Doppelgänger theory- viewpoint that is more literal- a split, NOT two selves, but one

1. Doppelgänger theory- viewpoint that is more literal-a split, NOT two selves, but one Nora Crook points out that more than more than one critic has said Frankenstein may well be "the novel…about doubling, shadow selves, split personalities" (Crook 59).

2. Since it was science…and it was made BY Victor… • “… by having Victor's double come into being via human agency, instead of as an … eruption from the unconscious, Mary Shelley put a new and significant spin on the old theme. The monster is, in the words of Joyce Carol Oates, "a ‘modern’ species of shadow or Doppelgänger," because it is "deliberately created by man’s ingenuity and not a mere supernatural being or fairy-tale remnant….Where, by tradition, such beings as doubles, shadow selves, ‘imps of the perverse,’ and classic Doppelgängers….spring full grown from supernatural origins – that is, from unacknowledged recesses of the human spirit – Frankenstein’s demon is natural in origin: a manufactured nemesis (Oates 548).

3. Two parts, not two separate traits • Shelley was more interested in maintaining the idea of the basic goodness of human nature, than in portraying a split personality. • Frankenstein does not split into good and evil parts. He suffers because he has become a monster. • The sensitive, virtuous being that he was remains within him, half aware of its own monstrosity and helpless to change it

4. The monster is not evil because he is the “noble savage’ • Often the monster is depicted to represent the destructive and diabolical nature of Frankenstein's intellectual ambition, but… • it does not align with the actual presentation of the monster as a noble savage, an innocent more sinned against than sinning.

5. Feminism in Frankenstein • "Feminist criticism of the last twenty-five years has directed attention to Frankenstein as ‘female gothic,’ revealing a specifically female unconscious" (Crook 59). In the novel, the unconscious is symbolized by, of course, the monster, and this characterization of him as feminine falls right in line

6. Female in Gothic lit. • Female Characters in Gothic Texts • Gothic fiction has become a popular area for feminist studies. Many commentators have noticed how females in Gothic fiction often fall into one of two categories: the trembling and innocent victim or the shameless and dangerous predator. However, others have noticed how women writers have often used the Gothic to explore aspects of femininity and sexuality. The mad woman in the attic in Jane Eyre has become a key symbol of Gothic feminism. The persecuted maiden • The trembling victim: frail, blonde, silent, passive, helpless and innocent. • Fear and terror portrayed through her often over exaggerated reactions. • She is often shown fleeing a rapacious and predatory male. • However, at times she is made to feel sympathy for the monster which pursues her. • Typical examples include: Mina in Dracula, Elizabeth in Frankenstein, Ophelia in Hamlet, Fay Wray in King Kong The femme fatale • The other typical gothic female is sharply contrasting female predator. • Dark haired, red lipped, wearing a tight black dress and with a startling cleavage – parodied by Morticia in the Addams family. • A dangerous and rapacious creature, offering a real sexual threat. • Often punished in their story for their transgressions. • Examples are: Lady Macbeth, Dracula’s brides The mother figure • The dominating father is a key presence in the gothic but the role of the mother is also central to some narratives. In Frankenstein, Victor usurps the mother’s role by bringing the monster to life, causing an offence against nature. In the mid-1800s, women had few rights and were expected to be subservient to men. Not only were women denied the vote, they were denied the right to own property. Cultural expectations required that women refrain from expressing themselves openly in the presence of men. Rather they were expected to be pure, pleasant, and supportive of men at all times. Feminist critics point out the unusual prevalence of strong female characters in Gothic novels, their independence Modern critics also point out the way in which female sexuality was often used to denote strength, rebelliousness, and evil. Appearing as nefarious seductresses, female characters were often demons or villains who were punished or made to see the error of their ways at the story's end. Feminist critics also claim that while women in earlier novels had been portrayed as victims waiting to be rescued, in Gothic novels the roles were often reversed and the male characters were victimized. Frankenstein offers common themes in the female Gothic tradition: fear and anxiety surrounding the birth process, female sexuality, and women's bodies. Modern women authors employ horror and the Gothic to convey the horror of being perceived as freakish by society for engaging in artistic and vocational pursuits outside of the traditional—and approved—women's realm, Women criticized for choosing to delay or avoid pregnancy, marriage, or motherhood fear and anxiety experienced by women who are afraid simultaneously of being trapped in stifling, repressive roles and of being rejected or isolated for challenging these prescribed roles

7. Feminism in Gothic lit. • Female characters play a very significant role but often ambivalent role in Gothic texts. • The stories may play out a battle between the sexes or explore the uneasy relationship between pain and love. • Women in the texts may be absent or marginalised. • They may explore sexual aggression and illicit desires; they may be objects of male fantasy. • Female characters may be used to express feeling and heighten terror. • Some feel the powerful femme fatale represent emancipated women who no longer submit to male control. • Female writers may use the women characters in a different way to men, to explore aspects of their own femininity and sexuality. • The female gothic character’s role has changed from the original Gothic stories of the 18th and 19th century to Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber. • Angela Carter was particularly interested in the portrayal of women as victims of male aggression as a limiting factor in the feminist perspective of the time. Her argument was that women need not accept that role and she uses The Bloody Chamber to explore how that may be achieved The work most frequently held as an example of female Gothic is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novella "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892). The novella, a fictionalized account of Gilman's real-life experience with the "rest cure," a commonly prescribed treatment for depression, horrified readers and critics when it was published, largely because the female protagonist's terror and eventual madness were chillingly true to life and offered a harsh indictment of a widely-held belief that women who found motherhood and domestic duties unfulfilling or even confining were mentally ill. Subsequent critical analyses of the work have focused upon Gilman's use of horror and Gothic elements to convey the desperation experienced by women who were both physically imprisoned and deprived of intellectual freedom and expression.

