Themes, Motifs & Symbols

Themes, Motifs & Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

Women’s Bodies as Political Instruments
Because Gilead was formed in response to the crisis caused by dramatically decreased birthrates, the state’s entire structure, with its religious trappings and rigid political hierarchy, is built around a single goal: control of reproduction. The state tackles the problem head-on by assuming complete control of women’s bodies through their political subjugation. Women cannot vote, hold property or jobs, read, or do anything else that might allow them to become subversive or independent and thereby undermine their husbands or the state.
Despite all of Gilead’s pro-women rhetoric, such subjugation creates a society in which women are treated as subhuman. They are reduced to their fertility, treated as nothing more than a set of ovaries and a womb. In one of the novel’s key scenes, Offred lies in the bath and reflects that, before Gilead, she considered her body an instrument of her desires; now, she is just a mound of flesh surrounding a womb that must be filled in order to make her useful. Gilead seeks to deprive women of their individuality in order to make them docile carriers of the next generation.

Language as a Tool of Power
Gilead creates an official vocabulary that ignores and warps reality in order to serve the needs of the new society’s elite. Having made it illegal for women to hold jobs, Gilead creates a system of titles. Whereas men are defined by their military rank, women are defined solely by their gender roles as Wives, Handmaids, or Marthas. Stripping them of permanent individual names strips them of their individuality, or tries to. Feminists and deformed babies are treated as subhuman, denoted by the terms “Unwomen” and “Unbabies.” Blacks and Jews are defined by biblical terms (“Children of Ham” and “Sons of Jacob,” respectively) that set them apart from the rest of society, making their persecution easier. There are prescribed greetings for personal encounters, and to fail to offer the correct greetings is to fall under suspicion of disloyalty. Specially created terms define the rituals of Gilead, such as “Prayvaganzas,” “Salvagings,” and “Particicutions.” Dystopian novels about the dangers of totalitarian society frequently explore the connection between a state’s repression of its subjects and its perversion of language (“Newspeak” in George Orwell’s 1984 is the most famous example), and The Handmaid’s Tale carries on this tradition. Gilead maintains its control over women’s bodies by maintaining control over names.

The Causes of Complacency
In a totalitarian state, Atwood suggests, people will endure oppression willingly as long as they receive some slight amount of power or freedom. Offred remembers her mother saying that it is “truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations.” Offred’s complacency after she begins her relationship with Nick shows the truth of this insight. Her situation restricts her horribly compared to the freedom her former life allowed, but her relationship with Nick allows her to reclaim the tiniest fragment of her former existence. The physical affection and companionship become compensation that make the restrictions almost bearable. Offred seems suddenly so content that she does not say yes when Ofglen asks her to gather information about the Commander.
Women in general support Gilead’s existence by willingly participating in it, serving as agents of the totalitarian state. While a woman like Serena Joy has no power in the world of men, she exercises authority within her own household and seems to delight in her tyranny over Offred. She jealously guards what little power she has and wields it eagerly. In a similar way, the women known as Aunts, especially Aunt Lydia, act as willing agents of the Gileadean state. They indoctrinate other women into the ruling ideology, keep a close eye out for rebellion, and generally serve the same function for Gilead that the Jewish police did under Nazi rule.
Atwood’s message is bleak. At the same time as she condemns Offred, Serena Joy, the Aunts, and even Moira for their complacency, she suggests that even if those women mustered strength and stopped complying, they would likely fail to make a difference. In Gilead the tiny rebellions of resistances do not necessarily matter. In the end, Offred escapes because of luck rather than resistance.

Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Rape and Sexual Violence
Sexual violence, particularly against women, pervades The Handmaid’s Tale. The prevalence of rape and pornography in the pre-Gilead world justified to the founders their establishment of the new order. The Commander and the Aunts claim that women are better protected in Gilead, that they are treated with respect and kept safe from violence. Certainly, the official penalty for rape is terrible: in one scene, the Handmaids tear apart with their bare hands a supposed rapist (actually a member of the resistance). Yet, while Gilead claims to suppress sexual violence, it actually institutionalizes it, as we see at Jezebel’s, the club that provides the Commanders with a ready stable of prostitutes to service the male elite. Most important, sexual violence is apparent in the central institution of the novel, the Ceremony, which compels Handmaids to have sex with their Commanders.

