'
California State University, Northridge
HARY SHELLEY'S VIE1t>J OF HAN AS SEEN IN
\\
FRANKENSTEIN AND THE LAST HAN
A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of
Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English
by
Nona Hale
Received:
Approved:
June, 1977
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,,
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
I.
II.
III.
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY .
1
THE TWO NOVELS
9
CONCLUSIONS . .
• 27
NOTES
•
A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
•
• 32
• 34
ii
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I.
A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
On 30 August 1797, a daughter was born to Mary
Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, who had married only
five months previously.
Though believing that marriage
was a stifling institution and that love should be free,
Mary Wollstonecraft had seen the effects of her liberal
views on her first child, Fanny Imlay, and she now wished
to spare her second.
Many of her perceptions of freedom
had been formed while she lived in Newington Green among
the leading dissenters of her day, to whom "free" meant
"guided by one's own will."
will was servitude.)
(To be guided by another's
These concepts had appeared in her
Vindication of the Rights of Men {1790).
Two years later
she had written A Vindication of the Rights of Homen in
which she insists that rights have no sexual basis: "what
they say of man I extend to mankind."
She believed that
inequality is the cause of the world's evils.
"Cruelty,
depravity, irresponsibility toward children and all helpless persons--these'wrongs' are to be fought by eliminating institutionalized inequality and by educating the
mind and heart of both meri and women, of all classes.
The
right she is most concerned to vindicate, then, is the
right to become a rational, responsible, independent
adult." 1
Although she married Godwin, she never lived in
his house except for the twelve days of this confinement
1
2
which ended in her death.
Godwin, a crusty bachelor,
found himself the widowed parent of two little girls.
Mr. Nicholson, a neighbor who was an amateur
phrenologist
a~d
physiognomist, examined Mary when she
was three weeks old and found signs of intelligence and
good memory although there were also indications that the
babe lacked persistence.
Even at such an early age it is
clear that much was expected of Mary.
2
William Godwin had found fame as a radical social
philosopher with the publication in 1793 of An Enquiry
Concerning the Principles of Justice.
"Truth, moral truth,
it was supposed, had here taken up its abode; and these
were the oracles of thought," wrote William Hazlitt about
this book's effect. 3
Godwin differed from a reformer like
Thomas Paine by submitting that democracy is not the solution to the injustices of the feudal-mercantile system.
This is because he did not feel that the evils of society
were due only to political suppression but also to economic inequality.
Even if kings, priests, courts, and
criminal laws were changed so that the political rights
of people were protected, the unequal distribution of
property would lead to envy, dissatisfaction and revolt,
Godwin wrote.
In 1801 Godwin married a widow, Mary Jane Clairmont, who had two children, Charles and Jane (later
3
Claire).
A son, William, was born to them in 1802.
confusion of children was Mary's early family.
This
Because
she adored her father and he seemed to see in her the
reincarnation
o~
his first wife, she appears to have
suppressed her natural warm nature in order to seem the
dispassionate intellectual he approved of.
stepmother were not compatible.
She and her
This may be the reason
that she spent parts of 1812 and 1814 in Scotland with
the Baxter family.
They were a conventional, middle
class household and she enjoyed her visits with them.
It was in Scotland, she says 1n the 1831 introduction to
Frankenstein, that her "airy flights of .
. imagination,
were born and fostered."
During the summer of 1814 Shelley was a frequent
visitor to Godwin.
They shared many views:
the innate
goodness of man, the unifying force of love, the progression of society toward good.
When Mary returned from
Scotland, she met Shelley at her father's house.
Partly
to elude her stepmother's tongue and partly out of longing
for her own mother whose memory she had romanticized, Mary
began to visit her mother's grave.
There she would sit
and read her beloved books, all those written by her
mother and many others from Godwin's library.
Fascinated
by this beautiful daughter of his mentor, Shelley began
to follow her to St. Pancras' churchyard.
They talked
4
of Mary Wollstonecraft and Shelley confided his unhappiness caused by his wife's neglect and lack of sympathy.
Shelley idealized Mary:
not only was she the daughter of
two of his idols, but she seemed to possess everything he
thought the ideal woman should have--beauty, imagination
and intelligence, love of poetry, and sympathy with his
aspirations.
No wonder they found themselves plunged in-
to intense feelings.
Hhen Godwin became aware of the
situation, he was the outraged father.
Mary was only
sixteen; Shelley was married to Harriet Westbrook and the
father of two children.
In July, the lovers eloped to
France and Switzerland, Claire accompanying them.
Mary
felt no compunction in eloping, for they were, after all,
only living out the philosophic views of her father.
Love was what bound two people together, not the institution of marriage.
broken.
When love was absent, the ties were
Marriage vows were not compelling and marriage
ceremonies were not necessary.
