Frankenstein

1. Frankenstein

2. Thoughts on Frankenstein “I first read Frankenstein at the best possible time: when I was too young to understand it. I had been told by someone. . .. –that Dracula and Frankenstein were the greatest of horror stories. I did not get it. I liked the monster, as all decent boys must. . . . The monster was a boy as such I wished to be, larger and stronger. . . .I did NOT see Mankind in the Industrial Age, or any of that; it was years beyond me. Most certainly I did not see Man Learning Things Mankind Is Not Meant to Know, which I now think was what Mary Shelley had principally wanted to show me. I saw that is it science that makes the scientist, and not the other way ‘round—that Victor was far more a creature of his monster and his desire to create it than the monster was ever a creature of Victor’s. And I saw that science is less scientific than scientists, and saner.” Gene Wolfe, The Shadow of the Torturer

3. The Legend. . . • In popular imagination, Frankenstein is an instantly recognizable myth. • That the myth was created by Mary Shelley in a novel she wrote when she was just eighteen years old is not so well known. • In the introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Shelley answers the question: “ How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?”

4. May/June 1816 • On a rainy night, she, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron spend an evening writing ghost stories. • Though at first not the vision we know today, Shelley gave herself to perfecting the story and discussing her craft and taking advice from Percy Shelley and Lord Byron • See Shelley’s introduction to the 1831 edition

5. Stimuli for the story • Mary’s own failure to birth a child that could survive • Her mother’s death 10 days after Shelley’s birth • The experiments of Dr. Darwin (Charles’ grandfather) • Woman’s mythmaking on the subject of birth • We’ll discuss this more next week • Female pain: death sits on the woman’s side of the bed. Lovers risk babies, and babies can kill.

6. Beginnings • Daughter of Mary and William Godwin • Mary died 10 days after giving birth, leaving an incompetent William to raise their baby and her daughter, Fanny, from a previous relationship • Though both professed to not believe in marriage, they were wed 5 months before Mary’s birth. She was not premature.

7. Literary Legacy • William Godwin • Born 1756 into a intensely Calvinist family • Tried his hand at preaching, eventually lost the faith • He failed at teaching, turned to writing • Enquiry Concerning Political Justice made him famous (1793) • Laid down the systematic evils of the government, projected a libertarian future • Poor manager of money; he eventually took another wife who had children of her own. Mary Shelley was not raised in a loving home, nor a terrible prosperous one • Believed people were naturally benevolent (like Rousseau) ; government is what corrupts humanity • Mary Wollstonecraft • Famous for her A Vindication of the Rights of Women • Defended the French Revolution, threatened that it would spread to England • Attacked the aristocracy that disenfranchised poor workers and women • Demanded equal political rights regardless of social class OR gender • Several affairs that ended badly, she attempted suicide a number of times. • Met Godwin in 1796, Mary Godwin (Shelley) was born the next August.

8. Personal Life and Tragedy • Never knew her mother • Raised by a stepmother who made a point of showing favoritism to her own children • Sent to Scotland at 15 years of age, ostensibly because she was suffering from poor health • Returned at 16 years of age, intellectually awakened, and met Percy Bysshe Shelley, a frequent visitor to her father’s house (and often lent him large sums of money) • Soon, she and the already married Shelley fell in love • On July 28, 1814, they ran away together (she was 16)

9. When they returned 6 weeks later, Mary was pregnant. • The baby was born premature and died two weeks later • Two months later, she was pregnant again. Her child, William, was born in January of 1816. • The couple was beset by money troubles and the social pressure English gentility reserved for sinful lovers. • In May of 1816, the Shelley’s went to Geneva to be with Lord Byron and the legend was born.

10. Troubling Issues • Mary Shelly, 18 years old, filled with the knowledge that her own birth had killed her mother. • Added to the uncertainty of her own life as an unmarried mother • She knew Percy had abandoned his own wife and two children. What was her hold on him? But she adored him. • Shelley was often jealous of Lord Byron who took her lover away for whole days at a time to go sailing. • Her half-sister, Fanny, who did not know to whom she belonged, having not mother or father, kills herself while Mary is writing Frankenstein • Several months later, Shelley’s wife, Harriet, also takes her own life (while pregnant with another man’s child) • Mary and Percy married two weeks later, though neither claimed to believe in marriage • Social pressure probably instigated the marital union

11. April 17, 1817 • Frankenstein was finished while Shelley was pregnant with her third child. • The baby, born in September, died just a few weeks later. • On March 11, 1818, the book was published anonymously. • it received some good reviews, though there were harsh critics. • When it became known it was written by a woman, one critic exclaimed: “for a man it was excellent, but for a woman it was wonderful.” • Not done with birth and death, her toddler son, William, died the following year just months before she gave both to a son, Percy, the only child who lived to become an adult

12. Percy’s death • Percy, an avid sailor, was lost in a storm at sea in 1822. His body washed ashore 10 days later. He had never learned to swim. • Little written after Frankenstein holds much scholarly interest. • Six months after Percy’s death, she wrote” Oh, Shelley, dear, lamented, beloved!? Help me, raise me, support me; let me not feel thus fallen and degraded! My imagination is dead, my genius lost, my energies asleep.” • She continued to write, mostly editing the works of Shelley and her father, until her death in 1851.

13. The Impact • “Frankenstein does not touch us because Victor Frankenstein is a scientist but because his creation was born ugly; because Victor abandoned him, because the creature’s life is spent in a long, long pilgrimage toward his father/mother’s love. The issue is not the scientist’s laboratory; rather it is the ‘workshop of filthy creation’ in which love and birth, and their consequence—death—take place.” –Leonard Wolf, The Essential Frankenstein

14. The Modern Prometheus • The story of Prometheus was particularly attractive to the Romantic Age ( a movement stirred by two major events: advancing industrialization and the French Revolution) • It saw him (Prometheus) as both Christ’s compassion toward humanity and the tragic heroism of Satan • Prometheus was a Titan god who stole fire from heaven and gave it to humanity. • Zeus punished him for this act of generosity by fixing him to a rock to which an eagle came each day to devour Prometheus’s liver.

15. There is a lesser known aspect to the Prometheus myth one in which he is seen as the creator of mankind • Percy Shelley wrote, of Prometheus, that he was a more “poetical” character than Satan, and, “as it were, the type of highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature.”

16. Paradise Lost • “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?” • Milton’s poem often serves Mary Shelley as the lens through which she sees her own creation. It is worth noting that Satan, in PL, often refers to God as the “Victor.”

17. Style • “framed story”—narrative structure; a story within in a story • Robert Walton is the narrator, introduced to the reader through letters to his sister. He comes across Victor Frankenstein who has been stranded. Victor relates the story of his life and experiment to Walton • Chapters 11-16 contain the monster’s story as he relates it to Frankenstein. • Story within the monster’s tale: the history of the De Lacey family, told to the monster, who in turn tells Victor. • Epistolary novel-collection of letters