Frankenstien revision notes

GENRE:

• Gothic:
  “It can be useful to think of the Gothic in terms of certain key cultural and literary oppositions: barbarity versus civilisation; the wild versus the domestic (or domesticated); the supernatural versus the apparently ‘natural’; that which lies beyond human understanding compared with that which we ordinarily encompass; the unconscious as opposed to the waking mind; passion versus reason; night versus day.”                     David Punter, emag 29
  • Horror: fear from physical shock – ‘Watery eyes almost the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set’
  • Terror: fear from uncertain or obscure – ‘frightful dreams’, ‘he might have spoken, but I did not hear; ne hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, nut I escaped’
  • Sublime: sense of awe at something much bigger than ourselves that we cannot understand fully – ‘A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy’, ‘A cold wind played on my cheeks which braced my nerves and filled me with delight’
  • Obscurity: both physical and mental, things not properly seen or understood - ‘The for an instant everything seemed of a pitchy darkness’
  • The Uncanny – unsettling experience over something that is strange, eerie or mysterious -‘dull yellow eyes’
  • Taboos: Cultural, moral or religious rules which are under pressure, challenging limits and norm-  ‘the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body’
  • Doppelganger: double, mirror image or alto ego of a character – both called ‘wretch’, ‘creature’ . Later in the novel, the loss of control of the creation mirrors Victor’s loss of control of himself.
• Elements of Romanticism:
  • ‘Romantic’ writers interested in the concept of ‘self’ as distinct from society indulging a sense of individuality. Walton is physically isolated on a ship in the Artic carrying notions of discovery and adventure whereas Frankenstein mentally alienates himself to concentrate on his work as well as physically distancing himself at the University of Ingolstadt. Can be seen as the less healthy version. Walton longs for companionship, ‘I greatly need a friend who would have sense not to despise me as a romantic’.

NARRATION STRUCTURE:

• Unreliable multiple first person narrators with narrations embedded in one another, the creation at the core, Frankenstein surrounding him and then Walton round the edge. Frame Narrative. Unreliable as each has a motif to the writing which is detrimental to the truth.
• Epistolary form – second person address, “Dear Mrs. Saville”, ‘you will rejoice to hear the commencement of an enterprise you regarded with such evil forebodings’
• Narrator and Narratee: emphasis on motif of narration
• Shape: Concentric circles or V-shaped. Uses Walton to introduce themes in which she will expand upon in Frankenstein’s narration. Symmetrical. Triangular pattern: each of the three main characters has important conversations with the other two, and this triangular pattern marks the exclusion of all other characters from the story.
• Return to Epistolary:

• Elizabeth’s letter in chapter 6 reflects how Frankenstein has been cut off from outside world, encapsulated by obsession.
• Learn more about brothers and Justine – setting scene for murder – to create a more shocking and emotional account.
• Shelley uses letters as interruption of other characters to reinforce Victor’s highly subjective recollection of events.
• Elizabeth exerting pressure on Victor’s return – reminding of home – covering up problems – positive things
• William’s death and Justine’s accusations delivered by Alphonse through letter, highly disjointed language – long sentences frequently interrupted by semicolons – indicates magnitude of distress – more emotional response evoked in reader. Emotional and personal message through impersonal and indirect manner.

LANGAUGE:

• Semantic Fields:
  • Walton’s celestial semantics – ‘phenomena of the heavenly bodies’, ‘eternal light’, ‘glory’ ‘light broke in upon me’ – sees knowledge as elevating into a superior position
• Repetition of ‘ardour’ – draws parallels between Walton and Frankenstein – passionate and ambitious. Before & After= Walton & Frankenstein.

THEMES:

• Issue with creation: misses out birth in account ‘From Italy they visited Germany and France. I, their eldest child, was born in Naples’ Shelley’s mother died in childbirth, regrets birth? Similarities allow convincing portrayal.
  •  ‘Their child, the innocent and helpless creature’ VF
  • ‘Whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery’ VF

• Dichotomy established at beginning between a public sphere (Walton – associated with action) and private sphere (Frankenstein – domesticity)

Relationship between Walton and sister:

• ‘You will rejoice to hear that no…’
• ‘my dear’
• ‘your affectionate brother’
• ‘A most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret’
• ‘I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind’ WALTON

BRINGING CREATION TO LIFE:

