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Lecture Overheads for Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein.
Please DO NOT use chunks of this material in your essays. Use the notes as a
resource; they are not a substitute for your own critical thinking.
Frankenstein Lecture 1
‘Frankenstein’ . Associations: of the monstrous, the macabre, of science gone awry.
A story with rampant imaginative reverberations in western popular culture.
Myth: recurrent narrative cluster; fundamentally same form though different variants;
foundational to human fears, beliefs, desires.
Mary Shelley’s ‘spin’ on Prometheus myth resonated strongly in her own time.
Same in our own time. ‘Frankenstein’ story (beyond novel, per se) associated with an
extraordinary number of stage and film related performances, with cartoons,
advertisements….
Elements of MS’s narrative: horrified fascination, scientific-aesthetic creation;
human-like machine-being or cyborg animated by human endeavor;
malevolent/benign possibilities; catastrophe/redemption.
Frankenstein a curiously modern story. First published in 1818, but grippingly of our
times.
Properly titled: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, 1818
Prometheus defns in reader, pp86-87. Even better: references to Prometheus in the
Intro to prescribed Penguin Classics edition. p.xxiv. Lineage of the Prometheus myth;
Greek variant – cunning over-reacher who aids; Roman variant (in Ovid’s
Metamorphoses) - plasicator who manipulates.
Prometheus myth appealing to younger generation of Romantic poets; metaphor of
the boundless Romantic poetic imagination/creativity
Frankenstein story irresistibly attractive to literary theorists: psychoanalysis, gender
theory, genre theory; commodity culture theory; theories re place of body in
medicine; Marxist theory; eco-theory…Compelling contemporaneity of the story.
(Contemporary debates in Ethics about issues such as cloning, stem cell research,
robotics & cyborgs and so on…prophetic aspects of this novel.)
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Yet paradox: Frankenstein = possibly most well-known, lasting of all romantic
creations, but MS less institutionalized than the Big Six. Further irony: process of
effacement or substitution. (‘monster’ lives on in cultural memory; Mary Shelley only
at margins of consciousness. ‘Frankenstein’ seems to ‘authorized’ himself. How listed
in course guide?)
Link later to question of woman as author in the Romantic period.
Crucial to understand: Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein, is the name of the creator
of the being. It is not the name of the creature. YET also allow that the novel
deliberately explores the ‘monstrous’ extremes of human kind. (Often in relation to
the denial of the moral and congenial elements of human being that Shelley seems to
suggest = the better, more stable, part of human society – the bonds of family, the
settled spaces of the domestic etc.)
Frankenstein Lecture 2
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Our response to Shelley’s novel is conditioned by its theatrical and filmic afterlife
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Extremely polyvalent text; extraordinary degree of over-determination.
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Partly because we know so much about Mary Shelley’s life from diaries.
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See Smith article in reader. Famous parents; famous husband.
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Mother Mary Wollstonecraft; pioneer feminist; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(1792); vs gender orthodoxies. Hmmm: challenges and affirms. Revolutionary and
reformist impulses. Feeds into F.
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MS’s father: William Godwin; influential political-moral philosopher.
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Parents = radicals & freethinkers
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MS’s early life: Smith article. Mother dies after M’s birth; daughter fixates on father;
Father remarries; problems; MS mooning on mother’s grave; intellectual discussions;
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Percy Shelley comes into family; infatuated - Godwin’s politics, Mary’s youthful
intellectualism. Already married; abandons; (wife’s later suicide); elopement; abroad;
estrangement from families; long unmarried; children out of wedlock; three die….
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Intensely emotional period; death; birth; MS’s diaries; dream of dead baby being
brought to life…
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Frankenstein partly re birth & nurture. ‘Monster’ unnaturally engendered.
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1816-17 novel first written. Interesting ‘genesis’(creation, birth, beginnings; scientific
and creation stories)
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Swiss Alps (theatre of the sublime…); romantic poet neighbors; Villa Diodati.
