Re-imagining Frankenstein
HUM 2052: Civilization II
Summer 2010
Dr. Perdigao
June 8, 2010
Frankenstein (1931, 1994)
http://home.avvanta.com/~dr_z/Movie/Posters/
Reprints/Images/frankenstein.jpg
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000K3UQ
.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif
Frankenstein (1931, 1994)
http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/S
2Art/RSP104~Frankenstein-Posters.jpg
http://srv14.movielist.net/bendermac/posters/mary_shelleys_frankenstein_ver2.jpg
Postmodern Play
http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/Dunechaser/
Literature/shelleyvictor.frankenstein.and.monster.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_cMdbfkl3Rz4/R9tWt9ZbLUI/AA
AAAAAAB7c/77NPWkkABI4/s800/mcfarlane+frankenstei
n1.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS0XceW
lGAs
Sources
• Mary Shelley’s biography—story of losses, mother Mary
Wollstonecraft (during her birth), premature birth to daughter who
dies February 1815, daughter Clara in 1818, son William in 1819, Mary
almost dies from miscarriage in 1822, loses Percy at sea later in 1822,
father William Godwin in 1836, herself dies on February 1, 1851
• Story’s genesis (9)
• Victory—Percy Shelley’s self-given name, name for protagonist (xxiv)
• Milton’s Paradise Lost and story of the fall, Mary had grown up
reading, house they stayed at in Geneva was one Milton had (xxx)
• Creature as Adam and Satan
• Rousseau’s notion of an “unfallen” state, corrupted by society,
Godwin’s own theories in Political Justice
• Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (xxxvii, 60)
• Mary Shelley reading Don Quixote while writing Frankenstein
Origins
• Robert Walton
• Margaret Saville
• St. Petersburgh: England
• Walton’s education (16), reading Uncle Thomas’ seafaring books,
poetry
• As Coleridge’s ancient mariner, but will “kill no albatross” (21)
• First description of the creature (25)
• Restores Victor “to animation” (26) with “spirit of life” (28), “so noble
a creature destroyed by misery” (28)
• Victor tells story of failed quest, hubris
• Story of Frankenstein family, Geneva, Beaufort, daughter Caroline (33)
• Victor born in Naples, oldest child
• Lake Como, visiting poor, find Elizabeth Lavenza, daughter of
Milanese nobleman and German mother who had died giving birth to
her
Educations
• Henry Clerval as childhood friend, interest in chivalry and romance,
for Victor, in metaphysical, “physical secrets of the world” (39)
• Elizabeth’s scarlet fever, to mother, death
• Attends university at Ingolstadt
• Krempe (47)
• Waldman (49)
• Description of creature (54), vision of creature (59)
• Coleridge’s poem referenced with creation (60)
• Henry’s appearance, letter from Elizabeth, story of Justine Moritz (667), role of women?
• Introduction of William (68), death (71)—role of the innocent?
Educations
• Sees creature (78)
• Justine’s trial, Elizabeth’s testimony, Justine as “monster” (88)
• Encounter with monster, as romantic encounter with nature, sublime
• “Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am
rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed”
(103).
• Story of his birth and journey
• Hovel as a “paradise” (109)
• Safie’s story (125)
CIV Readings
• Creature’s education
• The Comte de Volney’s Ruins of Empires: philosophy of history
• “Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent,
yet so vicious and base?” (122).
•
•
•
•
Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (100 AD)
Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667)
“Romantic cyclopedia universalis” (271) (130)
• “Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my
destination?” (131)
• Attempt to save young girl from drowning, to “restore animation”
(143), encounter with William, Justine, creature’s attempt to “reason”
with Victor rather than display passion (148)
A Monster’s Education?
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/10-Booksthat-Screwed-Up-the-World/BenjaminWiker/e/9781596980556/?itm=1#TOC
Table of Contents
Introduction: Ideas Have Consequences 1
Preliminary Screw-Ups
The Prince 7
Discourse on Method 17
Leviathan 31
Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men
Ten Big Screw-Ups
The Manifesto of the Communist Party 57
Utilitarianism 73
The Descent of Man 85
Beyond Good and Evil 99
The State and Revolution 115
The Pivot of Civilization 127
Mein Kampf 145
The Future of an Illusion 165
Coming of Age in Samoa 177
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male 195
Dishonorable Mention
The Feminine Mystique 211
Afterword: A Conclusive Outline of Sanity 227
Acknowledgments 233
Notes 235
Index 251
41
A sequel?
• “My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor; and my
virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I
shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the
chain of existence and events, from which I am now excluded.” (150)
An equal?
http://www.moviediva.com/MD_root/MDimages/Copy_of
_BrideofF.jpg
http://www.monsterlandtoys.com/video/Bride%20of%
20Frankenstein.jpg
Revisions
• Trip to England, Oxford, Edinburgh, Orkneys
• Henry Clerval—as Romantic (161), idea of India (163-4)
• Victor’s ennui
• Idea of the female creation— “thinking and reasoning animal” (170);
his reasons; destroys her
• “Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself
unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power; you
believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the
light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your
master—obey!” (172)
• “I shall be with you on your wedding night” (173)
• Gets rid of new creature, taken to magistrate Mr. Kirwin (178)
• Henry’s death, link to destruction of creature (181), return to Geneva
with father
Lessons
• Wedding night
• Elizabeth’s death (199), father’s death (202)
• Retells story to magistrate (202), “Chinese box structure,” received as a
fiction
• “he or I shall perish in mortal conflict” (206)—as Beowulf?
• Rewrites the story (213), corrections by Frankenstein
• “When younger. . . I believed myself destined for some great enterprise.
. . From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition;
but how am I sunk” (214)
• “Seek happiness in tranquility, and avoid ambition, even if it be only
the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and
discoveries” (220)
• Victor’s death
Didacticism
• Third representation of the creature (221), his story
• “Evil thenceforth became my good” (222)
• “I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once
filed with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the
majesty of goodness” (223).
• “I shall collect my funeral pile” (225).