Religious Terms Used for Political Purposes
Gilead is a theocracy—a government in which there is no separation between state and religion—and its official vocabulary incorporates religious terminology and biblical references. Domestic servants are called “Marthas” in reference to a domestic character in the New Testament; the local police are “Guardians of the Faith”; soldiers are “Angels”; and the Commanders are officially “Commanders of the Faithful.” All the stores have biblical names: Loaves and Fishes, All Flesh, Milk and Honey. Even the automobiles have biblical names like Behemoth, Whirlwind, and Chariot. Using religious terminology to describe people, ranks, and businesses whitewashes political skullduggery in pious language. It provides an ever-present reminder that the founders of Gilead insist they act on the authority of the Bible itself. Politics and religion sleep in the same bed in Gilead, where the slogan “God is a National Resource” predominates.
Similarities between Reactionary and Feminist Ideologies
Although The Handmaid’s Tale offers a specifically feminist critique of the reactionary attitudes toward women that hold sway in Gilead, Atwood occasionally draws similarities between the architects of Gilead and radical feminists such as Offred’s mother. Both groups claim to protect women from sexual violence, and both show themselves willing to restrict free speech in order to accomplish this goal. Offred recalls a scene in which her mother and other feminists burn porn magazines. Like the founders of Gilead, these feminists ban some expressions of sexuality. Gilead also uses the feminist rhetoric of female solidarity and “sisterhood” to its own advantage. These points of similarity imply the existence of a dark side of feminist rhetoric. Despite Atwood’s gentle criticism of the feminist left, her real target is the religious right.

Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

Cambridge, Massachusetts
The center of Gilead’s power, where Offred lives, is never explicitly identified, but a number of clues mark it as the town of Cambridge. Cambridge, its neighboring city of Boston, and Massachusetts as a whole were centers for America’s first religious and intolerant society—the Puritan New England of the seventeenth century. Atwood reminds us of this history with the ancient Puritan church that Offred and Ofglen visit early in the
novel, which Gilead has turned into a museum. The choice of Cambridge as a setting symbolizes the direct link between the Puritans and their spiritual heirs in Gilead. Both groups dealt harshly with religious, sexual, or political deviation.

Harvard University
Gilead has transformed Harvard’s buildings into a detention center run by the Eyes, Gilead’s secret police. Bodies of executed dissidents hang from the Wall that runs around the college, and Salvagings (mass executions) take place in Harvard Yard, on the steps of the library. Harvard becomes a symbol of the inverted world that Gilead has created: a place that was founded to pursue knowledge and truth becomes a seat of oppression, torture, and the denial of every principle for which a university is supposed to stand.

The Handmaids’ Red Habits
The red color of the costumes worn by the Handmaids symbolizes fertility, which is the caste’s primary function. Red suggests the blood of the menstrual cycle and of childbirth. At the same time, however, red is also a traditional marker of sexual sin, hearkening back to the scarlet letter worn by the adulterous Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale of Puritan ideology. While the Handmaids’ reproductive role supposedly finds its justification in the Bible, in some sense they commit adultery by having sex with their Commanders, who are married men. The wives, who often call the Handmaids sluts, feel the pain of this sanctioned adultery. The Handmaids’ red garments, then, also symbolize the ambiguous sinfulness of the Handmaids’ position in Gilead.

A Palimpsest
A palimpsest is a document on which old writing has been scratched out, often leaving traces, and new writing put in its place; it can also be a document consisting of many layers of writing simply piled one on top of another. Offred describes the Red Center as a palimpsest, but the word actually symbolizes all of Gilead. The old world has been erased and replaced, but only partially, by a new order. Remnants of the pre-Gilead days continue to infuse the new world.