Although Shelley agreed
with Godwin that marriage was an evil social institution,
he did not advocate promiscuous sex.
A sexual relation-
ship was proper only if it was the outgrowth of a spiritual relationship.
B~cause
he and Harriet no longer
shared such a relationship, he was able to leave her with
no feelings of wrongdoing.
He even invited Harriet to
join them as the sister of his soul.
"Shelley never gave
5
up his belief that people ought to live naturally and
rationally together, but he did come to recognize the
great practical difficulties. involved. "
4
After two months the lovers returned to England.
In February of 1815 a daughter was born to them, only to
die within two weeks.
uary of 1816.
A son, William, was born in Jan-
That summer they again traveled to Switzer-
land where Mary began writing Frankenstein.
After they
returned to England in the fall, Harriet was found
drowned.
In December they were married, mainly in hopes
of obtaining custody of Shelley's two children by
Harriet, but also to legitimize their child and to placate
their families.
Another daughter was born before they
left for Italy in 1818.
Life was tumultuous for Mary.
Before she was
twenty she had given birth to three children.
was twenty-two she had lost them all.
Before she
Add to this
Harriet's suicide, Fanny's suicide, the loss of Shelley's
children to the court, the death of the daughter of Byron
and Claire plus the constant hounding by Godwin and
creditors for money, the ostracism from Shelley's family,
the lack of funds because of Shelley's generous spirit
and one wonders that Mary was able to write.
Shelley had
little doubt that she had an extraordinary gift and
intellect, and it was probably due to his support that
/;
6
during this period she wrote History
of~
Six Weeks' Tour,
Frankenstein, Valperga, and a novella, Mathilda.
Her only
child to reach adulthood, Percy Florence, was born in
November of 1819.
She had a miscarriage in June of 1822,
but her greatest tragedy occurred in July of that year:
Shelley was drowned while sailing off the coast of Italy.
An impoverished widow at twenty-four, Mary felt
that she had but two obligations:
the furthering of
Shelley's reputation and the caring for her only child.
After a year with the Leigh Hunt family in Italy, she
returned to England, hoping that Sir Timothy, Shelley's
father, would feel obligated to support his grandson.
But he would do so
only if Mary relinquished custody.
She refused, and Sir Timothy compromised by giving Percy
Florence a hundred pounds a year.
Mary provided for her-
self, her son and her debt-ridden father by publishing
Valperga (1823) and The Last Man (1826).
In 1824 the
publication of Shelley's Posthumous Poems and the notes
Mary had written for the book so angered Sir Timothy (who
wanted nothing more than that the world should forget his
errant son) that he stopped the small allowance.
When
Harriet's son died in 1826 and Percy became heir to the
estate, Sir Timothy relented and gave him an allowance of
three hundred pounds a year.
Mary developed a life in London and a circle of
~
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7
friends, but she clung to Shelley's memory and never remarried.
Replying to a proposal from Edward Trelawny she
wrote, "Never, neither you nor anybody else.
shall be
writte~
on my tomb .
II
Mary Shelley
She continued to
support herself by writing and seemed almost morbid in her
widowhood.
Two novels were published, Lodore (1835) and
Falkner (1837), and she wrote notes to an edition of
Shelley's poems, Poetical Works_ (1839) .
five volumes of biography for Lardner's
pedia.
She also wrote
~abinet
Her last work, Rambles in Germany and
Cyclo-
~taly,
is
an account of two trips she took with her son and two of
h~s
friends.
poverty.
The final years of her life were free of
At the death of Sir Timothy, who lived to age
ninety-one, Percy succeeded to the title.
Shortly after
he married a widow, Jane St. John, who was devoted to
Mary.
In 1851 Mary Shelley died and was buried between
the graves of her mother and her father.
Mary Shelley wrote seven novels, two novellas,
twenty published short stories, five volumes of biographies, numerous articles and essays for literary
magazines, two books of travel, three poetic dramas and
a number of poems.
She edited works by Shelley, Godwin,
Trelawny and a short story by her stepsister, Claire
Clairmont.
And yet she is chiefly remembered as the wife
of Shelley, and by some as the author of Frankenstein.
8
She seems always to be a reflection of others--her mother,
her father, her husband.
Perhaps a better metaphor is
that she is a window through which we are able to glimpse
the romantic idealists of the early nineteenth century.
An examination of her idea of man as it emerges from two
of her novels, Frankenstein and The Last Man will aid us
in this understanding.
II.
THE T\'V'O NOVELS
Because of the associations in her personal life,
Mary Shelley is considered by many to be a spokesman for
In reality, she was much more
the romantic view of man.
conventional than her mother, her father, or her husband.
And from her works she appears to have had a much more
pessimistic view of man.
Although she agreed, for the
most part, that man is basically good, there are inconsistencies, as we shall see upon examination of Frankenstein and The Last Man.
