serving as the inspiration for the text. A significant portion of Mary’s lived experience centers on the loss of her children, which cements the femininity of creation in the text. With Mary’s creation of Victor as a physical person, Mary is the only character to successfully create life in the novel, which plays into the overarching focus of both Frankenstein and Frankissstein as novels about life, science, and reanimation.

Victor Frankenstein is the main character of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, and Victor Stein is his incarnation in Frankissstein. The end of the novel reveals that these two characters are the same man, as Victor somehow became a physical person after the publication of Mary Shelley’s novel. Instead of dying on the ice, as he does in Shelley’s original, Winterson envisions Walton bringing Victor to Bedlam as a patient. Victor disappears from Bedlam in the early 19th century, reappearing at Ada’s party in the mid-19th century without aging. Victor’s continued youth implies unnatural longevity, and Ry, too, is unsure of Victor’s age in the early 21st century. In many ways, Victor is the true antagonist of the novel, as his dedication to eliminating the need for embodiment, the progress of AI, and his disregard for the sanctity of human life paint him as an obstacle to Ry’s goals of living happily in his own body.

Victor is ultimately selfish, viewing others only through their possible impact on his own life. He sees Ry as “delicious data,” dehumanizing Ry as a simple variable in Victor’s life. Even Victor’s treatment of I.J. Good, his former mentor, shows Victor’s objectification of other people. Victor thinks Good’s brain would be useful, so he attempts to upload Good’s mind, regardless of Good’s wishes. Much like Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor accumulates body parts, experiments on human beings and animals, and ultimately cannot control his own creations. At the end of the novel, Victor disappears again, but the implication is that Victor lives on in another form. In this sense, Victor is more of a concept that a character, representing the human desire for progress and the struggle of maintaining ethics in the face of progress.

George Gordon Byron, or Lord Byron, was a Baron and poet in the early 19th century. His notable works include Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and he was a leading figure in the Romantic movement, along with contemporaries William Wordsworth, William Blake, and Mary and Percy Shelley, who also appear as characters in Frankissstein. In the novel, Byron is a chauvinist, womanizer, and arrogant intellectual, often using his superior position to undermine those around him. Byron and Polidori are antagonistic toward Mary Shelley at Lake Geneva, making sexist and discriminatory comments, but their views are largely in line with dominant social perspectives of the time. Although Byron treats Mary poorly in conversation, he is an ally to Percy and Mary, providing financial assistance to them and continuing to aid Mary after Percy’s death. Notably, Ada Lovelace is Byron’s only legitimate child, and he never meets her because of his disappointment that she is not a boy.

Ron Lord is Winterson’s contemporary incarnation of Byron, as indicated by the similarity in name and their shared chauvinism. Ron owns a sexbot company, which produces robots in the shape of women for sexual use. While Lord Byron objectifies women, specifically Claire Clairmont, Ron makes literal objects in the form of women. This development in Winterson’s portrayal of chauvinism and sexism indicates the changes in sexism over time, including Ron’s story about lonely men, which frames his sexism as a necessary consequence to women’s liberation. Unlike Byron, Ron becomes subservient to Claire, whom he promotes to CEO in his company. The reversal of Byron’s dominating relationship with Claire Clairmont in Ron’s subservience signals a change in the underlying social structures behind sexism. In the contemporary period, Ron portrays sexism as a frustration with men’s dependence on women, whereas Byron’s sexism is driven by social dominance.

John William Polidori was an English doctor and writer, credited with introducing the vampire genre of fiction. He was Byron’s personal physician and accompanied Byron, Percy, Mary, and Claire to Lake Geneva. Polidori is a minor antagonist in the text, supporting Byron’s sexism in conversation and disagreeing with both Byron and Mary’s position on the encroachment of technology on workers’ lives. In Frankissstein, Polidori is obsessed with Mary, but she shows no interest in him, focusing all her attention on Percy. Polidori is a minor character, serving primarily as an onlooker in the novel. Polidori is only on the sidelines of the narrative, but he wishes to become more active.

Polly D is a journalist in the modern day, and her names signals her connection to Polidori in the past. Like Polidori, Polly wants to be involved in the main action of the narrative, even expressing a romantic interest in Ry. However, like Polidori, Polly is consistently excluded from the lives of the other characters, only gaining access to Ry’s life after Victor’s disappearance. Critically, Polly’s view of technology is the reverse of Polidori’s, as Polly opposing technology because of the way she feels it threatens femininity. This reversal shows how social perceptions on sex, gender, and equality can shift over time, but, like Polidori, Winterson includes Polly as a largely comic character.