Frankenstein/ NLMG

Key Terms and Context

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 etc

• 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)

• Anonomously or under male Pseudonym (?)

  • 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

• 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

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

Frank Genre

• Gothic Literature

  • Becoming popular in the 1800s

• 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”

Gothic Literature

• Multiple Narrators common

• Becoming popular in the 1800s

• Epistolary Form common

• Doppelgangers common

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

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

Victorian Women

• 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 commondity

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

  • Sublime experiences

  • Isolated

  • Melancholic

  • Lone Genius

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

• Lukás’ Theory

• Distorts the consciousnesses of the people in a system

William Godwin and the Judiciary system

• 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 

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 

Bracken 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 

The Romantic Hero

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”

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

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.

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

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”