8. Feminism • They are the dark, earthy, "irrational" wisdom of the Mother Goddess as opposed to the light-filled, cerebral, rational knowledge of the Father God. They are the soft, yielding fluidity of the feminine Yin as opposed to the hard unyielding masculinity of Yang. • The "irrational" emotion and intuition of the feminine • such seeming contradictions are inherent in the nature of visionary wisdom, so it is said, transcends the traditional wisdom of "either-or"

9. Feminism in the monster Masculinity Feminine Exceptional tenderness ecstatic philosophical contemplation by reading Plutarch and Milton unhesitatingly plunges into a river to rescue a drowning girl leaves food behind to keep Victor alive, and he weeps over Victor’s corpse • exceptional cruelty • sunk to the depths of satanic rage by his utter exclusion from the world of human affections • mercilessly strangles Victor’s young brother William • sets himself the goal of destroying Victor by destroying all that Victor loves

10. How did women writers use the female Gothic? • The sense of marriage and husband as a smothering, threatening force was, given the state of society, a reality for women, who inevitably bore resentment for their necessary dependence on marriage and men, to say nothing of their infantilization at the hands of both.

11. Frankenstein and the Monster • "One could add up Frankenstein and the Monster," Suzanna Stormentwrites, "and have something resembling an integrated person: a figure who would in fact resemble Walton, who is an over-reacherwith both scientific and poetic interests." • Although "this synthesis would add to the figure of Walton... • the element of tragic experience," it would also seem to hint that the novel contains at least a trace of the satisfaction.”

12. Freudian trinity Ego- Superego- Id- Frankenstein- Clerval- Monster • The Frankenstein-Clerval-Monster conjunction immediately suggests yet another step in this interpretation – a reading of the novel based on the classical Freudian trinity of the Ego, the Super-Ego, and the Id as the structure of human consciousness itself.

13. it may be said of the id that it is totally non-moral, of the ego that it strives to be moral, and of the super-ego that it can be super-moral and then become as cruel as only the id can be. • Both Clerval and Frankenstein’s father act as representatives of the Super-Ego. Indeed Freud’s view is that the father is the origin of an individual’s Super-Ego. The two characters are present as a reminder to Frankenstein of what is good, proper, and socially desirable. Frankenstein himself represents the Ego – the pursuer of his own wishes and ends, the experimenter who uses reason even whilst feeling guilty about it. Freud defines his concept in just these terms: ‘The ego represents what may be called reason … in contrast to the id, which contains the passions’ (7). The Monster, as Id, certainly contains passions – the often irrational, unconscious urges fuelled by libidinal energy which are essentially amoral, but which it should be noted can be just as easily the source of good impulse as bad ones. • In this Freudian reading, the novel expresses the tragedy of conflicts within an individual consciousness. Frankenstein is riven by the competing forces of his social conscience (his Super-Ego), his conscious desires (his Ego), and his unconscious wishes (his Id). It will not be difficult (bearing in mind the Double reading) to demonstrate the competition between Frankenstein and the Monster as dramatic representations of the Ego-Id conflict – but first it is necessary to produce a reason, or an origin for the essential divisions which break Frankenstein apart.

14. Or… the “true” doppleganger • Perhaps Frankenstein and his Monster can be seen as one and the same person – just like Dr Jekyll and MrHyde. • It is significant that Frankenstein repeatedly falls ill or disappears in some way at those junctures when evil is to be performed by the Monster. This reinforces the notion that the Monster is Frankenstein’s evil Self and adds the suggestive possibility that Frankenstein commits these acts himself, and has to invoke the Monster as a form of self-justification. • Frankenstein is ill for some time after the creation of the Monster, which gives it the opportunity to murder William. He is adrift in a boat (‘every thing was obscure’) and thinking of the possible murder of Clerval when his evil Self does the job for him. And he is conveniently absent from the bedroom when Elizabeth is murdered. • Fictional credibility for Frankenstein’s innocence is created while letting an apparently independent other Self commit the crimes.

15. “true” doppleganger cont. • Do Frankenstein and the Monster in fact exist independently? No one else in the novel ever sees Frankenstein and the Monster together at the same time. • The Monster appears to have an independent existence at the de Lacy cottage, but this whole episode is told to Frankenstein by the Monster during their interview on the Mer de Glace – at which nobody else is present. • It could be seen as an invention of Frankenstein’s. He tells this tale to Walton in self-justification. He is driven by evil passions and in guilt over what these have led him to do, he has invented the fiction of an autonomous Monster to justify himself to the outside narrator. • The Monster and Frankenstein are one and the same person: the evil Self has merely triumphed over and replaced the good Self. • One could even argue that for good measure Mary Shelley has added a reflection of the good Self in the divided Frankenstein in the character of Clerval, a man who does no wrong and acts like a conscience to Frankenstein. As Frankenstein sinks morally in this story, he remarks that ‘In Clerval I saw the spirit of my former self’ and has to get rid of him in order to work on the creation of the female Monster, something about which he feels guilty.

16. Allusions • Paradise Lost • “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” • Sorrows of Werther