Frankenstein and The Bloody Chamber

How does John Locke's essay 'Concerning Human Understanding' affect Frankenstein?

Mary read this as she was writing the novel

Locke was an empiricist, and believed that all knowledge comes from experience, and the human mind 'begins as a blank sheet of paper, void of all characters, without any ideas'

>> the idea that humans are not inherently evil >> society as corruptive
>> Not the monster's fault for being monstrous

What was Galvinism?

Scientist Galvani 19thC

Frogs legs would twitch when electricity applied

Victor's motives

Ostensibly altruistic
> 'If I could banish disease from the human frame and reader man invulnerable'

However, Shelley presents him as corrupted by his desires
> sexual language
>> 'penetrate into the recesses of nature'

Quotes for initial description of the monster

'Selected his features as beautiful'

'Lustrous hair'

'Teeth of a pearly whiteness'

'Yellow skin scarcely covering the muscles and arteries'

'Straight black lips'

Monster's birth: 'He muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin...

... wrinkled his cheeks ... one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me'

Marxist reading of the Monster

The role of the creature as
> victim of society
> agent of social change

Could see him as representing the Proletariat; alienated from his fellow workers and humanity, he shapes his revenge and destruction of the traditional societal arrangement of the family.
> his chief victims were upper class

How the Monster changes throughout the novel

He reads about 'Virtue and Vice' in the hovel
> and questions how these qualities can simultaneously exist in one person

After his rejection by the cottage family, he begins to embody these characteristics

By the end of the novel, he recognised this


'Misery has made me a fiend'

Shelley's criticism of society >> his interaction with Civilisation is what turns him uncivilised >> society creates monsters

Walton: 'Why not still proceed over the untamed yet obedient element?....

.... What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?'

The Monster + Aesthetic prejudice

His ugliness and abnormality

> the blind grandpa appreciates him

The ugliness of the monster serves as a warning and allows a visible demonstration of the follies of vice

Frankenstein + the role of women

Masculine view of creation
> usurps the role of women in childbirth etc,.

V + W > domination of a feminised nature

Woman are very much static
> Walton's sister
> Elizabeth

Victor loved to 'tend' on Elizabeth as on 'a favourite animal'

Fear of the potential power of a female monster

Safie goes against the traditional, her mother told her to 'aspire to higher powers of intellect and an independence of spirit'

Quote for Monster justifying his malignity

'I am malicious because I am miserable'

Frankenstein + Family Relationships

Creature: "I am malicious because I am miserable"
> importance of nurture from Victor

Epistolary structure, frames narrative with intimate letters between Walton and Margaret - importance of family relationships

Victor talks about his wonderful childhood we cp. to how he has abandoned the monster

Quote from Victor about destiny , he talks about when mentioning his scientific education

'Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction'

What does American critic Charlotte Gordon have to say about Frankenstein?

Says that the novel is condemning the way that society treats the unknown

> She says that Shelley would have identified with the monster
>> In the 19thC, women were 'the unnamed creature'

Cp: Victor's fear of sexuality

Frankenstein + Setting and the Unknown

Transgressing into the unknown

Walton: 'undiscovered solitude'

Victor: 'I pursued nature into her hiding places'

Quote from Victor about knowledge

'Learn from me.. how dangerous is knowledge'

Compare Shelley and Carter's attitudes to the unknown

Shelley: Exploring the unknown as a transgression, a warning against unrestrained curiosity

Carter: don't accept limits, don't have to be restrained

TBC + The unknown

Cp. Frank, Landscape rep journey into the unknown
> 'Away from Paris, into the unguessable country of marriage'

The girl's curiosity is set up to be punished, but Carter subverts expectations and the girl gets away with it

>>embrace the unknown, embrace the unconventional

TCofMrL + The Unknown

Boundaries between human and animal

'He has the head of a Lion; mane and mighty paws of a lion, yet wore a smoking jacket of a dull red brocade'

--> Carter subverts traditional fairytales,- sets up oppositions between beast and girl, in order to break them and bring the girl into her animal self

TTB + The Unknown

Sets up The Tiger as the unknown, but the scene with the souls and horse riding casts doubt on the boundaries between the oppositions
> 'The six of us... could boast among us not one soul'

> transgression is acceptable because those boundaries between the unknown and the known don't really exist

How does Carter describe myths?

