Numerology in Mademoiselle Frankenstein
When I began writing Mademoiselle Frankenstein, I wasn’t just telling a new story—I was building it inside the hidden architecture of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Numbers guided me. Chapters, word counts, pacing—they weren’t arbitrary. For the most part, I mirrored Shelley’s original structure down to the bones.
Why did I do this? It was about reverence—and about discovering what form itself can reveal.
Why Bother with All That Math?
Matching Shelley’s chapter count and structural rhythm was more than a formal constraint. It became a kind of secret code between my novel and hers. Most readers won’t consciously notice. But they might feel it—an echo, a strange harmony, like hearing a familiar song in a new key. A subtle sense of déjà vu. A pacing that seems tantalizingly familiar.
Here’s why it mattered to me:
A silent dialogue with Shelley: Even though Mademoiselle Frankenstein tells a new story, it moves to an old rhythm. That rhythm creates an invisible thread—a kind of ghost connection. The structure itself becomes a bridge between the two narratives.
Numbers as Gothic symbolism: Gothic literature is no stranger to the mystical. Fate, cycles, patterns—they’ve always mattered. Numbers can suggest inevitability, symmetry, or even doom. By using Shelley’s blueprint, I wasn’t just honoring her—I was invoking the sense of fatal design that runs through the genre.
Constraint as creative spark: Limits often fuel invention. Having to work within a set framework forced me to be deliberate. Each chapter had to earn its place. Each scene had to pull its weight. There was no room for drift. The structure became less of a cage and more of a compass.
Echoing the past while creating something new: Like the Creature himself, Mademoiselle Frankenstein is stitched together from fragments of the past. It carries Shelley’s structural DNA, but its identity—its voice, its soul—is its own. The novel exists in conversation with Frankenstein, but it doesn’t mimic. It answers.
Other Novels That Work This Way
This kind of structural mirroring isn’t common, but it’s not unheard of. The Hours by Michael Cunningham echoes the rhythm of Mrs. Dalloway while shifting timelines and characters. The homage is subtle, but powerful. Joyce Carol Oates’s A Bloodsmoor Romance plays with serialized 19th-century forms, both satirizing and revering their conventions. These books likewise speak to the originals in structure and tone, but tell their own stories entirely.
The Strange Freedom of Writing This Way
Working within Frankenstein’s shape wasn’t always easy. Sometimes I had to bend my story to fit it. Other times, the structure unlocked things I wouldn’t have found otherwise. The rhythm guided me—slow revelations, accelerating dread, a final descent. In the end, Mademoiselle Frankenstein is what the Creature was: a new form built from old parts. Not a copy. Not a replacement. A creation with its own will, haunted by its lineage.
Have you ever read a book where you sensed an invisible structure underneath?
