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FRANKENSTEIN

Probably a "man-in-the-street" informal poll would rank Frankenstein and Dracula as the two most famous horror stories ever written--or filmed. Many undoubtedly are familiar with these classics only through Hollywood, and with the former this is a most unfortunate circumstance in that much violence has been done to an otherwise rich and perceptive narrative.

In The Meaning of Star Trek (NY: Doubleday, 1999), Thomas Richards perceptively argues that Mary Shelly's novel begins science fiction in a serious mode. He notes that unlike many entries in the genre, Frankenstein probes the subtleties of character. Rather than the mindless horror that destroys because that is its nature, Shelley portrays a gentle and sensitive creature that in Rousseau's fashion, is remains so until the atrocities inflicted on it by insensitive humanity cause a change.

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Maurice Hindle's Introduction to the Penguin classics' edition of Frankenstein is excellent in terms of thematic and biographical information it presents. Study it carefully.

An excellent source to study the novel's history from creative inception to Hollywood is:

Jameson, R. Frankenstein. Avenel, N.J.: Crescent Books, Inc., 1992.

The best web site is Literary Gothic with many articles on the novel and its author. Click here.

Click here for a great NIH link to the novel including literary and medical background photographs.

Frankenstein: A New Reality discusses facts of composition, themes, scientific allusions plus a link to a "mind chart" blending compositional and thematic elements.

An Extract of a Letter by Byron's Physician, Dr. John Polidori that outlines his account of the facts of composition of Frankenstein.

From the University of Pennsylvania, the Diary of Dr. John Polidori (1816) is on line--the excerpts pertain to the composition of Frankenstein.

Mary Shelley and her novel:

• The Literary Gothic: Mary Shelley--probably the best site with many links to other sites which examine Shelley's life and Frankestein's autobiographical elements.
• A Biographical Sketch of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley from The Victorian Web.
• Mary Shelley and Frankenstein by Kim Woodbridge. Please note: readers of this site admire its excellent quality, but lament that since it is not currently maintained (as of November, 2008), some of the links therein are not active.
• JJ's Murphs Page contains links to primary source excerpts from Mary Shelley's letters and journals.

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1--PSYCHOLOGY:

DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES:

• The romantics were fascinated with dreams (and in Gothic nightmares). From Adam's dream in Keats, to the nightmares of Mary Shelley, dreams were seen as predictors of what could happens or horrible recollections of what did. Coleridge's Kubla Khan, Rime of the Ancient Mariner and The Pains of Sleep all reflect a horrible nightmare word of what happens when the subconscious rapes the daylight. The romantic obsession with the imagination and the creative process produced our texts be wedding nightmarish personal tramas to that process.
• Click here for an excellent article on the dreams in Frankenstein by Jonathan Glance. He references the central dream in the novel: Victor, Elizabeth, Caroline and the creature.
• Sources: The Road to Xanadu (Houghton Mifflin, 1964) by John Livingston Lowes is an early but profound study of Coleridge's imagination at work in writing Kubla Khan and Ancient Mariner.
• Jameson's Frankenstein. Avenel, N.J.: Crescent Books, Inc. 1992. This excellent text provides essential biographical information, an analysis of the circumstances of circumstances of composition, a discussion of literary allusions, and the hollywood history of the novel.
  
• Check the following for Shelley:

1. Shelley's Preface to Frankenstein
2. Maurice Hindel's Introduction to the Penguin classics edition of the text.
3. These web sites feature Gothic background and dream psychology: click here
4. Go to my BRITISH LITERATURE COURSE HOME PAGE TO ROMANTIC PERIOD FOR ADDITIONAL LINKS: ( See especially: The Romantic Period and Dream Psychology: Click here.)

2--FEMINISM:

“A VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN” -- MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT--

On many levels, Frankenstein addresses women's issues, especially those of education, sexuality, and childbirth. Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died in childbirth after giving birth to Mary. She had borne an illegitimate daughter, Fanny, with one Gilbert Imlay, an American living in Paris. When there relationship cooled, she attempted suicide, but later began living with William Godwin, Mary's father. Godwin, formerly a clergyman, had abandoned the faith and became a radical anarchist. (See below for links to Godwin.) Mary's Vindication, seen at time as radical and dangerous (She was called a "hyena in petticoats") has become a classic in feminist literature. Click here.