The legend of Frankenstein that has filtered down
to us is concerned mainly with the creation of a monster.
Mary's concern was with the result of that creation and
its use as illustration of the nature of man.
She states
in her preface that such a creation is an event that may
not be based on fact, though it is not improbable, and
that the use of this event is justified mainly because it
enables the author to depict the nature of man in a much
more comprehensive manner than would be possible if such
a remarkable event had not been used as the departure
point for the author's imagination.
"I have thus endeav-
oured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles
of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate
upon their combinations."
5
9
10
~vhat
did Mary see as the "elementary principles
of human nature"?
One of the most obvious from her
writings is the natural goodness of man.
The romantic
view of sin is that it is caused by misery.
"Man is
innately good; the concept of original sin is alien to
Mary Shelley, as indeed it was to her father and her
husband."
6
Godwin taught that happiness leads to virtue;
treat a person ill and he will become wicked.
Like
Godwin, Shelley "did not believe that evil was inherent
in humanity but that it arose from corrigible social
causes .
[and that] this evil had been diminishing,
that society had been progressing, and that it would
progress further."
the monster.
7
Mary illustrates this most fully in
He is moved by the delights of spring and
is filled with benevolent feeling when he is alone in
the woods.
One aim of the novel is to show that an Adam
lacking a God for inspiration is still capable of happiness and virtue.
He has an affinity for the natural
world: the rising sun, the singing birds, the budding
plants.
8
It is the rejection of Victor and all other men
with whom he comes in con tact that makes him misera):>J:e
and, therefore, malicious.
·-------.
---~
.. --··
-
He pleads with Victor, "I am
-··
thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my
natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy
part, the which thou owest me .
. I was benevolent and
11
good; misery made me a fiend.
be virtuous"
(F, 101).
Nake me.happy, and I shall
And he confesses to Walton near
the end of the novel that as violent as he was, he received no pleasure from it and suffered from remorse and
guilt (F, 238).
Man has a natural tendency toward good.
Evil does not exist except as a corruption of human
nature due to unhappiness.
the world.
It is not a natural force in
One of Mary's purposes was "to show that evil
has no autonomous existence of its own, independent of
human life upon which it preys, but that it is of human
origin, a distortion of true human nature."
9
He shall
see later that the distortion is, perhaps, not so much a
distortion as an unawareness of the conflict between
man's reason and emotions.
Another example of a person who is impaired by
ill-treatment is Perdita in The Last Man.
Lionel de-
scribes his sister as "cold and repulsive .
. unloved
and neglected, she repaid want of kindness with distrust
and silence.
Poverty was the cloud that veiled her
excellencies, and all that was good in her seemed about
to perish from want of the genial dew of affection."
10
Lionel, himself, as an "unprotected orphan" was the
leader of a band of lawless shepherds who "owned but one
law, it was that of the strongest, and my greatest deed
of virtue was never to submit"
(LM, 9).
Through the
12
friendship of Adrian, Lionel "began to be human" when he
discovers the true nature of man:
"Not to be strong of
limb, hard of heart, ferocious, and daring; but kind,
compassionate artd soft"
(LM, 19) .
Man's emotions must be
nourished in order for him to be good.
It is the love and
affection of Adrian that makes Lionel virtuous.
However,
Hary is aware of something in man's nature that is not
totally good.
There seems to be some aspect of man that
"is for ever urging us on towards pain and misery .
II
When Lionel sees Adrian suffering from his love for
Evadne, he concludes, "We are not formed for enjoyment;
and, however we may be attuned to the reception of pleasurable emotion, disappointment is the never-failing
pilot of our life's bark, and ruthlessly carries us on
to the shoals"
(LM, 23).
This philosophy of the nature
of man could be taken as the unenlightened sentiments of
a young man and a stance from which Mary proposed to show
the growth of that young man's understanding were it not
that the same sentiments are echoed in the last pages of
her story.
There Lionel says, "Truly, we were not born
to enjoy, but to submit.
" (LM, 2 91) .
After wit-
nessing the destruction of the human race by plague,
Lionel does have reason for pessimism, but it seems that
the plague is used as a vehicle in this novel to strip
man of his pretensions so that his basic nature can be
13
shown.
Man may be fundamentally good, but he is subject
to many forces, among which is a pessimism resulting from
man's reasoning nature.
Man's reason sets him apart from the world.
He
has a desire for unity, a need for clarity, and a longing
to solve the great mysteries of life.
II
The race of man
. had been the mere plaything of nature, when first
it crept out of uncreative void into light, but thought
brought forth power and knowledge; and, clad with these,
the race of man assumed dignity and authority"
(LM, 300).
Lionel says, "So true it is, that man's mind alone was
the creator of all that was good or great to man, and
that Nature herself was only his first minister'!
(LM, 5).
However, man is capable of understanding the universe in
only an anthropomorphic manner.
