Since the sentence “Creation is not a mode of production, but a mode of existence” came to me, I’ve been thinking about Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, her dead husband whose heart did not burn. And that heart — wrapped in a sheet of poetry, waiting for years inside a drawer.
That Mary, only eighteen years old, had already endured so many losses, and that these losses ignited a creative force within her strong enough to give birth to a masterpiece like Frankenstein, is truly astonishing.
Beyond the familiar interpretations of the novel — “Humankind should not meddle with nature,” “Those who overstep their bounds and assume the role of the Creator are punished,” or “The Creature becomes evil only because it is rejected by society for its ugliness; the real culprit is not the monster but the society that denied it a chance” — what illuminates me is something else entirely: the act of creating one’s own self from the unconscious.
While watching the film, I can’t help but see that what Mary does at her desk is not merely crafting a horror story, but stitching together her fragmented soul with needle and thread. There is a woman there who has set out on the painful journey Jung calls individuation.