The following short excerpt is of interest:

"Consequently, the most perfect education, in my opinion, is such an exercise of the understanding as is best calculated to strengthen the body and form the heart. Or, in other words, to enable the individual to attain such habits of virtue as will render it independent. In fact, it is a farce to call any being virtuous whose virtues do not result from the exercise of its own reason. This was Rousseau's opinion respecting men; I extend it to women.

3--LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ALLUSIONS IN FRANKENSTEIN:

As with most romantics, Mary borrowed substantially from her literary and philosophical heritage in writing Frankenstein. You should be aware of at least the following influences:

• Milton's Paradise Lost, especially Book X--locate a copy in the library or on line. Note
  especially the following lines and issues:
  • ll. 720 to 1100, noting..
  • the lines Shelley quotes directly
  • what Adam demands of God following the fall
  • the role of original sin
  • why God allowed the temptation
  • Eve's response to the fall
  • suicide?
  • supplication of the creator
  • our first parents' resolve
    
    
• Rousseau's Social Contract and Emile:--Napoleon noted that Rousseau's "Men are born free but exist everywhere in chains" began the French revolution. His writings sought to emancipate man from tyranny, and the EMILE is considered a landmark in educational philosophy, outlining the requirements for a "natural education. Go to the BRITISH LITERATURE HOME PAGE, ROMANTIC PERIOD TO FIND EXCERPTS FROM THE EMILE AND SOCIAL CONTRACT. Click here.
  
• The same link- Click here - will provide resources for Coleridge's poetry and literary theories as outlined in The Biographia Literaria. His views on the Primary and Secondary imagination are very important for our novel.

• PHILOSOPHY:
  

1. Mary was strongly influenced by the epistemological dualism of rationalism vs. empiricism. Her father William's philosophical rationalism suggested the neo-classical belief that a utopia might be realized if man used his reason to create one. This utopian protocol merged in the romantic period with the belief that man is naturally good at birth, but corrupted by a foul environment. Godwin's great reliance on reason to achieve a utopia, however, was modified by most romantics who saw passion as a necessary condition for perfection His Enquiry Concerning Political Justice nonetheless greatly influenced Romantics who noted, at least at the outset, the hope that the French revolution would bring promises of a better world, free of oppression. He noted:

   Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it. By concentrating the force of the community, it gives occasion to wild projects of calamity, to oppression, despotism, war and conquest. By perpetuating and aggravating the inequality of property, it fosters many injurious passions, and excites men to the practice of robbery and fraud.

   Godwin links:

   1-William Godwin: quotes on education (from BrainyQuote)

   2-Click here for excerpts from Godwin's writings.

DESCARTES (1596-1650): The four following would prove sufficient for me: The first was never to accept anything as true for which I did not clearly know to be such...avoid prejudice. The second to divided each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, as might be necessary for its adequate solution. The third to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little...to the knowledge of the more complex...and the last in every case to make enumerations so complete...that I may be assured that nothing was omitted. Seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us, and I supposed that all objects that had ever entered my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams...it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I THINK, HENCE I AM [Cogito, ergo sum] was so certain that no ground of doubt could be alleged...in order to think, it is necessary to exist. I might take as a general rule the principle that all the things which we very clearly and distinctly conceive are true, only observing,\ however, that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly perceive...we rise to causes through their effects and avail ourselves of many experiments.