"Understanding the world
for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with
his seal.
The eat's universe is not the universe of
the anthill."ll
As the plague progresses, Lionel sees
the futility of all man's ·knowledge and reason.
Con-
sciousness is what is responsible for man's suffering.
Victor laments as he climbs the glacier in search
of some comfort, "Alas! why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only
renders them more necessary beings.
If our impulses were
confined to hunger, thirst, and desire we might be nearly
i'
.
14
free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows!"
(F, 99).
Han's mind compels him to act in ways which
bring unhappiness.
study the
caus~
Victor's imagination drives him to
of life--so much that he begins to dream
of creating life himself.
"A new species would bless me
as its creator-and source; many happy and excellent
natures would owe their being to me.
No father could
claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I
should deserve theirs"
(F, 4 7) .
becomes a hellish reality.
The vision of his power
Overcome by the magnitude of
what he has created, Victor flees from his creature; and
this abandonment is the great evil.
Victor allows his
reason to desert him, he does not accept the responsibility for a successful scientific experiment.
monster accuses him, " .
The
. you had endowed me with
perceptions and passions, and then cast me abroad an
object for the scorn and horror of mankind"
(F, 147).
Victor is unfeeling in his desertion of his creation.
Fathers claim the gratitude of their children for the
nurture and protection they provide; Victor can have no
such claim upon his progeny.
The monster likens himself
to Adam who "was apparently united by no link to any
other being in existence; but .
. he had come forth
. a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded
by the especial care of his Creator"
(F, 135).
One of
15
theperceptions and passions with which the monster was
endowed was a desire to know.
As he wanders the world,
he is much like Adam in the Garden of Eden, responding to
the basic forces of the natural world.
When he takes
refuge 1n the hut beside the cottagers and secretly observes them, he has the opportunity to learn language and
literature and the history of man.
The monster regrets
his loss of innocence and wishes that he could be free of
knowledge.
He reiterates Victor's prior cry.
He wishes
that he had remained a brute in his native wood " .
nor know nor felt beyond the sensation of hunger, thirst,
and heat!"
(F, 125).
"Increase of knowledge only dis-
covered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I
was"
(F, 137).
The reason Victor gives for telling Walton the
story of his search for knowledge and its disastrous results is that he hopes to deter him from such a calamity.
"You seek for 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"
Consciousness
lS
(F, 19).
what makes man's fate tragic, but aware-
ness can lead to joy as well.
Victor describes his
creation as "the living monument of presumption and rash
ignorance which I had let loose upon the world.
(F, 78).
II
What he does not see, what he is not aware of,
16
is that the monster is an emotional entity as well as a
It is this disregard for the emo-
robot come to life.
tional side of his creature that prevents Victor from
receiving any joy or pleasure in its creation.
Mary, by
telling his story, seems to be cautioning that man has a
dual nature, that he is not only a reasonable creature
but a feeling one as well and that both aspects must
function in harmony.
In The Last Man she describes their need in
another way.
Lionel says his father "was one of those
men on whom nature had bestowed to prodigality the envied
gifts of wit and imagination .
. without adding reason
as a rudder, or judgment as the pilot for the voyage .
[his) impulses .
ties.
"
. perpetually led him into difficul-
( LM, 5) •
Because of this deficiency his
father is eventually banished from the king's court and
dies impoverished.
extreme.
mind .
The Countess of Windsor is the other
"Never did any woman appear so entirely made of
. her passions had subdued her appetites, even
her natural wants .
. her body was evidently considered
by her as a mere machine .
part of her enjoyment.
. whose senses formed no
There is something fearful in
one who can thus conquer the animal part of our nature.
"
(LM,
52) •
She has subdued all emotions and
is singlemindedly focused on one thing only:
restoring
17
her son to the throne.
This obsession alienates her from
her children, and it is only with the death of Idris, when
she realizes that reconciliation and forgiveness are no
longer possible, that regret makes her human.
It is
interesting that Mary uses almost the same phrase to
describe the Countess in a disparaging manner as she does
to describe the reason for Adrian's goodness.
She says
of him, "In person, he hardly appeared of this w6rld; his
slight frame was overinformed by the soul that dwelt within; he was all mind"
(LM, 18).
In the first instance
mind seems to imply reason only; in the latter, reason
tempered by compassion and emotion.
The story of Lord Raymond in The Last Man is one
of reason overcome by passion and ambition.
He knows
that "though I dream of a crown and wake for one, ever
and anon a busy devil whispers to me, that it is but a
fool's cap that I seek, and that were I wise, I should
trample on it.
II
( LM
I
4 0) .
He marries Perdita,
Lionel's sister, but ambition is too strong for him to
be content, for "domesticity is not enough to contain the
. .
. d . " 12
.
