The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

The Gothic Project - Frankenstein: The 1818 Text, Week 1 (Volume I)

1) Many have identified Frankenstein as a book of science fiction—indeed, as even the first of that genre in the English language. In the preface, Mary Shelley writes, “The event on which the interest of the story depends … was recommended by the novelty of the situations which it develops; and, however impossible as a physical fact, affords a point of view to the imagination for the delineating of human passions.” What is she suggesting about the relationship between science fiction and truth? Do you agree with her? Why or why not?

2) Why has Mary included the letters Robert Walton writes to his sister, Margaret? Do they help you understand the scientific context in which Victor (and Mary) operate? The social context? In which ways is Robert like Victor? In what ways is he different?

3) Robert and Victor are both men of science but in vastly different fields. What does having two main characters in this field tell you about 1800s Europe?

4) How does Robert’s desire for a friend affect his relationship with Victor? How might this relationship affect the reader’s trust in Robert as a reliable narrator?

5) Victor describes the first appearance of Elizabeth: “Her hair was the brightest living gold, and despite the poverty of her clothing, seemed to set a crown of distinction on her head. Her brow was clear and ample, her blue eyes cloudless, and her lips and the moulding of her face so expressive of sensibility and sweetness that none could behold her without looking on her as of a distinct species, a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features.” Elizabeth is described as being heavenly, almost angelic as a child. We know that she is destined to be married to Victor, whom we also know to be quite troubled from Robert’s letters. Because of this contrast, do you think their relationship will flourish or falter? In what ways might Elizabeth act as a foil to Victor? How does the representation of Elizabeth, compared to those with whom she initially lives, reveal class bias of the time period?

6) How does Victor’s idolization of Agrippa, Magnus, and Paracelsus in his childhood inspire him to go into science, even when he learns they are “sad trash”? If he had studied then-modern scientists, would he have ever thought of the idea of creating life from nothing? As much as modern science was involved in the creation of the monster, was whimsy and a bit of alchemistic idealism to blame, as well?

7) When Victor goes off to the University, he becomes a “mother-less child,” believing himself “totally unfitted for the company of strangers.” How does this view of himself influence the way he approaches his studies?

8) Victor’s mother dies of scarlet fever after nursing Elizabeth. Victor describes her death as calm but also as “that most irreparable evil.” How might the death of Victor’s mother in this chapter influence the choices he makes about his studies and later pursuits?

9) Victor describes the processes he goes through to learn how to create life: “To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body.” After Victor dedicates himself to the studies of life, death, and natural philosophy, he neglects his health and family. Isn’t it ironic that he is studying life and death, but doesn’t realize the costs to his own health? Why, if he is studying this subject, can’t he tell that he is fading away as he is trying to animate a lifeless form?

10) Why does Victor choose not to reveal his discovery to anyone or to consult with anyone about his determination to animate a creature based on his discovery? Is it right to keep discoveries secret?

11) What do you think of Victor’s decision to run from his creation?

12) After Victor read his father’s letter detailing William’s murder, he states, “…I felt still more gloomily. The picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil, and I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human beings. Alas! I prophesied truly, and failed only in one single circumstance, that in all the misery I imagined and dreaded, I did not conceive the hundredth part of the anguish I was destined to endure.” What does this quote reveal about Victor’s personality and mindset?

It may be worth the time to read the Wikipedia articles on Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great), Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus (Philippus AureolusTheophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim). The first, a theologian and Scholastic philosopher, was a teacher of St. Thomas Aquinas. The second wrote "Three Books of Occult Philosophy," on Natural Magic. He also.wrote on the Vanity of Human Knowledge, which can be read as rejecting the assurance of the Three Books. Paracelsus was a physician and alchemist, who proposed to overthrow existing theories of the natural world. He wrote in an eccentric German, but his European impact was due to.Latin translations by his disciples. A lot of what he wrote sounds like nonsense, but effected some famous cures, and he was interested in things like occupational diseases long before traditional physicians were paying them any notice.

Ian wrote: "It may be worth the time to read the Wikipedia articles on Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great), Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, and Paracelsus (Philippus AureolusTheophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim). T..."

Thanks for the information, Ian. I actually looked them up to see if they were real people but I didn't go any further than that.

I think Victor’s interest in the works of Agrippa and Paracelsus is relevant to his obsession with creating life because of alchemy’s interest in the Philosopher’s Stone, which was supposed to confer eternal life on its possessor. And alchemical writings were widely seen as blasphemous, violating the perceived Christian mandate of submission to God. In creating life Victor is defying the natural order and setting himself up as a demigod. Interestingly, he doesn’t perceive this until his creation comes to life, and then he is revolted not so much with himself as with the creature.

He seems throughout volume 1 to be unable fully to face his guilt. Even when he believes that the creature has murdered his brother, he feels guilt but does not actively take responsibility. He seems a very weak person, and very absorbed in his own misery.