The Eyes
The Eyes of God are Gilead’s secret police. Both their name and their insignia, a winged eye, symbolize the eternal watchfulness of God and the totalitarian state. In Gilead’s theocracy, the eye of God and of the state are assumed to be one and the same.

handmaids tale notes

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handmaids tale context

Context
Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa, Ontario, on November 18, 1939. She published her
first book of poetry in 1961 while attending the University of Toronto. She later received
degrees from both Radcliffe College and Harvard University, and pursued a career in
teaching at the university level. Her first novel, The Edible Woman, was published in 1969 to
wide acclaim. Atwood continued teaching as her literary career blossomed. She has lectured
widely and has served as a writer-in-residence at colleges ranging from the University of
Toronto to Macquarie University in Australia.
Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale in West Berlin and Alabama in the mid-1980s. The
novel, published in 1986, quickly became a best-seller. The Handmaid’s Tale falls squarely
within the twentieth-century tradition of anti-utopian, or ‘dystopian’ novels, exemplified by
classics like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. Novels in this
genre present imagined worlds and societies that are not ideals, but instead are terrifying or
restrictive.
Atwood’s novel offers a strongly feminist vision of dystopia. She wrote it shortly after the
elections of Ronald Reagan in the United States and Margaret Thatcher in Great Britain,
during a period of conservative revival in the West partly fuelled by a strong, well-organized
movement of religious conservatives who criticized what they perceived as the excesses of
the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing power of this ‘religious right’
heightened feminist fears that the gains women had made in previous decades would be
reversed.
In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood explores the consequences of a reversal of women’s rights.
In the novel’s nightmare world of Gilead, a group of conservative religious extremists has
taken power and turned the sexual revolution on its head. Feminists argued for liberation
from traditional gender roles, but Gilead is a society founded on a “return to traditional
values” and gender roles, and on the subjugation of women by men.
What feminists considered the great triumphs of the 1970s – namely, widespread access to
contraception, the legalization of abortion, and the increasing political influence of female
voters – have all been undone. Women in Gilead are not only forbidden to vote, they are
forbidden to read or write. Atwood’s novel also paints a picture of a world undone by
pollution and infertility, reflecting 1980s fears about declining birthrates, the dangers of
nuclear power, and environmental degradation.
Some of the novel’s concerns seem dated today, and its implicit condemnation of the
political goals of America’s religious conservatives has been criticized as unfair and overly
paranoid. Nonetheless, The Handmaid’s Tale remains one of the most powerful recent
portrayals of a totalitarian society, and one of the few dystopian novels to examine in detail
the intersection of politics and sexuality. The novel’s exploration of the controversial politics
of reproduction seems likely to guarantee Atwood’s novel a readership well into the twentyfirst
century

handmaids tale character

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Compare the ways in which the writers of your two chosen texts show how science can create victims (44 marks)

NOT MY WORK!

Compare the ways in which the writers of your two chosen texts show how science can create victims (44 marks)

Both Mary Shelley and Margaret Atwood show how science can create victims when great power is abused by those in authority to others and ensure that through narrative voice, the reader is aware of it. Whereas Frankenstein holds three narrators to its title, The Handmaid’s Tale only has one, excluding Pieixoto in the Historical Notes. However, both give us an in depth and intimate perspective on how victims have been created through science. Furthermore, they both use various methods of character development to build a sense of familiarity with the reader to which they destroy when these characters become victims of science. This all aids the way the reader feels towards those with power. The periods that both novels were written in were times of significant change regarding scientific discovery, especially for Frankenstein. By showing science to have the ability to create victims it shares the message that morality is essential when one has great power and these novels are great examples of this.

One way that the writers show how science can create victims when power is abused is through narrative voice. In Frankenstein, Shelley makes use of what has been dubbed the ‘Russian Doll’ model: the creature’s narration is embedded between both Victor Frankenstein and Robert Walton’s narration. By doing this, Shelley is able to give a personal account of how the creature has been victimised by science as he retells his experience to Victor who “consent[s] to listen”. Before this, we only have Victor’s opinion on the ‘monster’, of which the constant use of negative nomenclatures, such as “wretch” and “demon” instil a hatred of the creature in the reader. However, when he is finally given a voice, the reader can understand that he starts life as an innocent being, just desperate for affection. He talks of the DeLacy family “whom [he] sincerely love[s], and of whose favour [he] has some hopes”, nonetheless, his unnatural form and terrifying appearance – brought about by Victor’s endeavour for scientific development – results in him being “struck…violently with a stick” and cast out. He becomes a victim because Victor abuses his power to create life in order to become a creator of which a “new species would bless”.