"Extraordinary lies designed to make people unfree"

Quote for Victor's last warning to Walton

'Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition'

Quote for how the Monster hates himself at the end of the novel

"You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself with"

Carter's message at the end of TCofMrL

Usually, corruption is from the unknown. However, in this story, the corruption is from the familiar (society)
>> no need to conform

Ending of TTB

Sexual desire is a catalyst for Beauty's transformation
> combines sex and birth
>> Beast licks off her skin, which can be seen as a sexual act that gives way to birth
>> 'nascent patina of shining hairs'

Sex is reclaimed as a collaborative act of creation, instead of objectification
> cp: how Beast had wanted to see Beauty naked, now she claims herself
> cp at the beginning when she didn't have identity - her father treated her as a commodity

Ending of EK

EK had dominated the girl
> She has somewhat colluded in this
>> she had allowed him to call her a 'skinned rabbit' etc.. because she was caught in the 'vertigo' of her desire for him

While most of Carter's heroines rewrite their destiny and find happiness with men, this girl completely rejects men
> She is called 'Mother' >> she is now the absolute author of her own destiny

> Undermined? Unsettling?
>> switches to future tense

Ending of LTHOL

Only when the Countess has died, her face looks
> 'Far older less beautiful and so, for the first time, fully human'

Ending as a comment on the artificiality of the construct of femininity?

'You can throw your Bible at him...

.... and your apron after.. it won't do you any good,

'Sweet and sound she sleeps...

.... in between the paws of the tender wolf'

TBC + Pain and Pleasure

'I longed for him and he disgusted me'

'There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer'

> the girl is almost fascinated by the Marquis' corruption

Quote from TBC about corruption

'Saw how much that cruel necklace became me.. and I saw in myself a potentiality for corruption that took my breath away'

EK + Pain and Pleasure

'Tender butcher' - He is her lover and also her destroyer (oxymoronic)

EK + Powerlessness

Girl is drawn in
> 'I will be drawn into that black whirlpool and be consumed by you'

'He lays upon me his irrevocable hand'

'He drew me towards him on his magic lasso of inhuman music'

Frankenstein + Entrapment

Victor trapped by his transgression > monster follows him
> 'I was anxious'
> 'we are nearly surrounded by ice'
>> Cp. punishment for betraying God, literally trapped by his actions

Monster is trapped outside of society, not accepted
> series of rejections

TCOW + Entrapment

Rep. patriarchal oppression
> wolves
> 'the trees go fishing on behalf of their friends'
> 'surrounded
> 'forest assassins'

Girl's transgression is not condemned
> 'the blizzard will die down'
>> Carter's message - to excape from entrapment is to embrace the source of it

'You never saw such a wild thing as my mother...

... ..... .... one hand on the reins of the rearing horse while the other clasped my father's service revolver'

TCOW + Treatment of women

Almost mocking tone about traditional women (that are usually celebrated in the fairytale genre)
> Macaroni lady
> Granny
>> 'She has her Bible for company, she is a pious old woman'
>> 'It won't do you any good'

Praises RRH > 'wise child'

LTHOL + The Past

'Helplessly perpetuates her ancestral crimes'

Forced to wear an 'antique bridal gown'

Trapped in her family and the chateau
> 'She is the last bus of the poison tree that sprung from the loins of Vlad the Impaler'

She is described as a haunted house
> 'look out the windows of her eyes'

LTHOL: 'The beautiful somnambulist helplessly...

... perpetuates her ancestral crimes'

Frankenstein + Blurring of Boundaries

Shelley presents the boundaries between Victor and the Monster as clear
> horror imagery re. Monster's birth

However, these boundaries start to blur in the monster's embedded narrative
> childlike
> wants to relate to the cottage people
> saves the drowning child
> wants companionship with William
> can read
>> capable of intelligent, rational thought

Cx: Gothic fears re. the Age of Enlightenment
> increase in views that humans evolved from animals
> many feared these ideas would bring the world to moral chaos, when humans aren't made in the image of God anymore
>> emp. Transgression

Victor has turned more to monstrosity
> distances himself
> SOLIPSISM
> allows Justine to die, and then somehow makes it about himself
> ignores Elizabeth
> abandons monster as soon as he is created
> hacks the female monster to bits in front of Monster

Frankenstein + Tension

Retrospective narrative
> Walton's letters, frame narrative
>> foregrounds consequences of Victor's transgression
>> we want to know what happened leading up to Victor's transgression > delayed revelation
>> ref. remorse, misery to come

Comparison to Walton > "Do you share my madness?"

