ANALYSIS OF FRANKENSTEIN

It was published in 1818, when Mary was barely 20 years old. This is a second
edition of the book (1831). It was published anonymously. From the very beginning, it
was a best seller and from then on it has been a influence for theater, cinema…
Frankenstein is a Gothic novel but we also can call it proto science-fiction. It was
the precursor of the first science-fiction book: The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells.
Frankenstein is science fiction because it explores the forbidden novel and the exoteric.
We have a contemporary early 18th century world, so we do not find a medieval
world. There are no castles or cathedrals, but nature plays an important role.

Plot

In a series of letters, Robert Walton, the captain of a ship bound for the North Pole,
recounts to his sister back in England the progress of his dangerous mission. Successful
early on, the mission is soon interrupted by seas full of impassable ice. Trapped, Walton
encounters Victor Frankenstein, who has been traveling by dog-drawn sledge across the
ice and is weakened by the cold. Walton takes him aboard ship, helps nurse him back to
health, and hears the fantastic tale of the monster that Frankenstein created.

Victor first describes his early life in Geneva. At the end of a blissful childhood spent
in the company of Elizabeth Lavenza (his cousin in the 1818 edition, his adopted sister
in the 1831 edition) and friend Henry Clerval, Victor enters the university of Ingolstadt
to study natural philosophy and chemistry. There, he is consumed by the desire to
discover the secret of life and, after several years of research, becomes convinced that
he has found it.

Armed with the knowledge he has long been seeking, Victor spends months
feverishly fashioning a creature out of old body parts. One climactic night, in the
secrecy of his apartment, he brings his creation to life. When he looks at the monstrosity
that he has created, however, the sight horrifies him. After a fitful night of sleep,
interrupted by the specter of the monster looming over him, he runs into the streets,
eventually wandering in remorse. Victor runs into Henry, who has come to study at the
university, and he takes his friend back to his apartment. Though the monster is gone,
Victor falls into a feverish illness.

Sickened by his horrific deed, Victor prepares to return to Geneva, to his family, and
to health. Just before departing Ingolstadt, however, he receives a letter from his father
informing him that his youngest brother, William, has been murdered. Grief-stricken,
Victor hurries home. While passing through the woods where William was strangled, he
catches sight of the monster and becomes convinced that the monster is his brother’s
murderer. Arriving in Geneva, Victor finds that Justine Moritz, a kind, gentle girl who
had been adopted by the Frankenstein household, has been accused. She is tried,
condemned, and executed, despite her assertions of innocence. Victor grows
despondent, guilty with the knowledge that the monster he has created bears
responsibility for the death of two innocent loved ones.

Hoping to ease his grief, Victor takes a vacation to the mountains. While he is alone
one day, crossing an enormous glacier, the monster approaches him. The monster
admits to the murder of William but begs for understanding. Lonely, shunned, and
forlorn, he says that he struck out at William in a desperate attempt to injure Victor, his
cruel creator. The monster begs Victor to create a mate for him, a monster equally
grotesque to serve as his sole companion.

Victor refuses at first, horrified by the prospect of creating a second monster. The
monster is eloquent and persuasive, however, and he eventually convinces Victor. After
returning to Geneva, Victor heads for England, accompanied by Henry, to gather
information for the creation of a female monster. Leaving Henry in Scotland, he
secludes himself on a desolate island in the Orkneys and works reluctantly at repeating
his first success. One night, struck by doubts about the morality of his actions, Victor
glances out the window to see the monster glaring in at him with a frightening grin.
Horrified by the possible consequences of his work, Victor destroys his new creation.
The monster, enraged, vows revenge, swearing that he will be with Victor on Victor’s
wedding night.

Later that night, Victor takes a boat out onto a lake and dumps the remains of the
second creature in the water. The wind picks up and prevents him from returning to the
island. In the morning, he finds himself ashore near an unknown town. Upon landing,
he is arrested and informed that he will be tried for a murder discovered the previous
night. Victor denies any knowledge of the murder, but when shown the body, he is
shocked to behold his friend Henry Clerval, with the mark of the monster’s fingers on
his neck. Victor falls ill, raving and feverish, and is kept in prison until his recovery,
after which he is acquitted of the crime.

