Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
March 23, 2015; Dr. Solomon
Agenda
• Background
• Technology and Nature
• Bases of Community-formation and
Exclusion: story and sympathy
• Becoming (or not becoming) human:
learning, language, self, sympathy
Background
• What are the limits and contradictions of
Enlightenment thinking?
• What is Romanticism?
Mary Shelley
• 1797-1851
• Mother: Mary Wollstonecraft
(Vindication of the Rights of
Men, 1790; Vindication of the
Rights of Women, 1792)
• Father: William Godwin
(Enquiry concerning Political
Justice, 1793)
• Husband: Poet Percey Shelley
Contemporary Science: animation
of lifeless bodies
Contemporary Science: animation
of lifeless bodies
Contemporary Science: animation
of lifeless bodies
“On the first application of the process to the
face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to
quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly
contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In
the subsequent part of the process the right
hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and
thighs were set in motion” (“George Foster” in
Newgate Calendar)
Victor Frankenstein to Walton
“Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds,
which I should first break through, and pour a
torrent of light into our dark world” (Vol. I, p
32).
Bad Science: Frankenfoods
Promethus: Maker of Man
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man design'd:
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest:
[…]
[with] Earth, but new divided from the sky,
And, pliant, still retain'd th' aetherial energy:
Which wise Prometheus temper'd into paste,
And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast.
(Ovid “The Creation of the World” ll. 77-84)
Promethus: Maker of Man
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man design'd:
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest:
[…]
[with] Earth, but new divided from the sky,
And, pliant, still retain'd th' aetherial energy:
Which wise Prometheus temper'd into paste,
And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast.
(“The Creation of the World” ll. 77-84)
Promethus: Maker of Man
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man design'd:
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest:
[…]
[with] Earth, but new divided from the sky,
And, pliant, still retain'd th' aetherial energy:
Which wise Prometheus temper'd into paste,
And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast.
(“The Creation of the World” ll. 77-84)
Prometheus: Giver of Technology
Prometheus came to inspect the distribution, and he
found that the other animals were suitably
furnished, but that man alone was naked and
shoeless, and had neither bed nor arms of defence.
The appointed hour was approaching when man in
his turn was to go forth into the light of day; and
Prometheus, not knowing how he could devise his
salvation, stole the mechanical arts of Hephaistos
and Athene, and fire with them.
Plato, Protagoras 320c - 322a (trans. Jowett)
Prometheus Bound (Rubens, 1611-1618)
Who is the real monster?
Three concentric 1st-person
narratives
Robert Walton of Victor Frankenstein
“I begin to love him as a brother; and his
constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy
and compassion” (15)
Frankenstein’s science
• “I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation
but for this one pursuit” (32)
• “how often did my human nature turn with
loathing from my occupation” (32)
Three concentric “I”-narratives
• Vol I:
– 1) Walton to sister (Course pack: Letter 4)
– 2) Frankenstein to Walton
• Vol II:
– 2) Frankenstein to Walton (Course pack: Chap 9)
– 3) Creature to Frankenstein (Course pack: Chaps 38)
• Vol III: see Vol. I
The bonds of sympathy
Becoming (or not) Human
• By what steps does the creature develop?
• How does he learn? From whom?
• With whom does he identify?
Sympathy and Self-recognition
“As I read, however, I applied much personally
to my own feelings and condition. I found
myself similar, yet at the same time strangely
unlike the beings concerning whom I read,
and to whose conversation I was a listener. I
sympathized with, and partly understood
them, but I was unformed in mind; I was
dependent on none, and related to none”
(86).
Self-consciousness
“My person was hideous, and my stature
gigantic: what did this mean? Who was I?
What was I? Whence did I come? What was
my destination? These questions continually
recurred but I was unable to solve them.” (86)
• What does reading do to the creature
• What does it do to us when we read the
creature’s story?
The Humanities make humans?
“Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the
grand line of demarcation between the human
and the animal kingdoms”
– William Godwin, “Of an Early Taste for Reading”
– What is human according to our readings
this semester? According to this reading?
Concluding Questions
• Are we to blame Frankenstein for creating the
creature? Or for abandoning him?
• Was the creature always already (biologically)
a monster from the moment of his animation?
• Or was he made into a monster through his
treatment by humans? Through the absence
of companionship and sympathy?
• Would it be possible to be human without a
community that accepts and recognizes him as
such?