On Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein”

Why does Victor Frankenstein create his monster? No one in the novel, least of all Victor, seems to know. The inspiration for Frankenstein came to Mary Shelley in a dream, and it is dream-logic that governs Victor’s scientific pursuit. For two years, the man works on his patchwork cadaver in a fever of intensity. He sutures limbs. He labors “among the unhallowed damps.” Then in the final, reeling moment of success, the monster opens his eyes—and Victor, horrified, flees. It is one of the swiftest and cruelest stories of postpartum depression ever written.