Frankenstein Ch. 18 – 23

1. FrankensteinCh. 18 – 23

2. Negative Consequences of Human Creation Group 3 Iris, Joyce, Kelly, Renee, Sony, Vivi, Vivien, Daisy

3. Outline • Plot • Frankenstein’s changes • Frankenstein’s decisions • Monster’s change and revenge • Frankenstein in human society • Conclusion

4. Plot Summary • Victor travels to England. • The creation of the female monster. • Frankenstein thinks about the consequences of this new creation. • Victor destroys the female monster. • Victor is arrested. • The death of Clerval. • The union of Victor and Elizabeth. • The misinterpretation of the wedding night.

5. Frankenstein’s Changes

6. Frankenstein’s Changes • Before the creation of the monster 1) Enjoyed nature. (74) Clerval 2) Passion for pursuing knowledge. (pp. 40, 51) 3) Ignored his family while creating the monster. • After the creation 1) Felt antipathy about “natural philosophy”(158; 164). 2) Couldn’t calm himself down even he was traveling in splendid scenery. (154-55) (William& Justine’s death, haunting of monster) 3) Felt guilty about his family (158).

7. Frankenstein’s Decisions

8. Why did he promise the monster to make a mate at first? • Victor’s reservation, “Shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world.”(145)You will not “persevere in the exile” (146) • Victor’s sympathy, “I was moved...but I felt that there was some justice in his argument.” (Page 146) (antipathy 147) • Monster’s promise, “If you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again...” (Page 146) • Victor’s thought, “I consent to your demand, on your solemn oath to quit Europe for ever, and every other place in the neighborhood of man...” (Page 148)

9. Victor’s reasons for destroying the mate (Page 165) • The mate’s disposition “ ...she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness.” “...refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation.” “...might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man...she might quit him...” • The breeding of monsters as a race “...a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth...” • (concern about others)

10. The direct cause of destroying the mate • Victor’s misinterpretation • “A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me...he had followed me in my travels... his countenance expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery.” (Page 166) • Victor’s madness “I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged.” (Page 166)

11. Questions • If Frankenstein did not promise the monster to make a mate, would the ending change? • If he did not break his promise to destroy the mate, would the monster keep its promise and stay away from human being?

12. Monster’s change and revenge

13. Before • Kindness “When I found that in doing this [stealing from their store]I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I abstained, and satisfied myself with berries, nuts, and roots, which I gathered from a neighboring wood. (Page 111) • Intelligence "My days were spent in close attention that I might more speedily master the language; and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian, who understood very little, and conversed in broken accents, whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that was spoken.”

14. Fond of Helping People "I remember the first time that I did this the young woman, when she opened the door in the morning, appeared greatly astonished on seeing a great pile of wood on the outside. She uttered some words in a loud voice, and the youth joined her, who also expressed surprise. I observed, with pleasure.” • Interested in Reading and Music “I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere, and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants.”

15. Afterwards it takes revenge through Killing...... Why?

16. Repeatedly Rejected by People • First Contact with People (106) • De Laceys (138) • Girl fell into river (141) • Pay without reciprocation and Keep Trying Finding Solutions “I ought to have familiarized the old De Lacey to me, and by degrees to have discovered myself to the rest of his family, when they should have been prepared for my approach. But I did not believe my errors to be irretrievable; and, after much consideration, I resolved to return to the cottage, seek the old man, and by my representations win him to my party.” (Page 137)

17. Three Rejections & the Monster’s Responses: 1 De Lacey’s Felix, ‘we can never again inhabit your cottage. The life of my father is in the greatest danger, owing to the dreadful circumstance that I have related. My wife and my sister will never recover their horror. I entreat you not to reason with me any more. Take possession of your tenement, and let me fly from this place.’ ” (Page 138)  For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, … I bent my mind towards injury and death. When I thought of my friends,…, these thoughts vanished and a gush of tears somewhat soothed me. But again when I reflected that they had spurned and deserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger, and unable to injure anything human, I turned my fury towards inanimate objects.” (138)

18. Three Rejections & the Monster’s Responses: 2 • [being shot at with a gun] when he tries to approach the girl he saves. • “This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and, as a recompense, I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound, which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind.” (Page 141)