.
psyc h 1c
energ1es
o-f t h e asp1r1ng
m1n
He consents to
being nominated for Lord Protector and wins the office.
Although not king, he is the ruler of his country and is
.involved in many schemes for the betterment of the people.
He has subjugated his dream of being a great conqueror
18
by being a great benefactor.
His true ambitions are
re~
vealed when Evadne, the beautiful Greek from his youth,
enters his life once more.
myself.
Raymond says, "I cannot rule
My pas,sions are my masters; my smallest impulse
my tyrant"
(LM, 109).
The loss of Perdita, the Protector-
ship, and Evadne provides him with a reason to flee to
Greece to seek glory as a warrior once again.
There he
defeats the Turks and insists on entering the deserted
Constantinople in spite of the threat of plague.
He will
not be denied the opportunity to "leave behind a trail
of light
it.
~o
radiant, that my worst enemies cannot cloud
I owe this to .
(Lr1, 141).
. myself, the victim of ambition"
The result of this driving impulse is that
Raymond is killed in an explosion in the city, and the
Greeks, the people he was fighting to free, are overcome
by plague.
The emotional passion for glory, overpowering
reason, has led to disaster.
Lord Raymond could have said what Robert Walton
writes to his sister as he journeys to the north.
"My
life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I
preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed
in my path . " ( F , 6 ) .
The ambivalent nature of man is
obvious in Victor Frankenstein.
He has spent days re-
galing Walton with his tale of suffering as a result of
seeking knowledge and honor, using his unhappy life as
19
empirical evidence.
Yet, when the ship is icebound and
the crew, fearful of Walton leading them into new dangers,
mutinies and demands to return if and when they are free
from their present peril, Victor emotionally exhorts them,
"Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace marked on your brows.
Return as heroes who have
fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn
their backs on the foe"
(F, 233).
Being a creature of both reason and feeling, man
not only is aware of his separateness but also suffers
from that awareness.
The theme of loneliness dominates
both Frankenstein and The Last Man.
In the first book
the monster is utterly alone because of the actions of
man.
In the second book Lionel is utterly alone because
of the action of nature.
Mary was nineteen when she
wrote Frankenstein and was still influenced greatly by
the teachings of her father and her husband.
By the
time she wrote The Last Man she had seen three of her
four children die, her half-sister had committed suicide,
her husband had drowned, she had had a
friend Byron had died.
her
miscarri~ge,
She must truly have felt as
though the actions of man were no match for those of
nature.
She wrote in her journal, "The last man!
Yes,
I may well describe that solitary being's feelings,
feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my
20
companions extinct before me."
13
In Frankenstein, Walton, Victor, and the monster
are all examples of lonely individuals.
The monster is
the most tragic of the three because he is the only one
who does not choose to be separate.
us so choose?
But then do any of
Walton and Victor both select the scien-
tific life; this results in their solitude.
In fact, it
may be that it is because Victor cuts himself off from
his family and friends in order to pursue his studies
that he is seduced into his dream of creating life and,
having created that life, is unable to see it as more
than just a living organism.
Victor, even when warning
Walton of the dangers of his ambition, never sees that it
was not the creation of the monster that causes him to
suffer, but the rejection of that creation.
Walton had
written his sister, "I bitterly feel the want of a
friend"
(F, 7).
Each man has a need to alleviate his
loneliness by sharing it with another.
unique.
Walton is not
When he rescues Victor from the ice floe, he
finds his friend.
Victor agrees with
~'lal ton
that "we are
unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser,
better, dearer than ourselves--such a friend ought to
be--do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and
faulty natures"
(F, 17).
Here Victor is describing
exactly what he should have been to his creature.
He
'
1
•
21
created life in the monster but that left him "but half
made up" because Victor then rejected him.
It is only
when he agrees to listen to the monster's story that he
"for the first time .
. felt what the duties of a
creator towards his creature were, and that I ought to
render him happy before I complained of his wickedness"
(F, 103).
The monster is the personification of true loneliness.
He belongs to no one and has no one who belongs
to him.
His creator has spurned him as do all men with
whom he comes in contact.
the world.
He is unlike anything else in
The monster also seems to be the most human
character in the novel, the one with whom the reader can
most readily identify.
Is it because this is really the
state in which all men find themselves?
Frankenstein is a plea for companionship and
freedom from isolation.
The monster, the product of
Victor's ambition, is given a voice in which it pleads
for release from its desperate solitude.
to create a companion for him.
He begs Victor
"I am alone, and miser-
able; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed
and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me"
(F, 152).
The monster feels his loneliness would be
bearable if shared.
The feeling is so strong in him
that he becomes threatening, promising to destroy any
22
hope of. happiness Victor may have if he refuses to do as
he is asked.
He then realizes that the passionate._out-
burst is not aiding in his argument; Victor does not
comprehend that he is responsible for the emotions of
the creature.
