bromance, despair Frankenestein: or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley apparently had an interesting life which could have been the stuff of fiction. "Frankenestein: or the Modern Prometheus" is apparently her most known work - written when she was 19 years old. She was fascinated by imagination and her preface makes reference to the Hindu legend of the world being held by an elephant which stands on a tortoise.
 She says about Invention, (her story?)  "Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. […] Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it."


 Early science fiction where Frankenstein creates a well 'creature' who murders and rationalises the murders in very credible ways and an example of horror complete with descriptions of cold wind, and so on which sounded really nice on a very hot Sunday afternoon.

The greatest horror for me was of course, that I was over-empathising with the monster - he was created and was living unhappily and was killing everyone who made him unhappy.  It could be because of the heat and reading things like this "but I was quickly restored by the cold gale of the mountains."

The book is written as a third party recount - from a man Walton, who seemed to have er.. fallen in love with Frankestein - a brother of the heart in the days before such things were frowned upon

Walton yearned for a friend.

"But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil, I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans."

 He then describes the man

" For my own part, I begin to love him as a brother, and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion. He must have been a noble creature in his better days, being even now in wreck so attractive and amiable. I said in one of my letters, my dear Margaret, that I should find no friend on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart."

 and in the end

"Must I then lose this admirable being? I have longed for a friend; I have sought one who would sympathize with and love me. Behold, on these desert seas I have found such a one, but I fear I have gained him only to know his value and lose him. I would reconcile him to life, but he repulses the idea."

Frankenstein and Henry "

Excellent friend! how sincerely you did love me, and endeavour to elevate my mind until it was on a level with your own. A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses; I became the same happy creature who, a few years ago, loved and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care"

Even the monster seems in love with Frankenstein  in that kind of way in which love is some kind of mutual dependency which then becomes hate and in the end.. well in the end , ends up like a few love stories and they all don't live happily ever after.