LOCKE (1632-1706): Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about while thinking, being ideas, it is past doubt that men have in their mind several ideas, such as those expressed by the words, "whiteness," "motion," "thinking"...How does he come by them? Let us suppose the mind to be as we say, white paper [blank slate, or tabula rasa], void of all characters, without any ideas. Whence has it all the materials, of reason and knowledge? From experience...our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey unto the mind several distinct perceptions of things according to these various ways wherein those objects do affect them...yellow, white, heat , cold...This great source of most of the ideas whatever it is the mind can be employed about in thinking, we have, depending wholly upon our senses, I call sensation. Secondly...is the principle of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got; which operations when the mind comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of reasoning, knowing, willing...I call this reflection, the notice which the mind takes of its own operations. The first capacity of the human intellect is that the mind is fit to receive the impressions made on it, either through the senses by outward objects, or by its own operations when it reflects on them. We can have no knowledge farther than we have ideas. We can have no knowledge farther than we can have perception of agreement or disagreement. We cannot examine and perceive all the relations they have to one another...Our knowledge comes short of the reality of things...I suppose it may of use to prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehension; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things which upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities; our business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.

4--MYTHOLOGY:

1. Since the sub-title of the novel is THE MODERN PROMETHEUS, it would be useful to know why the romantics esteemed the myth. In general, Promethius of course stole fire from the gods and gave it to man and was punished for so doing. He became of course a hero to the romantics. PERCY SHELLEY wrote a play called PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. You can read his PREFACE which explains how he transformed the myth, and the play itself; CLICK HERE
   .
2. This excerpt sets the tone:

"I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary."

Lord Byron, present when Shelley 's reverie occasioned Frankenstein,
wrote a short poem entitled Prometheus:

• Titan! to whose immortal eyes
  The sufferings of mortality,
  Seen in their sad reality,
  Were not as things that gods despise;
  What was thy pity's recompense?
  A silent suffering, and intense;
  The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
  All that the proud can feel of pain,
  The agony they do not show,
  The suffocating sense of woe,
  Which speaks but in its loneliness,
  And then is jealous lest the sky
  Should have a listener, nor will sigh
  Until its voice is echoless.
  
  Titan! to thee the strife was given
  Between the suffering and the will,
  Which torture where they cannot kill;
  And the inexorable Heaven,
  And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
  The ruling principle of Hate,
  Which for its pleasure doth create
  The things it may annihilate,
  Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
  The wretched gift Eternity
  Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.
  All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
  Was but the menace which flung back
  On him the torments of thy rack;
  The fate thou didst so well foresee,
  But would not to appease him tell;
  And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
  And in his Soul a vain repentance,
  And evil dread so ill dissembled,
  That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
  
  Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
  To render with thy precepts less
  The sum of human wretchedness,
  And strengthen Man with his own mind;
  But baffled as thou wert from high,
  Still in thy patient energy,
  In the endurance, and repulse
  Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
  Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
  A mighty lesson we inherit:
  Thou art a symbol and a sign
   To Mortals of their fate and force;
  Like thee, Man is in part divine,
  A troubled stream from a pure source;
  And Man in portions can foresee
  His own funereal destiny;
  His wretchedness, and his resistance,
  And his sad unallied existence:
  To which his Spirit may oppose
  Itself--and equal to all woes,
  And a firm will, and a deep sense,
  Which even in torture can descry
  Its own concenter'd recompense,
  Triumphant where it dares defy,
  And making Death a Victory.

• Since Byron is so essential to anything gothic, these sites are
  two of the best:
  • BYRON (from English History)
  • GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON (Literary Gothic)

5--CREATION: THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE:

The romantic of course were interested in the creation of life or Paradise Lost would not have sustained such an interest. They might have found, a precursor, Joseph Campbell's read of the GENESIS MYTH (The Power of Myth) interesting:

In GENESIS, the serpent is the seducer. Campbell notes, "That amounts to a refusal to affirm life...in the biblical tradition, life is corrupt...sex is corrupt, and the female as the epitome of sex is a corrupter. Why was the knowledge of good and evil forbidden...? Without that knowledge, we’d all be a bunch of babies still in Eden, without any participation in life...The Serpent is the primary god, actually, in the garden of Eden."

