Historical and Biographical
Approaches:
Frankenstein
“Frankenstein”
Author: Mary Shelly
Published in 1 Jan 1818
Original Name: “Frankenstein: The Modern
Prometheus”
Classic Gothic and Romanic Novel, with a
concern to the “over-reaching” of scientism in
the Industrial Revolution.
Timeline 1818
Shelly is only 21!
And these are the most
advanced technologies !!
So you can see how
imaginative Shelly is
Inspiration
“How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?
-Shelly
During the snowy summer of 1816 (the eruption
of Mount Tambora in 1815 had blocked the sky)
Shelly visited Lord Byron
In the visit, Byron challenged and John William
Polidori (Byron’s physician) and Shelly to
compose the scariest tale
Shelly come up the idea of Frankenstein, Byron
wrote a fragment based on the vampire legend
he heard in the Balkans, from this Polidori later
developed the novel “The Vampyre”.
Thus, two of the most proliferated horror
themes were created in the same contest!
They both won!
The unnaturalness and
lifelessness of the “miniice age” after the
eruption of Mt. Tambora
also provided Shelly with
the inspiration of the
arctic setting in the novel.
Victor Frankenstein
To critics, Frankenstein is akin to some scientists
of our own day, who attempt and achieve
developments mostly because they have the
technical ability to do so
In this sense, Victor Frankenstein is surprisingly
similar to another great inventor in history,
Leonardo Da Vinci
Leonardo Da Vinci used to
sneak into crypts to dissect
corpses to study them.
Although he had expressed in his notes his
abhorrence of war, he also designed some of
the most advanced weapons in his time
Frankenstein
Many mistook the name Frankenstein as the
monster’s name, the fact is the he was never
named
Instead he was called: 'creature', 'demon', 'fiend',
and 'wretch'
Victor, his creator and the real Frankenstein,
called it: ‘Devil’, ‘Vile insect’, ‘Abhorred monster’,
'wretched devil' and 'abhorred devil'
Victor Frankenstein and the monster
Victor had regarded the monster as evil right from the
start to the end, that’s strange in two ways
First, he failed to see the eeriness of the monster all
the time he was composing it
Second, he also failed to consider his own
responsibility and blamed everything on the monster
Therefore, the common mistake might not be
mistaken after all, for Victor Frankenstein can be
seen as the true monster
Historical Background of Frankenstein
•Frankenstein
Portrait of George III. He is
widely remembered for two
things: losing the American
colonies and going mad.
was
published in the last
years of the reign of
George III. Its author,
Mary Shelley, was born
in 1797. Both the
American and the
French Revolutions
were things of the past.
•It
must be admitted that
the social and political
picture in England
during Mary Shelly’s
years would have been
enough to drive many
sensitive and idealistic
young people into
radical thinking and
action.
Portrait of Mary Shelley
“Dark satanic mills” were proliferating
all over England
•Enclosure Acts
were driving small landowners,
tenant farmers, and agricultural workers off their
lands and into the slums of industrial cities; laborers
everywhere endured horrible working conditions
with no job security and faced the indifference and
hostility of a new and growing capitalist class.
The influences of her parents on Mary
Shelley
•Mary
Wollstonecraft, the
author of A Vindication of
the Rights of Women
(1792), and the novel The
Wrongs of Woman, in
which she wrote: "We
cannot, without depraving
our minds, endeavor to
please a lover or husband,
but in proportion as he
pleases us."
"Mary Wollstonecraft," by
John Opie (circa 1797).
The influences of her parents on Mary
Shelley
•Mary
Portrait of William Godwin
Shelley's father
was the writer and
political journalist
William Godwin, who
became famous with his
work Political Justice
(1793). Godwin had
revolutionary attitudes
to most social
institutions.
•Interestingly,
few of
these radical tendencies
are evident in
Frankenstein. Between
the age of 15 and 17,
Mary visited her middleclass friends in Dundee,
where seems to give her
a pleasant contrast to the
polar opposite of her
normal milieu.
The 1st edition of Frankenstein
in 1831. Mary Shelley used the
Frankenstein and Clerval
families in her novel to hearken
back to Baxters.
Biographical Features in Frankenstein
•Already
The book cover of another
edition of Frankenstein.
interested in
science in her early years,
Mary Shelley shared with
her husband’s fascination
with the natural sciences.
Hence, we read the
detailed accounts of the
creation of the monster in
her novel.
Biographical Features in Frankenstein
•However,
Frankenstein’s
chemistry is, to quote
James Rieger, “switchedon magic, souped-up
alchemy, the
electrification of Agrippa
and Paracelsus…[H]e
wants the forbidden….
He is a criminal magician
who employs up-to-dates
tools” (xxvii).
Biographical Features in Frankenstein
•Of
course, to some extent, Mary Shelley is
employing certain features of contemporary
Gothic romances. But she departs from the stock
formulas of the genre. One notable biographical
detail may be found in the geography,
topography, and climate of the settings of the
novel.
Picture of black mill factories
in the 19th century
Biographical Features in Frankenstein
•Mary
Shelley was more
interested in creating an
“arctic of the mind” than
in describing glaciers and
ice floes scientifically.
She was intimately
acquainted with both the
terrain and climatic
conditions in the Alpine
regions where she and
Percy Shelley lived.
Biographical Features in Frankenstein
Although “Frankenstein” is famous for being a horror novel, the
world in the fiction was deeply ingrained with Shelly’s belief of
conventional sexual morality and family piety
E.g. The expectation of conventional marriage between Victor
and his cousin Elizabeth
Family bonding: Victor’s friend Clerval
Different Frankensteins
Robert De Niro
Boris Karloff
Other Frankensteins
Frankenstein - The Musical
Batman as
Frankenstein
Andy Warhols
Modern Frankensteins
Like all great literature masterpieces, “Frankenstein” was
topical in its era yet also contains something universal in time
It questions human’s unending search for technical
advancement and power, especially in the age of science
Victor Frankenstein represents the part of human beings that
are capable of unlimited ingenuity, yet are often found lacking
in being responsible for the things we created
In our own day, those who express great caution about human
cloning need not base that caution on religious grounds alone
As Shelly has shown though Victor Frankenstein, the inability to
be responsible for one’s creation may present the greatest evil
of all.
“If researches manage to create living cells from scratch . . . .
Scientists are close enough to create life in the lab that is time to
start a public debate about what that would mean - for traditional
views of the sanctity of life as well as for whether the creators will
be able to control their creations”
From “Researchers Exploring, ‘What is Life?’ Seek
to Create a Living Cell”, Wall Street Journal
Related Sources and Links about
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/mshelley.htm
Full e-text of Frankenstein
1.worldonline.nl/~hamberg/
http://home-
Fred Botting, ed. Frankenstein: Mary Shelley. New York :St.
Martin's Press, 1995.