Frankissstein

Frankissstein is a novel by Jeanette Winterson that combines speculative and historical fiction in revisiting Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein. Winterson is a prolific author, known for her explorations of physical reality, gender, sexuality, and identity. Her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, won the 1985 Whitbread Prize for First Novel, and Frankissstein was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. Winterson is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, and she has won multiple awards, including the E. M. Forster Award for Sexing the Cherry in 1989. She was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for contributions to literature, and was then named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2018. Winterson is a lesbian, and she left her strict Pentecostal community after coming out at age 16.

Frankissstein was published in 2019 by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Penguin Press. It explores concepts of transhumanism, the meaning of life and reality, cryogenics, artificial intelligence, and romance in the modern era. The novel relates the parallel lives of Mary Shelley, the early 19th-century author of the novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, and Ry Shelley, a transgender man living in 21st-century England. As Shelley writes Frankenstein and contemplates her relationships with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Polidori, and Claire Clairmont, Ry navigates the issues of modern artificial intelligence while continuing a romance with Victor Stein, a scientist trying to reanimate the dead by uploading the human mind in digital form. The novel explores themes of The Nature of Embodiment and the Search for Identity, Redefining Humanity Through Technology and The Impacts of Misogyny and Anti-Trans Bias.

This guide uses the First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition of the text, published in October 2019.

Content Warning: This novel includes discrimination against women and transgender individuals, sexist and derogatory language, and a blurring of the meanings of transhumanism and transgender identity, a sentiment that is often read as an anti-trans bias. The novel includes a graphic description of sexual assault, as well as instances of dubious consent.

Plot Summary

In 1816, Mary Shelley stays at Lake Geneva with her husband, the poet Percy Shelley; his friend Lord Byron, also a poet; Byron’s physician, Polidori; and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont. The group drinks heavily and enjoys their vacation by the lake, though Mary notes that she and Percy are not wealthy like their friends. Byron is provocative, criticizing women as unintelligent and inactive, and Percy and Mary disagree. Mary’s mother is Mary Wollstonecraft, the notable feminist author of numerous treatises in favor of women’s rights. One night, Byron challenges everyone to write a scary story, and Mary takes time to consider the subject of her own tale.

Mary decides to write about something she finds scary, a creature given life that was never alive. Over their time at Lake Geneva, Mary writes Frankenstein, which impresses both Percy and Byron. As they stay at the lake, Mary becomes increasingly interested in the implications of her own novel. She also struggles with the loss of her and Percy’s first child. After leaving the lake, Mary and Percy go to Italy, where Mary gives birth to two more children, Clara and William, whom she affectionately calls “Ca” and “Willmouse.” Both children die in Italy, devastating Mary. In 1818, Mary goes to Bedlam, a hospital in London, where there is a man claiming to be Victor Frankenstein, the titular character in Mary’s novel. Victor asks Mary to unmake him, but Mary does not understand how a man could be born from a novel. Some time later, Victor disappears from Bedlam.

In Italy, Percy dies in a boating accident after having an affair with another woman. Mary is pregnant, and she laments Percy’s death. Mary names her child Percy, and she returns to England. Byron helps Mary financially, but he dies in 1824. Years later, Mary visits Byron’s daughter, Ada Lovelace, as Charles Babbage reveals his Analytical Engine, a kind of early computer. Ada laments that she did not meet her father, and she and Mary bond over their shared wit and experiences as women. Ada claims the Analytical Engine, if large enough, could contain all the information ever known by humanity. She even implies that it could make music or bring a person’s mind back to life. Mary fantasizes about bringing Percy back to life, and she sees a man she recognizes at the party. The man introduces himself as Victor Frankenstein, but he has not aged since Mary last saw him.

In the present day, Ry Shelley is a transgender man in England. He is a doctor, and he has an affair with notable scientist Victor Stein, whom he provides with body parts for his experiments. Ry goes to Memphis, Tennessee, for a Tec-X-Po, at which he meets Claire, a Christian who opposes robotics. Ry also meets Polly D, a journalist working for Vanity Fair, who fears that artificial intelligence is being controlled by sexist, racist white men. Ry interviews Ron Lord, who owns a company that produces innovative sexbots, robotic women designed for sex. Ron is crude, and Ry worries that sexbots will disrupt human abilities to forge relationships. Ry attends Victor’s lecture on artificial intelligence (AI), at which Polly D disrupts Victor with questions about sexism. Victor and Ron form an unlikely partnership, though Victor maintains that sexbots are beneath his area of interest.

Ry met Victor in Arizona, where Ry works for Alcor, a cryogenics facility. Victor becomes attracted to Ry after discovering that Ry was assigned female at birth. Ry had surgery and took hormones to make his body more masculine, but he retained his vulva and vagina. Ry calls himself a hybrid, but he identifies as masculine. Though Victor insists he is not gay, he begins a physical relationship with Ry. Victor asks Ry to acquire a head from Alcor, specifically belonging to I.J. Good, a deceased statistician and codebreaker who was Victor’s mentor. Ry reluctantly agrees.

In Arizona, Ry meets with Max More, the CEO of Alcor, along with Ron Lord and Claire, who is now Max’s assistant. Claire is repulsed by Ron, but she goes to dinner with him and Ry. Ron convinces Claire that sexbots can be useful in Christianity, and Claire agrees to become the CEO of Ron’s company. Claire is disturbed to find that Ry is transgender, and a drunk man tries to sexually assault Ry in the bathroom of the diner. The group then returns to Manchester, bringing Good’s head to Victor’s lab.

Victor explains that he wants to reanimate Good by uploading his consciousness like a computer, though he is not sure how much power the process will take. Victor thinks the human dream is to get rid of the need for a physical form, and he envisions humanity living alongside AI in mechanical bodies. Polly D breaks into the lab, and Victor locks everyone in a 1950s-style pub in the tunnels. Ron, Ry, Claire, and Polly are afraid, both of the physical danger of the tunnels and the existential danger of Victor’s experiments. The power goes out in the tunnels, but Victor restores the generators. The group leaves without Victor, and they discover that the entirety of Manchester suffered a blackout. Victor disappears, and Ry and Polly find the tunnels empty days later. Ry and Polly spend more time together, but Ry is devastated at Victor’s disappearance.