Note the following implications:

1. opposites exist in the garden: god and man,

2. the apple is the knowledge of opposites

3. good and evil

4. sexual opposites

5. reason and faith

6. GENESIS: relevant quotes / and commentary:

a. “You will not die” / they will eventually

b. “Your eyes will be opened” / to guilt and shame to progress

c. “Like God knowing good & evil” / but..what did God forbid?

7. Note how the following Biblical themes appear in the novel:

a. passionate restlessness (the horror of)
b. unreasoning energy
c. dissatisfied with what he has
d. prone to error
e.heroic energy in form and content
f. “strength is shown through conflict and endurance.”
g. “profoundest sympathy and imagination.”
h. knowledge not possessed by children
i. knowledge needed to make adult decisions,
j. SCIENTIFIC decisions?

8. Conclusion: Man takes this decision upon himself, he has the knowledge of God, but not the wisdom. What does Victor think?

9. Other BIBLICAL ALLUSIONS. How do you think Shelley might read THE BOOK OF JOB?
Recall there are two was to read the ending when Job confronts God (as does Adam in Paradise Lost). What are the endings, and which one do you think Shelley would endorse? Themes include:

• deserved or undeserved suffering
• the role of traditional advice
• the anger of Job
• accusing God (especially Chapter XIII)
• Job and God converse--the duality of the outcome?
• What does God do to the three advisors of Job at the end of the story and why?

10. Alexander Pope's ESSAY ON MAN offers a perspective for the novel as well...

Better for us, perhaps, it might appear,
Were there all harmony, all virtue here;
That never air or ocean felt the wind,
That never passion discompos'd the mind.
But all subsists by elemental strife;
And passions are the elements of life.
The gen'ral order, since the whole began,
Is kept in nature, and is kept in man.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

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SCIENCE: THE CREATION OF LIFE GALVANI, ELECTRICITY, AND GRAVE ROBBING

Robert Schwartz's site is excellent with many links: click here

The Shelley's were of course interested in science and desire to reanimate life, probably because the age was, and personally due to the loss of a mother and Mary's own child.

• Luigi Galvani in the 1790's experimented with electricity hoping to reanimate the dead. Although the science was misunderstood, it was believed--since frog legs twitched when shocked, that it could be brought back to life.
• Since the church taught that the body was the temple of the Holy Spirit and could not thus be tampered with even after death, medical schools resorted to grave robbing to obtain corpses.
• Eventually ( by 1752), laws were passed by Parliament allowing for the dissection of bodies of hanged criminals.
• Would it not be possible to sew together body parts to make a new person?

THERE ARE VARIOUS WEB SITES THAT OFFER PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SOURCE RESEARCH INCLUDING CITATIONS FROM GALVANI'S, DE VIRIBUS ELECTRICITATIS IN MOTU MUSCULARI (1792)

• GALVANI from The University of Pennsylvania

NOTE TOO, OF COURSE, WHAT 21ST CENTURY BIOMEDICAL ADVANCES "IN THE NEWS" MARY SHELLY ANTICIPATED...

Our approach to Shelley's novel will be to consider creative and philosophical issues that provide the substance Hollywood misses...

Jameson's introductory essay explores the circumstances of the novel's creation which are almost as well-known as the book. He suggests the following:

• the retelling of Genesis (as noted above)
• Mary Shelley's biography--we should note what happened to her mother, her relationship with Percy, what happened to her first child, the dreams / nightmares she had; click here
• Luigi Galvani's experiments
• Dream psycholgy: click here for a link to my British Literature page: Dream psychology (with Freud's work).
• Dream psychology
• Persons of note--discover who they were...

	William Godwin Mary Wollstonecraft William Shelley Mrs. Mary Jane Clairmont Lord Byron Clara Shelley Thomas Jefferson Hogg Claire (Jane) Clairmont Dr. Polidori: CLICK HERE for Kyla Ward's excellent analysis of his contribution. Harriet Shelley "Monk" Lewis What was Mary feeling at the time she wrote the novel
			by Lucy Mueller

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Mary's Preface:

Mary's comments shed much light on what she was to write. We should note...

