Frankenstein

1. Frankenstein Studying a Classic

2. Initial perceptions • What comes to mind when we think of Frankenstein? What images and associations? • The “monster” is a character who has inspired so many interpretations and transformations – both as a creature of fear and of sympathy. Part of the joy of reading this text is in deciding how you fell about or “read” him. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6_pkwy0_p4

3. Pop culture • Frankenstein has been interpreted in so many different ways: • 1931 classic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H3dFh6GA-A • Bride of Frankenstein http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7BO_hqe_q0 • Kenneth Branagh 1994: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg17y6iz7Xs • In music - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhxiAwd-6yM

4. National theatre • This is a particularly interesting version, that plays to the suggestion that Frankenstein and the monster are mirrors of each other. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FEakgJj-uA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axL7sKzrYtw

5. Spark notes version • So what do we need to know about Frankenstein: • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRppXdKDY_c

6. Mary shelley • We need to consider what we know about Mary Shelley so we know what to look out for during our reading. A lot of this will link in to what we already know about Blake as she was one of his contemporaries.

7. Romantic period • As a part of the Romantic movement, Shelley abhorred Science and the industrial revolution. So consider carefully what she is trying to say with her story of man creating a man. What are the consequences? Is this a cautionary tale?

8. Interest in nature • Preference for grandeur, the picturesque, the sublime, passion and extraordinary beauty as opposed to finish and proportion. Look for vivid descriptions of nature and note where they occur within the narrative. • The growth of the individual mind is enabled through knowledge of, and closeness to, nature and not from man

9. Emotional landscape • Explored the emotional directness of personal experience: • Extremes of rapture, nostalgia (for childhood or the past), horror, melancholy or sentimentality • Cultivation of the exotic, the bizarre or the macabre • Interest in the irrational realms of dream and delirium • Self-consciousness is not the same as self-knowledge. All characters must strive for this. • A moral fable on the self-destructive consequences of idealism and solitary obsession in a quest for passionately knowing

10. knowledge • The pursuit of knowledge is the downfall of Frankenstein: the overambitious desire to learn “the secrets of heaven and earth” • An ambivalence expressed by Shelley toward gaining knowledge • Acknowledgement of the limiting force of knowledge: Frankenstein warns against “passion or transitory desire” disturbing the tranquillity of the mind and human spirit

11. Gothic Genre • The Romantics were very drawn to the Gothic genre. • This genre distinctive for its fascination with the horrible, the repellent, the grotesque and the supernatural, in combination with many of the characteristics of the Romantic novel • Gothic: emphasis on emotion • Gothic art and architecture was intended to have a magical or preternatural effect on the viewer • The Gothic building was the perfect setting for a story intended to terrify or otherwise overwhelm the reader • Dangerous natural settings were employed (the sublime)

12. Gothic world • Characterised by a chronic sense of apprehension and the premonition of impending but unidentified disaster • The Gothic world is the fallen world, the vision of fallen man, living in fear and alienation, haunted by images of his mythic expulsion, by its repercussions and by an awareness of his unavoidable wretchedness

13. The gothic novel • Action tends to take place at night or in a claustrophobic, sunless environment • Some motifs of typical Gothic fiction include: images of death; revenge; family curse; the Doppelganger; demonic possession; masking/shape changing; madness • Coleridge, Byron and PB Shelley steeped in this tradition (Ancient Mariner quoted).

14. Need to be afraid • Psychologically, the Gothic novel is generally understood to serve a fundamental human need: • Can be called ‘the strange human need for feeling afraid’ • The need to retain links to the past

15. Science fiction • Science Fiction: explores the probable consequences of some improbable or impossible transformation of the basic conditions of human existence • Science Fiction is a form of literary fantasy or romance that often draws upon earlier kinds of utopian and apocalyptic writing • Before the use of the term by American Hugo Gernsback in 1926, such works were called ‘scientific romances’

16. Romantic/sci fi • Frankenstein is NOT truly an early precedent for the genre (it began later) • However, Shelley is using contemporary advances in science and technology to develop the possibility of the outcome experienced by Frankenstein. An allegorical novel, that the creation rebels against its creator can be seen as an apocalyptic warning against the unconsidered use of technologies which were beginning to emerge with the Industrial Revolution: the application of science can lead to unintended consequences!

