Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?
Paradise Lost, X, 743-45
"What genre of literature best describes the Frankenstein Tale?" you may ask quite justifiably.
GOTHIC tales of the macabre, fantastic, and supernatural, usually set amid haunted castles, graveyards, ruins and wild picturesque landscapes became the trend in the mid-seventeen-hundreds. They reached the height of their considerable fashion in the 1790's and the early years of the 19th century (based on the Oxford Companion to English Literature, p. 405-06).
Undoubtedly, there are Gothic elements to Mary Shelley's novel. She was familiar with the classics of Gothicism: Mrs. Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), M.G. Lewis's The Monk (1796) and William Beckford'sVathek (1786). In common with these Gothic tales, Frankenstein made use of the correspondence between theme, character and setting. One of the chief elements in the novel is the use of atmosphere to create mood. The icy mists of the Arctic and the bleak windswept Alpine glacial fields are linked to the spiritual and social isolation of the Creature and its Creator. The filmography of Frankenstein has indelibly engraved the image of the Monster's silhouette climbing the crags of Mount Blanc amid outgrowths of tree stumps, illumined by the icy blue flash of lightning.
Not unlike Victor Frankenstein, Gothic heroes are trapped in gloom unable to appreciate the light of day. They are the descendants of Cain, Satan, and Prometheus - heroic in their rebellion yet pathettic in their destiny. Their pain and suffering exalt them above the collective and enshrine them in their excruciating settings. In order to depict the shadowside of their heroes, Gothicists used ghostly visitations, especially a device known as a döppleganger, a mirror image of the self. Creature and Creator in Frankenstein are in reality one self reflecting different sides of human personality. Victor Frankenstein says: "I consider the being I cast among mankind ... nearly in the light of my own vampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy all that was dear to me."
In Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus the haunted gothic castles and medieval trappings are missing, replaced by experimental science and rationality. Frankenstein transcended Gothicism by combining science with the supernatural, or at least the supranatural. Shelley scholar Maurice Hindle draws attention to the differentiation between what Shelley was doing in distinction to her Gothic predecessors. The Gothic goal was to rebelliously assail the secrets of Heaven, whereas, in Shelley, Nature is being penetrated in a wanton act of assumption and pride.
Science Fiction: the current name for a class of prose narrative which assumes an imaginary technological or scientific advance, or depends on an imaginary and spectacular change in the human environment (Oxford Companion to English Literature, p. 876).
Mary Shelley read and relied on the most recent findings and theories of science to create her tale. She replaced the mythological theme of "heavenly fire" with the latest experiments of electricity. Benjamin Franklin, whose name has been suggested for the "Frank" in Frankenstein, may have been the modern Prometheus from whom Shelley drew inspiration. The concepts of electricity and warmth were theorized by Humphrey Davy whose experiments emphasized the electrical and chemical in a process know as galvanization which was said to be the key to the animation of life. The spark of life was quasi-electrical in nature.
Mary became familiar with galvanization both from the summer conversations at Villa Diodori with Byron and from her husband Percy's interest in this theme while at Oxford. A friend of his, Jefferson Hogg, describes Percy Shelley's early experiments with galvanism which solidly makes the link between Mary's husband and Victor Frankenstein:
Percy Shelley proceeded with much eagerness and enthusiasm, to show me the various instruments, especially the electrical apparatus; turning round the handle very rapidly, so that the fierce, crackling sparks flew forth; and presently standing on the stool with glass feet, he begged me to work the machine until he was filled with fluid (electricity), so that his long, wild locks bristled and stood on end... (Maurice Hindle, "Introduction", Frankenstein, Penguin Edition, p.xx).
Whatever else Percy was attempting to do, he provided not only a prototype for Mary's Victor but perhaps even the caricature of the mad scientist for later film versions.
Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus meets the criteria of at least proto-typical science fiction and has inspired other literary works which typify the genre more closely such as H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau and The Invisible Man. More popularly, Shelley's novel has inspired robotics sci-fi and even films such as "The Terminator."
Mary Shelley's classic defies strict categorization as either Gothic or Science Fiction. While containing elements of both, it moves beyond these genres and may be viewed as an argument against the Romanticism of her idealistic husband Percy and Lord Byron. Regardless of label, it is a cautionary tale very much rooted in the Nineteenth Century but thoroughly applicable to our approaching Twenty first Century.
