Description
The novel begins in St. Petersburg and Archangel, from where the English explorer Walton sets out to the North Pole to map these unknown lands. Among the ice, his ship picks up a exhausted European named Victor Frankenstein. After regaining his strength, Frankenstein tells Walton the story of his life and how he ended up in these places.
Frankenstein was born into a wealthy aristocratic family in Geneva. From childhood, Victor was interested in all things mysterious and inexplicable, and as a teenager, he studied the works of famous alchemists like Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa. After his mother's death, Victor's father sent him to the prestigious university of Ingolstadt. There, under the influence of his natural philosophy professor Waldman, Victor became interested in the cause of life and death.
After two years of research, Victor found a way to create living matter from inanimate and, using this discovery, he created and animated a giant. The newfound creature frightened Victor with its appearance, causing the scientist to flee from the laboratory in horror and suffer from a fever.
Upon recovering, Victor tries to forget what happened, but some time later he learns that his younger brother William was killed. Victor returned to Geneva, where he noticed the creature he had created in the woods one night. The court found the maid Justine Moritz guilty of William's death, as they found the boy's locket with her. She is executed, but Victor realizes that the real killer is the monster.
The monster meets Victor and tells him that he learned to speak thanks to a family whose barn he lived in and where the man taught a foreign bride French. Trying to befriend the blind father of the family, he was beaten by family members because of his horrific appearance. The monster found in the cloak, which he took in the laboratory, Victor's diary about his own creation and hated his creator. Hunted everywhere because of his ugliness, the monster accidentally stumbled upon William and, learning who he was, killed him.
The monster demands that Victor create a female companion for him, and he promises that they will go to the jungles of South America and live there away from the human race. After much debate, Victor agrees and isolates himself on an island, but, pondering the consequences of such a union, which could have populated the Earth with many monsters instead of one, destroys the female creature's body. The monster, in a rage, swears revenge and kills Victor's best friend Henry Clerval.
Returning to Geneva, the despondent Victor marries his childhood friend Elizabeth Lavenza, but on their wedding night the monster breaks into her chamber and strangles her. Elizabeth's death shocks Victor and his father, who soon dies. Bereft of his entire family, Frankenstein vows revenge and sets off in pursuit of the monster, which leads the hapless scientist to the North Pole, where the monster, possessing supernatural strength and endurance, easily escapes.
Deciding not to risk his life like Victor for the sake of knowledge, Walton turns the ship back. On the way, Frankenstein dies. In the cabin with the scientist's body, Walton discovers the creature, who says he regrets his crimes and decides to go further to the North, where he vows to burn himself on a funeral pyre. Uttering this vow, the creature runs away from the ship.