Summary Frankenstein - analysis

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley

- Daughter of 2 radical political firebrands
- Mother – Mary Wollstonecraft
 Author of a vindication of the rights of women
- Father – William Godwin
 Political scientist and novelist
- Brought up in a crucible of radical and political thinking
- Only ever knew her mother through her writing – died a few days after she was born
- Educated in part in Scotland
- Met Percy Shelley when she was 15/16
- Seduced by Percy – eloped with her half-sister to Europe
- Spent much of her life travelling around Europe
 War torn by Napoleonic wars
- Cosmopolitan and highly cultured traveller
- In Switzerland that Frankenstein was conceived
- 1816 Switzerland – escape dreadful weather in England
 Volcanic explosion the year before – year without summer
- Stayed near to lord Byron with john Polidori
- Spent evenings at the villa Diodati on the shores of lake Geneva telling each other ghost stories
- Interest in bad weather characterises Frankenstein and Swiss setting
 Sublime effect to the landscape – landscapes that give a sense to the incomprehensible/infinite
- First landscapes of novel – sea scapes of ice fields of arctic
- Introduces her own experiences of travel into the novel
- Oxford – based on a trip she and Percy made themselves
- Travel narrative that draws on her own experiences
- Supernatural story
- Later claimed it came to her from a dream – sees a student of the unhallowed arts animating a
creature he has constructed from dead parts
- First published on new year’s day in 1818
 Drive and energy that is lacking from the later edition
 Version is godless – characters are living in a world that is forsaken by god
 Atheistical novel
- Version people may read is a later version – 1831
 Extends the opening chapters and gives more detail about the science in the later version
 Changes the relationship between victor and Elizabeth – no longer blood relations
 Introduces element of the divine/god

Science and supernatural

- Generally considered to be a gothic novel
- Shelley – called it a ghost story
- Victor’s researches begin in alchemy and mysticism
 Studies occult thinkers
 Inspired to search for the philosopher’s stone/the elixir of life that promises immortality
- Gets idea to try to create life
- Inspired by Prometheus – subtitle in modern Prometheus
 Another version of myth where his theft of fire is more than fire – life itself
o Creates a clay figure which he then animates with life – brings it to life using the celestial
fire
- Alluding to other version of myth and reminder that Prometheus is a figure for overarching ambition –
scientists playing god

,  Warning figure
- Not through occultism that victor makes his creation – through modern scientific techniques
- Shelley writing in a period of huge fascination with science
- Percy had self-studied anatomy
- Had been research into cosmetic surgery/facial reconstruction into transplantation between human
subjects
 Particularly of teeth
- Cross-species inoculation
 Cowpox as a way of protecting against small pox
- Contemporary questions – draw in elements of debate about animal rights and animal vivisection
 Medical ethics
- What lies behind the novel is what are the responsibilities of a scientist in a modern and progressive
society
- Victor – rational scientist
 Using up to date technology – in particular galvanism (science of electricity)
 Caused huge stir throughout Europe when experiments began to take place on bodies/corpses –
including human corpses
- Experiment that takes place where body of executed criminal is laid out on the dissecting table and
he's connected to the galvanic apparatus
 When its turned on his eyes open – like moment where creature’s eyes open
- Sense that invisible forces can actually govern and create life
- Shelley – fascinated in how these create the world in which we live in
- Walton – on a similar quest to Frankenstein
 Part of the electromagnetic scientific field – looking for magnetic north and a northwest trade
passage
- Sense about power of compass and power that can create life are linked
 Walton and victor have an affinity for each other
- Victor – claims to see ghosts and be able to converse with spirits towards the end of the novel
 Has a series of nervous breakdowns in the course of the book
- Supernatural language but not necessarily supernatural effect
- Ghosts only speak to victor – gothic
 Playing with gothic imagination but trying to move into a more contemporary/scientific and
rational world
 Pushing the barriers of gothic – opens door for later gothic explorations of psychology and
delusion
- What is the relationship between victor and the thing he creates?
 Father/son relationship, scientist/experiment
 Does it unleash a forbidden part of himself which then pursues and tracks him down
 Is it a part of him imagination that is opened up and made manifest and becomes physical and
thereby haunts him?

Structure

- Patchwork of different tales, accounts and autobiographies which are contained within a series of
letters
- Walton – writing letters to his sister
 Silent recipient of these
- Walton – hears the account of victor’s own career
 Like a form of confession
 Sense that Walton is interviewing victor – looking for a friend
- Walton – a failed poet
 Some may be imaginative reconstruction – claims to be writing things down as closely as possible
- Authorised version – victor is editing the account