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Frankenstein: conceived/written in shadow of famous male romantic poets.
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Yet also critique of ambitions & self glorifications of male romantic writers. (PS’s
poem Alastor.)
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SCIENCE/PHILOSOPHY of the day: Age of discovery – technological, biological,
philosophical; Age of questioning – authority, God, parents. Romantic hero at odds
with society
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the key idea in Frankenstein: animating a collection of body parts through electricity.
Galvanism topical issue. Wonder and astonishment. Electricity plus ‘alchemy’, elixir
of life. Promethean possibility.
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Davy; public debates...novel as complex amalgam of these ideas.
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question of genre: what kind of book? “Hideous phantasm” .Horror Story; in her day:
Gothic. (On the wane then.) Mainstream English fiction tending towards realism,
verisimilitude. Indeterminate structure; Expostulatory/epistolary form: extended
series of letters. Encloses a number of narratives.
Frankenstein Lecture 3
The question of genre: what kind of book? “Hideous phantasm. The Gothic novel:
ghosts, cemeteries, dismembering; tombs; hauntings; abandoned castles; ruins.
Derivation: barbarian Gothic tribes (associations….uncivilized, in bad taste, crude.
and on to rampaging mobs, radicalism, irrational [female?] behaviors.
“How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and dilate upon, so very hideous an
idea”. Unnatural; Shelley revolts herself.
Gothic novels: excess; not approved of. (Recollect attitudes of WW & C to ‘the
romance’; see MS’s Intro re attitudes of new generation of male R poets. Annoyed by
banal platitudes of prose; desired heights of language/imagination associated with
poetry.)
MS combines ‘mundane’ (“the machinery of a story”) with mysterious, spine-chilling
subject and style.
Note: “Creatures of my fancy”; “not confined to my own identity”. Imagination
(authorship) duplicates identities; unstable.
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Novel’s creation and involuntarism of childhood imagination: her story of a “student
of unhallowed arts” scares even her; his “success would terrify the artist”.
MS’s deference to male figures yet novel raises telling questions about male authority
in MS’s success with the marginalized gothic form.
By 1818, mainstream English fiction: realism; focus on society; verisimilitude;
lifelike representation. MS domesticates the Gothic. Social and moral possibilities;
not only escapist.
Gothic re structure: indeterminate; unsettles certainties.
Epistolatory: an extended series of letters. (Used before MS; but nb device for her:
plot contrivances; form of human communication variously intimate/public.)
In Frankenstein, the epistolatory form is an envelope for various narratives eg.
- 1. Outer, enclosing narrative: Walton, commander of ship on expedition to North
Pole. W is writing to his sister Margaret Saville in London
- 2. Narrative of Victor Frankenstein as told to and transcribed by Walton.
- 3. The Creature’s own story as told to Victor Frankenstein and then verbally
relayed to Walton and then recounted in letter to Mrs Saville
- 4. Narratives of many others: many tales deriving from letters or journals or
overheard conversations: Caroline Frankenstein (was Beaufort); Clerval;
Elizabeth Lavenza; Justine Moritz; the De Laceys; Safie…
- many sub-narratives
- a series of concentric circles or Chinese Boxes. Ok, but also ltd as no
centre/core/conclusion. (Last words of novel…) And: narratives not neatly
separated. Odd ways in which readers lose and feel various presences in the
narrative.
- Book begins: Walton to Mrs Saville (she remains a postal address) W = polar
explorer, driven by urge for fame. Male ambition – cf Romantic poet. Made
explicit. Coleridge. Mysteries. Note terms in which ambition is stated. Also
commercial tho.
- Doubling. Walton mirrors Victor Frankenstein. Male bond. On cure, Victor
arrives. Soul mates.
- But: VF is assured of compliant, admiring listener in W. Still: cautionary moral
tale acts as counterpart to W’s triumphalism.
- Elements of homosociality: men bond at expense of women.
