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M A (English) Sem-III Class

Paper-X (A) : Forms of Popular Literature

Text: Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

Lecture Nine
28.12.20
Name of Content Creator: S M Mirza
Assistant Professor
Department of English and Modern European Languages
University of Lucknow
Lucknow

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M A (English) Sem-III Class

S M Mirza
Lecture Nine
28.12.20
2 of 2
Paper-X(A) : Forms of Popular Literature
Unit –I: Science Fiction

Text: Mary Shelley : Frankenstein

Characters
Victor Frankenstein
The oldest son in the Frankenstein family, the eventual husband of Elizabeth Lavenza, and the
novel's protagonist and narrator of most of the story.

The Monster
The hideous-looking creature that Victor Frankenstein creates (though the name "Frankenstein"
has become associated with the monster, the monster is, in fact, nameless). The monster is
originally kind and sensitive and wants nothing.

Robert Walton
An explorer who rescues Victor from the ice, hears his harrowing story, and sets it down on
paper in letters to his sister, Margaret Saville. Walton's quest for knowledge in the North Pole
parallels Frankensrein’s.

Elizabeth Lavenza
Victor's sister by adoption, and later his wife. Elizabeth is a stunningly beautiful and remarkably
pure girl whom Victor's mother adopts.
De Lacey
A blind old man who lives in exile with his children Felix and Agatha in a cottage and a forest.
As a blind man, De Lacey can't perceive the monster's wretched appearance.
Minor Characters
Henry Clerval
Victor's dear friend from childhood.
Alphonse Frankenstein
Victor's father
Justine Moritz
A young woman who the Frankensteins adopt at the age of 12. She is convicted of the murder of
William Frankenstein on circumstantial evidence and executed. Though all the Frankensteins
believe she is innocent, only Victor knows that the monster is the true murderer.
William Frankenstein
Victor's youngest brother, beloved by everyone. The monster strangles him in a forest near
Geneva.
Ernest Frankenstein
Victor's younger brother by six years. He is the only Frankenstein to survive the novel.
Caroline Beaufort
Beaufort's daughter, Victor's mother, and Alphonse Frankenstein's wife. Caroline is an example
of idealized womanhood: smart, kind, generous, and resourceful. Caroline dies of scarlet fever
when Victor is seventeen.
Symbols
Light
Light symbolizes enlightenment in Frankenstein. Walton expects to find the secrets
of the universe unveiled in the North Pole, which he describes as "a country of
eternal light."
Fire
The complete title of Shelley's novel is Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus.
Prometheus was the titan who, in Greek mythology, gave the knowledge of fire to
humanity and then suffered severe punishment at the hand of Zeus.

Frankenstein as a Gothic Novel

The first Gothic horror novel was The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, published in 1754.
Perhaps the last type of novel in this mode was Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, published in
1847. In between 1754 and 1847, several other novels appeared using the Gothic horror story as
a central story telling device, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1794) by Ann
Radcliffe, The Monk (1796) by Matthew G. Lewis, and Melmouth the Wanderer (1820) by
Charles Maturin.
Gothic novels focus on the mysterious and supernatural. In Frankenstein, Shelley uses rather
mysterious circumstances to have Victor Frankenstein create the monster: the cloudy
circumstances under which Victor gathers body parts for his experiments and the use of little
known modern technologies for unnatural purposes. Shelley employs the supernatural elements
of raising the dead and macabre research into unexplored fields of science unknown by most
readers. She also causes us to question our views on Victor's use of the dead for scientific
experimentation. Upon hearing the story for the first time, Lord Byron is said to have run
screaming from the room, so the desired effect was achieved by Mary Shelley.

Gothic novels also take place in gloomy places like old buildings (particularly castles or rooms
with secret passageways), dungeons, or towers that serve as a backdrop for the mysterious
circumstances. A familiar type of Gothic story is, of course, the ghost story. Also, far away
places that seem mysterious to the readers function as part of the Gothic novel's setting.
Frankenstein is set in continental Europe, specifically Switzerland and Germany, where many of
Shelley's readers had not been. Further, the incorporation of the chase scenes through the Arctic
regions takes us even further from England into regions unexplored by most readers. Likewise,
Dracula is set in Transylvania, a region in Romania near the Hungarian border. Victor's
laboratory is the perfect place to create a new type of human being. Laboratories and scientific
experiments were not known to the average reader, thus this was an added element of mystery
and gloom.

Just the thought of raising the dead is gruesome enough. Shelley takes full advantage of this
literary device to enhance the strange feelings that Frankenstein generates in its readers. The
thought of raising the dead would have made the average reader wince in disbelief and terror.
Imagining Victor wandering the streets of Ingolstadt or the Orkney Islands after dark on a search
for body parts adds to the sense of revulsion purposefully designed to evoke from the reader a
feeling of dread for the characters involved in the story.