The THEME
Mary Shelley's work is symbolic. SYMBOLS are meant to be explored with ever increasing depth rather than simply defined. What you envision as the central theme of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus will likely be governed by the interpretive lens you view the novel with rather than some unquestionable meaning revealed by the text itself. Instead of advocating any one theme, I would suggest that you explore your critical and imaginative abilities so that you can see the text in a multitude of ways. In this manner you will be attempting to see the most it can mean rather than trying to condense the novel into a single summary. Below I suggest three avenues into the text that locate the central thrust of it in different ways.
Moral Education
Frankenstein can be seen as a prophetic statement against the pride that accompanies technological or scientific knowledge. In the novel the power of science is linked to metaphysical goals and aspirations by Professor Waldman of Ingolstadt University. He declared that the scientific method had superseded theology or philosophy in yielding the truly miraculous. Science had in effect replaced spirituality as the means of the miraculous.
The ancient teachers of this science, said he, promised impossibilities, and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little. They know that metals cannot be transmuted, and that the elixir of life is a chimera. But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature, and show how she works in her hiding places. They ascend into the heavens: they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.
Victor Frankenstein becomes intoxicated with the possibilies of modern science. He is so inflated and consumed with the knowledge of how to animate a human creature that he doesn't consider the morality or even the aesthetics. He is so absorbed in the minutia of his experiments that he creates each section of the Creature with care without considering the total effect.
Although I possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame for the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles and veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say about eight feet in height, and proportionately large.
How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!- Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled complexion and straight black lips.
I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.
Deeply disappointed in the results of his experiment, Victor's elation turned to sheer terror when he realized what he had unleashed. The scientist becomes the hunted and the haunted as a result of overstepping his boundaries.
Not unlike the Monster, our modern atomic bomb was stitched together bit by bit with a great deal of care taken to ensure scientific accuracy but with little concern for its use. The Modern Prometheus has unleashed a fire that is capable of vicious destruction on an entirely different and impersonal level. Oppenheimer's monster has overshadowed Frankenstein's. The modern adage, "If if can be done, it will be done," contains the seed of our haunting, be the monster atomic, chemical, mechanical or genetic.
There are many advantages to viewing Frankenstein as a cautionary tale directed at science but this interpretation has limitations as well. It doesn't do Shelley's novel justice to see Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus as anti-scientific or as placing the blame on Victor's scientific knowledge. The problem is not with science but rather with the character of those who wield it.
More on Moral Education
Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus can be approached as a treatise on moral development and educational theory. Why and how do we create monsters that destroy innocent people? Mary Shelley was making suggestions about how human nature unfolds in different contexts. Women, men and monsters are educated through a similar process in the novel. Lee E. Heller in Frankenstein and the Cultural Uses of Gothic specifically defines these groupings as sentimental young women, bourgeois boy children and self-taught nameless classless men. In describing how these individuals form their attitudes and character, Mary Shelley interacted with the philosophy of Rousseau and Locke as translated by her father. Rousseau's educational perspective involved the ideal of an untarnished, pristine, primitive who developed virtue naturally by following innate instincts. Education would either faciliate the natural or distort it through social conditioning. Locke believed that the human mind came into existence "tabula rasa", that is, as a white slate upon which sensory experience wrote the script of life. Godwin wrote:
"..when a child is born, one of the earliest purposes of his instructor, ought to be to awaken his mind, to breathe a soul into the, as yet, unformed mass... we are too confident in our own skill, and imagine our science to be greater than it is... The world instead of being, as the vanity of some men has taught them to assert, a labyrinth of which they hold the clue, is in reality full of enigmas which no penetration of man has hitherto been able to solve" (Heller, Frankenstein and the Cultural Uses of Gothic, p. 337-38).
The young women in the novel were rescued by Catherine Beaufort Frankenstein from lower class backgrounds. Elizabeth, rescued from the Italian peasantry, was educated toward domestic virtues that would enable her to be a fitting daughter, sister and wife. The same process of education is evident in Justine Moritz who was saved from the lower class as well.Women educated in such a manner would not be encouraged to be initiators but were objects acted upon by men. Justine was wrongfully accused of murder and executed by a mob. Elizabeth was the victim of the Monster, or, more accurately, was a victim of Victor's miseducation. From a developmental viewpoint they were instructed toward passivity and set up for victimization. Godwin was right when he suggested that circumstances beyond the educator's control form character and destiny. Justine though educated for refinement was still suspected of murder likely because of her lower class origins.