- V’s account of childhood: like W, driven to penetrate/uncover “secrets; role of
books; dangers of solitary youthful reading!
Frankenstein Lecture 4
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Genre; Gothic; narrative form: ‘epistolatory’. Or many critics prefer ‘epistolary’.
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‘Chinese boxes’. Main narrative frame: W’s letters to Mrs S. Letters 1-4. W =
frame narrator. Within: VF’s story (Chs 1-10, and again 17-24); within that:
creature’s story (Chs 11-16). (Chs 1-24 supposedly = part of letter 4, butletter
form is suppressed; narrative closer to diary. Epistolary format resumes from mid
Ch 24 to end of novel. )
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W Mrs Saville: blank; ‘faceless’ addressee. Useful device:
 projected figure of implied reader. Advantages
 also: text aware of its own lack of ultimate reference. NB for shape
and content of this novel as a whole.
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Matter of doubling. W mirrors VF. W nb figure: prepares reader for VF.
Conditions our reactions to VF’s story.
W’s quest and motives. Urge to discover. (link to P. Shelley eager that MS “enrol
myself on the page of fame”). Male ambition. Boundless Romantic imaginings.
Yet W argues: human service. (Hmm: colonial commerce too? See: similar moral
ambiguities re Clerval’s pursuits.)
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MS’s uncertainties re pushing the boundaries of knowledge and the uses to which
knowledge may be put.
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W’s unease re quest: constantly justifies. Reader and Mrs S implicitly critical
YET also sympathize. Compelling moral dilemma. Prepares us for VF.
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End: W abandons quest; serves crew. Implications? Self balanced by moral claims
of human society. CF VF. Again, tho: difficult to judge. MS supporting and
questioning pioneering spirit.
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W and VF: ‘the Romantic’ male figure. Stranger, enigmatic, charismatic, noble.
Romantic ideal: natural man (passions) yet able to articulate feelings in
imaginative, expressive ways.
On p.24 (or 19) (and towards end of Ch 24) W writes sister re male soul mate.
Deep companionship. Danger of male bonding at expense of women? Forms of
naturalized reproduction of social status quo which make women (and biological
reproduction) ‘unnatural’?
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See: while VF and W embody dominant norms, they also = outsiders; attractive
figure for R poets. (Annoying: VF’s groanings re lonely suffering/tortured
emotions. Still: MS preparing space for similarities b2 VF and creature: “filthy
wretch” and wretched state to which VF’s actions reduce him.)
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Again: bond b2 VF and W Romantic ideal of passionate artistic ‘soul mate’;
living at limits of feeling and experience. (Evident in R poets?) V also recognizes
fellow soul in W: “Do you share my madness?”(27, or 28).
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VF has compliant, admiring listener in W. Desperate for just such. CF previously:
burden of maddening moral secrecy. With W and VF: scene set for confessional
narrative intimacies.
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VF’s narrative as cautionary moral tale (eg 28-29; acts as counterpart to Walton’s
triumphalism.
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Victor’s account of his early life/his formation: individual subjectivity; shaping of
self/consciousness. Link to Romanticism , and first person narrative.
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VF’s perfect childhood: “silken cord” of liberal, caring parents etc. Yet even this
gentle limit cannot edify. VF wants more. Romantic flouting of authority.
(Prometheus figure: as devil; angel cast out.) Tragic fate/flaw. (Link to nature,
nurture, Creature’s education.)
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V’s childhood: like Walton: uncover “secrets” of life and being (36; 37). V set on
Promethean path through reading of alchemical works. Dangers of solitary
knowledge?
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Passage on p.54. V speaking directly to Walton. Moral tale again. Repeatedly
says: “I knew”…yet onwards regardless.
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MS has VF repudiate (male?) Romantic notions of exceptional, unbounded
individualism. Emphasizes social desirability of “domestic affections”. Female
quality, in scope of this text. Extends critique of individualism into a critique of
imperialism: male ambition. The novel as anti-romantic?
