Frankenstein: Context/Ideas

Galvanism

• Luigi Galvani and Giovanni Aldini

• Concerned w/ reanimating the dead using electricity

• Explored during the period of enlightenment

  • Generated fears over scientific discovery

• MS inspired by Galvanism; creature created through the practice

• Description of monster’s creation takes from Aldini’s recount of galvanising a human corpse

  • “eyes opened”, “muscles convulsed”

Prometheus

• Prometheus stole fire + was condemned by the Gods as a result

• Frankenstein (The Modern Prometheus) gives humans what once belonged to the Gods (immortality)

  • Demonstrates act of hubris in act of creation/playing god

• Victor is Promethian; rebelliously creative and innovative.

• The creature arguably resembled Prometheus?- Liberation from creator

• Ovid’s Metamorphoses describes Prometheus moulding humankind from clay

  • Act of creation; god-like powers

Paradise Lost- John Milton

• Satan was punished for his vanity; rebellious ‘hero’ who defied God (according to Romantics Byron and Percy Shelley)

  • Satan also punished for his arrogance and thirst for forbidden knowledge.

    • Victor mirrors him in this way

• “Did I request thee, maker, from my clay?”

Shelley’s early life: Mary Wollstonecraft

• Feminist

• Wrote “A Vindication for the Rights of Women”

  • Earliest treatise for equality of women- argued that women were capable of rational thought

  • Believed the ideal marriage was a companionate marriage (good companionship > love and sex)

Shelley’s early life: William Godwin

• Seen as one of the first advocates for utilitarianism

  • First proponent of anarchism; rejects governmental authority + is in favour of self-governing

• Humans can become perfect and god-like if they follow reason above all else.

The Age of Enlightenment (Age of Reasoning)

• Intellectual and philosophical movement in EUR (late c17th to 1815)

• Questioned traditional authority and religion

  • Embraced scientific knowledge

  • Led to concerns about science’s influence over religion

    • = backlash from Church

• Shelley infl by this; Frankenstein regarded as first sci-fi novel.

Romanticism

• Altruistic/intellectual movement in EUR towards end of c18th.

• Emphasis placed on emotions, individualism + power of nature'

  • Reaction to rapid industrialisation.

The Sublime

• Greatness/immensity of nature

  • + human inferiority

• Abundance of overwhelming emotions

  • Seen in Frankenstein when the creature is among nature.

Concerns over science

• Interrogative science:

  • Needing reasons why

  • Generally more intrusive

  • Practiced by Victor

• Observational science:

  • Observing the natural world

  • Seen as more ethical

• Victorian concerns raised over interrogative science

  • Believed man was interfering with natural order

    • AGAINST Romantic ideas

• Sir Humphry Davy:

  • Chemistry enables chemists to be “masters” rather than “scholars” of nature

    • VF engaged w/ this idea, MS rejects it

    • Sexual politics: male scientist, mother nature; penetrative

The Gothic Doppelgänger

• Seen in A Picture of Dorian Grey and The Strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

• Commonly used to explore the duality of man

  • Civilised externally, beast within

• Victor + the Creature are doppelgängers to a certain extent

  • Both isolated; Victor’s is self-inflicted.

• 2011 National Theatre Production: actors playing Frank/Creature switch each night to fuse roles together + emphasise the idea of a blurring double.

• Elizabeth: “men appear to me as monsters”

Jean-Jaques Rousseau

“Man is born free but everywhere is in chains”

• Society’s confinement of the true human being

• Ideas about self/society emerging

• c18th, the self becomes increasingly defined by its inner life rather than it’s position within society

  • Idea that sovereignty comes from the will of people

Rousseaunian reading of Frankenstein:

• Whilst in nature, the Creature is true (+ unmarked by societal values)

  • Once exposed to civilisation, the Creature becomes cold + fuelled by vengeance.

• Victor as a victim of society?

  • Societal goal of knowledge pushed him to indulge in his ardent curiosity (similar to Beckford’s Varthek?)

Significance of Geneva

• Frankenstein born out of a holiday to Geneva (MS, Lord Byron, John Polidori)

• 1816 the year without a summer: cold and grey- very Gothic and spooky

The French Revolution

• Frankenstein as an allegory for the FR rev?

  • Creature reps the poor, Victor’s family represents the bourgeoise?

  • The Creature attempts to overthrow the bourgeoise (Victor) on his hunt for revenge, this turning into a revolution.

Evolution

Erasmus Darwin (incl in MS 1831 foreword)

• Theories incl. evolution, survival of the fittest published in 2 long poems.

• Ladder of evolution; “single-sex” reproduction + “dual-sex” reproduction

  • In his sexless act of creation, Victor goes back in evolution (degeneration)

Basis for Charles Darwin’s work.

Mary’s identification with Victor

• Anxiety surrounding raising + loving children

  • First child died after 2 weeks, 2 more pregnancies before/during writing

    • Fear of not bonding with and loving children (postpartum depression)

    • Similarly, Frankenstein has no bond or maternal instinct towards the creature

• Wollstonecraft died during childbirth- creature destroying creator; fears of “could my child kill me?”

Mary’s identification with the Creature

• Creature’s rejection of a maternal figure

  • MS’s nanny (Louisa Jones) abandons her for a lover when MS is 3; loss of maternal figure

  • Stepmother (Mary Jane Clairmont) rejects MS + favours her 2 other biological children

    • Strong effect on MS; psychosomatic boils

• Feeling like an outsider with no sense of belonging

  • MS lives with a wealthy family in Scotland after being sent away- feels like an intruder in this family

  • Creature “looking through a keyhole” at the DeLacey’s healthy family dynamic.