In the Gothic novel, the characters seem to bridge the mortal world and the supernatural world.
Dracula lives as both a normal person and as the undead, moving easily between both worlds to
accomplish his aims. Likewise, the Frankenstein monster seems to have some sort of
communication between himself and his creator, because the monster appears wherever Victor
goes. The monster also moves with amazing superhuman speed with Victor matching him in the
chase towards the North Pole. Thus, Mary Shelley combines several ingredients to create a
memorable novel in the Gothic tradition.

Themes
Dangerous Knowledge

The pursuit of knowledge is at the heart of Frankenstein, as Victor attempts to surge beyond
accepted human limits and access the secret of life. Likewise, Robert Walton attempts to surpass
previous human explorations by endeavoring to reach the North Pole. This ruthless pursuit of
knowledge, of the light (see “Light and Fire”), proves dangerous, as Victor’s act of creation
eventually results in the destruction of everyone dear to him, and Walton finds himself perilously
trapped between sheets of ice. Whereas Victor’s obsessive hatred of the monster drives him to
his death, Walton ultimately pulls back from his treacherous mission, having learned from
Victor’s example how destructive the thirst for knowledge can be.

Sublime Nature

The sublime natural world, embraced by Romanticism (late eighteenth century to mid-nineteenth
century) as a source of unrestrained emotional experience for the individual, initially offers
characters the possibility of spiritual renewal. Mired in depression and remorse after the deaths
of William and Justine, for which he feels responsible, Victor heads to the mountains to lift his
spirits. Likewise, after a hellish winter of cold and abandonment, the monster feels his heart
lighten as spring arrives. The influence of nature on mood is evident throughout the novel, but
for Victor, the natural world’s power to console him wanes when he realizes that the monster
will haunt him no matter where he goes. By the end, as Victor chases the monster obsessively,
nature, in the form of the Arctic desert, functions simply as the symbolic backdrop for his primal
struggle against the monster.

Monstrosity

Obviously, this theme pervades the entire novel, as the monster lies at the center of the action.
Eight feet tall and hideously ugly, the monster is rejected by society. However, his monstrosity
results not only from his grotesque appearance but also from the unnatural manner of his
creation, which involves the secretive animation of a mix of stolen body parts and strange
chemicals. He is a product not of collaborative scientific effort but of dark, supernatural
workings.

Secrecy

Victor conceives of science as a mystery to be probed; its secrets, once discovered, must be
jealously guarded. He considers M. Krempe, the natural philosopher he meets at Ingolstadt, a
model scientist: “an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science.” Victor’s
entire obsession with creating life is shrouded in secrecy, and his obsession with destroying the
monster remains equally secret until Walton hears his tale.

Whereas Victor continues in his secrecy out of shame and guilt, the monster is forced into
seclusion by his grotesque appearance.

Texts

Frankenstein is overflowing with texts: letters, notes, journals, inscriptions, and books fill the
novel, sometimes nestled inside each other, other times simply alluded to or quoted. Walton’s
letters envelop the entire tale; Victor’s story fits inside Walton’s letters; the monster’s story fits
inside Victor’s; and the love story of Felix and Safie and references to Paradise Lost fit inside
the monster’s story. This profusion of texts is an important aspect of the narrative structure, as
the various writings serve as concrete manifestations of characters’ attitudes and emotions.
 Family

Frankenstein presents family relationships as central to human life. Most of the families that
appear in the novel—the Frankensteins and the DeLaceys—are perfect to the point of
idealization. Meanwhile, most of the book’s horror and suffering is caused by characters losing
their connection to their families, or not having a family in the first place. Frankenstein blames
his isolation from his family for his disastrous decision to create the Monster: “If the study to
which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections[…]then that study is
certainly unlawful.” The Monster, too, blames his suffering on the fact that he has no family: “I
was dependent on none and related to none.” When the Monster is trying to persuade
Frankenstein to create a companion for him, he argues that his lack of family relationships is
what has caused him to become a murderer. On the other hand, the Monster does have a family,
in that Frankenstein is his father. Before creating the Monster, Frankenstein imagines that “No
father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve” the Monster’s.
Instead, the Monster and Frankenstein spend the novel trying to destroy each other.

Alienation

Frankenstein suggests that social alienation is both the primary cause of evil and the punishment
for it. The Monster explicitly says that his alienation from mankind has caused him to become a
murderer: “My protectors had departed, and had broken the only link that held me to the world.
For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom.” His murders, however,
only increase his alienation. For Frankenstein, too, alienation causes him to make bad decisions
and is also the punishment for those bad decisions. When Frankenstein creates the Monster he is
working alone, in a “solitary chamber, or rather cell.” Being “solitary” has caused his ambition to
grow dangerously, but this isolation is already its own punishment: his laboratory feels like a
“cell.” Once he has created the Monster, Frankenstein becomes even more alienated from the
people around him because he can’t tell anyone about his creation. Both Frankenstein and the
Monster compare themselves to the character of Satan in Paradise Lost: alienation from God is
both Satan’s crime and his punishment.