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Recollect: MS domesticating gothic. ALSO: ‘Gothicizing’ the mannered novel of
verisimilitude. Brings in ‘the other’; ‘the monster within’ that propriety or
naturalized assumptions denied.
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Then: moment when Monster emerges. VF’s 1st response to his creation: para 2,
p.56. Ch V. Aesthetic. Ugly appearance. Monster’s rejection tied to appearance
that violates norms: a form of pure otherness. MS’s critique of the aesthetic
imagination?
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VF’s rejection of Monster reaching out to him as he starts from his dream (57)
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VF’s strange dreams (top of 58): role of women. Violation anxiety. VF has
appropriated birth function; usurping an nb female function.
Frankenstein Lecture 5
Passage on p.54 end of Ch 4: VF speaking to W: cautionary moral tale. MS repudiating R
notions of individualism. Rather: “domestic affections”. Links: critique of imperialism.
W reluctant to listen.
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Criticism of the Aesthetic: “artist”. Isolationist; obsessive. (VF does not quite
renounce…see end of novel.)
Link to passage covered in seminar: animation of creature: ugly appearance. MS:
reminder re moral problem of perfect form cf de-formed. Otherness. The aesthetic can be
extremely parochial; prepares grounds for colonialism; xenophobia. Recollect
‘Gothic’/Goths.
VF’s dream: women = wormy corpses. A violation anxiety: VF has appropriated the birth
function. (Also: perversity of sexual intimacy; fear of…see wedding night passage.)
Quick account of plot at this point: VF’s illness. Clerval in Ingolstadt. Male bonding
again. Clerval’s balanced normality. Father’s letter. Death of William. Returns to
Geneva.
Terrific storm: Romantic flash of insight. Storm/lightning evident symbols of Romantic
imagination. Unsettling parallels b2 VF and creature.
Curious element related to doubling: V sees Monster as destructive aspect of himself.
Vampire; spirit from grave…(74). Monster is distorted double of Victor: doppelganger.
(MS prophetic: 19c interest in doubles/doppelgangers…)
…Arrest & death of Justine Moritz; misery in Frankenstein household:
1: VF –moral transgression dawns upon him. Becomes split person/ality. Language of
intense tortures. Situation intensifies VF’s recognition of virtuous domestic/family world
he has lost. Secrecy/confession: irresolvable quandary. Eg 74. (Notice how MS idealizes
VF’s childhood. Possible reasons 1. biographical; 2. plot device linked to nature/nurture.
2. Elisabeth also becomes split after obviously unjust death of Justine. EL afflicted with
terrible sense of social unreality. Her certainties = overturned (89-90). “Vice and
injustice” now part of her everyday. “Misery has come home and men appear to me as
monsters thirsting for each other’s blood” (89). Elisabeth’s vertiginous identity, as if
“walking on…edge of…precipice” (90): acute insight, tho unaware of actual events).
Starts a questioning (tho not a ‘quest’) of her own.
V’s first meeting with monster. Mountains near Geneva. Landscape of the sublime. VF
aware of this: landscape alleviates his suffering (93). Very Romantic, esp.
Wordsworthian. VF has spirit of the romantic poet. Also: apt setting for monster: warning
that sublime may be the home of more than just elevated poetic feelings? Harbours
monsters of human ego, of a-social obsession?
Encounter b2 V and monster, followed by monster’s narrative = fulcrum. Balances events
on either side. Monster’s narrative: challenges VF’s perspective on events; shows attempt
to define relationship with V: demanding rights. (Has led many critics to read monster as
symbol for marginalized: working class, colonized etc.)
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Frankenstein Lecture 6
Note: lecture tomorrow, Thursday 5th, in place of seminar. Venue is SH2.
Lec 5: encounter b2 V and creature in Alps. Creature: demands recognition; V as
guardian, maker → responsibilities (96). Criticism of religious orthodoxy. If V refuses:
hell will reign. Implication: not inherently evil; evil only in response to V’s denial of
duty.
