This is fantastic literature, utterly spellbinding. My heart breaks for the creature whose own 'heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy, and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot even imagine.' It is a tale of exclusion and if you've ever felt like an outsider, the deep loneliness and emotional cost of that. It is also a cautionary tale of the 'masculinist-made god': science; man's selfish idealism and his efforts to dominate the universe. I take historian Brian Easlea's point that such a universe was and still is seen as the 'resisting female' who must be 'conquered'. Engaging read.