Ambition

Frankenstein suggests that ambition is dangerous because it has the potential to become evil.
Frankenstein’s ambition motivates him to create the Monster, and he compares his own ambition
to a list of other destructive ambitions: “If no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere
with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have
spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of
Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.” The fact that Frankenstein compares his own work to
the destruction of entire civilizations underscores just how huge his ambition is. His suggestion
that his ambition makes him like Satan, “the archangel who aspired to omnipotence,” also points
to the grandiosity of Frankenstein’s ideas. Frankenstein imagines himself as nothing less than the
devil incarnate. However, the novel also suggests that ambition alone is not enough to cause evil
and suffering. Walton is introduced as a character every bit as ambitious as Frankenstein, but
Walton chooses to abandon his ambition out of duty to his crew. Frankenstein’s real mistake
(and crime) is that he places his ambition above his responsibilities to other people.
 Setting
Much of Frankenstein’s story unfolds in Switzerland, the country in central Europe where Mary
Shelley was staying when she began writing the novel. However, the novel ranges widely within
Europe and across the globe. Frankenstein visits Germany, France, England and Scotland.
Walton travels through Russia. Elizabeth is Italian and the DeLaceys are a French family living
in Germany. Safie is Turkish. Clerval plans to move to India, and the Monster proposes
relocating to South America. The novel’s frame story, narrated by Walton, is set in the Arctic
Ocean, where Walton is trying to find a new route around the world. By encompassing the whole
globe in this way, Frankenstein presents itself as a universal story. The global reach of the
setting also suggests one way in which Frankenstein can be read allegorically. Shelley’s era saw
a rapid expansion of European power across the globe, driven by the same advances in science
that enable Frankenstein to create the Monster.

Frankenstein’s Swiss and Arctic settings support the novel’s argument that the natural world
should be respected for its dangers as well as its beauty. The Swiss Alps are initially a place of
wonderful beauty: as Frankenstein describes, “I suddenly left my home, and, bending my steps
towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget
myself” However, as Frankenstein climbs, the “eternity” of the Alps becomes inhospitable and
foreboding, a “sea of ice” and “bare perpendicular rock.” This physical journey from his
comfortable home to the barren mountains reflects Frankenstein’s intellectual journey. He leaves
the safety of home to seek out wonderful new knowledge, but he goes further than human beings
should go, and he ends up somewhere dangerous when he creates the Monster. The barren
landscapes of the high Alps and the Arctic help to make one of Frankenstein’s central arguments:
not everything in nature is safe for humans to discover or experience.

Style
The overall style of Frankenstein is elevated and formal. The characters use complex diction
(word choice) to capture the intensity of their emotional experiences. For example, when Walton
writes to his sister at the start of the novel, he explains his loneliness by lamenting that “I have
no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as a capacious mind,
whose tastes are like my own.” Walton gives an idealized description of his vision of the perfect
friend, and focuses on describing the intellect and cultural sophistication he imagines such an
individual would possess. Similarly, when Victor describes learning what contemporary
scientists were capable of achieving, he explains that “I felt as if my soul were grappling with a
palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my
being.” He uses the metaphor of a musical instrument being played to describe the revelation and
inspiration he experienced at this moment.

Both Walton and Victor are well-educated and highly ambitious men committed to achieving
prestige in their chosen fields. The sophisticated language they use reflects the grandeur of their
ambitions to do things like explore uncharted lands and develop a system for creating life.
Interestingly, the monster speaks in a similar style, despite having been raised in isolation with
practically no human contact. When the monster first speaks with Victor during their meeting on
the mountaintop, he threatens to “glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of
your remaining friends.” Despite his monstrous appearance and the grotesque actions he is
threatening to commit, the monster has a highly sophisticated command of language and speaks
in the same elevated and grandiose style as Victor does. This stylistic choice confirms the
implicit comparison between Victor and the monster that reoccurs throughout the novel, and
supports the inherent humanity of the monster. Although Victor desperately wants to believe that
he has nothing in common with his creation, the shared style of their speech suggests otherwise.

Remember this…
• Though Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic
movement, Brian Aldiss has argued that it should be considered the first true science
fiction story. In contrast to previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of
later science fiction, Aldiss states that the central character "makes a deliberate decision"
and "turns to modern experiments in the laboratory" to achieve fantastic results.[7] The
novel has had a considerable influence in literature and popular culture and spawned a
complete genre of horror stories, films and plays.
• Since the publication of the novel, the name "Frankenstein" has often been used to refer to the
monster itself.