Frankenstein Notes

Frankenstein Notes



Mary Shelley

  • Born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin 

  • Eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley at the age of 17

  • 1816: First developed idea for Frankenstein during a summer vacation to Geneva with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John William Polidori



Romanticism

  • A literary movement that grew out of a negative reaction to the rigid, formal guidelines and forced subject matter of poetry and art of the previous age 

  • People longed for a simple past, pre-industrial Revolution



Romanticism Elements 

  • Deep love and appreciation for nature

  • Interest in ordinary people 

  • Inspired by imagination and emotions 

  • Favored simple, common language

  • Refusal to accept human limitations

  • Emphasis on individualism

  • Sense of optimism

  • Interest in the supernatural



Gothic Tradition

  • Evokes an atmosphere of horror and dread

  • Portrays a deteriorating/decaying world

  • Isolated protagonist 

  • Sometimes includes the Wanderer: a gothic character who wanders the earth in perpetual exile

  • Plot mirrors a ruined world in its dealing with the protagonist’s fall from grace



Prometheus?

  • Greek mythological figure - a Titan

  • Stole fire from the gods to give to the humans 

  • Enabled progress and civilization

  • Punishment: bound to a rock where each day, an eagle eats his liver, which grows back only to be eaten again the next day

  • In Western tradition, Prometheus represents the quest for scientific knowledge and its unintended consequences



Chapter 1

Victor Frankenstein's family history

  • He was born in Geneva to a well-off family

  • Parents are named Alphonse and Caroline 



  • Elizabeth Lavenza=cousin? (They call each other cousin out of affection)



  • In reality, she is his adopted sister, and they were very close

  • Parents adopted her as a sort of “gift” to Victor, and his mother always wanted a daughter anyways




Chapter 2

  • Again, we’re learning more of Victor’s childhood here

  • “No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself.”



  • Victor had a best friend named Henry Clerval, a very smart boy who also wanted to pursue greatness

  • “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn.” Victor Frankenstein’s Tragic Flaw 

  • As a child, Victor wanted to pursue the elixir of life, that was his driving ambition, so he studies old archaic scientific things like alchemy

  • (Human beings can accomplish anything, romanticism element!)



  • When he was a child he witnessed a lightening strike a tree

  • He realized in that moment that science is very powerful and destructive (power of nature, romanticism element!)



  • He wants to “penetrate” the citadel of nature” and the secrets that it holds (Man V Nature conflict



Chapter 3

  • Victor’s mother dies of Scarlet Fever 

  • Her dying wish is that he marry Elizabeth 



  • He departs for Ingolstadt, a university.

  • He’s isloated now (gothic trope!). Clerval and Elizabeth do not accompany him.

  • “I ardenly desired the acquisition of knowledge”.



  • Is it safe to pursue knowledge alone? No other perspective?

Professor Krempe

  • Krempe basically tell Victor that he’s an idiot for studying older, more medieval sciences like (pseudoscience), and he should really be studying things like modern science (real science).



Professor Waldman

  • Waldman was nicer than Krempe.

  • Essentially, Victor is convinced by Waldman that modern sciences can help him achieve those grand ideas and ambitions that the older sciences promised him(49)



Chapter 4

College Continued



  • Victor becomes a master of natural philosophy and during his time in college, impressing his professors

  • “Two years passed in this manner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged, heart and soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries which I hoped to make”



  • Had a keen interest in “the causes of life”(52), and began with “the study of death”(52).

  • Eventually, Victor “became capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter

  • Humans without limitations - Romanticism element



The Creation

  • Victor needs a frame to bestow life to

  • Resolved to make a man “eight feet in height.”



  • “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 his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.”

  • He is the creator, he is a god

  • Becomes an obsession for him, 



Feeling Nervous



  • “Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree, the fall of a leaf startled me, and I shunned my fellow creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime.”

  • He’s feeling nervous now

  • Is this a sign that he’s undergoing a wrong pursuit? Did he know, deep down that what he was doing was wrong. 

Chapter 5

  • Victor brings the creature to life, but is horrifieed by its ugly appearance 

  • Horror = Gothic element 

  • After trying to sleep and having horrible dreams, he flees his apartment



  • Victor wanders around Ingolstadt and runs into Henry Clerval, who says he has come to Ingolstadt on “a voyage of discovery to the land of knowledge.”

  • Victor is horrified by this why?

  • Victor returns to his apartment, the creature has fled.

  • Victor falls ill, while Henry takes care of him



  • Time passes, during this illness he is plagued by dreams

  • Henry tells him of a letter Victor received during his illness, it’s from Elizabeth