Frankenstein/ NLMG

Key Terms and Context — 💛 = Theory / 💙 = Literary / 💜 = Autobiographical / 💚 = Science and Society

MS Started writing 💜

• Started writing it in 1816 (according to Author’s note) - the summer of no sun

• Started writing it at 18 years of age

• Stayed in Villa Diodati in Geneva with Percy, Byron, John Polidori

• Got married to Percy while writing

• “I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow” while being unable to sleep

MS Publishing 💜

• 1818

  • Published edition 3 in 1831 (we study)

• Anonymously

  • Women unlikely to get published

    • People would assume poor quality

    • Only expected to write about love and marriage

• Taken to publishing house by Percy

  • Said he’d helped with “revising proofs” and that it was a friend’s

  • Many thought that he wrote it

  • Dedicated to her father, William Godwin

MS Childhood/ Parents 💜

• Mary Wollstonecraft - famous proto-feminist, died in childbirth (11 days after giving birth to her second daughter MS)

  • Wrote “a vindication of the rights of women” - suggested that women are not naturally inferior to men, and that they only appear so because of a lack of education

  • Shelley read her works and was inspired by satirical depictions of gender in the novel

• William Godwin - famous philosopher, raised her strictly

  • Had radical ideas, in line with proto-anarchist enlightenment philosophers such as Diderot: "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."

  • Wrote “An enquiry concerning political justice”, suggesting that Mankind is capable of perfection through reason and eventually there will be no need for the corrupting institutions such as the state 

• Ran away with Percy Shelley when she was 16 and he 18

Frank Genre 💙

• Gothic Literature

  • Multiple Narrators common

  • Becoming popular in the 1800s

  • Epistolary Form common

  • Doppelgangers common

• Inspired by Fantasmagoriana (Author Note: “Some volumes of ghost stories, translated from the German into French, fell into our hands”)

  • German book of ghost stories

• Heralded as one of the first examples of science fiction

• The competition aimed to “make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart”

Ishiguro 💜

• British-asian author

  • Moved from Nagasaki to England when 5, spoke Japanese at home

    • immigrant experience → otherness, cultural isolation and desire to integrate into dominant culture

    • this relates to the notion of science over-reaching and the terrible moral/ social consequences — both ‘Atomic Bombs’ and ‘Clones’ have arguments for and against their existence

  • 23 years after moving to England he got British citizenship

    • deferrals → proving their worth and humanity, as he had to prove himself a ‘worthy citizen’

  • “I do have a distinct background. I think differently, my perspectives are slightly different.”

• Not his first successful novel

  • Published NLMG in 2005

  • Won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2017

• Originally wanted to be a professional songwriter

  • In the novel, artistic output → the soul

  • Reflects the central musical motif

  • His choice to use non-prosaic language is conscious

NLMG Genre 💙

• “You could say there’s a dystopian or sci-fi dimension”

• “I think of it more as an alternative history … if just one or two things had gone differently on the scientific front”

The mind at birth is blank 💛

• Tabula Rasa

• Filled later through experience and socialisation

• John Locke - Enlightenment Philosopher

• Calvinists → people are predestined for heaven/ hell, inheritably evil/ not evil

Reproductive Cloning 💚

• In 1996, scientists created the first cloned mammal from an adult cell - Dolly the sheep

• Worldwide community almost unanimously agrees that usage on humans is unethical:

  • Cloning is often dangerous and ineffective

  • Considered a violation of human rights

  • Laws have been passed against the cloning of humans in many nations

Human Rights 💚

• Nazis used experimental surgery in WWII on prisoners of war and the jewish, believing them to be less than human → increase in human rights concerns

  • Bone, muscle, nerve regeneration, and bone transportation studied

• The exponential growth in technology and AI systems resulted in a philosophical debate about what it is that makes as human.

