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Frankenstein Notes
CONTEXT
Mary Shelley’s Life Mary Wollstonecraft - her mother William Godwin - her father Percy Bysshe Shelley - her husband Writing of ‘Frankenstein’ The Villa Diodati The Summer of 1816 Romanticism Themes Second Generation of Romantics The Monster Tragedy Letters Epistolary Form Moral Qualities of Walton: Importance of Male Friendship: Initial Impressions of Victor The Frame Narrative: Walton passes the narrative onto Victor Frankenstein: Chapters 1- Victor’s Early Childhood Why does Shelley place this here? What philosophy of child-rearing does it seem to espouse? How is this relevant to what occurs later? How is Elizabeth positioned in the text? Victor’s Comment on Elizabeth Compare Victor and Clerval as students Alchemy What is alchemy and the occult? Victor’s Mother’s Death What might Freud have to say about the dangers of her final words? Mr Waldman’s Lecture Comment on the following passage which describes modern science and scientists: Why are they so powerful for Victor? How are nature and knowledge gendered? How does Victor’s language show Promethean ambition? - p.41- Compare this to Victor’s account of his parents’ relation to him on p.28. Attachment: Victor’s Original Sin The Elder Victor’s Reflection
Inhuman Horror How does Shelley show Victor to be inhuman or criminal? Chapter 5- Imagery of fire: Contrast of light and darkness: Natural Vs Man-Made Language Setting Description of the Monster Passage Themes: Victor’s Dream Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Justine’s Trial Elizabeth’s Speech in the Court Victor’s Feelings Elizabeth’s Speech Chapter 10 Victor quotes Shelley’s ‘Mutability’. Comment on the meaning of the quotation and the significance of its placing. ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ Percy Shelley 1819. Chapter 11 Summary: How does the chapter explore ideas such as ‘the noble savage’ and ‘the tabula rasa’? How is the ‘hovel’ symbolic? Monster’s experience in the Village Monster’s first experience of Fire Chapter 12 How is the monster presented as learning empathy and emotion from the De Laceys? How is the help he offers them symbolic? How does Shelley, through the monster, present the ‘godlike science’ of language? How does Shelley present the monster’s reaction to seeing himself (Narcissus)? In what mood does the chapter end? Chapter 13 How is Safie symbolic? Summarise the whole section from ‘The Book from which Felix instructed Safie’ to the end of the chapter in detail. Chapter 14 How does the presentation of Safie show that Shelley does not see the passivity of Elizabeth as inevitable or positive? How are the De Lacey’s and Safie shown to be analogous to the monster? Chapter 15 Find out the basic plot of the Sorrows of Young Werther. What does the monster learn from this novel? What does he learn from Plutarch’s Lives?
CONTEXT
Mary Shelley’s Life
Mary Wollstonecraft - her mother
➔ Best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) in part an answer to Thomas Paine’s A Vindication of the Rights of Man , in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. ➔ She suggests that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagines a social order founded on reason. ➔ She had a number of unconventional relationships with men. ➔ She died of complications following the birth of Mary Shelley.
William Godwin - her father
➔ In 1793, Godwin published his great work on political science Political Justice , an anarchist critique of the state. It’s a positive vision of how an anarchist society might work. ➔ After the writings of Burke and Paine, Godwin’s was the most popular written response to the French Revolution. ➔ After the death of Mary Wollstonecraft he married Mary Jane Clairmont.
Percy Bysshe Shelley - her husband
➔ Now considered one of the ‘big six’ Romantic Poets. ➔ Wrote an influential elegy for John Keats called ‘Adonais’. ➔ He was expelled from Oxford for publishing a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism. Soon after he married Harriet Westbrook. ➔ In May 1814 he met the 16 year old Mary and fell in love. With his marriage deteriorating, they eloped. ➔ They were able to marry in December 1816 after Harriet’s suicide.
Writing of ‘Frankenstein’
The Villa Diodati
● Mary’s stepsister, Clair Clairmont, initiated a sexual relationship with Lord Byron in April 1816, just before his self-exile on the continent, and then arranged for Byron to meet Shelley (eloped) and her husband in Geneva. ● Shelley’s party arrived in Geneva in May and rented a house close to Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lake geneva, where Byron was staying. There Shelley, Byron and the others engaged in discussions about literature, science and ‘various philosophical doctrines’. ● Shelley and Byron became close friends.
