This is a silly little French essay I wrote in senior year. I had just found my new passion – gothic literature – and it was going to change the course of my life from then on. Fully invested in Frankenstein, I spent my senior year alluding to it in essays for all my classes (yes, even chemistry) and wrote as many essays as possible either on Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein, or on the nature vs. nurture debate. This essay is actually titled Le Prométhée moderne, ou une lecture transformatrice. It is written in only my most terrible French (all my French) because I am of firm belief that French is only meant for when gushing over cats, stubbing your toe on the corner of a table, or to talk in secret code with your siblings when in a not-french environment. The title is an obvious spin-off of Frankenstein‘s second title The Modern Prometheus. It’s one of those essays that’s kinda hard to read for me. I am totally infatuated with the story that my writing style in incoherent (or maybe it’s just the French). I don’t remember what I got grade-wise on this bad boy, but I’m sure it was nothing stellar. Let’s just say, my grades are three times better now that I study everything in English even though all these undergrad courses are supposed to be harder than high school.
To get the main gist of it, I argue that Frankenstein is a transformative read because it examines the moral constraints surrounding scientific experimentation and also offers an allusion to Shelley’s life through the Creature. In a way, I argued, it was a sort of anomalous semi-autobiographical work. If you are willing to enter the uneven terrains, sordid trenches, and calamity of which the centre finds embedded a French-written essay par la Emma Fackenthall, please find attached this little number:
Well, that’s all folks. Reading through a second time just now I will say that this is an attempted deep dive in shallow waters. I wanted to say so much more and I had so much I could of added, but once again I was bound by the nefarious, cruel, abiding, oxygen-depriving, totalitarian-regime facsimile known as the god forsaken word count. dun dun dunnnnn. Let me speak, goddammit! I will write twenty pages if I wish!