Nature's Influence on Characters in Frankenstein

1. scantron for Frank quiz- start on #131 After quiz- who is the “real” monster- Discussion- duality, Freudian trinity

2. Ch. 9 Power of nature Nature is often portrayed as omnipresent and capable of altering human perception and perspective. Just as nature can make him joyful, it can remind him of his guilt, shame, and regret: “The rain depressed me; my old feelings recurred, and I was miserable.” While back in nature, going into Ch. 10 he will meet the creature- remember 6 years have passed.

3. Sublime Nature Throughout the novel, pay attention to how the characters are influenced by the natural world. Also note Shelley’s long descriptions of the natural world. This is classic Romanticism! Suicidal, pastoral elements; escape What is his guilt/fear? What is his opinion of the creature’s life? “…sleep crept over me… oblivion” (100).

4. They chat p. 104 powerless bug - language, eloquence • “I expected this reception.. All men hate me… yet, you, my creator, detest and spurn me” (104) Foil- one desires life, one rejects; one craves companionship, one isolated What does he ask? conditional • “Do your duty towards me… if you comply, I will leave you.. In peace… but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satisfied with your remaining friends.” What does the fact that Victor goes with the creature say about him?

5. Victor and the monster • Both connected to nature • Victor – emotionally at home in nature • Monster – physicallyat home in nature concealing aspect no fear reactions but oddly unnatural in its appearance

6. Birth parallel Light, food, shelter, clothes, crying, sleeping, knowledge (read/reason), socialization Clothes Night is his mother Parallel continues- tool Prometheus Why the allusions Introspection/identity p. 128

7. Transformation of the creature Before Now Large Strong Wild Mysterious Ugly Large Strong Intellectual Sensitive Even more scary p. 139 Allusion

8. p. 139 “I was wretched, helpless, and alone.” • The monster clearly understands his existence and abandonment by his creator, and he wants revenge. p. 140 • This instigates a likeness of the creature to Victor as he takes on more human characteristics- those similar to Victor. • The exception is consideration of others - Victor in the Alps, now the De Laceys p. 145 • Superior to base human emotions p. 146, but 149

9. 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. • tantrum, of 149 to conundrum 150

10. The Straw Medea p. 153 Why specific request p. 155 Hideous monster… let me go (153) He tried, children, the blind “Have a care; I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth” (157). …. A fiendish rage animated him… its revenge now. Appeals: ethos, pathos, now logos- Ch. 17 The decision : Victor spends the next couple of chapters detailing his project, but something goes awry with the foreknowledge of the chase scene detailed by Walton.

11. Theories: Are Victor and the creature foils? ? … What if the creature and Victor are not two individuals?

12. What is a doppelganger? • A look-alike, literally a “double-goer” • An alter ego • A paranormal double of a living person • A doppelgänger is often perceived as a sinister form of bilocation and is regarded by some to be a harbinger of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's relative or friend portends illness or danger while seeing one's own doppelgänger is said to be an omen of death.

13. The Literary Doppelganger Interpretation • It can be seen simply as a double, an alternative version of the individual concerned; • It can be seen as a complement, a version of the individual that possesses different qualities and thus completes the personality; • It can be seen as an opposite, a being that possesses all the qualities that the individual lacks and most abhors. By the way: An important literary form employing the Doppelganger motif is the psychomachia, originated by the Greek poet Prudentius to depict "conflict within the soul" or the struggle between virtue and vice within an individual. The psychomachia was particularly important in medieval art and drama, where separate characters were perceived a representing different aspects of a single human personality, so that conflict within the drama depicted the struggle of conscience or the need for integration of the personality.

14. 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).

15. Or a more LITERAL Doppelgänger theory- 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).

16. Two Halves= One Whole • It is difficult to decipher which represent good and which represents evil -- the man or the monster. To some degree, they each represent both. By the end of the novel, the question of which character is the “monster” is left open to interpretation. • One would initially assume the monster is the evil, yet it is Frankenstein who creates the monster and then hides from the responsibility. His cowardice not only leads to the death of his younger brother, but also to that of the accused. • Duality: because the man and the monster seem to be two halves of one being held together by magnetism, popular culture confuses Dr. Frankenstein as "the mad scientist," while his monster has become Frankenstein. • showing itself in the novel.

17. Who has seen them together? • Perhaps Frankenstein and his Monster can be seen as one and the same person – just like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. • 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.

18. “true” doppleganger • 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 Lacey 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.

19. Shelley’s Doppelgänger: Two parts, not two separate traits • Ultimately, Shelley seems to use the doppelganger as yet another layer in her argument regarding the nature of humanity, the idea of the basic goodness of human nature, more than in portraying a split personality. • Human nature is not clear-cut and absolute—human action is an unknown force, one with which we daily reckon. • 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. • It is not coincidental that a monster would be given the name Frankenstein -- the doppelganger relationship of Frankenstein and his unnamed monster

20. Frankenstein and the Monster • "One could add up Frankenstein and the Monster," Suzanna Storment writes, "and have something resembling an integrated person: a figure who would in fact resemble Walton, who is an over-reacher with both scientific and poetic interests." What if they were combined? The names are interposed- used for each synonymously.

21. Psychoanalytic Theory Clerval- Frankenstein- Monster Freudian trinity Superego- Ego- Id- • 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.

22. 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 driven 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 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.

23. 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.

24. Female in Gothic lit.- refer to your handout Female Characters in Gothic Texts • females in Gothic fiction often fall into one of two categories; explores aspects of femininity and sexuality. The persecuted maiden • The trembling victim: frail, blonde, silent, passive, helpless and innocent. • Fear and terror portrayed through her often over exaggerated reactions. The femme fatale • The female predator. • A dangerous and rapacious creature, offering a real sexual threat. • Often punished in their story for their transgressions. 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, were expected to be subservient to men, were denied the vote, 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. 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, are criticized for choosing to delay or avoid pregnancy, marriage, or motherhood;women show fear and anxiety simultaneously of being trapped in stifling, repressive roles and of being rejected or isolated for challenging these prescribed roles.

25. Feminism in Gothic lit. • Female characters play a very significant role but often ambivalent role in Gothic texts. • The stories explore the uneasy relationship between pain and love. • Women in the texts may be absent or marginalized. • They may explore sexual aggression and illicit desires; they may be objects of male fantasy. • Female writers may use the women characters to explore aspects of their own femininity and sexuality. The work most frequently held as an example of female Gothic is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novella "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892). As we read, 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. Also connects to women physically imprisoned and deprived of intellectual freedom and expression.

26. Feminism in the monster Masculinity Feminine • 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 • 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

27. 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. • Victor deifies himself in usurping the mother’s role of creating life. This is an offence against nature- causing imbalance.