The Summer of 1816
1816 was nicknamed the year without a summer. The eruption of Mount Tambora caused the temperature to cool by about a degree across the world. Switzerland was beset by stormy rain.
- Wet summer where the group read ghost stories.
- Lord Byron put forward the idea of each of them writing a ghost story, where Frankenstein was formed.
- Many long conversations between Percy and Byron on the principles of life.
- Polidori wrote The Vampire - the first Vampire story.
- Byron wrote the poem Darkness and Fragment of a Novel
Romanticism
Frankenstein is a novel about the importance of communal feeling but to an extent. Consequences and critique of masculinist individualistic ideology of Romanticism.
Themes
NATURE
● Beyond human, organic, appreciation, sublime, beauty/terror. ● Responses to the Industrial Revolution. LIBERTY / REVOLUTION / SOCIETY ● 1789 French Revolution; Wollstonecraft and Payne lived through it. ● The first generation of the Romantics. Anti-hierarchical, believed in liberty and freedom. THE INDIVIDUAL / ARTIST / GENIUS ● Using natural experiences to inform themselves rather than studying. ● Power of genius comes from being naturally endowed with knowledge. ● Opposition to structural societal forms. Combination of Marxism and Liberalism, Freedom and Equality, Individual and Collective. THE CHILD ● Uncorrupted by society and its values.
Second Generation of Romantics
1816 - Keats, Shelley, Byron.
- Mary Shelley goes to Geneva, for the Alps, sublime.
- Where Rousseau lived: read parts of Novelle Helanise.
- Revolution = scientific, philosophical, religious and political. Reject every inherited norm.
- Refusing dogma and social norms = unusual lives of all these poets.
- In flight from the disapproval of society (Percy, Byron).
- Shelley and Claremont were both unmarried women.
Righteous and arrogant. He wants to be a memorable person in the history of exploration. “The inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries.” What do these details suggest to you about his character? That he is self-centered and egotistical. In the second letter to his sister, what does Walton say he longs for? A friend: “I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend.” Why do you think Walton feels lonely even though he is on board a ship with a full crew? He believes that no one is on his level of intelligence and ambition, and his definition of friendship is that the other person has to be on the same intellectual level as you. Walton has such a high perception of himself, that no one on his ship comes close to his requirements: “I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen.”
Epistolary Form
- Exposition, places the novel, personal influence.
- Bound in time, contained, found object. Certain realism.
Moral Qualities of Walton:
- Wants to be the sole achiever, the first man to explore the pole forever.
- Very unrealistic. Debt of a race to one person.
- Egotistical, narcissistic.
- Romantic focus on the individual, priorities on his journey. Collateral damage does not matter.
- Linking Romanticism to facism? Disregard to none other than the individual.
Importance of Male Friendship:
- Walton refers to his lack of a friendship (Letter 2) and his friendship with Victor Frankenstein (Letter 4).
- Narcissistic and egotistical side for his desire for friendship.
- Male friendship - automatically ‘a man’, not considering a female friendship.
- A woman cannot offer this Platonic ideal. Only someone identical to the self can fill the needs. Horatio and Hamlet.
- Desperate for a meaningful connection but focused on a “special person”.
Initial Impressions of Victor
- Overly romantic language. Almost homoerotic of narcissism rather than homosexuality.
- Puts a distance between Walton and Victor as Walton feels bad for Victor’s suffering.
- “Creature” - object of sexual desire and fascination.
The Frame Narrative:
- The narrative seems to always be the same despite the frame.
- The previous narrator always tries to flatter the next narrator.
Walton passes the narrative onto Victor Frankenstein:
- Errotic language, sexual element of the ear (idk?).
- Act of possession, consumed by the next narration.
- Seduction as possession. Walton and Frankenstein merge. Doubles becoming one. Page 160: Validates or opposes the events of the text.
Chapters 1-
Victor’s Early Childhood
“I remained for several years their only child […] I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me.” p.
Why does Shelley place this here?
Victor draws an idyllic picture of his childhood, everything is quickly alleviated by the presence of a close, loving family. This will soon be shattered with the death of Caroline, the creation of the Monster and the death of Elizabeth.
What philosophy of child-rearing does it seem to espouse?
