Australian Screen Education, Autumn 2004 i36 p130(7)
Frankenstein: symbol and parable. (Critical Essay) Julie Dellal.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2004 Australian Teachers of Media
I see Frankenstein as an intensely sane person, at times rather fanatical ... [yet]
Frankenstein's nerves are all to pieces. He is a very strong, extremely dominant
personality, sometimes quite strange and queer, sometimes very soft sympathetic and
decidedly romantic ... I want the picture to be a very modern, materialistic treatment ...
something of Dr. Caligari, something of Edgar Allan Poe and of course a good deal of us.
(1)
James Whale
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus was written by Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
when she was nineteen-years-old, and was first published on 11 March 1818. Mary
Shelley's imagination gave birth to Frankenstein's Monster and over a century later
director James Whale reanimated the Monster, breathing new life into Shelley's creation
and in turn creating one of contemporary culture's most enduring images. Shelley's
archetypal Gothic novel explored ideas beyond its time and expounds a myriad of
concerns, themes and influences.
The Novel
Many aspects of Shelley's novel were influenced by events from her own life. Some of
these include:
* Her parents--Mary Wollstonecraft, a
pioneering feminist writer and William
Godwin, a Rationalist philosopher-were both famous radicals and 'had been
heavily influenced by the ideals of the
French Revolution'. (2) Her mother died
ten days after her birth. Mary, like her
monster, was motherless.
* The death of Shelley's (own) child. In
her journal she recorded dreaming of
her child coming alive again: '[I]
Dreamt that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we
rubbed it before the fire, and it lived.' (3)
* Her husband, the Romantic poet Percy Shelley, was idealistic in his 'passion of
reforming the world', (4) was fascinated by science, especially chemistry, and is thought
to be the model for Victor Frankenstein. According to Percy Shelley's friend T.J. Hogg:
In his youth Percy bought and experimented with chemical apparatus and materials and
read 'treatises on magic and witchcraft as well as those more modern ones detailing the
miracles of electricity and galvanism'. (5)
He further recalls that at Oxford, Shelley charged a powerful battery
of several jars; labouring with vast energy, and discoursing with
increasing vehemence of the marvellous powers of electricity, of
thunder and lightening, describing an electrical kite that he had made
at home, and projecting another and an enormous one, or rather a
combination of many kites, that would draw down from the sky an
immense volume of electricity, the whole ammunition of a mighty
thunderstorm; and this being directed to some point would there
produce the most stupendous results. (6)
It was almost as if Shelley was providing filmmakers of the future with that 'thunder and
sparks' image of electrical reanimation which has become so standard a feature of
Frankenstein films. (7)
* Shelley and Byron are believed to have had many discussions regarding the possibility
that a corpse could be reanimated using the process of galvanism, named after the Italian
physiologist and experimenter Luigi Galvani (1737-98), whose experiments with frogs
led him to believe that an 'animal electricity' resided in the nerves and muscles of
animals. Observing that the convulsions of a frog placed in a circuit containing a piece of
metal were accompanied by motions in its nerve juices, he assumed the convulsions to be
the work of a subtle but vital electrical fluid 'animating' the animals enclosed nerves and
muscle fibres. (8) Galvani's contention that this fluid was comparable to ordinary
electricity 'may have inspired Mary Shelley's idea that "perhaps a corpse would be
reanimated", no doubt through the agency of an enormous voltaic electricity-producing
Galvanic battery'. (9)
* Paracelsus (1493-1541) was a Swiss alchemist and physician who claimed that 'human
beings could be produced without mother and father by using alchemical procedures'.
(10) Mary Shelley took the germ of Paracelsus' idea that science could create life. This
notion provided the foundation for Frankenstein, which Shelley developed to the point of
rebuilding and reanimating a life.
Mythology: Prometheus
Mary Shelley gave her novel the title of Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, but
who was Prometheus?
Prometheus is a figure from Greek Mythology who belonged to a race of Titans. His
name means 'forethought', and he was considered to be amongst the wisest of the gods.
Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus were spared the wrath of Zeus because they did
not join their fellow Titans in the war against the Olympians. Zeus charged the brothers
with the task of creating man, and the Goddess Athena breathed life into the figure that
Prometheus molded from mud. Epimetheus was to assign the Earth's creatures with their
unique qualities, whether it was cunning, fur or wings. However, Epimetheus had run out
of attributes when he came to man, so Prometheus proclaimed that man should stand
upright like the Gods and gave him fire. Zeus then proclaimed that man must offer a
portion of each animal sacrifice to the Gods, but since Prometheus' loyalty lay with man
rather than Zeus (who had imprisoned the remaining Titans) he decided to trick Zeus into
accepting a bag of bones and fat. Angry at this deception Zeus took fire away from man,
to which Prometheus responded by lighting a torch from the sun and returning fire to
man. Zeus was infuriated by his actions and vowed to reap vengeance on both man and
Prometheus. Man's punishment came in the form of Pandora, (11) and Prometheus' fate
was that he was chained to a mountaintop for all eternity, 'in a place where it always
snows and the wind howls ceaselessly'. (12) 'He could not die as he was immortal' (13)
and was thus doomed to an eternity of suffering with an eagle feeding daily upon his
regenerating liver.
'Prometheus is cited in allusions for his inventiveness, his shrewdness,
and for the sufferings his genius brought him. "Promethean" means
daringly creative and original.' (14) In his introduction to Mary
Shelley's novel, Maurice Hindle says that 'we need to look no further
than the novel's sub-title--The Modern Prometheus--to discover
Frankenstein's main theme: the aspiration of modern masculinist
scientists to be technically creative divinities'. (15) Both Victor Frankenstein (of the
novel) and Henry Frankenstein (of the film) are modern Prometheans, and both are
punished. Victor Frankenstein suffers the loss of his bride Elizabeth, his friend Henry
Clerval, and is destined to spend the rest of his days chasing his vengeful creature
through wastes of desert to Arctic ice. Henry Frankenstein, who claims that he has
'discovered the great ray that first brought life into the world', has a much simpler fate-death at the hands of his creature. (N.B. The original screenplay ends after Henry is
thrown to his apparent death by The Monster and the mob sets fire to the windmill. The
scenes of Henry's happy recuperation were added later.)
Novel to Film
James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) was one of Hollywood's earliest sound films and in
his rendering of Shelley's tale Whale has reduced this complex novel to its fundamental
element--that is, the consequences of playing God. As Edward van Sloan said in his
introduction to the film, 'this is the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to
create a man after his own image, without reckoning upon God'.
In the novel, Shelley's use of multiple narrators allows a diversity of perspectives to
emerge. The first is that of explorer John Walton, in the form of letters to his sister; then
The Monster's creator, Victor Frankenstein and The Monster himself, in alternating roles
of the pursuer and the pursued. However, the first thing to go from the film are the three
narrators. Screenwriters Garrett Fort and Francis Faragoh chose to drop the character of
John Walton and swap the names of the characters. Victor Frankenstein became Henry
Frankenstein and Henry Clerval became Victor Moritz. There is no mention of Elizabeth
being Victor's cousin as well as his fiance. The scientific references are retained;
Professor Waldman talks about 'galvanism' and 'electro-biology' with Elizabeth and
Victor. However, the most significant change is in Whale's introduction of the idea of the
'criminal brain' being responsible for the perverse nature of The Monster. As Dr
Waldmann explains in his lecture '... and here the brain of a criminal. All the degenerate
characteristics check amazingly with the case history of the dead man, whose life was
one of brutality, of violence and murder'. Mary Shelley's story has now been reduced to
one voice, Henry Frankenstein's, and it is his version of events that unfolds.
The Director
James Whale came from a large working-class
family in a provincial town in England. His father,
a furnace-man, sent him out to work at fourteen.
From his job(s) he saved enough money to attend
Art and Craft classes in the evenings. He then
proceeded to lose his Black Country accent and
acquire the speech of a young gentleman. His
accent is so successful that he fooled the army
recruitment officers and was commissioned as an
officer of the army in the First World War. He saw
the horror of war in the trenches, is captured by
Germans in an ambush, and spends eighteen
months in a prisoner of war camp. Whale acted in
amateur stage productions and also became a
skilled stage designer during this time. After the
war he worked as an actor and stage designer and
by 1925 was appearing on the London stage. In 1929 he directed Journey's End, a pacifist
play about war in the trenches, and his distinctive vision was evidenced in the sets.
During this time he was engaged for several years, although he apparently already knew
that he preferred men as sexual partners. He took Journey's End to Broadway and then
moved to Hollywood to make the film version.
Influences
As an Englishman in Hollywood, particularly one who had worked in stage design in the
theatre, Whale brought a European sensibility to his films. He was a visually literate man
who loved the visual and performing arts. Consequently his work displays a wide range
of influences, from the paintings of Francisco de Goya, Giovanni Battista Piranesi,
Salvatore Rosa and Henry Fuseli to work of the German Expressionists, both painters and
filmmakers--films such as Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) and Der Golem (Henrick
Galeen and Paul Wegener, 1915) and in particular Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) and The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920).
