Frankenstein
Introduction
British Novel to Film
Fu Jen English Dept
Dr. M. Connor
Introduction

Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein is
a complex blending of many different
themes. Most people are familiar with the
story, at least the version that has been
passed down to us through the cinema
versions, but many people are unaware of
just how very complex it is.
This week’s material
Since I am assuming you are in the
process of reading, I won’t be discussing
plot or character much this week.
 This week’s materials will be devoted
more to background and introduction.

Intellectual stimulation
At the time she was writing it, Shelley was
intellectually stimulated--reading Romantic
poetry with her brilliant husband Percy
Bysshe Shelley and his friends and
working through John Milton’s Paradise
Lost among other great works.
 She was 18 years old.

The Shelleys
Source:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/IIA2.jpg
Source:
www.2idiotsinaboat.com/pilgrim/media/0830.jpg
Year of tragedy
But she was also grieving the loss of her
first child, a terrible tragedy for any one.
 But there was more to come. Her halfsister Fanny Imlay committed suicide in
the following fall, when she was still writing
the novel, as would Percy’s deserted and
unhappy wife, Harriet.

Lake Geneva
Mary Shelley was only 18, far from home,
on the banks of Lake Geneva,
Switzerland, during one of the worst
summers on record.
 It was cold and rainy that summer, and
Geneva is no place to be under those
conditions!

Life in Geneva

I’ve had the great good luck to live in
Geneva while teaching this novel, partially
set in that city. One summer course I
spent doing this book and the film versions
of it was another horrible summer--wet,
cold and full of thunderstorms bouncing off
the mountains that encircle Lake Geneva-the Alps and the French Juras.
Oppressive atmosphere
After reading the book together and
watching the films, my class and I felt we
had some additional insights into what
went into the book.
 While one of the prettiest places on Earth,
Geneva in the cold and rain can be quite
spiritually oppressive.

Even with electric lights, a Genevan sunset
is lovely. The Juras are in the background.
The Italian Alps outside of Geneva. These are the
mountains Shelley was thinking of when she was
writing her novel.
June 16th


As all the introductions to the novel tell you, its
inception came on a very special night. Thanks
to the torrential rains, the Shelleys could not
return to their own villa, so they had to spend the
night at their friend Lord Byron’s villa, Villa
Diodoti.
The house party included Mary’s stepsister,
Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron, and John Polidori,
Byron's physician.
Source: http://www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/Gothic/Diodati.jpg
The night on film

This house party is immortalized in Ken
Russell’s strangely compelling Gothic
(1986), which gives a fictionalized account
of the evening, with Natasha Richardson
as Mary Shelley, Julian Sands as Percy
Shelley and Gabriel Byrne as Byron.
A poster for the film
Gothic. It’s a strange
film, but I recommend it.
A little violent, though.
The head on the bottom
left of the poster is Dr.
Polidori. To the left are
the Shelleys, and the final
picture on the bottom is
Lord Byron. Photo
source:
http://www5.airnet.ne.jp/a
shiato/POLITICS%20of%
20AUTHOR/KEN%20RU
SSELL/GOTHIC/GOTHIC
.JPEG
The Evening’s Challenge

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After giving themselves a good scare reading a
collection of German ghost stories, The
Fantasmagoriana, aloud, they set each other a
task. Each would write a horror story for the
entertainment of the rest.
Shelley wrote a now-forgotten story, Byron wrote
a story fragment, and Polidori began the "The
Vampyre", the first modern vampire tale, which
he later finished and published in 1819.
What of Mary?

And poor Mary had a terrible time. She
couldn’t get started. But a few days later,
she had what she called “a waking
dream:”
“I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts
kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I
saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched
out, then, on the working of some powerful
engine, show signs of life...His success would
terrify the artist; he would rush away...hope
that...this thing...would subside into dead
matter...he opens his eyes; behold the horrid
thing stands at his bedside, opening his
curtains...
(http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/maryshel/sum
mer.shtml)
She had the beginning

The next morning
Mary realized she had
found her story and
began writing the
famous lines that
open Chapter Four of
Frankenstein - "It was
on a dreary night in
November”.
Source:
http://www.olemiss.edu/courses/engl205/frankart7.html
Intense Reading Program


Shelley was doing some heady reading that
summer. In the days before the creation of her
story she and Percy had been reading and
discussing Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s
“Christabel”, Germaine Necker, Madame de
Stael's De l'Allemagne as well as Milton’s
Paradise Lost.
All of these influences can be found in the novel,
but very few people who hear the name
“Frankenstein” think of an intellectual novel.
Separate PPT

