Not for the first time, it’s hard to know how to write about a classic. The classics have already constructed their frames of reference. Victorian psychoanalysis. Imperial hauntings. The gender wars.
One, of course, wonders what a West Indian reader of the book thinks, more than one wonders what one thinks oneself. The monster in the attic. The ‘other’ Frankenstein. The hideous implications of colonialism. The unwitting zombie movie.
The way that the novel now makes us question the society from which it emerged in ways the author perhaps intended, or perhaps didn’t. The whole twentieth century shitshow, already nascent like a baby acorn, in the prose of a woman writing to keep her sisters entertained.
With a happy ending suitable for a twenty first century horror movie.
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