In Frankenstein, Whale, with Art Director, Charles Hall, used the silent German horror
films, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis, as the template for the style that
became known as 'Universal Studios Gothic'. This style is typified by its 'huge shadowed
interiors with massive doors and immense staircases, hollow, cold seeming places in
which the actors seemed fragile and out of place, at fate's mercy'. (16) In addition to the
influence of these German Expressionist films, Whale's background as an artist also
informed the sensibility of his Frankenstein. The film possesses a painterly quality with
many of the film's frames paying homage to both well and lesser-known artworks. For
example, Fuseli's Nightmare (1782) is re-imagined by Whale in the scene in which
Elizabeth faints and lies sprawled over her bed, with The Monster taking the place of the
goblin and lurking outside the window; whilst the interior of Henry's abandoned watchtower resemble Piranesi's dank, frightening and imposing prisons.
The influence of art upon Whale when fashioning the look of his Monster is also
apparent. He provided a number of drawings of the actor Boris Karloff, who was to play
The Monster, to chief make-up artist Jack Pierce, who used these as his guide for creating
the face of The Monster. In 1799 the Spanish artist, Francisco de Goya produced a series
of etchings entitled Los Caprichos. Goya's image of the noblemen in 'Los Chinchillas'
(Plate 50) could have been a blueprint for The Monster's visage. Another probable
influence on Whale is German Expressionist painter, Otto Dix, whose images of war
heroes are not unlike Frankenstein's monster--constructed from human scraps, pieced
together and sewn up.
Symbolism
Frankenstein is a film rich in symbolism,
especially that of Christian Art. Whilst looking at
the film from a symbolic point of view is not a
definitive reading of the text, it will give the
viewer some insights into the depth of meaning
that permeates Whale's Frankenstein. Although an
investigation of the symbols that inhabit
Frankenstein may raise more questions than can be
answered, they also serve as a way to interpret
what we are seeing.
The first symbol we are presented with is that of
eyes. These are floating in the image of a face
during the opening credits. The eye is the
traditional symbol for the 'all knowing and ever
present God'. (17) This is an obvious reference to
the film's main tenet of (the dangers of) Man playing God.
Henry Frankenstein is a man of science rather than a man of God and the film alludes to
his lack of spiritual faith during the burial scene. What is striking about this scene is the
dramatic use of light and dark (chiaroscuro) in the sky, yet when the camera cuts to
Frankenstein and his assistant Fritz, they are in darkness, and their physical darkness
suggests a spiritual darkness.
There is also the symbolism of dark versus light--'He's only a few days old, you know.
He has been kept in total darkness. Now I'm going to expose him to the light'
(Frankenstein to Waldman). Slowly and silently the door opens and a huge figure backs
into the room from the darkness. He turns slowly and awkwardly into the light.
Frankenstein moves slowly towards his creation, gesturing for him to come towards him
and to sit down. Frankenstein opens the skylight and the sunlight streams in. The Monster
looks in childlike wonder with his hands raised to the radiant light. The use of dark and
light is not just a visual symbol but both literal and metaphorical. There are many
connotations to the notions of light and dark--the Prince of Darkness and the Realm of
God: good and evil, right and wrong. Significant proportions of Frankenstein can be
divided into light and dark. In some of the light scenes we are able to discern the 'true'
nature of The Monster: these scenes are used to make us empathize with him, notably the
scene where he encounters the child Maria, who is not frightened by him and invites him
to play with her. The Monster is a character of duality, defined by the light and dark
scenes. In the light scenes we catch glimpses of innocence, naivete, trust and joy, whereas
the dark scenes convey pain, rage, fear and alienation, confusion and mistrust.
During the graveyard/burial scenes the camera focuses, individually, on three striking
images--the cross, the crucified Christ and the statue of the figure of death.
The cross represents Christ and his sacrifice for mankind; it is 'a mark or sign of Christian
religion, the emblem of atonement and the symbol of salvation and redemption through
Christianity'. (18) The crucified Christ does not 'mean' anything as a symbol--it is what it
is. In this instance it serves to reiterate the symbolism of the cross.
The statue of the figure of Death usually represents change and transformation--rebirth,
creation, destination and renewal. Upon the theft of the body from the grave,
Frankenstein says to Fritz, 'he's just resting, waiting for new life to come'. This scene is
reminiscent of the New Testament narrative of the raising of Lazarus from the dead by
Jesus (John 11:44).
On a lonely mountain trail, swinging from a timber gallows, is the hanged man. His is the
body to be stolen by Frankenstein and Fritz. The Hanged Man represents the relationship
between the Divine and the Universe and can also be symbolic of selfishness.
