Leon_, but the resemblance
is so vague and superficial, and _Frankenstein_ so immeasurably
superior, that Mrs. Shelley's debt to her father is negligible.
St. Leon accepts the gift of immortality, Frankenstein creates a
new life, and in both novels the main interest lies in tracing
the effect of the experiment on the soul of the man, who has
pursued scientific inquiry beyond legitimate limits. But apart
from this, there is little resemblance. Godwin chose the
supernatural, because it chanced to be popular, and laboriously
built up a cumbrous edifice, completing it by a sheer effort of
will-power. His daughter, with an imagination naturally more
attuned to the gruesome and fantastic, writes, when once she has
wound her way into the heart of the story, in a mood of
breathless excitement that drives the reader forward with
feverish apprehension.
The name of Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_ is far-famed; but the
book itself, overshadowed perhaps by its literary associations,
seems to have withdrawn into the vast library of famous works
that are more often mentioned than read. The very fact that the
name is often bestowed on the monster instead of his creator
seems to suggest that many are content to accept Mrs. Shelley's
"hideous phantom" on hearsay evidence rather than encounter for
themselves the terrors of his presence.
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