Frankenstein
First published 1818
The story Frankenstien was well ahead of its time, named the first science - fiction book ever written, and written by a female made it almost revolutionary.
Published almost 200 years ago it still stands as a literary masterpiece but how well do you know the story line? How much do you know of its origins?
Frankenstein
The Plot
Robert Walton, wrote letters to his sister, recounting his dangerous journey to the North Pole by sea. The journey is interrupted by treacherous ice, which traps the ship. Walton meets Victor Frankenstein, who has become frail by the cold, and needs Walton’s help. So Walton brings him aboard his ship to keep Frankenstein warm, where during this period, Frankenstein tells the story of a monster he has created.
Frankenstein’s story begins with a retale of his early life, where he studied natural philosophy and chemistry. During this period, he becomes fascinated with the desire to discover the secret of life, and after a few years, believe he has found the answer.
He begins to recover old body parts and creating a creature out of it. One stormy night, he finally brings his creation to life. What started as an obsession, soon filled him with fright. Frankenstein leaves the house, and once he returns with his friend Henry, the monster had gone. From the fright and remorse, he falls ill.
Frankenstein returns to his family home in Geneva, when he receives a letter that his brother William, had been murdered. He becomes convinced that his brother’s murderer, was the monster that he had created. However an innocent, gentle girl called Justine Moritz, had been accused for the murder. She is tried and executed. Frankenstein grief stricken, falls into a depressive state.
Frankenstein comes in contact with the monster once more. The creature admits to the murder, and pleads for forgiveness. The monsters’ reasoning for the murder was an attempt to inflict pain to his cruel creator, who had made the monster lonely. The monsters ask for Frankenstein to create a mate, to suppress this loneliness.
First, Frankenstein refuses, but is later convinced, and begins to create a second monster. One night, mid-way through creating the second monster, Frankenstein begins to have doubts. The monster is looming over him however, portraying a horrifying glare. Frankenstein realising the in-morality of his actions, destroys his second creation. The monster enraged, vows to get revenge, by being present at Frankenstein's wedding night.
Leaving the island by boat, a storm directs his boat to a shore of an unknown town. Upon landing, he is arrested with allegations of a murder that had occurred overnight. The victim was Frankenstein's good friend, Henry, who had been strangled to death. Frankenstein falls ill with the news, and remains in prison until he recovers.
Frankenstein finally returns to Geneva, where he marries Elizabeth. With the worry of the monster appearing at his wedding night, he orders his wife away to wait for him. He then hears the horrifying scream of his wife, where he realises that the monster had always aimed to kill his wife, and not him. His wife is murdered by the monster, and his father dies of grief. Frankenstein vows to seek revenge, and kill the monster.
Frankenstein tracks the monster, where they finally meet on an icy sea. The ice beneath them breaks, separating him and the monster. This is the moment when Walton is present, and is aligned with his fourth letter to his sister.
The final part of the story is noted in Walton’s next series of letters to his sister. Walton however, cannot save Frankenstein, who dies shortly after being taken onto Walton’s boat. Walton returns to where Frankenstein's body lays a few days later, where he sees the monster weeping over his creator. The monsters admits to his remorse and guilt, and that he can now end his own suffering too. The novel ends with the monster departing for the northernmost ice and dies.
Frankenstein Castle - Germany
It is situated upon a hilltop in Odenwald, Germany, and it was once home to an eccentric alchemist that conducted an array of frightening experiments with dead bodies and electricity in front of live audiences. Using the bodes of executed criminals he was seemingly able to bring them back from the dead, twitching the bodies muscles with the use of an electric current.
During Mary and Percy Shelley's early travels around Europe it is known that they passed the castle on a boat, looking ominous on top of the hill. Marry was inherently interested local legend stories, therefor it is alomost certain she would have been told about the catsle and its crazy resident scientist.
The Year Without a Summer -1816
The eruption of Mount Tombora, in the East Indies on April 1815, was the largest eruption since history records began. It fired its its contents up into the atmosphere with a biblical force, causing an unbalance of the gases in the atmosphere which lead to the a sustained preiod of extreme weather conditions and environmental change. The ash travelled for months across the globe, causing the sky to turn a glowing red a sunset/ sunrise.
The seasonal rhythms of the earths climate were still unstable the year of 1816, the summer when Percy and Marry Shelley stayed in on Lake Geneva with Lord Byron and Claire Clairmont. There was an assault of wild thunder and lightning storms, and below freezing temperatures, causing the group to take refuge inside the rented home. It was during this time that it was suggested they should have a competition as to who could tell the scariest ghost story. At first Mary was not able to come up with a terrifying story, but shortly afterwards the idea came to her in a nightmare. This would eventually become Fankenstein the novel two years later in 1818.
Percy Shelley
In 2007, John Lauritsen studied the influence that Percy Shelley had on the final draft of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’. Lauritsen’s study was titled ‘The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein’, highlighted how Percy Shelley contributed at least 5,000 words (6%) to the novel. Finally, in 2008 Percy Shelley was credited as the co-author of Frankenstein by Charles E. Robinson in the new edition. Robinson noted how Percy Shelley made “very significant changes in words, themes and style. The book should now be credited as ‘Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley with Percy Shelley’.”