Conversely, in The Handmaid’s Tale, only one narrator dictates the story, until the Historical Notes, which is both a part of and separate from the story. Yet through this very intimate view on the oppressive regime of Gilead. The science of fertility is what the government abuses and in doing so creates many victims, especially the Handmaids. Without Offred’s narration, the reader would not be aware of anything that goes on in Gilead, including Janine’s childbirth experience. She is reduced to animalistic traits and is described as a disgusting woman that has a “smell, more animal.” Like in Frankenstein it rests on the shoulders of the narrators to relay the story, who tend to also be the victims. Whether it be from creature to Victor or from Offred directly to the reader, the stories they tell would otherwise remain unheard, as victims so often are – but by giving them a voice, it gives them power. Those who abuse power through science are not held accountable.

Both Shelley and Atwood use character development throughout their novels to show how science creates victims. In The Handmaid’s Tale, Moira is portrayed as a strong presence, a rebel who was a ‘fantasy’ to the other women. She was escaping from the Red Centre and determined not to be overcome by the regime, whilst the other Handmaids “were losing the taste for freedom.” However, when Offred visits Jezebel’s, a very different Moira is presented, weak and defeated, “she shrugs. It might be resignation.” This same gradual victimisation by science is shown in Frankenstein by the characters of Victor. At the beginning of the novel, he is excited by the thought of science and the potential to be a ‘creator’, though as the story goes on, he is reduced to a weak man who feels suicidal and “abhors society”. It relates to what critic Anne Mellor says regarding the relationship between science and nature. She says the nature is presented as female and science, the male and that when people, like Victor, commit transgression, science “penetrates” nature, commits a rape, and means that an abuse of power can lead to science creating victims, as a rapist creates a victim.

Both Shelley and Atwood were writing in a time of great change that concentrated on science. In Mary Shelley’s era, some natural philosophers were intrigued by the idea of galvanism, which Victor uses to create his monster, “I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing” however immediately after he creates the monster, he is horrified and in a way, creates a victim by science before the creature has had any life because of his “horrid” appearance. He hates the monster and says “a mummy again induced with animation could not be so hideous.” Thus the creature is destined to be an automatic outcast. In the 80s when Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale, technology was of increasing importance and thus resulted in a popular period of other dystopian and sci-fi novels being written such as ‘The Clockwork Orange’. In Atwood’s novel and others of that time, science and technology is shown to be an entity that creates victims. For example, Offred is tested for fertility using technology and this is all artificial in creating new life. They are like human test tubes; despite being set many years in the future. Furthermore, the use of computers means she loses control of all her money before the regime had a stronghold on the population, Luke owns her money and this makes her a victim. It conveys a sense of fear that people had for science, in that victims are created when power is abused in the hands of strong, influential governments.

Ultimately both novels aim to display the world as a place for great potential. Victor says he wants to use science to “dispel all illness” and the technology used in The Handmaid’s Tale has the potential to improve modern issues such as decreasing fertility rates. However, in the hands of Victor and Gilead, they use the power they have for selfish and twisted purposes that result in Offred’s best friend never being seen again and both Victor and his lifelong dream die at the end of the novel. Science creates victims and it is because humans often believe they are able to defeat what is natural, beat the system, yet it only results in pain and misery.

Explore the way the writer of your chosen text crafts the narrative in order to make the text relatable to the reader

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In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood crafts the narrative in a certain way in order to make the text relatable to the reader. There is constant use of time shifts in the form of flashbacks in order to make aspects of the regime recognisable to the reader and therefore they can sympathise with the character of Offred. The voice is also presented by Atwood as an internal monologue allowing the reader to understand in great depth the emotions of the Handmaid which may echo feelings that they have experienced themselves. Atwood also uses metafiction in a way that, although at first may seem to make the novel appear unreliable, instead provides many different perspectives or outcomes. This not only explores how the regime of Gilead holds many secrets and that because of this, it is corrupt, but also opens up the narration to many different interpretations. Ultimately, it can be said that Atwood uses these innovative methods to ensure the novel is recognisable to all readers and her purpose is to ensure that the novel is not limited to a small audience because of its specific nature. The Handmaid’s Tale is undoubtedly a reminder to all to be free to fight for individuality.