17. Key themes • Frankenstein centred around: • Thirst for knowledge • A scientific over-reacher • Forbidden knowledge and the mysteries of life • The emphasis in Frankenstein is on psychological terror • The scientific experiment can be seen as proving that the masculinist arts of civilisation can only reanimate the dead and deaden the living. In this way, we can see Shelley’s feminism.

18. structure The three concentric layers of the text are presented in three volumes: The text has been described as a ‘Chinese Box’ – referring to concentric boxes made to fit within each other. It is a story set within a story set within a story. Captain Robert Walton’s letters home to his sister bookend the story The narrative related by Victor Frankenstein The monster’s story

19. Triple structure • Walton’s story of his voyage to the Pole is a buffer for the reader confronting the more marvellous story of Frankenstein • Parallel situation between Walton and Frankenstein – each has a solitary nature, feels largely self-educated, is obsessed with their ‘quest’ and ‘suffers’ from hubris • Frankenstein’s narrative warns Walton of the price payable for egocentric obsessions and Walton’s voyage to the Pole reflects the setting in which the monster tells his story to Frankenstein

20. Monster’s narrative The monster is a fascinating character is he is a newborn, experiencing the world for the first time. He is essentially good, as the first part of his narrative shows, but is met with harsh rejection due to his strange status. A lot of philosophers at the time such as Rosseau we interesting in exploring the inherent nature of man, away from the structures of society (like Blake). The monster’s relationship to Frankenstein can be said to symbolise the relationship between man and his creator. The monster’s narrative is at the heart of the novel because he symbolises the essence of what it is to be ‘fallen’ – capable of any horror

21. The monster feels alienated and abhorred, defective and mute, and ends by exacting revenge, thereby causing more suffering. The alienation from culture and society is therefore portrayed as, literally, deadly

22. Shelley questions • Through the “monster”, Shelley asks the questions: • Who are we? • What is our intrinsic nature? • What are we capable of once made jaded by society? • How do we view what is different or other? A Romantic story-telling method emphasises the ironic disjunctions between different perspectives on the same event as well as ironic tensions that inhere in the relationship between surface drama and concealed authorial intention

23. Viktor • Shelley’s protagonist is so completely engrossed in his own ego that he must create a being to reassure himself of his own existence: • Frankenstein’s consciousness alienates him from life, causing him to become a solitary figure • He creates another being, who stands as a double (doppelganger) or subconscious element of himself • This grotesque usurpation of women’s bodies essentially deepens his own crisis of self-consciousness, for, in embodying his alter-ego he cannot now go beyond it and return to a state of former innocence

24. egotism • Frankenstein becomes the epitome of egotism and self-consciousness: • To Walton, Frankenstein confessed that his “eyes [became] insensible to the charms of nature. And the same feelings … caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent” • The wounded deer Frankenstein comes across in the Alpine valley he sees as ‘a type of me’ • Frankenstein was so self-obsessed that he cannot consider the possibility that it may be Elizabeth who dies at the hand of the monster on their wedding night • When he does consider the scenario of his own death he is self-gratifyingly morbid: “yet when I thought of my beloved Elizabeth – of her tears and endless sorrow, when she would find her lover so barbarously snatched from her – tears, the first I had shed for months, streamed from my eyes

25. Byronic hero • Archetype of the Romantic period • Not a traditional hero, but darker more tormented. Often a rebel. • Often isolated • Moody and/or passionate • Intellectually superior • Arrogant, overly sensitive, self-involved • Could be considered a bit of an anti-hero

26. EXAMPLE Byronic heroes • Heathcliff from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights • Rochester from Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre • Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars • Edward Cullen from Twilight • Batman • V from V for Vendetta

27. mirrors • Frankenstein’s monster is a magnified image of the self of the creator, indicative of Victor’s profound narcissism • This monster represents a larger than life super-ego of his creator (remember its size) • Frankenstein concedes that the monster he created is in essence a part of his spirit, his mirror: “my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy all that was dear to me”