Women in MS’ society 💚

• Marriage → legal property of husband

• Women could not:

  • Testify in court

  • Vote

• Widely believed that women were not capable of rational thought

  • and Psychologically vulnerable due to hysteria

The “angel in the house” 💙

• 19th century archetype

• From Patmore’s poem (1864)

• Feminine Ideal:

  • a wife and mother

  • who was selflessly devoted to her children

  • and submissive to her husband

• ALIGNS WITH / ARE PRESENTED AS

  • Archetype created AFTER Frankenstein was written

• MS satirises the way men see women by presenting Elizabeth and Caroline as doubles - lack of depth

Enlightenment 💚💙

• During the 18th century

• Davy (associate to Godwin) wrote “Elements of Chemical Philosophy” which taught Shelley the distinction between alchemy and chemistry

Abjection 💛

• Psychoanalytical Theory established in Kristeva’s 1980 book

• Suggests that things that were once part of a human subject and are now an object we have an instinctive repulsion too

  • Most extreme example = the human corpse

• Victor makes a subject out of objects, therefore crossing the boundary and creating the feeling of abjection

• The creature can be seen to represent evil/ taboo parts of Victor, that have been expelled

• Victor refuses to accept that the creature is a subject

• In NLMG, clones are in liminal space between subject and object

You can tell the moral character of someone based on how they look 💛

• Physiognomy

  • Interior beauty as reflecting interior morality

  • The creature learns about this as he reads

French Revolution 💛

1789-1799

• Peasants treated as monstrous

• Hugely influential event → great need for social change, challenge to oppressive hierarchies

• Creature’s rebellion inspired by this - learns about the corruption of the world, seeks to be treated fairly and eventually seeks to punish his oppressors

Growing-up story fancy term 💙

Bildungsroman narrative

When one narrative is embedded in another 💙

Frame Narrative

Epistolary Form 💙

• Taking the form of a document or letter - of the character’s written thoughts

• Common in Gothic Lit: Allows slow revelations, multiple perspectives and unreliability

• Common in travel narratives: strong sense of place

• Creates verisimilitude

Verismillitude 💙

the appearance of being truthful or real

Intradiegetic Narrator 💙

Aware that they’re a storyteller and communicating to others within their world

Fictive Autobiography 💙

Fictional character records their life story

Non-linear Narrative / In Media Res 💙

Begins near the end of the characters’ lives - recounts their memories not in order

Withheld information 💙

Defers information through their memories, so the reader has to gradually piece together clues (references a tragedy without explaining / doesn’t mention clones for a while)

Lacking/ large amount of…💙

Poverty of imagination/ expectation

Survailance 💛

Panopticon

• System of control

  • All prisoners watched by a single guard

  • Cannot tell whether they are watched

  • Therefore self-regulate their behaviour

• Designed by Bentham in 1700s

Theories of creativity 💛

• Humanistic → Basic needs met before creativity (Maslow)

• Psychoanalytical → Creativity is created in suffering (Freud)

Polysendeton 💙

This and this and this

Albatross Poem 💙

• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

    • Friend of William Godwin

• Frame narrative poem

  • Wedding guest is interrupted by an Ancient Mariner

• Ancient Mariner’s story:

  • Albatross lead sailors out of danger

  • Was killed by the Mariner

  • Ship is cursed, sailors die and the mariner is lonely and outcast

• An omen, foreshadowing Frankenstein’s punishment for going against nature

• Ironic → Walton isn’t the mariner, he is the wedding guest and Frankenstein is the Mariner

Grave Digging 💚

• 18th - early 19th century

• Increasing need for fresh corpses in medical schools to practice on

• Criminal executions didn’t provide enough

• Resurrectionists were often not punished by authorities because they were seen as vital to medical science’s enhancement

• Bodies and body parts became a commodity

• The rich could afford mort safes to protect their bodies from this fate; the poor had no choice

• Therefore, the creature is made up of body parts of the lower classes

Romanticism 💙

• Movement 1700s-1800s

• The Romantic movement of the time was concerned with the

  sublimity of nature, individual legacy, the corruption of

  innocence, and the significance of emotions over scientific

  rationality.

  • The age of Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution caused a

  huge intellectual and cultural shift, where people of all strati of

  society were becoming more socially and politically conscious

  of individual rights and liberties.

• Dominated by men

• Romantic Heroes

  • Shelley is parodying this masculine ideal upheld by her contemporaries

    • Has sublime experiences that create a sense of wonder and awe

      • The sublime:

        • Key element of Romantic Literature

        • Appreciation of nature as awe-inspiring and immense but also terrifying and uncontrollable

    • Is isolated and on the outskirts of society

    • Is melancholic

    • Is a lone genius - makes breakthrough without the help of others

    • Critic Wilson: “the Romantic Hero is an individual who triumphs over the restraints of theological and social convensions”

Jargon 💙

• special words or expressions used by a profession or group that are difficult for others to understand

Brainwashing 💛

• Reification of the mind → Alienation that makes them unable to see their repressed position in society

• Lukács’ Theory

• Distorts the consciousnesses of the people in a system

Doppelgänger 💙

• The doppelganger is a symbolic figure – a projection of the protagonist's inner life on the outer world.  