• Setting:

• Sets scene for horrific incident
• Dullness contrasted with climatic emotions of Frankenstein
• Contrast room with outside world – sense of isolation – ‘dim and yellow light of the moon’ – eerie unsettling – subhuman nature of creation
• ‘the rain pattered dismally against panes’ – dismal, gloomy, depressing
• ‘dreary night in November’ – negative forebodings

• Motion:
  • ‘convulsive motion agitated his limbs’
  • jerky movements – unnatural – similar to lack of control a newborn has
• Instruments of Life:
  • Lightning
  • Prometheus
  • Not shocking detail = less controversial
• Victor’s dream in which Elizabeth dies
  • STRUCTURAL JUXTAPOSITION
  • Putting two things next to each other to create drama and irony
  • Foreshadowing – premonition of future – first kiss – dies on wedding – never consummate relationship
  • Fear of possibly what relationship may involve – fear of sex – fear of creation – unknown – loss of control
• Victor’s physical response:
  • ‘Convulsing’ resembles creation – both entering an unenjoyable existence

• Reliability:

• Ambiguity. Incident must be very clear in mind as so terrific, but likelihood that Frankenstein is projecting all his negative feelings conjured onto the beginning of the creation’s existence – making creation more monstrous – trying to persuade Walton, so will introduce creation as negatively and shocking as possible
• Frankenstein wants sympathy – creation wants contact – stretches hand out ‘seemingly to detain me’ – mistaken – trying to shift blame

CREATION:

• Significance of creature’s encounter of light/fire:
  • Parallel to Prometheus
  • ‘light became more and more oppressive to me’ – rejected by appearance made visible by light
  • Moon- unappreciated gentle beauty, associated with female – not there during first malevolent death
• Safie:
  • Cant speak, voiceless,
  • Welcomed into family even though different, highlights creation’s rejection, introduces justice through story – statement of female politics, Mary Wolfstencraft
• Destruction:
  • Power harnessed in a negative way – using passion from nature to destroy – creation uses landscape to mirror inner-state of mind
  • Cottage representing civilisation
  • JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
  • According to Rousseau, an important 18th-century philosopher, humans are not quite blank slates but come into the world with two instincts: (1) self-preservation, and (2) compassion. Thus humans "naturally" have the potential to be good and would be so were it not for the corrupting influence of civilization.
  • In this view, education and the role of the educator is monumentally important; that innate tendency toward compassion needs to be nourished and developed. Thus it is important to think about what Frankenstein's creature learns and from whom he learns it. Think about what's being written on his slate: he goes from a "noble savage" to a malevolent monster only as a result of what is impressed upon him by human society. He is rejected and abandoned by his creator and thus has no educator to guide his development and shape his attitudes toward himself and others.
• Symbolic of other groups of people, ‘I, miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked and trampled on’ – ‘miserable and abandoned’ – e.g. women, muslims – safie, lower class – social injustice. ‘Abortion’ – paradoxical, having a mother, metaphorical – unwanted and neglected. Implicated guilt of abortionist, reminds of Frankenstein’s role.

ALLUSIONS:

• Shelley makes allusions so that the reader draws analogies
• ‘Plutarch’s Lives, Volney’s Ruins of Empire, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Werther and Milton’s Paradise Lost all represent ideas important in Romantic thinking and give the Creature points of reference’ Dr. Siv Jansson, University of Greenwich, introduction
• Prometheus:

• ‘The Modern Prometheus’ – duplicate name for novel
• Background: Titan vs Zeus. Prometheus (a titan) supported Zeus, which brought him into the circle of Gods. Zeus took fire away from mankind. Prometheus deceitful and stole fire and gave it to mankind. Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him onto a rock where an eagle ate his liver every day. Rescued after 30 years by Hercules.
• Both created life or superior race (physical difference) and overstepped a boundary, suffer eternally, both took on role of God.

