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Frankenstein (Science/knowledge/nature (A genesis narrative for the…
Frankenstein
Science/knowledge/nature
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One of the first science fiction novels? SciFi is always about the issues of its time, even though it's often futuristic.
Adaptions present the event according to contemporary ideas of science.
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Some suggest that art functions to keep science in check - can really relate that today with things like bionics and animal testing, where should we stop?
M Waldam in Frankenstein, p76: "the ancient teachers [...] promised impossibilities, and performed nothing". [...] These modern masters promise very little [...] [but] have indeed performed miracles"
Contextual
- Transplants: teeth transplants - poor people were paid for their healthy teeth to be put into paying people's mouths, through the 18th century.
- first public autopsy for 170 years in 2002
- Shelley went to Oxford, would have experimented
- Galvanism, 1803 experiment on a human hands and legs moved
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Nature 'of another race of beings', 'terrifically desolate'
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Morality
Victor's whole choice is one of either selfishness, or selflessness and duty to humanity. Either way, he believes that people will suffer - incl the woman he creates. Maybe he knows that his suffering will be confined to his own friends and family?
Walton's description of Frankenstein gives an outside opinion of his utmost good; ambiguous morals to compare with the rest. He's 'godlike in ruin'
'could hardly believe that so great a fortune could have befallen me' that the creature's not there: selfish.
A weird competition of who-is-suffering-the-most throughout, can be seen as selfish from both sides.
Creature as devilish:
- Frankenstein calls him 'daemon' and 'devil'
- 'I bore a hell within me, which nothing could extinguish'
- 'like an evil spirit'
- 'my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph'
- 'a grin was on the face of the monster'
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Surprised sympathy
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'the barbarity of man', everyone afraid and hateful of him.
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His innocence and journey, learning about humanity, make all of our evils even more barbaric: his reasoning is rational.
- reading Ruins of Empire - could man be so 'base and vicious' as well as 'virtuous'?
He will never fit in to humanity
- wishes he had never known human sensation
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Dislike of Victor
Female 'mate' might 'delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness'
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Ambiguity
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Victor's eyes at the end: sometimes 'lighted up with indignation' sometimes expressed 'infinite wretchedness'
Frankenstein, in the end, does not find his actions 'blameable'
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Ambition/madness
Walton, at the beginning: 'nothing serves to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose'
Language of extreme excitement surrounding the discovery means that any discomfort we have is enhanced.
I tortured living animal to animate lifeless clay [...]
'I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation'
'could hardly believe that so great a fortune could have befallen me' that the creature's not there: selfish.
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Derangement could come from reason: if he just made the woman, selfishly, he could perhaps moralise it in his head and provide himself with peace
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Seems like a bit of an epic near the end, the qualities of Frankenstein's perseverance could be deemed heroic.
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Domesticity
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"the amiableness of domestic affection is characteristically a Wollstonecraftian one" McDonald and Scherf
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Maybe, staying in such a close-knit family unit it a negative: everything important relies on that, and it's not dispersed...Shelley fled from family largely, after father disallowed her choice. maybe some more points that I'll think about later
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Many awful things (eg genocide in America) 'if no man had allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections'
Preferring the romanticism of the 'orientaists' over the 'manly and heroical' poetry of greece and rome.
Politics
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Critique of egotism, or hubris
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Apparently she critiques solitary creativity - can show this practically in Percy's role in editing Frankenstein
Alchemy? Newton himself was an alchemist, and Frankenstein's goal is to beat immortality. Could link to Watson too, wants to become superhuman in his endeavours.
From intro to 1818 version by McDonald and Scherf: "Frankenstein engages with Political Justice frequently enough to place it firmly within the radical tradition. [...] Shellley felt that the relentless rationalism that made her father's book exciting ultimately made it forbidding"
The monster is vegetarian. Largely cause he's part animal, but it does speak of morality, esp cause the Shelleys were vegetarian.
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Without 'descent' or 'riches', a man is 'doomed to waste his powers for the profit of the chosen few' 135-6
It's xenophobia that condemns the Turkish merchant, Safie's father, to death.
