Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

●Introduction●Letters and Chaps 1 & 2●Narrative Frames & Family

Relations

Outline

Introduction: Frankenstein – Relevance, Background and Major Themes

The Letters Chaps 1 and 2 Notes

Frankenstein: What’s the Story about?

The Making of the Monster Significance --1:05 – 6:30 Context (scientific and personal) -- 6:30- 9:10 Occasion of writing – 9:10 – 11:00 Prometheus 15:30 Story introduction 16:10 – 29:10 Frankenstein theatrical production 29: 10- Frankstein in films 32:09 James Wales’ 2 films version 36:00 Later variations: 45:29 comedy, comics,

Which Frankenstein Stories do you know?

Anything that we produce but lose control of

“The Monster” in the Sci-fi Tradition

Frankenstein (1931) 2001: A Space Odyssey

(1968) Blade Runner (1982) (2001) (robot looking for his

mother) The Island (2005) (cloning)

“The Monster” & Postmodern Identity

-- blurring the lines between the machine and human (genetic engineering and cloning) the

human and the other animals’ genes

-- human identity as a patchwork, piecing together of fragments

Frankenstein/Monster as a Romantic Hero

Prometheus –as an over-reacher Romantic Hero -- a character that rejects

established norms and conventions, has been rejected by society, and has the self as the center of his or her own existence.

Features: introspection, the triumph of the individual over the "restraints of theological and social conventions," wanderlust, melancholy, misanthropy, alienation, and isolation (source)

e.g. Rochester (Jane Eyre) Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) and Don Juan

Background

Mary Shelley – Eloped with Shelley 1814, leaving his pregnant

wife behind. Her mother (Mary Wollstonecraft) dies of

miscarriage; her own experience of child birth and infant death (1815), Harriet Shelley’s suicide in 1816 and then the deaths of her two children (1818, 1819)

The novel comes out of Byron’s suggestion of a ghost story contest (pp. 7-8)

(The Making of a Monster 6:40)

Background: A Period ofRevolutionary Fervor & Scientific Invention

Contemporary Science: Invention and the Origin of Species Dr. Erasmus Darwin: (p. 8; grandfather of

Charles Darwin); invents a speaking machine and a horizontal windmill, etc.

the generation of life: (1) life evolved from a single common ancestor“ (2) animation (text p.9)

French Revolution (Monster= revolution) Beautiful, energetic and

also destructive Ingolstadt – (in southern Germany) considered

the origin of French Revolution

Major Themes Scientific Invention and its Possible Problems—or

Scientist as God; Relations between Creator and Creature (Father and Son, or Double? "unwanted pregnancy")

Romantic Hero: solitary and idealistic over-reacher, finding solace in nature, seeking to explore and transcend human boundaries (like Dr. Faust) (Three types: Promethean hero, Byronic hero, Gothic hero-villain source; see p. vi for meanings of Prometheus.)

Definition of Humanity (appearance vs. nobility of the mind); Responsibility and Guilt

The Roles of Women and Nature The novel as a "Female Gothic“: Shelley "brought birth

to fiction not as realism but as gothic fantasy, and thus contributed to Romanticism a myth of genuine originality." (E. Mooer)

Letters and Chaps 1 & 2Letters and Chaps 1 & 2

Major Issue (1): Major Issue (1): Frame Narratives: Walton // Frankenstein Frame Narratives: Walton // Frankenstein

What does Robert Walton desire and want? What does Robert Walton desire and want? How is he similar to but different from How is he similar to but different from

Frankenstein in his pursuit? Frankenstein in his pursuit?

Robert Walton & his Letters1) like a Romantic Hero

His desire for exploring the Pole (pp. 15-17)

2) Walton likes and is like Frankenstein (24-) Brings Frankenstein back to life; like a brother; Parallel: “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did,“

pursue the same course(29)

3) Different from Frankenstein: Walton Margaret Frankenstein Elizabeth-- his want of friends(19) and understanding of his lieutenant (pp.

20-21).