● The optimum of attachment theory, a child who is so sheltered and secure in their relationships, that they will be more than ready to eventually leave the home and create new connections. ● He is presented with having the perfect childhood, so he should have a perfect adulthood, but he does not. His decision to cut himself off, caused by his egotism, is his downfall. ● His parents could be an example of ‘sensibility’ going around looking at the poor people as a spectacle. The idea of the privileged. The monster is a symbol of revolution, and so his parents as a bourgeois representation could be a type of nightmare.
- Victor is interested in the study of beyond humans. Clerval wants to study humankind, ethics, politics, and society.
- Victor obviously thinks of himself as to be better than Clerval, as he believes his intentions to be more divine than Clerval’s love of literature and humanities.
- Victor views science as the only true route to new knowledge.
Alchemy
p.31- The first image we find of Victor’s early learning is alchemy. He studies the great works of Western magic and the occult: Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus.
What is alchemy and the occult?
- Alchemy was a form of speculative thought that, among other aims, tried to transform base metals such as lead or copper into silver or gold. It also sought to discover cures for diseases and a way of extending life.
- The occult, in the broadest sense, is a category of esoteric supernatural beliefs and practices which fall outside the scope of religion and science, encompassing phenomena involving otherworldly agency, such as magic, sorcery, and mysticism and their varied spells.
Victor’s Mother’s Death
p.34- “On her deathbed the fortitude and benignity of this best of women did not desert her. She joined the hands of Elizabeth and myself. “My children,” she said, “my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children...”
What might Freud have to say about the dangers of her final words?
- Victor's mother on her deathbed asks Elizabeth to take her role in the family but also expresses a desire that Victor marry Elizabeth.
- Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex is relevant here - his mother in the moment of death makes Elizabeth (already a sort of sister to Victor) both his mother and his lover.
Mr Waldman’s Lecture
p.
Comment on the following passage which describes modern science and scientists:
“They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they
can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.”
- Victor describes these as ‘such the words of fate – enounced to destroy me.”
Why are they so powerful for Victor? How are nature and knowledge gendered?
- Waldman explains to Victor that alchemy was a false science and teaches him that while the alchemists' pursuits were noble, real scientists do the scientific, valuable work.
- Exaggerated the Patriarchal language. Nature is She. The Scientists are ‘penetrating’ nature; therefore, science is seen as a form of rape.
How does Victor’s language show Promethean ambition? - p.41-
“I paused, examining and analysing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me – a light so brilliant and wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the immensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that among so many men of genius who had directed their inquiries towards the same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret […] What had been the study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world was not within my grasp.” Light is a metaphor for Victor’s ambition
Compare this to Victor’s account of his parents’ relation to him on p.28.
“No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me as ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of this child so completely as I should deserve theirs.”
Attachment: Victor’s Original Sin
“My eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. And the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time. I knew my silence disquieted them, and I well remembered the words of my father: ‘I know that while you are pleased with yourself you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear regularly from you. You must pardon me if I regard any interruption in your correspondence as proof that your other duties are equally neglected.” p.
The Elder Victor’s Reflection
“I then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect to vice or faultiness on my part, but I am now convinced that he was justified in conceiving that I should not be
Natural Vs Man-Made Language
- “Dim and yellow light of the moon”
- Draws parallel between the eyes of a man-made creature with the natural light of the moon.
- “One hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me.”
Setting
Natural is good, undefiled by rational control, so by bringing overly schematically, the limbs together. ● Atmosphere feels dark with light, could be a moral ambiguity and greyness. ● November is the death of life.
Description of the Monster
★ Archaism describes the situational/religious experience rather than it directly being the monster. ★ Alliteration, there’s a correlation between his panic and his speed and the alliteration to increase the speed of the piece. ★ Sense of panic is mirrored by short sentences (fragmentation). ★ Animalistic description, he juxtaposes in the descriptions a lot. We watch him discover if he’s beautiful or repulsive. All individual aspects of the monster are beautiful. ★ “Wretch” - ambiguous in that it's something abject, but also deserves pity. ★ Accents of life - Aristotle, idealising religion to idealising accustocism. ★ Mood swings he expieriences in relation to the event. Whole passage fixates on his relationship with the monster.
Passage Themes:
➔ The Monster is no longer Victor’s as its alive. ➔ Idealism vs Realism. ➔ Intellectual vs Moral duty and responsibility. ➔ Ultimately to do with Victor’s narcissism. ➔ Pierces the narcissistic illusion. ➔ Monster is a feminine presence in the novel. ➔ Greatest sin is detachment.