• Rime of the ancient mariner, Coleridge:

• Mariner roaming, stops wedding guest, on ship, driven off course to Artic, sees Albatross, Mariner shoots Albatross, crew die, alone on ship, wears albatross around neck as symbol as he tries to atone, crew regain life, think Mariner devil, cursed to wander Earth telling story
• Ancient mariner shot one of God’s creatures
• Both defy God; by disturbing natural order
• Both alienated by actions and unable to return to normal life
• Frankenstein: ‘deadly weight hanging around my neck’
• Walton: ‘I am going to unexplored regions, ‘to the land or mist and snow’; but I shall kill no albatross’ – will not overstep boundary
• Mariner seen as devil comparison with Frankenstein
• Creature doesn’t deserve judgement
• Shelley and Coleridge similar Romantic writers
• Richard Holmes’ interprets the poem as showing ‘man’s destructive effect on the natural world, so that human moral blindness inadvertently introduces evil into the benign systems of nature, releasing uncontrollable forces that take a terrible revenge.’

• Paradise Lost, John Milton:
  • Draws on familiar, to make more controversial characters
  • Opening page: ‘Did request thee. Maker, form my clay/ to mould Me man? Did I solicit thee/ from darkness to promote me?’ Adam bemoans his fallen condition
  • Creature = Adam -> he strives to be good but creator shuns him. Rhetorical questions portray his blame on Frankenstein for his miserable existence
  • Paradise Lost a catalyst for Creature to realize he needs woman
  • ‘But it was all a dream; no Eve soothed my sorrows nor shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam’s supplication to his creator. But where was mine?’
  • Frankenstein = God, creator, power
  • ‘Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me’
  • Important: takes on role of Adam before resorting to ways of Satan. Abandoned by creator.
  • When Satan thrown into hell “better to rein in hell, than serve in heaven” – wants a dominion
  • Hell- psychological state of mind
  • Frankenstein: ‘I bore a hell within me that nothing could extinguish’
  • Role reversal: initially Frankenstein took on ‘god role’ and creation ‘adam role’ – failure to comply leads to role reversal where creation holds power
  • Role Reversal at very end, Frankenstein fearlessly chasing Creation, Doppleganger.
  • Motif: ‘You seek knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been’
• Idea of hell:
  • Creation (p.105): I, like the arch-fiend, bore a hell within me’ – hell not a physical place but psychological
  • Imagery of hell (p.107) – ‘the wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it, and licked it with their forked and destroying tongues’
  • Hell = Devil = Monster?
  • Frankenstein- ‘I was cursed by some devil, and carried about with me my eternal hell’

PARALLELS:

• Justine + Creation: both rejected which has consequences. Justine beautiful and so more fortunate as she has a support network. Innocence destroyed by the environment they find themselves in.
• Clerval + Frankenstein: ‘In Clerval I saw an image of my former self’, comparison between two highlights difference, ‘I was in no mood to laugh with strangers’. Clerval best romantic hero as still socially involved and does not alienate himself.

Parallels between Creation and Frankenstein:

• Both called ‘wretch’
• ‘I never saw a more interesting creature’ WALTON
• ‘No creature had ever been so miserable as I was’ – identification with creature

Women in Novel:

• ‘fair exotic’ CAROLINE – Frankenstein – beauty/appearance
• ‘A being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features’ – ELIZABETH – VF – idealisation of women
• ‘Fairer than a garden rose among dark-leaved brambles’ – ELIZABETH – VF
• ‘Looked upon Elizabeth as mine – mine to protect, love and cherish’ – VF POSSESSIVE
• ‘My more than sister, since til death she was to be mine only’ – FORESHADOW OF DEATH ON WEDDING NIGHT
• Elizabeth’s death more peaceful than Female creation, ‘I might have supposed her asleep’
• Representation of women as victims, defined by their relationships with men they are associated with
• Rape = enactment of Victor’s fears. ‘Pale yellow light of the moon’ parallel to when creature created by ‘dim yellow light of the moon’. Importance of moon: link with nature, separated from society, dopplegager= creature = night, Frankenstein = day, cyclic nature. Creation as female?

CRITICS:

• Dr Siv Jansson, University of Greenwich: ‘His isolation from humanity is marked by his namelessness, and by the epithets which dehumanise him: ‘wretch, ‘daemon’, ‘monster’’

• ‘The Woman Writer as Frankenstein’ by Aldrich and Isomaki: ‘Popular transfer of the name Frankenstein from the creation’s creator to the creation himself, is true to logic of novel because the two characters are aspects of one being’
• Nora Cook: use of frame narrative – things lost in translation – how much made up/imagined? ‘how can we be sure that Victor’s story’ isn’t ‘dreamed up’. ‘faked it’
• Mary Farret:  
  • Frankenstein unreliable because of 3 people narrator effect. MS created Walton who repeats Frankenstein who repeats Creation.