Shortly after returning to Geneva with his father, Victor marries Elizabeth. He fears
the monster’s warning and suspects that he will be murdered on his wedding night. To
be cautious, he sends Elizabeth away to wait for him. While he awaits the monster, he
hears Elizabeth scream and realizes that the monster had been hinting at killing his new
bride, not himself. Victor returns home to his father, who dies of grief a short time later.
Victor vows to devote the rest of his life to finding the monster and exacting his
revenge, and he soon departs to begin his quest.

Victor tracks the monster ever northward into the ice. In a dogsled chase, Victor
almost catches up with the monster, but the sea beneath them swells and the ice breaks,
leaving an unbridgeable gap between them. At this point, Walton encounters Victor, and
the narrative catches up to the time of Walton’s fourth letter to his sister.
 Walton tells the remainder of the story in another series of letters to his sister. Victor,
already ill when the two men meet, worsens and dies shortly thereafter. When Walton
returns, several days later, to the room in which the body lies, he is startled to see the
monster weeping over Victor. The monster tells Walton of his immense solitude,
suffering, hatred, and remorse. He asserts that now that his creator has died, he too can
end his suffering. The monster then departs for the northernmost ice to die.

Characteristics

To create the creature, we have the convergence between the natural and
supernatural, between science and uncultured knowledge. By violating the natural the
monster is created. This is the story of the moral dispersed of an individual between he
does not conform on the moral rules of this society. The monster is rejected by Doctor
Frankenstein and is a source of fear and danger for the other. He feels rejected. The
novel shows how we can become evil and dangerous by being excluded by society and
not being loved by others. The moral message behind the novel is very important.
The novel is a critic to the bourgeois family. Maybe Frankenstein creates the
monster because his family is not so perfect. It is also a reflection of the female
rejection and the patriarchal order. We don’t have many female characters. Some critics
consider the monster to be a woman, although we know he is a man.
The novel is about motherhood and being anxious and afraid. Mary Shelley got
pregnant twice when she was 16, and she was anxious to be a mother. When her babies
dies, she thought she was a monster.
The mother of the novel is Victor, but he is not a good mother because he rejects his
creature. Moral responsibility as a mother. Radical importance of human affection for
civilization to improve. The monster has access to culture, but he does not have access
to love. The problem here is that civilization corrupts the creature, and the source for his
fury is that he has no love given by his mother or friends.

Influences

In 1816, the Shelleys went to Geneva for the summer with some friends, but it was
very rainy. So that, they spent time together talking about horror stories. Influences of
Mary Shelley:

-Encouragement of Percy Shelley.

-In a way, she wanted to show she was also worth, like her parents.

-Having spent many years in Scotland.

-She knew many German stories which influenced the work.

 -She knew about philosophy and the experiments of her father.

-She had a nightmare and she dreamt of a ghost.

-Locke and Rousseau

 Rousseau: ‘The good savage’. We are born being good, but it is society
who makes us cruel. Tabula rasa, we are born without any idea.
 Locke: Empirism, we learn through experiences.

The monster is enlightened by learning, but if we do not develop our affect, we

cannot be good and civilized people.
Certain characteristics of the monster come from the romantic hero, such as the
abuse when they were children, they are rejected by society, they are endless wanderers
and rebellious, they break the rules, they want to revenge…

Topic

Mary Shelley does not care about description (for example, she does not describe
how the creature is created) but about the social and moral consequences of these acts.
This is an exploration of liberty, human rights… and how the monster is excluded of
society. Dangerous knowledge.
As soon he gives life to the creature, he realized what he has done and rejects it.
After knowing his brother has been murdered, he comes back to Geneva. He meets the
monster some time, and the monster asks for a female creature, but Victor rejects to do
it. At first, he tries to create a female monster, but he destroys it before giving life to
her.
Her intention is between the science fiction and the Gothic fiction. She wanted to talk
about the mysterious fears of nature, because it has its attractiveness, its dark side. She
also wanted to frighten readers.
The two moments of horror are:

--The German city of Ingolstadt, when Victor creates the monster.

