I am reminded that "Frankenstein" is not a drag

It's week 4 in my scifi/fantasy class, and I'm not sure why I always approach re-reading "Frankenstein" as such a drag. Maybe it's because the book and its elements have so infused our culture (and not always in ways that accurate reflect Mary Shelley's ideas) that I think there's nothing new to learn. But once I start it, I find I appreciate it more than ever, despite its sometimes florid language and high-strung emotional tension. Here's my latest take in paper #4:

A word search of Frankenstein reveals that the word "nature/natural" appears over 70 times in the novel. Shelley uses "nature" in three different ways to advance the novel's great theme, that when nature is out of balance, terrible things happen.

"Nature" often refers to what is fixed and immutable." In Frankenstein, "human nature" includes feelings (love, hate, loyalty, agony), curiosity, and the creative urge. The monster's nature, is different. He is not created by a loving God, but by Frankenstein's effort to pervert nature through studies of unnatural sciences like alchemy. The monster's nature is therefore unlovely and unlovable, and, to his sorrow, destructive, first inadvertently then calculatingly. 

"Nature" may also refer to the natural world, particularly wilderness. For Shelley and other romantic writers, the beauty and power of nature restores mind and spirit. Frankenstein seeks to forget his monster by climbing Mont Blanc, hiking across glaciers, or watching thunderstorms break over the alps. But Frankenstein has broken with the natural world in creating the monster, so the restorative powers of these scenes are temporary; he remains tortured.

The use of the word "nature" described above are both linked closely to the third meaning of "nature," which Shelley sometimes capitalizes. "Nature" here personifies the mysteries of life and creation. Frankenstein treats these mysteries as if they were problems to be solved and does not consider the the implications of his error until his loved ones are dead, and only his own death and his creature's will restore the balance he has disrupted in Nature.

Frankenstein can be read as a meditation on how human nature can end up at odds with Nature and as a threat the natural world. This meditation reverberates today as humans attempt to "improve" nature through genetic manipulation, cloning, and depletion of resources. Failing to think through the consequences unbalances Nature. And, as Shelley illustrates, when Nature is unbalanced, there are unintended, catastrophic consequences.