The first way that Atwood uses narrative to make the novel relatable to the reader is through the use of time-shifts to take the reader back to the ‘time-before’, a very recognisable society to a contemporary reader and uses this to compare and contrast to the regime of Gilead.  In chapter 7, the difference in Gilead compared to ‘the time before’ is highlighted when Offred thinks back to her college days, when Moira would sit on “the edge of [her] bed, legs crossed, ankle on knee, in her purple overalls…the gold fingernail she wore to be eccentric…Let’s go for a beer”. This may remind readers, who have been to college, of the many happy memories they had when they could express themselves through clothes and were free to entertain and go out and allows them to put themselves in Offred’s position. It is essential that Atwood uses these flashbacks interwoven with the rest of the story because it highlights the difference in the Gilead years where “it must be hell”. The use of time shifts is effective when one considers that it has come about from the guessed order of tapes found by historians that the story was recorded on, which the reader finds out in the additional historical notes at the end of the novel. So whilst the narrative can make us feel closer to Offred, by not being in chronological order it affects the reader’s interpretation and they may feel more distant from her, as we understand that this may not be the order she wished her story to be told in and this is not wholly her voice. Even though, it allows the reader to appreciate how, in such a mundane and uneventful existence, memories start to surface and this could be relatable to how this can either give hope, which Offred has when thinking of Luke, or ruin the human spirit. Both occur to Offred, “Of all the dreams this is the worst”. By exploring such a relatable reality in many different ways, Atwood ensured the novel is recognisable to all readers and that they can relate with the multi-faceted character of Offred, no matter what their background.

A further means in which Atwood has used the narrative to make the novel relatable to the reader is how she has crafted the text to be a sort of dramatic monologue – aided by the use of first person narration. Through this, Offred tells us her deepest feelings, such as during the ceremony, “I wish it were true; then I could get better and this would go away”. The use of personal pronouns guides us to sympathise with Offred especially when paired with metafiction throughout the novel. Metafiction is used by Atwood to make the reader consider about the reliability of the narrator by using the power of storytelling. Metafictive novels allow the reader to experience a far more intimate perspective of the events in the book such as inviting the reader to develop their explorations surrounding how Offred feels towards the regime as she wishes “It’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending…I’ll pretend you can hear me. But it’s no good, because I know you can’t”. This allows us to infer that Offred wants people to know of her story but is unsure if that will ever happen. It echoes similarities of Anne Frank, who wrote a diary in Amsterdam when she was hiding from the Nazis. She told the whole truth because she never thought anyone would read it. It was her way of rebelling against an oppressive regime, as it is Offred and her tapes – giving a deeper sense of seeing personal qualities in these women. Atwood uses the metafictive, dramatic monologue voice to ensure the novel is recognisable to all readers. Especially when considering it similar to Anne Frank’s diary, we can understand The Handmaid’s Tale is undoubtedly a reminder to all to be free to fight for individuality.

In addition to the structure of the novel, throughout the novel we are given, by Atwood, scenarios in which Offred tells of more than one outcome. Sometimes it is because she doesn’t know, “The things I believe can’t all be true, though one of them must be” – giving the impression of oppression brought about by Gilead’s use of withholding information from the people from the country under its control. Although it may be because she cannot fully be truthful in order to protect herself, “It didn’t happen that way either…All I can hope for is a reconstruction”. The theme of hope is repeated throughout the novel helping the reader relate to Offred as they’re reminded of it constantly and hope for her sake that the regime will to cease to continue. We are reminded that characters who lose hope, like Moira, are overcome and defeated through anecdotes supplied by Offred’s knowledge throughout the narrative. By giving many different accounts of the events it means that readers can form their own opinions on which one is the most truthful and which one they relate to the most. Atwood has chosen to craft her narrative in this way to ensure that the novel reaches a wide audience and most likely welcomes the different interpretations of her novel that follow.

Throughout The Handmaid’s Tale, it is evident that Offred is a very well developed character. She is flawed, has mood swings and struggles though what seems to be an unbearable existence with great dignity. This is all thanks to the carefully crafted narrative which presents flecks of life whether it be emotions/events/buildings that modern readers recognised and relate to. Atwood only includes things that have already happened in the real world in her novel and by doing this she forces readers to realise problems within their own societies. The different interpretations within the book for readers are also evident because the novel has been restricted in many countries. This censoring of literature not only depicts how this complex text can be interpreted drastically differently across the globe but also seems to remind the reader that a life like Gilead is possible – a theme of threat which is presented across generic dystopia. The narrative is relatable to readers and whether it be a character or event that instils this, The Handmaid’s Tale is undoubtedly a reminder to be free to fight for individuality.

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?