Both Walton and Victor Frankenstein were products of idealistic bourgois education. Their explicit goal was not to make money but to make a contribution to civilization: Walton in the discovery of the Northwest Passage and Victor in relation to life sciences. Beneath this apparent service orientation was a propensity to grandiosity. Walton comments:
Do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! ... you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.
Victor Frankenstein expressed similar sentiments:
"Wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!
"No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs. Pursuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption."
The education of these men as well as Victor's friend, Clerval, involved cultural progress and mastery over the material world. In each case books played a significant part of their education or miseducation. Walton bemoans the fact that he was self educated and was reared on tales of the sea found in his uncle's library. Victor took his education into his own hands and read alchemical texts that put fantastic notions in his head. It is the permissiveness and flexibility of a liberal Rouseauian education that allowed for such freedom.
"My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence. We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed."
Again William Godwin's belief in chance encounters as an uncontrollable aspect of the educative process is seen in Victor's discovery of the alchemists and his reaction to his father's comments.
A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind; and, bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book, and said, "Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash."
If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded, and that a modern system of science had been introduced, which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical; under such circumstances, I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside, and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardor to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin.
The potent combination of the magical idealism of the alchemists who strove for mastery of the material world and modern science is what is implied to have caused Victor's ruin. While earlier praising his liberal education, Victor seems here to blame his father for not educating him aright. Mary Shelley revisits the alchemical influence when Professor Krempe denigrates alchemy as nonsense, in contrast to Waldman who synthesizes modern and ancient science, thus offering Victor a better field for the same goals of mastery.
Clerval, Victor's friend, is a more literary type. He also has the aspiration of commercial exploration in the conquest of India. He was inspired, to his practical father's dismay, by Romantic tales of chivalry.
All three of these men in the novel appreciate the liberal education which formed them into heroic idealists yet they all attribute their personal situations to rebellion against the educational interventions of their fathers. Walton chose the sea over his father's advice. Victor dabbled in occult science above his father's advice. Heller states the complexity of understanding the educational process as spelled out by Mary Shelley:
"We need to consider the difficulty of controlling experiences, including reading that affect and shape the character, and the extent toward which individuals are themselves responsible for their own actions" (Heller, Frankenstein and the Cultural Uses of Gothic, p. 334).
Mastering the educational process can be as full of pride as mastering the technology of life since it leaves no room for concepts such as fate, destiny, or even providence. These qualities are spiritual in nature and appear not to have been part of the Enlightenment education of any of Shelley's characters. Frankenstein, in his confession to Walton, admits the mystery of the formation of our soul.
"Thus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin. When I look back, it seems to me as if this almost miraculous change of inclination and will was the immediate suggestion of the guardian angel of my life - the last effort made by the spirit of preservation to avert the storm that was even then hanging in the stars, and ready to envelope me. Her victory was announced by an unusual tranquility and gladness of soul, which followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting studies. It was thus that I was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution, happiness with their disregard. It was a strong effort of the spirit of good; but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction."
What of the Monster's education and destiny? He represents Lee Heller's third class of "self-taught, nameless, classless men." In describing his life experiences to his Creator, Victor Frankenstein, the Monster uses the telling phase that he was "giving account of the progress of my intellect." Here again Shelley emphasizes progress, development and education as central themes in her novel.
The Monster learns, Lockean style, through differentiation of the senses:
"A strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard, and smelt, at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I learned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. By degrees, I remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I was obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me, and troubled me; but hardly had I felt this, when, by opening my eyes, as I now suppose, the light poured in upon me again. I walked, and, I believe, descended; but I presently found a great alteration in my sensations."
There is no better example of Rousseauian educational theory than the sensitive Monster who learns through direct observation, from within a hut, of a loving family called the DeLacey's. His education is quite extensive - in some ways superior to Victor's and Walton's. He learned of history through Volney's Ruins of Empires. He overheard the lives of great humans in readings of Plutarch's Lives, and his theology was learned from Milton's classic, Paradise Lost.