So the monster tries logic.
"If any being
felt emotions of benevolence toward me, I should return
them an hundred and an hundred fold; for that one
creature's sake, I would make peace with the whole
kind"
(F, 154).
suaded.
Being a reasonable man, Victor is per-
He begins to create a female, but "thought with
a sensation of madness of my promise of creating another
like him and trembling with passions, tore to pieces the
thing on which I was engaged"
(F, 177).
Unaware of the
emotional nature of his creature, Victor allows his own
emotional nature to condemn his creature to a life of
inexorable solitude.
Lionel Verney, in The Last Nan, begins his life
alone as "an unprotected orphan among the valleys and
fells of Cumberland" (LM, 8) .
Lonely and longing for
human companionship, he forms a band of boys similar to
himself, rough and wild as the countryside in which they
live and as untaught as the sheep they tend.
He "owned
but one law, it was that of the strongest, and [his] .
greatest deed of virtue was never to submit"
(LM, 9).
is only after Lionel meets Adrian and enjoys love and
It
23
sympathy that he feels himself to become human.
It is 1n
society that he experiences the hope of happiness, and
it is there that his emotions are aroused.
He discovers
a strength greater than that of the physical body.
.
. 1s
power.I
"This
Not to be strong of limb, hard of heart,
ferocious, and daring; but kind, compassionate and
soft"
(LM, 19) .
His loneliness eases as he finds joy
in intellectual pursuits, love in his marriage to Idris,
and companionship in the society of Adrian.
Then his
happiness is taken from him; one by one, not only those
closest to him, but all of humanity except himself dies.
He is left desolate; his loneliness is as final and
irreparable as is the monster's.
The plague, as it
progresses across the world, rips away all man's pretensions:
the political arena with its ambition, the
intellectual life with its seeking for knowledge, and
the imaginative glories of the arts.
like our first parents.
" (LM
I
Man "is solitary;
2 34) .
For Mary
Shelley, man is a solitary figure who may feel as though
he is in communion with others like himself, but eventually will recognize an intense feeling of alienation.
Her idea is that "the condition of the individual being is
14
• 11 y 1so
• 1 a t e d an d th ere f ore u 1 t 1mate
•
1 y trag1c.
•
II
essen t 1a
Mary used the glacier as a symbol of loneliness
and desolation in Frankenstein and in The Last Man.
It
24
is comforting to both Victor Frankenstein and Lionel
Verney to look out upon the cold, impenetrable ice and
feel as though man is but a small part of the hugh scheme
of the universe, a pawn of fate.
Man with his intellect
might believe he is able to overcome "the untamed yet
obedient element"
(F, 11), or maintain as Adrian does,
"The choice is with us; let us will it, and our habitation becomes a paradise.
potent.
II
( LM, 54) .
For the will of man is omniBut the plague brought a
"painful sense of the degradation of humanity"
as though nature had turned against man.
(LM, 168),
Man might
classify and study and feel as though he has control, but
in reality he can be annihilated by the unpreventable
forces of nature.
Mary and Percy Shelley were reading Paradise Lost
the summer she wrote Frankenstein and its influence can
be seen in the novel.
Both works were "designed to
define man's place in the universe and give form to those
forces threatening to displace him .
. although Mrs.
Shelley's God was certainly not Milton's, they shared
a feeling for a divinely created natural order."
15
With
this idea of a natural order came the notion that,
although there were choices that man could make, there
was also a fated path that he must travel.
Victor
chooses to forego his efforts to penetrate the secrets
25
of nature when he sees the oak tree disintegrated by the
bolt of lightning; suddenly he feels as though "nothing
would or could be ever known" but in spite of his decision "destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had
decreed my utter and terrible destruction" (F, 33).
Is
it man's illusion that he has power over his destiny?
Raymond and Lionel have a discussion concerning free will
and determinism.
Raymond says, "I cannot .
voluntary changes on my will.
. run
We are born; we choose
neither our parents, nor our station; we are educated by
others, or by the world's circumstance, and this cultivation, mingling with our innate dispositions, is the
soil in which our desires, passions and motives grow."
Lionel replies, "There is much truth in what you say .
and yet no man ever acts upon this theory .
not .
. Does he
. feel a freedom of will within him, which,
though you may call it fallacious, still actuates him as
he decides?" (LM, pp.46-47).
Even if what Raymond
argues is true, man still acts as though he has free
will and that action is what elicits hope.
Hope is what alleviates the tragic suffering of
man's solitude.
It may be a delusion, but it is "the
last blessing of humanity"
(LM, 226).
Both the monster
and Lionel, the most desolate of living beings, end their
stories with a hope.
The monster is going to the north
26
to build himself a funeral pyre.
He hopes to find in the
purifying flames rest and peace such as he never could
find in his life.