  • The Creature: “I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime”; deliberate isolation and lack of respect

    • Sees himself in monster and shuns him too.

  • “Irrevocably excluded”

• Fear that an unloved child would become a monster

  • “misery made me a fiend”

    • Creature kills William in trying to embrace him as family; fear of harming own children

Empiricism

John Locke

• Empiricism: all knowledge, ideas and character come from experience

• No innate character or ideas= nothing inherently monstrous about the Creature

  • Locke wrote about “child who has, at birth, the strength and stature of a man”

• Creature: “misery made me a fiend”

Female sexuality

Mellor 2019: “What Victor Frankenstein is really afraid of is an independent female sexuality”

Female creature:

• Independent; refuses to obey “a compact made before her creation”

• Ugly woman; “deformity”

• Lustful; might prefer “superior beauty of man”

  • Physical strength so able to work sexual will on men (Vic.)= loss of male dominance

• Reproductive powers to birth “a race of creatures”

• Other women in novel do not have this sexual desire

Eliminating the role of women

Mellor 2019: “destroy the mother by becoming the mother”

• Victor’s motivation for creating the creature is to eliminate the female role in reproduction

• Motif of dead women:

  • Dead Eliz./mum in dream (“graveworms”); Victor being embraced by dead mum.

  • Victor tears apart female creature violently (“trembling with passion”)

    • Excitement/eagerness to destroy women?

  • Elizabeth’s death; “embraced with ardour”

• Only instances of intimacy are an attraction to the idea of eliminating the female.

Nature and revenge

• Victor creating the creature (+ going against nature in doing so) leads to illness; “natural” deaths

• Elemental power of nature pursues Frank.

  • Sublime, lightning, thunder, storms

  • Connection w/ appearance of creature

  • Icy setting @ end

  • Role of supernatural/hauntings- spirits tormenting in Manfred (L Byron, dramatic poem); familiar to Shelley, so infl.

  • Victor is never able to have his own children (death of Eliz + Vic); punishment for subverting natural reproduction.

Victors relationship with nature

• Victor in his study: “my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature”; beginning of the end.

  • Vic. disregards nature and believes he can overcome it.

• V. “forced to lean against a tree for support”; demonstrates romantic idea that nature is always triumphant.

• Ernest Frank (only surviving Frankie) becomes a farmer; cooperation/reconciliation w/ nature.

Modern responses

• Science: bioethics of genetic modification of gametes to eliminate conditions.

  • Can be used for attractiveness, slow ageing- superhumans, “designer babies”

The Creature as a “racial other”

• “yellow-skinned” “flowing black hair”

• Walton “not a European”

• Imperialist age= fear of other

Failure to embrace people who are different= creation of monsters (Victor); message from Shelley.

Isolation stemming from this (on victims side) also makes monsters; not good for anyone involved.

Ambition, hubris and consequence

• Vic possesses hubris in his god-like powers of creation.

  • Promethian, believes he can remove women- more hubris.

• Walton + hubris: “success shall crown my endeavours”

  • Foil for Vic- not corrupted by the consequences of ambition like Victor.

• Rime of the Ancient Mariner (intertextuality)

  • “I shall kill no albatross”; ideas of consequences and self-inflicted burdens

Companionship/Isolation

• Walton: “thirst” for companionship which is needed for survival.

• Victor becomes isolated in his study (like creature, link doppleganger): “causes me to forget those friends”.

  • Victor is not isolated at first; pushes those he loves away from him.

  • Creature longs for companionship, cannot get it (DeLaceys, female creature).

    • Victor’s isolation is self-inflicted.

Exterior appearances

• Eliz: “she appeared of a different stock”, “heaven-sent”

When creating the creature, Frank: “selected his features as beautiful”- opposite is achieved, creature is “hideous”

• Beauty can only come from the natural; attempts to manufacture beauty (like Vic) are unsuccessful as they go against the natural order.

  • Modern interpretation: plastic surgery?

• Shelley suggesting there is a better way to view beauty in terms of power + the sublime- nature is most beautiful, like natural creation is best.

• When creating something (e.g. child or art) it is in the image of yourself.

  • Frank’s responsibility to see himself in the creature without rejecting it.

  • “God made man beautiful and alluring after his own image”; beauty is in familiarity and recognition, not in an objective science experiment.

Setting

• Night time; emphasises isolation, lower visibility= unknown, spooky

• “The sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation”; creature has a reliance on nature- bring in romantic ideas.

• Storm: appearance of creature (Nature’s revenge)

• “Rain pattered dismally”

• “darkness and storm”

• “vivid flashes of lightning”

• Typical of Gothic; internal thoughts/feelings become externalised.

Structure and form

• Epistolary novel

  • Walton’s letters to sister MS

    • Metanarrative element- reliability and consistency of storytelling comes into question

      • Punter 1996: “fragmentary, inconsistent, jagged”- like the monster

      • Narrator effects reliability/consistency “Frankenstein, Victor, Walton”; either way, novel is still androcentric; explains 2d nature of Eliz + women in novel (Shelley highlighting men’s lack of understanding of women”

• Nested narratives/Chinese box struct.

Creators/ Creation scene doubling

• “capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter”; subversive of natural order.

• “a new species would bless me as it’s creator and source”; Victor taking on god-like role. Hubris; wants to be hailed.

Creation scene:

• Imagery of childbirth- “every limb became convulsed”: Victor replacing role of women

• “watery eyes” vs. “aching eyes”