Creature’s language = educated. Coincides with V’s. Highlights: otherness only visual.
Actually similar to educated 19thC readership. (V: malign; inhumane)
Creature tells story to V: similar hopes as V in unburdening to W. Compassion; enable
different story of self . Nb to morality of novel. Again: doubling.
Quasi birth/‘childhood’ (99-103). World opaque. Senses/sensations. (Ideas of Locke child’s mind blank slate; knowledge through sense data, then through language).
And Rousseau: man innately good; corrupted by society. (Ideas embodied in creature’s
experience.)
Creature adapts: arousal of aesthetic sense. Implications: human qualities; refined. Eg:
wonder/delight at moon (99); birdsong (100); joy/pain at fire (100-1); admires human
dwellings (102).
Yet outcast. Hostility. Innocent of his physical aberration.
Shelter. Animal-like. Yet solitary education begins. (Interesting: makes ‘natural’
distinction b2 cottagers and villagers. Also: instinctive connection with superior beings,
though experience → pariah.)
Observation of cottagers: accelerates creature’s education. Close to ‘society’. Miniature
bildungsroman? Aesthetic again: guitar playing (104); sympathy: Agatha sobbing.
Complex emotional states. Implication: human potential.
Altruistic behavior: collecting wood; desire to please; benevolent disposition. No innate
monstrosity. Cottagers think actions = those of wonderful good spirit (111).
Creature: identifies with cottagers visually and emotionally. Exhibition of sympathy nb:
in late 18c thought human sympathy considered primary social regulator. Restraint;
identification…(108).
Creature faces own deformity (110). Water: Narcissus in reverse. Intensifies admiration
of cottagers (111). Thinks will influence his destiny. Imaginative projections re
community (111). Ironies: VF will control. And VF = asocial/solitary, egotistical, polar
opposite of cottagers’ family/familial kindness. (Note: VF denies creature a mate/family;
VF himself denies claims of own family…)
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Innocent stage superseded by experience. Romantic expectations re future (112) denied.
‘Monster’s’ fall from grace. Adamic/Satanic figure: fallen creatures. Overt in novel
(97). Promethean.
Skip: Safie story; cottagers’ history. Recognize though: symmetries with other incidents –
unjust trial/conniving judicial; male rescue of female. (Clumsy, contrived?)
Education now more formal through books associated with Safie’s education into French.
Creature = apt pupil (115). Pedagogic abilities + benevolence + admiration for
community: mark him as all too human.
Creature’s education through books/reading. (Canonical 19thc texts.) Commences:
Volney’s Ruins of Empires: radical social critique. MS pointedly generalizing the
‘monster’s condition → social injustice. Perplexing contradictions of humanity (116).
Humans: evil and godlike.
Passage on 116-7: awful recognition for monster. Oddly akin to V. Knowledge →
damnation. Learns re normal birth/socialization (117). Painful understanding: ‘monster’
in both appearance and socialization.
Education continues: valise of books (124). MS’s deliberate choices: questioning of
identity.
Goethe’s Sorrows of Werther. Prototypical bildungsroman. Artist, unrequited love,
imagination and reality. Creature sees similarities b2 self and protagonist (125). (Note:
suicide. Creature learns “despondency and gloom” [125].)
CF Plutarch’s Lives: biographies of famous men. Learns elevating thoughts beyond self
(125)
Most impressed: Milton’s Paradise Lost (126 considers a “true history”? Because true of
him?). Realizes: own condition more akin to Satan cf Adam. Epigraph to novel.
Reading of Paradise Lost dovetails with creature’s discovery of V’s journal: tale of own
creation. Knowledge = mixed blessing. Creature’s appalled reaction to his genesis.
Reading has given him false expectations. Solitary and abhorred. (130).
Poignant: still hopes for welcome into human community.
Frankenstein Lecture 7
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Creature’s education: ambivalent. Nobility/degradation.
