A story within a story...within a story...whose voice?

As we drew up in class the other day, it has come to my attention just how lost we really are when hearing this voice. Whose voice are we really hearing? At the point in the story when the creature is telling his story, who are we hearing from? The Creature? Frankenstein, who the Creature tells? Walton, who Frankenstein tells? Margaret, who Walton tells? Or Mary Shelly, who is writing the book? What is lost and what is gained between each telling of the story? In a normal game of telephone, when things aren't quite heard right or retold wrongly, the initial phrase can change and become convoluted. The original story is told by the Creature himself to Frankenstein. The start of the chain. When Frankenstein is telling the story to Walton, more than a year has passed, and he is filled with hatred for the Creature. Both time and emotion bias a story. It is only once that we see the Creature through Walton's voice, and they converse over Frankenstein's dead body. Walton describes the Creature as having an "appalling hideousness", yet the Creature continues to act like as in Frankenstein's story, here asking forgiveness from Frankenstein and yet continuing to curse him. Next down the telephone is Walton telling his story to Margaret, and unlike the Creature or Frankenstein's telling of the story, Walton's story is written down and transcribed through letters. Does the story then become more lasting or does it lose something through this new medium of writing? It is these letters to Margaret that Shelly writes of, and invariably we hear her voice telling the story. So in the end, how true does a story ring that has been told repeatedly and then written down? Perhaps it is a question that ties into oral tradition and the transfer of a story into the written word.