The advantage of being relatively untouched by what Rousseau would consider corrupting social influence did nothing to prevent the Creature from the deep sense of alienation and loneliness to which he attributes his malice. He was rootless, homeless, friendless and in the last resort parentless. Education could not overcome his destiny. Just as Victor's father neglected his education through a disinterested response to a legitimate question, so the Monster would blame Victor for indifferently abandoning him to experiences of injustice. The distance between the ideals his education presupposed and the social reality of life was deep. He tried to act in loving ways toward mankind but in the end was shot at and became an object of ridicule and revulsion. Mary Shelley questioned both the naiveté of Enlightenment educational theories and the abstract idealism of the Romantics through showing examples of good and bad teachers, as well as by revealing the possibility of the effects of the unexpected in the process of character development.
Parent-Child Dynamics
One of the most applicable interpretations of Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus approaches the novel from a relational dynamics point of view. While there are similarities to the moral educative point of view this relational approach touches on the deeper psychological roots of monster-making.
The dynamics of doom are set up by the abhorance of the parent for the child. Victor Frankenstein's idealism prepared him for a idyllic relationship. Instead of the expected adulation by his offspring, he was immediately confronted with the creature's loathsomeness and his own responsibility.
I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, continued a long time traversing my bed chamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep.
Victor's disillusionment with parenthood, more particularly mothering, led to post-partum depression and neglect. Victor himself had no one at his side encouraging him or advising him of what to do with what he had created. His entire venture was done in secret, in self-imposed isolation. Through his obsession he isolated himself from any form of community. While bringing his child into the world he was himself alienated from society. Parenting had become for him an issue of possession, ownership and self aggrandizement. One could say that Victor lived for and through his child or what that child promised until that child became a separate being from him. Victor in essence experienced the burden of loneliness in parenting and didn't have the character to cope with it.
One wonders if Mary Shelley gleaned this theme from her own experience. She had a mother who disappeared immediately upon birth and a father who was left to carry out the responsibility of child-rearing on his own. One of his self expressed reasons for a quick remarriage was the need to have someone other than himself care for his children. In the aftermath of her mother dying, did Mary think, as many children do, that she was the cause of her death? Did Mary feel the same as her sister Fanny, that her existence was a life-extracting burden on those who loved her? Fanny's last words included this self evaluation: "...whose life has only been a series of pain to those persons who have hurt their health in endeavoring to promote her welfare." Although it is by no means certain that this is the motive for Mary highlighting the experience of loneliness, one has to consider it entirely possible.
If we can empathize with the pain of the parent we must be even more touched by the plight of the child, a creature brought into the world and immediately abandoned, who because of his hideousness could not expect a surrogate. Telling the tale of his progress to Frankenstein, the Creature recounts his first encounter with civilization.
I had hardly placed my foot within the door, before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country, and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel, quite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces I had beheld in the village.
This ugly child is not without his endearing qualities. He, like all living beings, stands in awe and reverence toward the universe. As the moon moves through the sky he gazes in wonder. This monster appreciates the love of the DeLacey family and is moved by higher culture as he develops. Sadly he is even rejected by the family that inadvertently modeled what love was. The beauty of their love only mocked his lonely existence and increased his pain.
But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans.
Upon reading the journal of his creator, the Monster finally attributes blame to Victor Frankenstein:
I sickened as I read. "Hateful day when I received life!" I exclaimed in agony. "Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred."
The abandoned Creature finally set the terms of a truce with his Creator in an effort to establish justice. He will either be recompensed for his suffering existence through the creation of a mate or he will wreck his wrath on his Creator.
Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends.
Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin, was convinced that the isolated individual would become vicious. His belief was obviously shared by Mary his daughter. Mary, however, had something to add to Godwin's proposition and that was that viciousness is the product of parental neglect. An unloved Creation is driven to wreck revenge on an indifferent Creator. Herein is the warning: love what you create or be utterly destroyed by it.
Copyright and Borrowed from Arthur P. Patterson for
Educational purposes on this meister_z Learning Center site.
[Copyright 1996 by Arthur Paul Patterson, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada]
But to return to dearer considerations. Shall I meet you again, after having traversed immense seas, and returned by the most southern cape of Africa or America? I dare not expect such success, yet I cannot bear to look on the reverse of the picture. Continue for the present to write to me by every opportunity: I may receive your letters on some occasions when I need them most to support my spirits. I love you very tenderly. Remember me with affection, should you never hear from me again.
Your affectionate brother,
Robert Walton