19. Three Rejections & the Monster’s Responses: 3 • Seeing William, the monster thinks of “educating” him and turning him into his companion. • William calls him “Hideous monster!” and says his father will “punish” him.  the first victim • The portrait (143) –the monster gazes with delight, but then his rage returns. • Seeing Justine’s smile, the monster is afraid that she will wake up and denounce him.  “The thought was madness; it stirred the fiend within me.”(144)

20. Hope in having his same Species • Hope in having his same Species “I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects. This being you must create. You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do; and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede.” (Page 144)

21. Rejected by FrankensteinThe Fatal Destruction by Human BeingsAn Entirely Devastation of Being Accepted • “I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. (Page 166)  the monster:a howl of devilish despair and revenge • "You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you intend? Do you dare to break your promise? I have endured toil and misery: I left Switzerland with you; I crept along the shores of the Rhine, among its willow islands, and over the summits of its hills. I have dwelt many months in the heaths of England, and among the deserts of Scotland. I have endured incalculable fatigue, and cold, and hunger; do you dare destroy my hopes?” (Page 167)

22. Mirror Image: The monster itself vs. how Frankenstein looks at it

23. The monster hoped that people would accept it once they know it does no harm to them “I persuaded myself that when they should become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues, they would compassionate me, and overlook my personal deformity.” (p.130) Frankenstein believed it was a devil just as how it looks like. I produced “a depraved wretch, whose delight was in carnage and misery” (77) “Shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world! Begone! I have answered you; you may torture me, but I will never consent.“ (p.193)

24. Through reading literature, the monster felt itself like Adam in the “Paradise Lost” Desire of its own Eve Reason: “Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous ” Frankenstein took it as devil and never named it. Frankenstein took this request as the possibility from the monster couple to take over human’s world"Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall."

25. The monster as a murderer Two kinds of victims: • A) kill to revenge the whole human race (nothing to do with Frankenstein) “…Not I, but she shall suffer: the murder I have committed because I am for ever robbed of all that she could give me, she shall atone. The crime had its source in her: be hers the punishment! Thanks to the lessons of Felix and the sanguinary laws of man, I had learned now to work mischief. I bent over her, and placed the portrait securely in one of the folds of her dress. She moved again, and I fled.”(p.144)

26. B) kill to revenge Frankenstein 1) William “I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph: clapping my hands, I exclaimed, `I, too, can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.” (p.143) 2) Clerval-but with pain 3) Elizabeth “But when I discovered that he, the author at once of my existence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness... I recollected my threat and resolved that it should be accomplished.” (p.220)

27. Frankenstein and Human Society

28. Frankenstein’s Family Ties

29. Transition • Monster:“Shall each man find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone?” (pg. 167) • Hopes for a mate revenge • Frankenstein:“I shuddered to think that the future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race.” (pg. 166) • Selfish thoughts considers about humanity • Dissection of the female monster: “ • I “felt as if I had mangled the living flesh of a human being.” (170) • “I again felt as if I belonged to a race of human beings like myself” (169)

30. The Course of Isolation • Self-Imposed Mental isolation: • Desires to do the work in solitude and even pass his life in solitude.(? a barrier; 158 )  responsibilities 183 • Depressed by negative emotions (181). • The death of Clerval. • Physically/Socially isolated: • The sea (pg.169): warm joy of life (172) • Frankenstein’s encounter with the villagers, the woman and the physician.(173, 177, 178) • The judgment and trial. (176, 182) • The responses of the two magistrates: Mr. Kirwin p. 177, 200 (1)+(2) Parallel to the sufferings of the monster. Frankenstein and the monster are inseparable.

31. The Completion of Isolation • The death of Elizabeth and the father: • Frankenstein misinterprets the monster’s intentions:“The monster had blinded me to his real intentions; and when I thought that I had prepared only my own death, I hastened that of a far dearer victim.” (pg. 191)  He underestimates the monster’s intelligence.  After destroying the female monster, Victor thinks that the monster would directly seek him in revenge.

32. The Completion of Isolation • “Man! You may hate; but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness forever.” (pg. 168) • Frankenstein’s decision deprives the happiness of the monster the monster’s revenge the death of two women Frankenstein isolated.

33. Question • Why does Frankenstein insist on telling Elizabeth that he created the monster and the things that happened after the creation of monster until the second day after their marriage?