Victor’s Dream
Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams 1905
- “Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious”
- They work by condensation of thought into metaphor.
- Dream analysis is achieved by the patient ‘free-associating’ with each element of the dream.
Victor’s Dream
- Symbolisation of a female writer.
- Female sexuality is strikingly absent from the text. This is the only kiss a female gives in the entire novel.
- One thing femininity represents is not being a man.
- When he realises the monster is not him, he is horrified.
- For Shelley, the novel is the equivalent of the monster is Mary.
- Sexuality, childbirth and murder. Bearing Demons: Frankenstein’s Circumvention of the Maternal, Margarest Homans: Key quotation on the symbolism of the dream: “To bring the demon to life is equivalent to killing Elizabeth, and that Elizabeth dead is equivalent to his mother dead. Elizabeth may have been the death of the mother [Catherine caught the fever from her], but now that she has replaced her, she too is vulnerable to whatever destroys mothers. And, indeed, the dream is prophetic: the demon will much later kill Elizabeth, just as the demon’s creation has required both the death of Frankenstein’s own mother and the death and violation of Mother Nature. To bring a composite corpse to life is to cicumvent the normal channels of procreation; the demon’s “birth” violates the normal relations of family, especially the normal sexual relation of husband and wife.”
Chapter 7
page 59- ● Shelley celebrates the beauty of the mountains. ● Using Victor as her mouthpiece. Victor’s sin is being asocial, leaving behind attachments. Sublime is the figure of the solitary victor. ● Celebration of the sublime. Storm, romantic. Finding beauty in terror. ● The monster is a projection of Victor. The monster wants to hide in the romantic sublime. ● Dodgy and questionable nature of the Romantics, having no social bonds. “Egotistical sublime” Keats on Wordsworth, echoed by Shelley.
Chapter 8
Justine’s Trial
● Working class woman against upper class men. ● Predictable result of the trial. “Wretched mockery of justice” - Victor. ● Justine, dressed in black, mourning for William and herself. Calm, knows the outcome. ● Antinomian. ● Justine - Justice. Mockery of the court system.
Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you - Ye are many - they are few.” Confrontation of the oppressed to the oppressor.
- Revolutionary poem. 1818 first edition of Frankenstein published.
- Monster as the many, Victor as a noble individual. Victor tells Walton the story of his life to cure him of excessive ambition. The whole tale takes place within the context of persuasion. The monster retells another story to persuade Frankenstein not to kill him.
Chapter 11
Summary:
Monster’s first experiences of nature, society and how he places himself within social structures. Picking berries, birds, going to the village and scares people by accident. Goes to a ‘hovel’ (attached to the De Lacey's village) and tries to find food.
How does the chapter explore ideas such as ‘the noble savage’
and ‘the tabula rasa’?
Note that we are now in the ‘centre’ of the narrative frame. Tabula Rasa - Latin for Blank Slate (John Locke). Rationalism, knowledge through thought. Empiricism, knowledge through experience. “No distinct ideas” - the Monster has entered the world with no knowledge of existing. Monster is this innocent child with no preconceived notion of the world. The Noble Savage - Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In a state of nature = happy. Romanticism. Nature is uncorrupted. Civilisation leads to our corruption. An ‘other’ uncorrupted’, ‘primitive’, state of nature. Non violent state, very calm - large shift from when he enters into the Village.
How is the ‘hovel’ symbolic?
Placement in society, placing himself outside of the Village. Looking in on normality from the perception of outsideness. Linked to Offred’s room: self-isolation despite being within a larger house. Take ownership of these places despite the lack of human interaction and community within them.
Monster’s experience in the Village
Stoned - sexually violent. Links to mediaeval religious punishments.
Monster’s first experience of Fire
First impression of fire is joy. Contrasting. Links to the village, he thinks it is beautiful but then gets burnt. Criticising Frankenstein, he does not have support from his creator, which means the Monster cannot be introduced into society with satisfactory knowledge to survive.
Chapter 12
How is the monster presented as learning empathy and
emotion from the De Laceys?
- Through noticing how unhappy the family are. He sees the realistic nature of humanity, not perfect lives.
- The Monster was ‘deeply affected’ by what he saw.
How is the help he offers them symbolic?
- He collects wood and makes repairs to their abode. Develops a desire to keep the family content. Reveals that he is the opposite of monstrosity. Takes pleasure in the good that he does.
