FRANKENSTEIN:
A COMPARISON OF THE ORIGINAL NOVEL AND THE HALLMARK MOVIE
Submitted By
Jared Wilson
World Studies English
Mrs. McMillan
March 9, 2005
Ambition, it is the drive to aspire to new heights and to go further than anyone before. At first glance it seems like such a harmless thing, in fact more good than bad. Human ambition drives the modern world, the various eddies and currents of which shape not only human life, but all life on the earth. It has brought about marvelous inventions and ideas that save lives, or make life more bearable. In an increasingly industrial world, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein examines how such ambition, when taken far beyond the edge of reason, can become a horrifying and disturbing concept. Ambition can be a force for good, but it can reveal secrets that man was not meant to know (Shelley vi). The terror inspired by such a simple human fascination has captivated people for hundreds of years, and subsequently brought about new ways of expressing it. Currently there are about 119 different movies, television-movies, videos, television series, and video games based on Shelley’s original Frankenstein, including a Hallmark television movie released in 2004 (IMDb). The Hallmark rendition of Shelley’s Frankenstein has many similarities and differences to the original novel, but most important among these are the portrayals of Victor and his monster, as well as the thematic focus in both works.
The portrayal of Victor Frankenstein in both the book and the movie is an important part of the whole. The way he is portrayed affects the way an audience feels about him, and those feelings subsequently affect where their sympathies lie in the context of the story. In both the original novel and the Hallmark movie, Victor seems the same at first glance. He has a mostly happy childhood, and his adult years are punctuated and saddened by the deaths of loved ones. He has an insatiable hunger for knowledge and often forgoes social interaction for the pursuit of science. Yet all of these similarities serve only to accent the discrepancies between the novel and the Hallmark movie.
In the movie, Frankenstein seems to be the real monster of the story. He shuns and abandons his own creation who only wishes for someone to call father and someone to love, both of which Victor has. It does not seem too much to ask of a father what he himself enjoys. Instead, it is only natural that a father should hope that his children are able to do better than he is and become greater. This selfish attitude in Victor gives the audience a more negative of him than it would be otherwise. Additionally, the movie focuses more on Victor rather than the monster. On the other hand, Shelley’s Victor takes on a radically different persona. His actions and cold-heartedness towards the monster seem to be justified and for the greater good of all mankind. Shelley’s Victor describes his monster’s race as devils and asks himself if he had the “right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations” (Shelley 159). This makes him seem like the more noble person, to think about the welfare of others and act unselfishly despite the cost such a decision might entail. In addition, the book focuses more on the monster’s emotions and development rather than Victor’s.
The portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster has an effect on the way the audience sees Victor, as well as the way they interpret the book and the Hallmark movie. In both, like Victor, one may see the same character at first look. The monster exhibits a constant attitude of self-loathing and self-pity in both the book and the movie. And indeed in both the audience sees the monster exhibit honorable intentions when he helps the De Lacey family, and evil in his framing of Justine and murder of Henry and Elizabeth. However the differences lie mostly in the monster’s reaction to his own crimes. In the Hallmark movie Frankenstein’s monster only accidentally kills William when he tries to find out about his father. Such unintentional tragedy grants a great deal of sympathy. And after
Justine’s execution, the monster lays her corpse in front of a church, loosing the rope around her neck and caressing her dead frame. Such actions show how human the monster truly is. Like a normal human being, he feels remorse for his destructive actions. This portrayal allows us to identify with the monster, and feel more sympathy for him. He even starts out his new life with a hurt leg! Conversely Shelley’s original portrayal of the monster does not generate quite as much sympathy. Rather than accidentally killing William while trying to find out about his father, the monster deliberately kills him in a fit of rage after learning that he is Victor’s younger brother. Not only is his act of murder deliberate, but also he shows no remorse for the crime’s he commits, and as such seems less human, thus gaining less sympathy with the audience.
While the story generally stays the same between the book and the Hallmark movie, the thematic focus in one is slightly different from the other. The Hallmark movie transforms Frankenstein into a gothic love story between Victor and Elizabeth. The movie spends a lot of screen time developing their relationship from childhood friends to devoted lovers. The monster’s existence in the movie seems only to serve the purpose of killing Elizabeth and separating Victor from his love. On the contrary the original novel puts only a small amount of time developing the relationship between Victor and Elizabeth. The love interest is there, but it is secondary to Shelley’s portrayal of the “monster as an emblem of science, technology or power out of control” (The UW).
The story of Doctor Frankenstein and the consequences of his unchecked ambition is one of those rare tales that have a message that transcends time and is universal in nature. Although Shelley’s original novel and the Hallmark movie differ in their portrayals of key characters as well as the thematic focus of each work, they both tell the same classic story of horror and drama that leaves people with a simple message to “seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition” (Shelley 206). The consequences of not doing so are dire indeed. And yet it is the story of these consequences that has captivated the imaginations of people for hundreds of years and will continue to do so for many more.
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(BTW if you spot any personal pronouns please quote them so I can fix)