However, while we know Percy Shelley made changes in the proofs of Frankenstein, such changes to the text cannot be identified as they do not now exist. David Ketterer in 'The Wonderful Effects of Steam: More Percy Shelley Words in Frankenstein?', mentions how parts of Percy's contribution, will ''forever remain a mystery''.
Below is Percy Shelley's revisions of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein', with words he included in italics, and words with a line across them, was what Percy erased from the novel.
Mary Shelley Upbringing
Mary’s upbringing was a turbulent one, where she had an unstable relationship with both her father and her stepmom. Her profoundly disrupted life at such a young age, has caught the attention of critics, many of whom link her childhood to the themes in her first novel, Frankenstein. Critics view the novel as a direct representation of Mary’s biography, where the creature’s experience of not being accepted and having no companion, shows similarities to the feelings portrayed in Mary’s diaries.
As historian Marshall Brown stated, the novel was influenced by the “unhappy yearnings of an author who was barely more than a girl when she conceived it. One surmises that it embodies the only form she knew-the unformed, inchoate existence of childhood”. Another Historian, Kaufmann, noted that Mary had an underlying moral to the novel, one that represented that even in a dark world there is hope, offering a “promise of happiness in a Nietzschean realm beyond any definable truths”. This moral to the story, could be a reference to Mary’s new joyful life with Percy, in contrast to her difficult upbringing.
Franknestein in Hollywood
The term ‘monster’ springs to many people’s mind when they think of the creature in Frankenstein. For years, children has dressed as the monster for halloween, and even in Hollywood, the creature has been represented as purely a murdering monster. However, as critic Marshall Brown notes, the creature is “singularly jolted between violence and reflection”, but why do so many films purposely miss out the creature’s reflection?
Many new readers of the novel will be surprised, and fairly disappointed if they had watched the Hollywood movies before reading Mary’s gothic novel. Why is this you ask? Well quite simply, the movies present the movie as a horror, where the ‘monster’ is cold-blooded killer, in a setting of a remote castle, with galvanic flashes and the grunts of Boris Karloff. Instead, Mary’s novel is gothic, not horror. Frankenstein in seeped in an uncontrollable eeriness, over the overdramatic terror portrayed in the Hollywood blockbusters.
So how is the creature represented? Well Mary certainly wanted the subject to be more than just a structure of body parts, she wanted it to tackle with human emotions. As critic Kaufmann stated, the creature was a representation of Mary’s upbringing, where like the creature, they lack nurture and direction in their lives. The creature is not mad, but emotionally disordered.
The film versions of Frankenstein, as historian James Heffernan highlights, shows “far less of the monster's inner life than his long autobiographical narratives in the novel do”. These aspects of the book, represents a creature battling with grief, guilt, and most importantly, loneliness. The majority of films, made the creature speechless, replacing dialogue with the famous ‘grunt’. In James Whale’s 1931 version, the creature is completely silent, and died in a burning windmill which is in contrast to the poignant death of creature in the original. The only film that presents the most similarities to Mary’s novel, is Kenneth Branagh’s version in 1994, however the creature is once again speechless, which effectively rips out the heart and emotion that remains of the creature.
This stubborn visuality of cinema, may help to explain why film versions of Frankenstein have drawn so little attention academic attention. Which as Mary’s husband, Percy Shelley once quoted, that language itself is a “more direct representation of the actions and passions of our internal being, than colour, form, or motion."
Franknestein in Hollywood
Religion and the Supernatural
There has been recent study into both the themes of religion and the supernatural in the novel. During the 19th century, the term “supernatural”, was a religious term referring to God and angels. As it does regularly in Radcliffe and Godwin’s versions, the theme of the “supernatural” has connotations of a magical aura and a religious undercurrent. However many critics deem that neither supernatural or religion is particularly present in the novel, but instead aspects exceed nature rather than violating realism.
The creature is the main reference for this discussion, due to its seemingly “supernatural” abilities. The creature in its first appearance, is described as a “gigantic stature”, around seven or eight feet. In addition, the creature is able to leap across large chasms and famously capable of “scaling the overhanging sides of Mont Saleve". When in physical confrontation with Felix De Lacey, the creature is grabbed "with supernatural force," yet is confident in tearing Felix "limb from limb", however the word "supernatural", still just means "a lot." In reference to the strength of the creature, is that it is incredibly strong, but not “supernatural”.
The creature itself has been analysed as a God like figure, brought into the world to walk alongside men like Jesus did. Jesus who had a role in teaching lessons to mankind, has been compared to the creatures role on Frankenstein. The religious imagery of the creature being identified as the “glaring sun” and "a light so brilliant and wondrous" that "the sun does not more surely shine in the heavens, than that which I now affirm is true".
Not just the creature has come under analysis in terms of the “supernatural” theme in the novel, so to does the human characters. Frankenstein, who completes all his tasks beyond the limits of time, and the communication between characters across linguistic boundaries.
Critic Marshall Brown’s conclusion on the matter, is that “Frankenstein is supernatural to the extent that it takes the form of a charmed world”, where the monster is just “quantitatively impressive, not qualitatively alien.” The world created is far beyond ordinary human experience, so readers in the nineteenth-century especially, would have accepted the exceeding of nature in the novel as believable.