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Gender
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Women not getting a say: Safie in her marriage to Felix, the female creation in 1. her creation and 2. her bondage to the male
Women still more prone to sensibility - eg Felix, 'my wife and my sister will never recover their horror' 150
Narrative technique
Walton's letters as the frame of the story:
- I think it just serves to put it into perspective, make it more objective
- more real and thus creepy, as Walton seems to exist much more in what we know as the real world.
- serves as a foil to Frankenstein
- Makes more poignant Frankenstein's downfall: we hear of his virtue objectively
How it's dictation
- Could be less accurate, both in Walton's inaccurate notes and Frankenstein's memory
- Feelings more or less genuine? Talking, things could flow more purely than in writing, but could also be more restrained.
William's death comes incredibly unexpectedly. Makes, among other things, for a gripping story.
It's unlikely that the monster would have the eloquence that we read, it's coming from Victor's mouth of life-long education, the creature's only a couple of years, and most of that alone
The creature's story is uninterrupted; none of what Victor feels throughout, all focus on the creature to have the full effect of our sympathy/interaction
Religion
Genesis
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There are various falls: Victor's life, Creature's benevolence/life, the De Lacey family's downfall, Safie's mum's enslaved
Religion
Tension: consolation comes from the fact that characters dead may go to heaven, but the science conflicts with existence of god.
Ideas of morality around whether he should create another: would they get along? Suggestion that we should never try to imitate God because anything but God is imperfect; Adam and Eve had perfect love at first because God made them, you couldn't assume that for Frankenstein's creations.
Is the creature one of the first monsters not to come from the idea of the devil, but of human actions?
Creation
He's forced to be self-sufficient from the offset, and the narrative is similar to the creation of Adam but without the aid of the creator.
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Account of the creature's development is similar to Godwin's of the development of the human infant. pg 122.
The creature prevents Frankenstein from being able to create any other beings, by coming just before he can consummate the marriage.
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Characterisation
We hear a full backstory, all the psychological damage of Victor, his childhood and love
We only know of Elizabeth, Henry etc from his own POV, even in letters: they're how he remembers them.
Victor's selfishness:
- On finding that the creature is no longer in his lodgings, 'I cold hardly believe that so great a fortune could have befallen me'
- On Justine being accused of murder: 'The tortures of the accus
ed did not equal mine'
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Context
Shelley's life
Mother died 11 days she was born, so brought up by father, with first a half-sister, then a stepmother who she didn't get along with and her kids.
Spent a while in Dundee in 1812 and 13(maybe health, maybe for politics, we aren't sure), the landscapes fostered her imagination
Percy Shelley: he was an apprentice to Godwin, a political follower, Had a kid and a wife when they met, he 21 and she 16.
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Parents and politics
Mary Wollstonecraft
- Centrally, an advocate for female education
- Advocated 'free love', which Mary Shelley also supported
- Critical of gender dichotomy
- Used rhetoric and metaphors
- Milton influenced her, an influence in Frankenstein.
- On religion: indebted to Milton and esp Rousseau, for a religion based on inner truth. Originally Anglican.
- Bold, confident
William Godwin
- Journalist, novelist, political philosopher
- Radical: anarchist, wanted reform, thought we should never unquestioningly accept the status quo.
- Very optimistic view of human nature. 'Perfectability' - through knowledge, we'll progress (humans essentially social) and we'll reach a state where co-operation means we won't need a government.
- Relentless rationalism, which Mary engages with, though she's not nearly as radical, sometimes reason goes too far?
- Though he didn't support Mary and Percy's love at all. Hypocritical?
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Her education was very good but quite exceptional for a woman - and her father said that "her perseverance in everything she undertakes almost invincible."
Posthumous scandals about Mary Wollestonecraft and Percy Shelley - she's the inheritor of this, and somewhat responsible for how they're perceived after they're gone
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The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe 1774. The creature reads it, everyone would have known it. Man in love with woman obsesses over her and kills himself - reflection perhaps in the plight of the creature.
Death and lost children
Mary lost 3 children, only one, her last (Percy Florence) survived past infancy. Her life filled with unnecessary death.
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Genre
The Gothic
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Monstrosity, and teratology, the study of it. Monstrosity is generally 'abnormmal' or 'defective'.
Think about popular culture representations - I think the monster's meant to be way more grotesque than the way popular culture sees him.
Money isn't presented as important, but readily available, inconsequential. Could examine what role it really plays - it enables every part of the story, from university to travel to the final hunt.
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