Setting
> Dante's inferno, punishment for something

Religious language
> 'profane fingers'

Monster's threat to Victor
> 'I will be with you on your wedding night'
>> we guess the threat is against Elizabeth, given that V has just killed female monster
>> Victor's solipsism

Victor: "Do you share my madness?...

... have you drunk also of that intoxicating draught? Hear me, and you will dash the cup from your lips"

TBC: 'He stripped me..

... as if he were stripping the leaves off an artichoke'

TBC + Sex and Violence

Marquis' porn
> 'reproof of curiosity'
> 'Have the nasty pictures scared baby?'

Marquis kisses the rubies before he kisses her mouth
> more attracted by the violence

'A dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides'

'There is a striking resemblance between the act of love and the ministrations of a torturer'

The strangled ex wife's body disturbed the girl
> 'Her dead lips smiled'

EK: 'The tender butcher who showed me...

.... how the price of flesh is love.. skin the rabbit!

TBC: 'I had been infinitely..

... dishevelled by the loss of my virginity'

TTB: Beauty's father being more inhumane than the Tiger

'My father lost me to the beast at cards'
> short, matter of fact opening
> objectified


Beast: "If you are so careless of your treasures, you should expect them to be taken from you"

Quote for how the Countess hates being a vampire

'The blood on the Countess' cheeks will be mixed with tears'

Quote for Monster being like a baby in the first bit of his embedded narrative

'Poor, helpless, miserable'

'Sometimes I tried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds'

Found a fire
> 'In my joy, I thrust my hand into the live embers'

Quote for Victor recognising the monster as his double

"My own spirit let loose from the grave, forged to destroy all that was dear to me"

What is the significance of the 2011 Danny Boyle staging of Frankenstein?

Boyle cast similar looking actors for Victor and the Monster

The actor who played Victor would occasionally give the monster's lines and vice versa

Quote for the Monster always being close to Victor (also a metaphor for doubles)

'He hovers near the spot which I inhabit'

Which contemporary critic thought that Shelley's miscarriages had an impact on her writing?

Ellen Moers

Frankenstein, Setting + Walton's Ship in the North Pole

Walton's journey out there represents isolation and transgression

'Encompassed as I am by frost and snow'

Cx: Dante's inferno
> The 9th and innermost circle of hell is full of people stuck in frozen water up to their waist (or neck if they're really bad)
>> They committed the worst type of sin, betrayal of God
>> alludes to Victor's and Walton's Promethean transgression

Walton + Playing God

'I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to the heavens'

Frankenstein + the Sublime setting of the Alps

Romanticism
> healing powers of nature

Ch7 describes his journey back to Geneva through the mountains just after William's death
> 'by degrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me'

Frankenstein + Victor's workshop

'Workshop of filthy creation'

'Solitary chamber, or rather, cell'

He 'neglects' the outside world and gets a fever
> healed by nature (and clerval)
>> 'the season contributed greatly to by convalescence'

Carter + Woodland Settings

Fairytale convention

The Psychologist Jung says fairytale forests represent the 'perilous aspects of the unconscious'

Justine Gaunt says they're places 'where the subconscious can run free and we can return to our primal selves'

> TCOW
> EK
> W.Wolf

How does Justine Gaunt describe fairytale woodlands?

They're places 'where the subconscious can run free and we can return to our primal selves'

TCOW, Quote for forest being malevolent

'The wicked trees go fishing on behalf of their friends'

Quotes for Monster's realisation after he kills William

'My heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph; clapping my hands, I exclaimed, "I too can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable"

Cp, just before he had wanted William as his 'companion'
> it even looks as if killing him was an accident
>> on,y grabbed his neck 'to silence him'

Quite for Victor being threatened by female monster's ability to have children

'A race of devils would be propagated upon the earth'