Victor's Quest

Charlotte Gordon starts where readers of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein expect the story to start: Victor is finally speaking, and his childhood sounds idyllic. She reads it for red flags. His mother and his cousin Elizabeth were both rescued by his father and brought into the household with no agency of their own, and when his mother dies she hands Elizabeth her role as mother of the house, and as Victor's bride. Mother, bride, cousin: Gordon says the women are interchangeable doubles, and she quotes Victor admiring Elizabeth as "entirely forgetful of herself."

Then the arrogance: alchemy over chemistry, graveyards, professors ignored, a family he fails to visit. The line Gordon stops on comes when Victor, remembering his listener is Walton, warns that slavery and genocide came from the obsessive pursuits of a few men. She calls it an amazing insight he'll later walk back. The film ends on Oscar Wilde's two tragedies, with Victor about to get what he wants.