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Frankenstein Volumes I and II

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1 Frankenstein Volumes I and II
Lecture 25 Frankenstein Volumes I and II

2 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 1797-1851
Daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft married to Percy Bysshe Shelley begins Frankenstein in Geneva as part of ghost-story competition devised by Byron After Shelley’s death, returns to London, where she writes, edits his poems, and raises their one surviving child Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, oil on canvas by Richard Rothwell, first exhibited 1840

3 Mary Shelley’s Web of Intrigue and Sorrow

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5 Summer of 1816 “We will each write a ghost story.” - Byron

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7 DIFFERENT EDITIONS: 1818 / 1831 Compare:
p.5 (1818 by PBS) & p.169 (1831 by Mary) Last lines: her version says “I soon lost sight of him” – in PBS edition, he is just “lost in darkness” Mary Godwin Percy Bysshe Shelley Have Possess Wish Desire/Purpose Hot Inflamed Add to Augment Ghost story A tale of superstition

8 Frankenstein and Motherhood
Reference to “my hideous progeny” creates parallel between Shelley as author and Frankenstein as natural philosopher Frankenstein has frequently been interpreted as an exploration of the female writer’s ambivalence about the act of writing. to write Frankenstein Shelley has to engage in the very type of self-assertive behavior that the novel repudiates.

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10 Inventing Frankenstein
“invention does not consist in creating out of the void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded” (Introduction, 1831) Both the creature and the novel are composed from the fragments of existing materials 1. Epistolary novel 2. Sentimental novel 3. Educational treatise 4. Gothic novel 5. Scientific realism Frankenstein is frequently asserted to create the genre of science-fiction 6. Allegory Monstrum, Latin root of monster = warning or portent; but what does the monster warn against? 7. Myth “the modern Prometheus”

11 Walton and Victor the Enlightenment philosopher / Romantic poet
Both are characterized by egotism, neglect of domestic duties through single-minded pursuit of self-fulfillment Compare their… 1. Education/Childhoods 2. Views of Human Nature 3. Scientific Arrogance/Ambition

12 What causes Victor’s downfall?
Note the detailed account of Victor’s childhood “the child is father to the man” Role of Accident E.g. discovery of Agrippa, lightning striking tree, being late for lecture Circumstance produces Victor: 18th-century mechanistic model of psychological development 1831 version rejects this model

13 Volume II: The creature’s narration
First-person narration shifts creature from savage murderous other to humanized, sympathetic protagonist Nature v. Nurture: Is the monster a blank slate? Tabula Rasa?

14 Sublime v. Beautiful (à la Edmund Burke)
Two human drives: 1. Self-preservation 2. Procreation Two kinds of human art rouse these: 1. The Sublime self-preservation 2. The Beautiful procreation

15 Sublime v. Beautiful cont.
BEAUTIFUL/Picturesque Alps Forest Masculine Feminine Survival Aestheticization Solitude Society

16 The creature and the social
The De Lacys--ideal of domestic harmony Safie--“the good other”; gives the creature false expectation of how he will be treated The creature learns that his appearance inevitably excludes him from the social world

17 The creature and the literary
The creature tries to fit himself into paradigms provided by literature (86, 87) The creature is exposed to knowledge of human vice (80)

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