1. Creation doesn’t exist but is Frankenstein’s externalisation of anxieties and fears.
2. Frankenstein doesn’t exist but is Walton’s externalisation of anxieties and fears.
3. Walton is Shelley’s externalisation

• ‘Tangles’ storyline
• ‘Parallel personalities’
• ‘Demonic projection of tormented psyche’

• Andreas Rohrmoser, ‘Mary Shelley seems not to condemn the act of creation but rather frankenstein’s lack of willingness to accept the responsibility for his deeds. His creation only becomes a monster at the moment his creator deserts it’
• Mary Shelley, ‘No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks’
  • CREATURE: ‘For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own dreams… still I desired love and friendship’
• Diane Hoeveler, ‘The author expels her own guilt both for having caused her mother’s death and for having failed to produce a healthy son for Percy’
• Marilyn Butler, sees Frankenstein ‘as engaging with two different interpretations of ‘life’: the question as to whether life was some intangible essence or simply the sum of a collection of biological and psychological functions’
• Many of the Hammer films didn’t give the creation a voice, Vic Sage: ‘It’s great that he talks like an 18^th Century philosopher because then you have this disparity between his appearance and his speech, which tests the viewer’
• Fred Botting, ‘The ensuing, confused pursuit binds the two together and tears them apart in a dialect of desire… excluding all other relations, this polarisation of self and other is so absolute that it can only end in death’

CONTEXT:

• The novels use of the myth of Prometheus as an analogy for Victor Frankenstein also supports an ‘anti-authoritarian’ reading
• Mother died in childbirth
• Marxist criticism: Frankenstein= elite but negative portrayal, creation = lower class, mistreatment by society leads to desire for radicalism/reform

• Shelley’s parents argued for social justice, human rights and equality, against repression. Godwin believed, believed that institutions such as law, government, marriage and property were unnecessary and the causes of corrupt relations between people. Jean-jacques rousseau idea of the natural man = good, environment -> noble savage. Development of man shown through Creation. ‘Man is naturally good, loving justice and order, that there is absolutely no original perversity in the human heart, and that the first movements of nature are always right’

• Period before Romanticism, seen as The Enlightenment, saw nature as something to be dominated.
• Deaths of Shelley’s children
• Literature in the 18^th Century was shaped by values and characteristics of neoclassicism: emotional restraint, order, logic, technical precision, balance, elegance of diction, an emphasis of form over content, clarity, dignity, decorum, it sought to appeal to the intellect rather than the emotions and considered with more important than imagination
• Writers who were considered ‘romantic’ were very interested in the concept of ‘self’ as distinct from society, sense of individuality exaggerated by alienation.
• Some of the main characteristics of Romanticism include: idealism, celebration, nature-worship, fascination with the medieval, the Gothic, the foreign, the exotic and supernatural, valuing the sense, and indulgence in physical passion and sensation for their own sakes, living for the joy of the present moment, revolution with individuals rebelling against the established social and political structures of the day. Niel King, emag 25
• It can be useful to think of the Gothic in terms of certain key cultural and literary oppositions:
  • Barbarity vs civilisation
  • Wild vs domesticity
  • Supernatural vs Natural
  • That lies beyond human understanding vs ordinary
  • Unconscious vs Waking mind
  • Passion vs reason
  • Night vs Day            David Punter, emag 29
• Questions were raised about the elusive boundary between life and death, during the 1790s an Italian physician named Luigi Galvani performed one of the first experiments with nerve impulses through electrical charges, making a frog’s muscle twitch by jolting them with a spark from an electrostatic machine.
• In classical mythology, Prometheus, seeking to improve the lot of mankind, stole fire from Gods. His punishment was to be chained to a rock for eternity, his liver pecked out by an eagle. In Ovid’s version of the tale in Metamorphoses, Prometheus is a ‘plastictor’, a figure who creates and manipulates men into life, rather than simply saving them.
• Edmund Burke, ‘The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature… is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror’
• 1802, Humphry Davy, ‘Science has… Bestowed upon [man] powers which may be called almost creative; which have enabled him to change and modify the beings surrounding him, and by experiments to interrogate nature with power’

CHARACTERS:

• Alfonse Frankenstein:

• ‘Benevolent’
• positive image of Father as ‘protecting spirit’ to mother – higher being, god-like figure
• stereotypical representation – active, protector, provider

• Caroline

• ‘he strove to shelter her, as a fair exotic’ – rare, unique, fragile, vulnerable, physical beauty
• ‘uncommon mould’ – capable of independent thought

• Elizabeth

• Social distinction ‘distinct species’
• Celestial references – crown of gold hair – higher being
• Objectified by Victor – ‘my’, ‘mine’
• Blurring of boundaries of relationship

• Frankenstein:

• ‘Divine wanderer’ – elevated by the pursuit of knowledge

SETTING:

• Where Victor created female: ‘it was a place fitted for such work, being hardly more than a rock’, described as ‘barren’ opposite of fertile, cutting women out, impossible to create in barren environment.
• Description of weather on Wedding Eve:
  • ‘Transitory light’ eerie soft description
  • ‘Wind rose with great violence’
  • Moon covered by clouds, ‘dimmed her rays’ – personification, getting rid of feminine role

DEATHS:

• Horrific imagery of corpses ‘I feel yet parched with horror’

DREAMS/OBSCURITY:

• Gothic convention
• ‘A mist came over my eyes’ – relate to Arctic fog at beginning – obscurity – inability to see properly – terror
• ‘Passes like a dream from my memory’ (body of Clerval)
• ‘Awakening, from a dream, in prison’
• Dream = manifestation of guilt and responsibility
• ‘The past appeared to me in the light of a frightful dream’
• ‘I was possessed by a kind of nightmare’
• Frankenstein passive in dreams, ‘presented’, ‘possessed’, powerless, what he has been repressing surfaces
• Unlike earlier in the novel here, there is a lack of distinction of reality. ‘Passed like a dream from my memory’ use of simile… dreaming or not? Ambiguity through blurring of imagination and reality. Detachment = denial.

LANGUAGE:

• Late in novel, repetition of ‘melancochy’, ‘misery’, ‘ravings’ and ‘miserable ravings’ – shovelling guilt off himself by claiming insanity

Linguistic analysis of Creation in Chapter 11:

Topics of Conversation:

• Discovery – nature and humanity – rejected by society – reader feels sorrow and pity for creation
• Fire – nurturing and inquisitive nature revealed
• Natural experience – gothic concept of the sublime – utter awe – ‘a radiant form rise from among the trees. I gazed with a kind of wonder’ ‘A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt, at the same time’ – punctuations detach sentence emphasizing volume of impact of surroundings
• Observation of the cottagers – devotion and kindness to each other stresses Victor’s abandonment of the creation and lack of care, and so ironically the cottager’s kindness makes him suffer as it highlights how truly alone he is. Additionally lack of interaction and of a name – lack of social identity
• Growing idea of social significance – concept of otherness
• Attack by villagers

Language:

• Scientifical, elevated, ‘greater accuracy’, ‘great quantity’ – expresses intelligence in creation contradicting Frankenstein and the traditional interpretation of the creation
• Self-pitying to an extent – ‘I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch’ – trying to gain sympathy from reader and Frankenstein ‘I sat down and wept’
• Natural – ‘instinctively’ – not an abomination of nature
• Childlike response to nature – innocence – ‘soon a gentle light stole over the heavens, and gave me a sensation of pleasure’ – able to forget ugliness
• Romantic style
• Sensitive and emotional, weeping

Allusions:

• Paradise Lost, ‘as exquisite and divine a retreat as Pandaemonium appeared to the demons of hell after their sufferings in the lake of fire’ – parallel between Satan and the creation – rejected by creator and endure hellish treatment before finding refuge– reference to fire

Imagery:

• Nature, Fire – strong descriptions distract from the awfulness of the creation
• The creature’s development mirrors the development of man. But as they went from beats to men, men also lost their innocence

How is Shelley characterizing creation:

• Human to an extent
• Painful existence

What do you make of the popular representation of the creation – talk about Shelley’s description and Frankenstein’s:

• Ironic – the creation is believed to be morally cruel due to its ugly appearance, concept of external reflecting internal, however it isn’t, but due to this treatment it does fulfill the expectation of an evil monster.
• Therefore you can argue either way
• N.B Attempts role of Adam – looking for companionship and escape from loneliness but when denied resorts to methods of Satan. Wasn’t Satan initially?