The Tower is the laboratory of Frankenstein and is
also symbolic of the downfall of the mind, seeking
to penetrate the mysteries of God and unforeseen
catastrophe.
The electric flashes of light which occur during
The Monster's animation could be interpreted as
an aureole which represents 'divinity': supreme
power. Its use has been reserved for the
representation of Divinity--'The Father, The Son
and the Holy Ghost'. (19) The Monster 'sees the
light' and raises his arms in wonderment,
embodying an almost religious rapture (ecstasy).
Then the arms are lowered and the camera focuses
on the hands, which are in the position of a
supplicant. 'Light is symbolic of Christ, in
reference to His words in John 8:12, "Then spake
Jesus again unto them, saying I am the light of the
world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.'"
(20) 'The hand raised palm outwards is a symbol of the blessing from God.' (21)
After The Monster's exposure to the light, Fritz
enters the room holding a torch. After noticing
The Monster's terrified response, he taunts him
with it, which leads to The Monster being
eventually subdued and bound with a rope. He is
removed to the cellar and held captive, chained to
the walls. The torch and the rope are both symbols
of betrayal (The Passion of Christ). Chains are
again representative of The Passion, 'referring to
the flagellation of Christ by the soldiers'. (22)
The Monster meets the child Maria and she gives
him daisies, which were used as a symbol of
innocence, of the Christ Child. Maria in her
innocence does not see the creature's hideous
exterior as monstrous and is the only person to
treat him kindly. The Monster, in his innocence
and naivete, does not understand the difference
between a child and a flower and unwittingly kills
her. This is the incident that incites the wrath of
the angry mob. The Monster's difference brands him as an outsider and serves to unite the
mob against him. The film alludes to The Monster's persecution through the visual cue of
the burning arms of the windmill, which are eerily reminiscent of the Klu Klux Klan's
burning cross.
Power and its Abuse
'In the name of God, now I know what it feels like to be God!' Although a clap of thunder
obscures part of this dialogue, it sums up the essence of both Mary Shelley's book and
James Whales' film. Both explore the notions of power and its abuse.
Henry Frankenstein, a young man of extreme intensity, is obsessed with
creating/endowing life--'That body is not dead. It has never lived. I made it. I created it ...'
He leaves his family, university and friends and works in seclusion with his hunchbacked
assistant Fritz. They steal bodies from wherever they can. The intensity of the quest is
heightened by Whales' dramatic use of chiaroscuro. In the early scenes at the graveyard
and gallows, we see Frankenstein and Fritz, skin white, eyes blackened and lit with a
feverish gleam.
Although the story has been simplified, the theme of power and its
abuse has been maintained. Fritz, Henry Frankenstein's hunchbacked
assistant--a grovelling, powerless servant--moves up a rung on the
(evolutionary) ladder after The Monster is brought to life. A somewhat
dimwitted but sinister little man, he takes great pleasure in tormenting
The Monster. Is this because there is now somebody/thing more lowly
than himself? The animation of The Monster gives him power. Fritz is sadistic, maybe
even an evolving psychopath who enjoys inflicting pain and revels in The Monster's
misery. He even becomes brave enough to ignore his master's instructions, and in this
scene discovers his source of control-fire. Frankenstein tells Fritz to 'go away with that
torch'. The creature panics in a purely animal response to fire. Why doesn't Fritz take his
torch and go away rather than proceeding? From here his persecution of The Monster
begins. First he is bound with a rope as he advances towards the men, and then thrust
back into the cellar, the door barred before he can escape.
In the next scene we hear The Monster howling. He is chained to the walls. Fritz enters
with his whip and lashes the helpless creature. Frankenstein's intervention is ineffectual
as Fritz loses the whip but gains the torch and the torture continues. In his rage The
Monster manages to break free and hangs Fritz. Frankenstein can't cope with the
responsibility for what he has created and retreats into illness, appearing only to be
concerned about the records of his experiments. Dr Waldman is left to destroy the
creature. The Monster senses that he is about to be killed and strangles Waldman. In
killing Fritz and Waldman the creature is only trying to survive and, as Mary Shelley
summed it up when she wrote of Frankenstein's
rejected, unnamed creature, 'misery made me a
fiend'.
