The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde - UPDATED REVIEW

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde  Genre : Classics Blurb (on back of book) : Oscar Wilde’s only novel is the dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. In this celebrated work Wilde forged a devastating portrait of the effects of evil and debauchery on a young aesthete in late-19th-century England. Combining elements of the Gothic horror novel and decadent French fiction, the book centers on a striking premise: As Dorian Gray sinks into a life of crime and gross sensuality, his body retains perfect youth and vigor while his recently painted portrait grows day by day into a hideous record of evil, which he must keep hidden from the world. For over a century, this mesmerizing tale of horror and suspense has enjoyed wide popularity. It ranks as one of Wilde's most important creations and among the classic achievements of its kind. UPDATED REVIEW MY OPINION : ****** I would like to start out this review by stating that this is undoubtedly m...
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Frankenstein - Mary Shelley - UPDATED REVIEW

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Genre: Classic Horror

Blurb (on back of book): "Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart ..."
Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.
Based on the third edition of 1831, this volume contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Bysshe Shelley's preface to the first edition. This revised edition includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with 'A Fragment' by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori's 'The Vampyre: A Tale'.

UPDATED REVIEW
MY OPINION: *****

I love this book! This was my third time reading it for both my European History and English class for college and I loved it as usual. This is on my list of books to die for so clearly I will never have anything bad to say about it. 

I love that every time I read this book again, I notice something new. Particularly because I had to read this book for the first time in a history class, we focused a lot more on the historical context of this book beyond the actual words on the page. Especially in a time when Europe (and a good amount of the rest of the world) was undergoing a secularization and scientific rationalism revolution, this book seemed to display a lot of that historical information that we had never talked about in any of my classes before. I also read this book for the literary context for my English class, so it was interesting to see the dichotomy of what this book focuses on depending on the perspective you are looking at. 

I'm not going to go too far into this book this time around because I think my first review was sufficient. I really just love this story and every time I read it, it gets more and more enjoyable. I always feel such pity for the poor creature who just wanted to be loved. Yes, he was a "monster" for what he did but I understood what he was going through and the "outsider effect" kind of thing. I am by no means excusing his actions but I personally think Victor was the villain more than the monster ever was.

I love Henry Clerval (as usual). I always pray for a different outcome for that poor boy but it never happens. Justice for our man. I'm also convinced he was in love with Victor but maybe that's just me. 

Although this book is described as Gothic horror, I wouldn't necessarily say it was that scary. It's definitely more focused on the Romantic view of nature and man vs. nature. The nature-y passages could get a little tedious but they were definitely intentional and I could understand why they were there. We also learned a little bit more about Mary Shelley herself, who was married to Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, so clearly that had a lot of influence in her work. 

I will say something interesting we talked about was the ways in which women were depicted in this novel. Although Shelley's mother was leading feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, I would not say that this is necessarily a feminist novel. All of the women included in this book are kind of just there and don't really have the most fleshed-out characters. That being said, I wouldn't say it was anti-feminist either. In a way, Shelley argued for a feminist view without overtly saying it, and for good reason, since it would have been much harder for this book to be published in the given time period if it had been otherwise. 

Ultimately, I love this book. If you haven't already read it, I would highly suggest you pick this one up before you die. It's definitely a classic for good reason. 

Main Character: Victor, the Creature, Walton
Sidekick(s): Friends, family
Villain(s): The Creature, science, cruelness of society, etc
Classic Horror Elements: This book, while a classic, is written as a horror novel.

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