-At the end, when Elizabeth is killed by the monster.

The narrative a little bit complicated, because it is a mixture of different point of

view. The main narrator is Robert Walton, not Victor Frankenstein. He wrote letters
addressed to his sister in England. We have a mission and he is trapped in the ice. While
he is trapped in the ice, he met Victor, who is persecuting the monster. Robert Walton
acts as a mediator between the narrator and the readers. These letters want to give
credibility to the history. ‘Layered structure’, the metaphor of the Russian doll, because
there are different points of view in the story, told by a mediator through letters. We see
also a change of perspectives, and we can feel empathy for all of them.
Hesitation as the basis of the Gothic novel. The main hesitation if if what you read is
fantasy or actually the truth. At the end, you don’t know if the monster exists, or if you
have to trust the supernatural or the natural. There is a second hesitation, because Robert
Walter sees the monster. The only reliable character sees the monster, but we don’t
know if it is an illusion or a real thing.

Parallelism between the myth of Prometheus and Paradise Lost

The modern Prometheus is Doctor Frankenstein, because he is punished for having

transgressed the natural order. He thinks himself as a God. Importance of mythical
experiments. In the novel, Victor Frankenstein is God.
In Paradise Lost, Adam and Satan are both monsters. The creature is firstly Adam,
but the roles change. The monster is also the fallen angel rejected by God and can be
equal or superior to God with his powers.
As in Paradise Lost, the creature takes revenge against its maker.
In Frankenstein, Eve is not represented, because at the end the creature has not a
partner. According to some critics, the monster is a metaphor of the female perspective.

Overreachers Characters who want to go beyond knowledge. Faust, Dr. Jekyll,

Victor Frankenstein... Faust is famous thank to Goethe, but it really comes from
Marlowe. Marlowe is closer, culturally speaking, to Mary Shelley although Goethe is
closer in time. Doctor Frankenstein is an overreacher because he wants to be superior
to life according to religion, but he also wants to be the mother, since women create life.
He creates a conflict between science and the supernatural.
Shelley has a clear moral message: not to go beyond. She explains the consequences
of the experiments in order to spread this message. Revenge leads to self-destruction

Nature

The idea of sublime nature, correspond to the idea of Edmund Burke. Experience
with landscape, vastness, climax of beauty. It has different effects on the characters:

-In Victor, nature makes him forget about what had happened to him.

-It is the place when Victor and his creature meet.

-The creature feels save in nature and it is the place of self-education of the monster.

Female monster and motherhood

Feminine critics say that female characters in Frankenstein are secondary, what
represents the oppression women were subdued to in the 19th century society.
 Mary Shelley was probably angry because his father has rejected him. We can see
this in the novel through the bad relation between the monster and the creator. When
you are a maker, you have to protect your son, but Victor fails because he does not
protect his creature. So that, the creature feelings turn into hate.
Mary’s biography is vital to completely understand Frankenstein: we have a teenage
mother, but she is pregnant under abnormal circumstances. She hasn’t a female figure
next to her, and she feels embarrassed because she was not married to Percy Shelley, so
she will condemn her children to live a life of embarrassment. She has the feeling that
she will give birth to a monster. When she finally give birth to the child, he dies, so that
Mary Shelley thinks that she was a monster and feels guilty.
The uncanny experience is that because of her, her mother died, and she feels bad
about it. The repress comes back when she gives birth herself. She will feel responsible
for the death of her mother and for the death of her children. They had four children, but
three of them died (two of them before she wrote Frankenstein)
For Mary Shelley, John Milton was the master of the writing. Nevertheless, when
Milton wrote Paradise Lost he has the help of his daughters. Women in the 19 th century
wanted to write, but they did not know how to express their experiences and their
feelings. They didn’t know if continue the tendency of the time or break with it.