In death he will be free of the torment
inflicted by the action of man.
suicide many times:
II
Lionel had contemplated
death by my own hands was a
remedy, whose practicability was even cheering to me.
What could I fear in the other world?"
(LM, 332).
He
feels he cannot know the purpose behind man's creation,
but he also feels he has been saved by fate for some
reason.
His hope is to discover that reason.
"If my
human mind cannot acknowledge that all that is, is right;
yet since what is, must be, I will sit amidst the ruins
and smile.
Truly we were not born to enjoy, but to
submit and to hope"
(LM, 290).
Q .
III.
CONCLUSION
The view of man's nature that emerges from Mary
Shelley's two
n~vels,
Frankenstein and The Last Man, is
difficult to categorize.
Camus has noted that man has a
need for clarity; his reason urges him to organize.
How-
ever, his universe defies rational efforts because it is
.
.
1 . 16
lrratlona
Mary Shelley's ideas are not easily de-
fined because her intellectual stance was so often unwittingly affected by her emotions.
She reasoned that
"A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a
calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a
transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity"
(F, 49).
By the time she was twenty-three she felt she had reached
enough emotional maturity to allow reason to control her
feelings as her father ahd her husband had taught.
They
themselves were far less successful in following this
teaching:
Godwin held down his emotions until they
erupted and he acted irrationally and Shelley's emotions
were so complex that he was unable to use reason to ana17
lyze and subdue them.
But it is apparent in her works
that she was still subject to her emotions, although
perhaps subconsciously.
She had been well trained in
liberal thought by both Godwin and Shel-ley; she had
absorbed their ideas of a reasonable and benevolent
27
28
society, of the perfectability of man; she tried to sustain these ideals.
person.
But she was really a more conservative
Her visits to the Baxter home in Scotland pro-
vided "her earliest, perhaps her only, taste of quiet
conventional life in a middleclass family.
.
. f.1cant t h at s h e enJoye
.
d 1t.
.
..17
s1gn1
It is perhaps
The conflict between
what she wished to believe intellectually and what she
felt emotionally prevented her from developing a coherent
viewpoint~
Both her reasoning and her feelings are
revealed by the inconsistencies in the novels.
In Frankenstein the monster epitomizes Godwin's
theory; his basic goodness is distorted by ill-treatment
and he becomes evil.
He asks, "Am I to be thought the
only criminal when all human kind sinned against me?"
(F,
240).
The Godwin formula works for the monster, but
not for Victor.
end?
~'Jhy
should he come to such an unhappy
There is no answer to this puzzle if one considers
only the reasonable aspects of the problem.
When one
perceives that Victor's suffering is the result of his
inability to respond with feeling toward his creation,
the result of seeing the life he created as only a
thinking organism rather than a thinking and feeling
being, then one understands that Mary is making a plea
for the emotions as well as the intellect.
In Political Justice Godwin foretold a society
29
in which all would have political and economic equality.
Mary may have agreed with her father in theory, but in
practice she was not a republican.
The heroes of her
novels always belong to the aristocracy.
The poor are
shown to be, at best, innocent and kind, but still pitiable and ignorant.
The monster discovers in his reading
of history that what man most esteemed was "high and unsullied descent united with riches.
A man might be
respected with only one of these advantages; but, without either, he was considered .
. doomed to waste his
powers for the profits of the chosen few 11
The
Las~
Man can be looked upon as an argument
against equality.
and " .
(F, 124).
Plague made all men equal materially
. near at hand was an equality still more
levelling, a state where beauty and strength, and wisdom,
would be as vain as riches and birth.
II
(LH,
2 31) •
The grave yawned
The plague symbolizes that egali-
tarianism which would destroy civilization.
Walling
quotes phrases from Valperga, an earlier novel, in which
Mary Sljeaks of the "contagion of liberty."
19
Mary could
write with sympathy of the liberal attitude, "but, for
herself, she lacked the inner fire.
other camp attracted her:
Too much in the
social living, gentle manners,
the advantage of culture that in her day belonged far
more exclusively to the hereditary titled class than they
30
. she looks on the poverty of the masses as
do today .
an established ordinance, a God-given scourge to be
alleviated by charity, not abolished by egalitarian
measures."
20
Although she tried to expound the reason-
able, liberal view, her conventional attitudes and
feelings seeped through and are revealed.
Intellectually, Mary agrees with the idea of
man's innate goodness.
However, she is instinctively
aware that man's emotions affect his view of life.
This
awareness of the dual nature of man is evident in both
the novels and is responsible for the view of man that
emerges.
Mary Shelley sees man as a creature of both
reason and feeling.
His reason makes him conscious of
his separateness, his fate, and his death.
It makes him
see life as a curse, death as a release, and himself as a
helpless pawn of nature.
But reason also creates an
awareness which enhances the quality of life and arouses
man's emotions.