-- his need of her letters; Writes to his sister as much as possible (at every stop: St. Petersburg, Archangel, and then at North Pole) (e.g. 22)

Walton’s Desire for the Unknown Geographical Boundaries

The pole: land of beauty or of frost and desolation. (15)“I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the

sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man.”(16)

Desires for glory and the marvelous (21-22), conquering nature

Walton’s Desire out of Reading

Inspired by poets and his reading: 16-17, 21 16 reading histories of voyages 17 wanted to be a poet: These visions faded when I

perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven. failed

21 I am going to "the land of mist and snow," but I shall kill no albatross … I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets.

Walton Frankenstein

First saw the monster p. 24Frankenstein –

wretched, fatigued and suffering. “restored him to animation by rubbing him with brandy…

From this time a new spirit of life animated the decaying frame of the stranger.”

Walton: p. 25 interested in F as a “creature” (wildness and madness + benevolence and melancholy)

P. 27 “I begin to love him as a brother, and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and

compassion.” Sympathy 28; Honoring F’s double existence 29

Walton and Frankenstein

Is Walton a double of Frankenstein? A better version? Or a less heroic one?

Walton: softened and refined by feminine fosterage

20 isolated; wants friends 19

Chaps 1 & 2Chaps 1 & 2

Major Issue (2): Major Issue (2): Friendship and Family Relations (among Parents and Friendship and Family Relations (among Parents and

Children, and Siblings) Children, and Siblings) Orphan & father’s death:

• F’s Father (Alphonse) and Beaufort: Father’s trying to help

• Father and his attachment to Caroline Beaufort pp. 32-33

• Elizabeth 34-36– angelic, a present for Victor F’s childhood in Geneva. 33-34 – heavenly bliss

Frankenstein’s pursuit of knowledge in Chap 2: Elizabeth & Henry Cheval as foil. pp. 36-37, 38

Family Relations: Parents

Harmony and heavenly bliss F. born to parents who are humanitarian and

loyal to their friends nobility of the mind and his childhood education (33)

Father attached to Caroline, who is weak in constitution

Both love F: “My mother's tender caresses and my father's smile of

benevolent pleasure while regarding me are my first recollections. I was their plaything and their idol”

a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control (34)

Family Relations: Women Women: “the loving, sacrificial mother; the innocent,

sensitive child; and the concerned, confused, abandoned lover. ” (source)

Parallel between Caroline (32-33) and Elizabeth (more later) : orphan, weak, beautiful and virtuous.

Elizabeth: an orphan with natural beauty (35) and goodness (pp. 36, 38)

• Hair: brightest living gold (35)• Fairer than pictured cherub--a creature who seemed to

shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois (羚羊 ) of the hills.

• till death she was to be mine only. (36)

Friends Elizabeth vs. F (36)

Differences between Clerval and F: that of Romantic poet (books of chivalry and romance adventurous exploits) and scientist (37, knowledge)

Cheval – moral relations of things; Elizabeth: sympathy 38

Elizabeth Frankenstein

calmer and more concentrated disposition

More intense

Poetry and nature’s appearance

Causes behind them

Frankenstein

Violent temper and passion Desires to learn “the secrets of heaven

and earth,” “the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world” (37).

Foreboding: p. 38 the birth of “that passion” (38)

F’s Pursuit of KnowledgeThe course of his interest as that of fate: “for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my

destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but,swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.” (38)

Natural Philosophy: “the genius that has regulated [his] fate” (38)

(pp. 39) The contrast between occultism and alchemy (represented by Cornelius Agrippa, `Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus) on the one hand, and modern science (represented by mathematics and the study of electricity)

(p. 41) a brief turn to modern science defeated by “Destiny” (“Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.” 42)

Fate or Choice?

Notes: (2) Mer de Glace, a glacier

above Chamonix

Note (2): Ingolstadt, Germany

Where Frankenstein studies;the birthplace of the Illuminati, a secret society that introduced revolutionary ideas believed by many to have helped foment the revolution in France.

References

Reading: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20038/20038-index.html