Frankenstein - Chapter 1

Well, Victor really knows how to start off a story doesn’t he? This chapter is spent with the stranger recounting his parentage. Particularly, of how his father and mother met and started their family. So, who are Vic’s parents?

Well, his father is… unnamed. Apparently his father was some sort of public official in Geneva (this is before it was a part of Switzerland) and had a friend by the name of Beaufort who fell upon hard times. Papa Frank at one point visited his friend, who he hadn’t heard from in some time, and finds that the situation that he and his daughter Caroline are in is dire. Caroline is keeping herself and her father afloat, as he’s sick with what I can only suspect is depression. Eventually, Beaufort dies and Vic Sr. marries Caroline. It’s noted that the two have quite an age difference between them, which is kinda squicky to me, but the book doesn’t linger on it too long.

The two of them had baby Victor and by all accounts it seems that Victor was raised in a loving household with kind parents. The family traveled a lot, and at one point Caroline travels to a part of the poorer district near Lake Como. Evidently, this was something that the two regularly did. By all accounts they were charitable, as Caroline always tried to keep in mind that she had once been poor.

It’s kind of strange discussing books that were written in a different time. At once I feel called on to address some of the strange social habits of characters in the books, but I feel like if I were to call out every instance of a problematic occurrence in 18^th-19^th century Europe, there’d be much less review of the book. As such, I’ll probably keep the commentary on the society which the characters inhabit to a minimum in these reviews, unless I feel it’s particularly rearing its head as a thematic element.

The point of this venture, though, is that Caroline adopts a young girl named Elizabeth from a poor family who had been taking care of her. Elizabeth is described as being a particularly adorable child, and all of the people back home seem to love her. Caroline presents the two kids to one another and they become more than siblings, they are great friends who are calling one another “cousin”. Vic displays a particularly possessive tone toward Elizabeth, and implies that, at some point in the past, she died.