The Horror Film and the Outsider
Whale's homosexuality surely informed his
decision to commit Shelley's tale of the ostracism
and persecution of a misunderstood and maligned
creature to the screen. 'Critics and gay activists have often interpreted the Frankenstein
films as a coded account of Whale's sexuality ... his feeling that he was a misunderstood
outsider, a lonely monster.' (23) Shelley's fable provided Whale with a vehicle to express
his alienation from mainstream society as well as that of others. As Robin Wood suggests
in his article 'What Lies Beneath?', '... in Karloff's make-up, clothing, gestures and
performance, his threats and pleadings, we can also see the working-class, the poor, the
homeless, the dispossessed, suggesting a parallel between psychological repression and
social oppression.' (24)
Film theorist Robin Wood was one of the first critics to write seriously about the horror
film. His seminal article entitled 'The Return of the Repressed' examined 1970s American
horror films by applying psychoanalytic theory to suggest that horror films served to
(metaphorically) address taboo subjects, such as homosexuality, rape, incest, etc.-subjects deemed too abject to address through more conventional genres. Wood adapts
'this term from Freud's work on infantile sexuality to explain what he sees as the
necessary repression of the child's anti-social and destructive urges'. (25) Put simply, the
child must learn to repress such urges to ensure that the social status quo is maintained.
The horror film, therefore, acts as a sanctioned outlet for such social deviances.
Conclusion
Frankenstein's monster embodies many things and it is difficult to contain any discussion
of this text; indeed a discussion of Frankenstein could take many paths and embrace
many theoretical positions, ranging from psychoanalysis to Marxist theory. I have chosen
to focus my discussion upon the film's symbolic references, in particular its use of the
symbols of Christian Art, to suggest the underlying themes of this classic text.
Furthermore, the film's homage to artworks highlights the visual significance of this film,
illustrating Whale's own aesthetic preferences.
(1) Mark Gatiss, James Whale, Cassell, London, 1995, p.74 in Richard Davenport-Hines,
Gothic: Four Hundred Years of Excess Horror, Evil and Ruin, Fourth Estate Ltd, London,
1998, p.337.
(2) Maurice Hindle in Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, edited with an introduction by
Maurice Hindle, Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex England, 1985, p.10.
(3) ibid., p.15.
(4) ibid., p.20.
(5) From T.J. Hogg, Life of Shelley, quoted in Christopher Small, Ariel Like a Harpy,
Mary and Frankenstein, Gollanz, London, 1972, p.104, quoted in Hindle (ed.), Mary
Shelley, Frankenstein, pp.20-21.
(6) From T.J. Hogg, Life of Shelley, quoted in Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit,
Quartet Books, London, 1976, pp. 44-45, quoted in Hindel op. cit., p.21.
(7) Hindle, op cit., p.21.
(8) ibid., p.264.
(9) ibid., p.264.
(10) ibid., p.264.
(11) AS a final touch to this perfect beauty, Zeus gave Pandora a box that he instructed
her never to open. Pandora was sent to Earth by Zeus to the dim-witted Titan Epimetheus
as punishment for caring more for man than the gods and to punish man for his
possession of fire. Epimetheus gladly accepted her, despite warnings from his wise
brother Prometheus never to accept anything from Zeus. When Pandora opened the box
she released all evil into the world. However, one piece of good remained trapped within
the box as Pandora slammed down the lid in fright, hope, 'and it remains to this day
mankind's sole comfort in misfortune', in Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of
Gods and Heroes, New American Library, New York, 1940, p.72.
(12) Bernard Evslin, Gods, Demi-Gods and Demons: An Encyclopaedia of Greek
Mythology, Scholastic Books, USA, 1975, p.193.
(13) ibid., p.194.
(14) Abraham H. Lass, David Kiremidjian and Ruth M. Goldstein (eds), The Wordsworth
Dictionary of Classical and Literary Allusion, Wordsworth, Hertfordshire, UK, 1987,
p.182.
(15) Hindle, op cit., p.23.
(16) Lloyd Rose, 'James Whale, the Man With a Monster Career', Washington Post, 29
Nov. 1998. http://www. washingtonpost. com/wp-srv/style/movies/features/jameswhale.
htm Accessed 16 March 2004.
(17) George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art, Oxford University Press,
New York, 1954, pp.46-7.
(18) ibid., p. 164.
(19) ibid., p. 148.
(20) ibid., p. 43.
(21) ibid., p. 48.
(22) ibid., p. 174.
(23) Lloyd Rose, op cit.
(24) http://www.sensesofcinema.com/ contents/01/15/horror_ beneath.html: Accessed 20
May 2004 (original emphasis).
(25) http://www.kutsite.com/ dossier/tcm2/tcm2.html: Accessed 20 May 2004.
Julie Dellal has a Diploma of Arts (Fine Art), Graduate Diploma in Professional Art
Studies (Painting) and a Graduate Diploma in Education.
Named Works: Frankenstein (Motion picture) - Criticism and interpretation;
Frankenstein (Novel) - Criticism and interpretation