• the classics to which she alludes including Paradise Lost by Milton
• her analysis of "waking dreams" -we know the romantics' fascination with dream psychology--what is a waking dream? Recall Coleridge.
• her listening to Byron and her husband discuss the philosophy of reanimation: "My imagination, unbidden,. possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw--with eyes shut, but acute mental vision--I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out...frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world."
• BOOK X of Paradise Lost and its importance.
• the Enlightenment influence and the role of a "reasonable' Christianity in promising a utopia, but Hindle notes, "As a cautionary tale warning of the dangers that can be cast into society by a presuming experimental science, Frankenstein is without equal." Hindle also notes the influence of John Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. The epistemology of the 'blank slate" and sensation / reflection is important in the education of the creature.
• Shelley's interest in the myth of Prometheus. Recall Byron's poem.
• Percy Shelley's interest in science. See Hindle's Introduction, p. xxi.
• the influence of the Byronic hero concept and Coleridge's poetry.

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Frankenstein:

Why does the novel begin with a frame story? Note other works from Job to The Canterbury Tales to Heart of Darkness that use this device. What figure of speech is generally present, and what does its use contribute to the novel's many themes listed above. What role does Walton play? What does he want to do, and what is the irony?

How objective and reliable is Victor's flashback account of his childhood? Evaluate his emotional and imaginative stability. What cognitive issues seem to interest him the most: ""Chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose?" What is that purpose? Does he have any doubts about what he wants to do? What moment in his narrative does he look back with more objectivity than he had at the outset? Are there any classical themes?

When Victor creates the 'thing,' what is his reaction? Why? What principles of romantic aesthetics are operative?

The conversations between creature and creator of course are the substance of the novel. With the romantic emphasis on educational psychology--Wordsworth's "child" being "father," and of course Rousseau's "Emile" being naturally good-no innate perversity in the human heart, then the role of the environment is primary. What are the environmental circumstances that shape the creature's growth. What does it read, whom does it meet, and what are the results? "I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but...." What follows the 'but' is terribly important? "You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather form your fellow creatures, who owe me nothing?

As the creature recounts its earliest recollections, what details are important and why? Remember that the romantics sought to validate the ideas, the forms of Plato in the sense world, and to establish the connection between the two was the goal of their poetry. Wordsworth's "Intimations' Ode" offers one of the best examples.

The creature notices the natural world: "I was delighted when I first discovered that a pleasant sound, which often saluted my ears, I proceeded from the throats of little winged animals who had often intercepted the light from my eyes. I began also to observe with greater accuracy, the forms that surrounded me...sometimes I tried to imitate..." IMITATE is a crucial world, with rich pedagogical associations. The child is the product of the environment.

When does all of this begin to change? How is the creature received by humans, including children?

A direct allusion to Paradise Lost occurs when the creature sees its own reflection for the first time. Who in Milton's poem had a similar experience, and what was the result? What does the creature do? What existential / metaphysical question does it ask? Note that his line, "I tried to dispel them [his agonies] but sorrow only increased with knowledge." What character in a play by Byron says almost the same thing?

When the creature wants to know the most basic of questions, "What am I," he turns to Paradise Lost. When he compares his own situation to Adam's, what is his conclusion? Ironically to whom does he consider turining for support?

There is much of gothic terror in the passages when the creature curses its fate; compare the scenes with The Monk.

What are the circustances surrounding the killing of William? Do romantic writes in the gothic mode supply 'justifications' for acts of revenge that are plausible? Today we speak in terms of "diminished capacity." How 'diminished' is the creatures in the William episode?

If loneliness is the most terrible of emotions to endure, the creature demands that Victor (his God?) make him a mate--Genesis? Milton? How does Victor's response, and subsequent action reveal his suitability for his purpose?

What do you think of the creature's reaction to what Victor does? Is the creature simply reacting to what it has experienced?

As the novel ends, why is the commetary of Walton (objective observer?) so important? What are the creature's final reflections--how Byronic are they? Does the ending of the novel contain a Paradise Lost allusion?

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SPECIFIC QUESTIONS...