These emotions lead him to seek comfort
in the love and companionship of
oth~rs,
to defy fate by
taking responsibility for his life, and to increase
life's value in a revolt against death.
"Is one to die
voluntarily or to hope in spite of everything?"
21
Reason
tells man life is tragic; emotion persists in hoping.
"There is so much stubborn hope in the human heart."
22
31
Mary views man as isolated and ultimately tragic, but she
shares with her husband a hope for his salvation.
"To
the skeptical idealism of the mature Shelley, the hope in
the ultimate
re~emption
of life by love and imagination
is not a certainty, but a moral obligation.
We must cling
to hope because its contrary, despair about human possibility, is self-fulfilling, by ensuring the permanence of
the conditions before which the mind has surrendered its
aspirations.
Hope does not guarantee achievement, but it
keeps open the possibility of achievement, and so releases
man's imaginative and creative powers, which are its only
available means."
23
Reason tells man he is isolated and
doomed; it also creates an awareness that enhances life.
Emotion tells man to hope.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night;
To defy Power, which seems Omnipotent;
To love and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change nor falter nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.
Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound
Mary Shelley attempted to follow her husband's credo in
her life and her work, but was burdened by her bourgeois
conventionality.
NOTES
1 Eleanor L. Nicholes, "Mary Wollstonecraft," in
Roman tic Rebels.: Essays on Shelley and his Circle,
ed. Kenneth Neill Cameron (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1973), p. 52.
2
christopher Small, Ariel Like a Harpy (London:
Victor Gollancz, 1972), p. 30.
3
Kenneth Neill Cameron, "h'illiam Godwin," in
Romantic Rebels, p. 20.
4
Frederick L. Jones, "Mary Godwin to J. J. Hogg:
the 1815 Letters," in Romantic ~ebels, p. 90.
5
Mary W. Shelley, Frankenstein (London: J. M. Dent
and Sons, 1963), p. 1; subsequent references to this
edition are cited as F in the text.
6
R. E. Dowse and D. J. Palmer, "Introduction,"
Frankenstein, Hary W. Shelley (London: J. H. Dent and
Sons, 1963), p. ix.
7
Kenneth Neill Cameron, "Percy Bysshe Shelley,"
in Romantic- Rebels, pp. 10-12.
8
9
Small , p • 6 2 .
Dowse and Palmer, p. vii.
10
Mary Shelley, The Last Man (Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 1965)-·-,-p-.-rG; subsequent references
to this edition are cited as LM in the text.
11
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other
Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,.l961), p.--u.--12Hilliam A. Walling, Mary Shelley (New York:
'I'wayn~ Publishers, Inc., 1972~. 85.
32
33
13
Mary Shelley's Journal, ed. Frederick L. Jones
(Norman: Univers1ty of Oklahoma Press, 1947), p. 192.
14
Hugh J. Luke, Jr., "Introduction," The Last Man,
Mary Shelley (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1965), p. xvii ..
15
Martin Trapp, Mary Shelley's Monster (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1976)~- 69.
16
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 21.
17
Noel B. Gerson, Daughter of Earth and Water: A
Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (New York:
Morrow andCompany, 1973), p. 150.
18
Sylva Norman, "Mary lvollstonecraft Shelley," in
Romantic Rebels, p. 61.
19
Wa ll"1ng,
20
21
22
23
Norman,
~:lary
ll
S h e~,
p. 91 .
"Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, " p. 70.
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 6.
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 103.
M. H. Abrams, ed., The Norton Anthology of
English Literature, 3rd ed. ~ew York: W. W. Norton and
Company, 1974), II, 507.
Q .
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Abrams, M. H., gen. ed.
The Norton Anthology of English
Literature.
3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and
Company, ~974. II.
Cameron, Kenneth Neill, ed.
Romantic Rebels: Essays on
Shelley and his Circle. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1973.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays.
New York: Alfred A-.-Knopf, 196~Gerson, Noel B.
Daughter of Earth and Water: A Biography
of Mary Wollstonecratt Shelley. New York: William
Morrow and Company, 1973.
Glut, Donald F.
The Frankenstein Legend: A Tribute to
Mary Shelley-and Boris Karloff. Metuchen, N.J.:
The Scarecrow Press, 1973.
Jones, Frederick L., ed. Mary Shelley's Journal.
University of Oklahoma Press, 1947.
Norman:
Nitchie, Elizabeth. Mary Shelley: Author of· "Frankenstein". New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,
1953.
Shelley, Mary W. Frankenstein.
Sons, 1963.
Shelley, Mary.
The Last Man.
Nebraska Pres~965.
London: J. M. Dent and
Lincoln: ·University of
Small, Christopher. Ariel Like a
Gollancz, 1972~
Ha~py.
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Walling, William A. Mary Shelley.
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34
London: Victor
Boston: Houghton
New York: Twayne