• Causes psychological distress 

• Creature is often framed by windows, potentially seen as mirrors 

Brocken moment 💙

• The 'spectre of the Brocken' a gigantic shadow of the observer projected on the cloudbank opposite the sun  

• Seen as a symbol of the viewer's sense of self importance 

• Rather than seeing himself in the manner of the 'Spectre of the Brocken' (Romantic Symbol) he sees the creature – the creature functions as his shadow, reaffirming the monster as victor's gothic double 

Guidebook or memoir 💙

• Victor’s account of travel begins this way

  • Describing picturesque sights

  • And the effects of industrialisation

• He cannot shake off the idea that he has “drawn down a terrible curse” on himself

On the Female in Frankenstein 💙💛

Anne K. Mellor: “Possessing nature: the female in Frankenstein” (1988)

• “He is afraid of an independent female will”

  • “She might assert her own integrity and the revolutionary right to determine her own existence.”

• “He imagines that she may be ““ten thousand times”” more evil than her mate”

• He fears that the creature will be more ugly than the female creature

• He fears that she will be able to seize and even r*pe the male she might choose

• He fears her reproductive powers, her capacity to generate an entire race of similar creatures

• “What Victor Frankenstein truly fears is female sexuality”

NLMG as a business 💛

• Marxist Lens

• Commercialisation of the clones

• The system is a business because it:

  • Minimising expenditure on worker’s labour → the clones work for free, high student : guardian ratio

  • Minimising waste goods → As many donations as possible, don’t allow the clones freedom to leave, fears that they continue to take organs in ch.23

• Model of exploitation → making more than what you give

  • Imbalanced trade

  • Fundamental principle of profit, and capitalism

  • Normal people gain life, organs, human experience → clones lose their lives, organs and normal human experiences

• The clones as the Proletariat

  • Historically, the working class do manual labour (factories, etc) → Their bodies are exploited for the profit of the upper classes

  • They don’t accumulate wealth

  • They’re unable to leave their jobs

  • Low living standards + poverty of ambition

• Thatcherism

  • Some people argue that under this government many vulnerable sections of society were dispossessed / given strangulated governmental support due to brutal economic policies put in place due to war debt.

    Working class communities such as mining towns were notably affected.

Galvanism 💚

• Galvani → noticed that they could use an electrical spark to make a dead frogs legs twitch in 1780

• Aldini → Attempted to revive a murderer, Thomas Foster in 1803

• Davy → Pamphlet: “Introductory to a course of lectures on Chemistry (1802)” suggests that chemistry holds the answer to the secret of life, read by Mary Shelley

• Author’s note: in the convos “between byron and shelley” she was a “devout but nearly silent listener” where the “nature of the principle of life” was discussed

• “Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such things.”

Education 💛

Rousseau (Enlightenment Philosopher): education shouldn't be about imparting information and concepts, but rather developing the pupil’s character and moral sense.

“man is born free but everyone finds himself in chains” — opening line from social contract

Family NLMG 💛

• more women entering the working world, following WWII, many social conservatives were concerned that the ‘family’ unit would disintegrate

Simulacra 💛

Baudrillard’s theory that the postmodern world is dominated by simulacra (simulations of the real, rather than authentic experiences)

Reification of the mind 💛

Lukács: “reification of the mind” is a form of alienation that works through distorting the consciousness of the people within the system – by making them unable to clearly see their oppressed position within wider society

Around in the 20TH century so only aligned with in Frankenstein

Hyper-consumerism 💛

Hyper-consumerism in late capitalism creates a culture of exponentially increasing supply and demand – for example ‘fast fashion’

NLMG as a dystopia 💛

• Dystopic genre: pervasive authority of nameless powers, concept of panoptic surveillance, rebellion against oppressive powers, a journey of discovering the ‘truth’ about the oppressive system

• You could say there’s a “dystopian” or “sci-fi” dimension”

• “I think of it more as an alternative history … if just one or two things had gone differently on the scientific front”

Pantheism

the totality of being—called by various names Nature, universe, cosmos—is a self-organizing unity that needs no distinct creator, and can be met with the same sense of reveration and awe as theists attribute to their gods.^[1][2]