- Monster as the Revolutionary Mob - misunderstood by those in power. Monstrosity only formed out of necessity.
How does Shelley, through the monster, present the ‘godlike
science’ of language?
- Recognising the currency of society is language. Compared to Victor and his conquest to be a hero.
- Clerval as a part of humanity, morality and literature. Attached to the rest of society through knowledge.
How does Shelley present the monster’s reaction to seeing
himself (Narcissus)?
- ‘I am the monster’, questions around a monster and the nature of a monstrous individual.
In what mood does the chapter end?
Hopeful. Last two paragraphs. Becomes like a poet. A romantic poet in his own mind.
Chapter 15
Find out the basic plot of the Sorrows of Young Werther. What
does the monster learn from this novel?
- Novel by Goethe. Written in diary form as a collection of letters about unrequited love which ends in the protagonist killing herself. The narrator is of a higher class than her love and so they cannot be together.
- It’s the Monster’s first interaction with external emotions, conceptualising emotions to him and he relates to them. He has an emotional reaction but doesn’t pretend to have an intellectual reaction. Very pure and contrasts with Victor’s intellectual nature.
- Learn about melancholy, first encounter with a depressive state. Emotional education.
What does he learn from Plutarch’s Lives?
Collection of biographies on Greek and Roman heroes, presented in pairs of failures and successes.
- The monster learns a glorified idea of masculinity, women are submissive and men uphold male standards of violence.
- Both the Greek and the Roman heroes have the same humanity but with cultural differences. Compared to Victor and the Monster - they have very different values. Nature vs Nurture, particularly around masculinity.
- Introduces him to the idea that things could be different, cultures can be different. It begins the decline of his empathy. He realises that people could be different and it is not necessary for him to be treated so badly.
- Fictionalisation of humanity, making reality into a narrative of fiction.
What does he learn from Paradise Lost? This is the most
significant book in the monster’s collection. It gives the novel its
epigraph.
The Monster becomes hyper aware of what a burdening existence is, especially as he doesn’t have a relationship with his creator. He identifies with both Adam and Satan.
- The Monster is overtly jealous of Adam’s relationship with his creator. The epigraph is where Adam blames his creator for their existence and inevitable fall from humanity.
What does the Monster find?
Victor’s Journals creating the Monster - page 100 Made in God’s image: “God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring [...] but my form is a filthy type of yours.”
Could the monster be made in Victor’s image?
- Representation of Victor, shows his values.
- Physical manifestation of Victor’s interior life. Narcissism, fear and anger. The monster’s body will not conform to normality. Happiness is the reward for normality, the reward for belonging. In the end all the monster wants is to mimic a form of happiness, seen in the De Laceys. A well balanced, nuclear, ideal family. Aspires to a normative function. Racial identity, heterosexual.
The Monster in Society
“These were the reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude; but when I contemplated the virtues of teh cottagers, their amicable and benevolent dispositions, I persuaded myself that when they should become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues, they would compassionate me, and overlook my personal deformity.” - page 100
- The monster wants to assimilate into society, into what he perceives as normitility.
- Theme in society about the spectacle or interiority. Which do you create judgement on?
- Can only be a dream, only a hope. Weighing up the happiness in observing versus being a part of the normitility.
- Cultural theorist, queer, - Sara Ahmen ‘The Promise of Happiness
- A relation of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is actually an obstacle to your flourishing. Beriant. Social critic.
- Despite the monter’s relentless pursuit of a fantasy of a good life, there is a cruel optimism that eventually gives rise to a violent/evil turn.
The Monster’s Interaction with the De Laceys
See his optimism, the careful way he constructs the meeting and then is totally crushed.
- Suddenly becomes desperate, indecisive and very human. Old De Lacey is blind, easy to take his side.
- View this as a desperate attempt to sympathize with the Monster, or to manipulate him. He wants to help even though he recognises there is something terrible about the Monster. Blind justice.
- “Great God” “who are you” - very ambiguous.
- The Old man, despite his apparent compassion for the Monster, doesn’t defend the Monster.
- Could the monster be manipulating De Lacey?
- He talks to De Lacey because he wants to assimilate into society and the only thing that is limiting him is his appearance. De Laceys had an innate survival instinct that immediately rejected the Monster, cannot say it’s a societal construct, but it's an ingrained fight or flight. “The hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity.” page 103
