Down in the valley

It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!—Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion, and straight black lips.

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.

With those words, and not "It's alive!", Victor Frankenstein describes the bringing to life of his creature. When I wrote an interactive version of Frankenstein I gave the creature transparent skin -- the écorché look. But in doing so I was giving it a science fictional spin. Victor says, when asked why the skin is transparent: "Originally that was an accident of the skin-culturing technique I have been using. I tried for some time to fix it, until I realized that this translucence will make it easier for physiologists to study the functioning of the creature’s muscles and arteries."

Writing before SF existed as a genre, Mary Shelley was more interested in character and motivation than in the technical details. She also wanted the creature to be alarming to look at, to explain why he is shunned by everyone he meets and so ends up homicidally resentful, but she does it more subtly. Consider that description: the features "selected as beautiful" that become horrifying when they start to animate. It's easy to imagine a yellow-hued statue with lean, chiselled features. That could be a thing of great beauty -- unless it came to life, in which case it would suddenly slip from being an aesthetically pleasing artwork into the Uncanny Valley. Shelley had recognized the effect a century and a half before Masahiro Mori gave it a name.

In Frankenstein (the proper 1818 version) Victor flees to his bedroom, but the creature follows him there:

By the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped, and rushed down stairs. I took refuge in the court-yard belonging to the house which I inhabited; where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.

Oh! no mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those muscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.

In rejecting his creation, Victor sets off a chain of events that will spell tragedy for both of them. It's by no means as simplistic as the internet meme about "knowing that Frankenstein is the monster". Victor shirks responsibility; the creature murders a whole string of people, with possible rapes too. But neither of them is a hero or a villain. Shelley didn't write that kind of dumbed-down fiction. Her work has been woefully overshadowed over the years by the many movies and, fun as some of them are, none can hold a candle to the original novel. If you want a real Halloween treat, that's where to look.