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Association of self with devil. Miltonic. Still: recognizes own better capacities.
(Intensified by closeness to de Laceys. Irony though.) Pathos.
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desire for communion (129) is his undoing. Word: “prejudice”. Even the old man,
unwittingly (130).
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Analogy b2 de Lacey and reader: experience monster as creation in language
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Exchange b2 de Lacey & Monster: not total failure. First kindness (130). Yet
followed by mayhem (131). Role of sight in this.
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Irreconcilable split forms in monster: anger yet pathetic hopes (132-3)
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Learns tho: situation irretrievable. Crucial moment: reactions ambivalent: mid Ch
XVI: fixates on injury BUT fond thoughts soothe. Vents incendiary rage, but not
on humans (134). How to interpret?
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Resolves to seek V for justice cf murder (135)
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Two nb events (1) Saves girl (136-7). Injustice of situation. (137). Learning
through experience cf books. (2) Murders William. Yet mitigating circumstances:
innocence; friendship; unprejudiced reaction. But: knowledge William = VF’s
brother provokes him.
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Curious series of events re locket. Sexual feelings? (138). Same re sleeping
Justine (139).
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Desire for mate/mating. Narrative stops short of rape. BUT still makes women
bear brunt of creator/creation conflict. Jacobus: women become victim of
perverse bond b2 scientist/creation
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Creature (now ‘ monster’?): demands female. (139-140. Candid intimacy b2
monster and V. Moment of humane mutuality. Repulsion, yet compassion
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Narrative hiatus. Whether to create mate. Focus: another mating: VF and EL.
Doubling again.
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VF’s proposed marriage to EL: problematic (146). Note sentence structure.
Mimics split. Not sexual desire. Delays date; links to creation of female creature
(147).
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V protracted tour with Clerval (149-157). Last companionship: homosocial. Wild
Orkneys: apt setting → making of female monster (159). Destroys (161).
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Before: beginning of Chap 20: VF’s extended reverie. Reasons why monster
should be destroyed. Mainly: threat to human race (160-1). Dismisses earlier
entreaties as “sophisms” (160)
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Dramatic intensity: co-inciding moments (161). Monster in window. Sight.
Language emphasizes: elemental enmity. Threat/promise re wedding night (163).
Repeated by VF; italicized..
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From here: little from monster’s perspective. Effect: shifts sympathies vs him.
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Pick up: V about to return to Geneva. EL’s letter. Matter of interminably delayed
marriage (181-2). V placates her, but conceals anxiety. Split
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V perceives threat as vs himself (183). Increasingly unsettled behavior (185).
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Fateful honeymoon night (188). Emph on dreadfulness of the night. Wedding
night full of dread.
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Slew of entirely predictable events (only VF seems not to have anticipated.) Part
of reader’s perverse pleasure? Events after E’s murder: V repeatedly embraces
corpse. Ardour. Monster appears at window (189) Stage like framing again.
Highlights otherness/outsider. Necrophilia? Adds horror. Also emphasizes V’s
morbid sexuality? Prepares for obsessive pursuit of monster
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Ending? V devastated, revenge. Law won’t believe him: mad. Increasingly alone
in world (// monster’s situation.)
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Appeal to spirits of dead (195-196). Diabolical. Fitting irony.
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So: 196-202: V pursues monster. Arctic. Encounters Walton
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When V dies: monster appears; narrative doubling: posture; wedded to each other
already feels
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final peroration: to W (proxy/substitute for V): emph suffering. Paradise Lost
(211)
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doubling; categories shifting. Monster non-monstrous; different cf VF’s
representation of him. Moral being.
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Final appeal: “justice” (213) Irrefutable.
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Ends: hiding; immolation. No havoc vs W and crew. This kind of rampant
destruction then becomes an nb Hollywood narrative thread….Have to make the
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creature more monstrous than he is. Why? To make monstrosity of human
behavior seem less?
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