1. Narrative Structure in Frankenstein

2. Frankenstein
Frankenstein opens with letters from an explorer, Robert Walton, to his sister.
The Explorer is stuck on his ship in the ice of the North Pole.

3. Layers of Stories in Frankenstein
Robert Walton’s Narrative
Victor’s Story
Creature’s Story

4. Frame Narrative A fusion of two respected 18th century genres
epistolary novel, a traditionally feminine genre
explorer’s journal, a traditionally masculine genre and an archetypal enlightenment genre

5. Frame Narrative Functions:
provide a frame of verisimilitude to an improbable tale
It SEEMS more true
It is VERY familiar and conventional: it was told…
Ancient Mariner
Ozymandias

6. Epistolary Novel A Novel written as a series of documents Letters
Diary entries
Newspaper clippings
Blogs s

7. Epistolary Novel Conventions
Reveal inner life: individual psychological struggles
Growth to knowledge and virtue

8. Ideological Functions
Reassure readers of the capacity of individual to combat the temptations of evil and grow towards virtue

9. Frankenstein subverts the epistolary novel
Male narrator
No growth: fails to resists temptations; learns nothing

10. Explorer’s Journal Conventions
Protagonist : heroic scientist-explorer
Quest structure – pursuit and achievement of a goal (c.f. the hero’s journey)
Encounters with strange lands, creatures and beings
Increased understanding of the world and humanity

11. Explorer’S Journal Ideological functions
celebrate the quest for knowledge and the power of reason
celebrate human achievement - illustrate man’s increasing mastery of his world
(archetypal embodiment of enlightenment ideologies)

12. Frankenstein subverts the conventions and ideologies of the Explorer’s Journal genre
Heroic protagonist exposed as flawed: narcissistic etc
Quest ends in failure – reveals human limitations, rather than celebrating achievements
Protagonist learns nothing from experiences and encounters
NB: Gulliver’s Travels

13. Further subverts the Explorer’s Journal by embedding within it a disreputable genre – a gothic tale.
Foregrounds the importance of the Explorer’s Journal genre’s neglect of the:
irrational
inexplicable
supernatural

14. Victor Frankenstein’s Gothic Tale
Gothic conventions
Emphasis on the irrational and fantastic
Emphasis on emotion rather than reason
Challenge to enlightenment values

15. Setting: relics of past corrupt society or wilds of nature
Protagonist: innocent, often virginal, victim
Villain: supernatural figure or authoritarian patriarchal figure representative of past, corrupt regime
Narrative structure: triumph over the monstrous

16. Ideological Functions
Acknowledge the existence of the monstrous
Reassure readers that the monstrous can be defeated or controlled

17. Frankenstein subverts these conventions and ideologies
Setting: locates monstrosity in everyday world: bourgeois domestic sphere
Protagonist: is victim and villain/monster
Ironically, victim of own villainy

18. The monstrous a product of human action: external diabolical agency replaced by internal human agency
The evil patriarch is an archetypal enlightenment bourgeois figure
Villain is victim and hero

19. Blurs boundaries between victim, villain and hero and human/non-human
The monstrous not defeated or controlled