Please see the accompanying power point
presentation on Milton’s Paradise Lost, as
I think you probably need some
background on the work.
Quickly brought to Stage


The first dramatization of Shelley’s novel came during
her own lifetime. It was a three-act opera by R. B.
Peake titled Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein
(1823).
When Mary Shelley attended a performance of the play,
she commented that she was “much amused and it
appeared to excite a breathless eagerness in the
audience” (quoted in Donald A. Glut, The Frankenstein
Legend, Scarecrow Press, 1973, p 32). A second
adaptation opened the same year, as did a trio of
comedic versions. In 1826, new versions were staged in
London and Paris.
Film versions

A quick search for “Frankenstein” on
imdb.com brings up 102 hits, not including
name matches! And that doesn’t include
films like the recent Van Helsing in which
Frankenstein’s monster plays a key role in
the story.
The Swiss Alps

On the next slide is a map taken from my
family’s personal homepages. It shows a
trip we took when we lived there, but on
the left side, you can see the Sea of Ice
where the Creature and Frankenstein
meet in book two. It’s written in German
as Eisinmeer.
Source: http://www.fillibabba.com/fun/english/Switzerland/index.html
Romantic novel

Of course, the novel is the most widely
read Romantic novel, so quickly some
background on the Romantics ”just in
case”.
Romantic period
Usually designated as 1798-1832
 In 1832 The Reform Bill carried in
Parliament which changed many aspects
of Victorian law and society as well as the
death of Sir Walter Scott.
 Most of the major romantics had died or
stopped creating by this date.

Romanticism:


A movement in literature, art, music and philosophy.
Chiefly a reaction against the Age of Enlightenment and
the Neoclassical movement and their rules about
Reason, order, balance, rationality and intellect.
In the pre-romantic period there was an upsurge in
interest in medieval romances (the term romantic in
either case has nothing to do with love). In medieval
romances (ie: Tristan and Isolde and the Arthur tales),
emphasized individual heroism and mysterious
happenings. Think of the search for the Holy Grail or the
story of the Fisher King

From Bloomsbury’s Guide to English Literature.
Romantics emphasized
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The individual
The subjective
The irrational
The imaginative
The personal
The spontaneous
The emotional
The visionary
The transcendental
Characteristics of Romanticism are:

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Deepened appreciation of the beauties of Nature
A general exaltation of emotion over reason
An exaltation of the senses over the intellect
A turning in upon the self and a heightened examination
of human personality
A preoccupation with the genius, the hero, and the
exceptional figure
A new view of the artist as a supremely individual
creator, whose creative spirit is more important than
strict adherence to formal rules and traditional
procedures
An emphasis upon imagination as a gateway to
transcendent experience and spiritual truth
A consuming interest in folk culture, national and ethnic
cultural origins and the medieval era
A predilection for the exotic, the remote, the mysterious,
the weird, the occult, the monstrous, the diseased and
even the satanic
Frankenstein
Most of these characteristics are central to
the novel.
 But it transcends ”Romanticism” in some
ways. It’s also considered the first science
fiction novel.

Photos

Geneva is unbelievably beautiful, so I’m
going to add some photos. You can see
why it drew so many Romantic writers.
The fountain in the lake wasn’t there in Shelley’s time. It’s
late 19th century. View from the Old Town.
http://www.geneve-tourisme.ch/?rubrique=0000000166
A view over
the Old Town
with St.
Pierre’s
Cathedral,
which was
there in
Shelley’s day.
See the
beautiful
mountains in
the
background.
http://www.geneve-tourisme.ch/?rubrique=0000000166
A street in the Old Town showing
the Swiss flag, the white cross,
and the flag of Geneva, which is
just as important to the Genevois.
It shows the Eagle of liberty and
the keys to the cathedral. Some
wags say it’s half a chicken and
the keys to the wine cellar!
Genevois enjoy a French love of
food! It may be in Switzerland,
but it’s a French culture.
Source: http://www.geneve-tourisme.ch/?rubrique=0000000166
La Salève, a mountain outside of Geneva,
actually right over the French border.
Frankenstein sees the Creature climbing up
the mountain side. It’s about 680m high.
Source: http://www.rando-saleve.net/ (in
French, but nice pictures)
La Salève from Lake Geneva. The Old Town, which would have
been ”Geneva” in Shelley’s day, is the part on the lower right hand
side. The part of the city on the top side of the photo was outside
the city walls, but was developed as well.