In general, Victor seems unhealthily attracted to grandiosity. The authors who inspired him as a child are full of reality-defying ideas (making the term “natural philosophy” quite an irony), and he becomes inspired about studying chemistry only after his professor gives a hyperbolic speech about its powers.

Both Victor and Robert Walton seem obsessed with achievement; their ambition leads them into potential disaster. I think the value of ambitiousness was little questioned in the era that the book was written, so it’s interesting to me that Mary Shelley shows so much of the downside. It makes me wonder whether women were very aware of the personal cost of male ambition but were conditioned not to challenge it. Adding the frame tale of Walton highlights the perils of ambition; he also shares some of Victor’s other traits and needs (e.g., the focus on how a congenial companion can enhance one’s life), thus highlighting those traits.

I am curious to discover how Victor goes from running away from his creation to chasing him across the tundra.

Weather is certainly an ever-present phenomenon in the story—perhaps suggested by the peculiar weather of the Year without a Summer, when Mary Shelley started writing the book. Mostly it seems to be brought in as an externalized ecpression of the characters’ moods, but every once in a while it seems to be trying to argue the characters out of their moods.

Abigail wrote: "I think Victor’s interest in the works of Agrippa and Paracelsus is relevant to his obsession with creating life because of alchemy’s interest in the Philosopher’s Stone, which was supposed to conf..."

Abigail your comments are always so insightful.

It makes me wonder whether women were very aware of the personal cost of male ambition but were conditioned not to challenge it.

I think at the time women were conditioned not to challenge much. I don't often read historical fiction, especially mysteries, because it annoys me.

Thanks for the kind words, Gem! I love this group because there are so many thoughtful and insightful commenters here.

There is very little evidence that alchemy was considered blasphemous per se. Some supporters of it did arouse complaints when they argued that transmutation was a material sign of the spiritual reality of transubstantiation, but a lot of that came from those who didn’t believe in the possibility of transmutation to begin with, often on Aristotelian grounds.

Others deemed it a foolish waste of effort and money, and some regarded it as a kind of confidence game. It was sometimes criminalised, whether as inherently fraudulent or from fear of an inflationary influx of.precious metal. Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, the iconic figures of modern of physics and chemistry, respectively, considered it plausible enough to campaign for the repeal of laws against making gold.

I agree about the turning-base-metals-into-gold side of the activity, but it’s my impression that the business of changing the nature of living things, and especially the pursuit of eternal life, were considered contrary to God’s will.

For a remarkably comprehensive and fairly up to date work on alchemy and the development of chemistry, see Allen G. Debus on “The Chemical Philosophy,” a massive and often very detailed work, available as a Kindle book.

Abigail wrote: "In general, Victor seems unhealthily attracted to grandiosity."

.. I haven't yet found the time to catch up with reading the book - it has been on my TBR list for a long time, but I find it difficult to get into it ...

but your words about 'unhealthy attraction to grandiosity' spontaneously made me think of the males in Mary Shelley's company: Byron and P.B. Shelley - neither of them exactly paragons of modesty ;-), both imbued with the romantic idea
of the power of (poetic) creative genius.

I found the initial letters rather boring too, but things improved for me quickly.

Yes, I often smiled when reading this section to think of the company the author kept! She doubtless had examples of the traits she described near at hand, so it interests me that she’s writing from the point of view of people with grandiose ambitions but is simultaneously showing the reader the pitfalls of ambition.

The theme of the motherless child is striking. Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died not long after the daughter was born, of "childbed fever" - almost certainly because the doctors never washed their hands and came to the delivery from an infected person or even a corpse.

The monster is similarly abandoned by his parent shortly after birth. But I had forgotten that Victor is also motherless. Mary Shelley was definitely affected by the loss of her mother, sometimes in strange ways. She and Percy used her mother's grave as a "make-out" spot.

I'm pretty sure Mary, Percy and their friends attended a demonstration of "galvanism", where electric currents attached to a dead frog or other creature made it seem that the animal had come back to life.

Typically for the era, this book spends a long time establishing its bona fides by having outside characters vouch for the truth of the story. Mary's original story was of course much shorter and started right at the moment of creation. Percy "improved" it, which I think is a shame.

Another odd fact is that this book might not have existed except for the explosion of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. The atmospheric dust caused "the year without a summer" in England in 1816. So Shelley, Byron and the rest found their holiday plans derailed by cold and rain. Boredom led to the challenge by Byron to everyone to write a "ghost" story.

Besides the galvanism experience, another influence came from life. Mary had recently given birth to a daughter prematurely and the baby only lived a week or so. She had dreams of bringing the baby back to life. Later Mary had other miscarriages, one so severe that she claimed Percy saved her by putting her in a cold bath, and she lost at least 2 children to illness. And Percy felt no guilt at being unfaithful during Mary's pregnancies and recoveries.

** Maybe some of this info was already in a Background Info thread, but I didn't see one.

Thanks for all the context, Robin!

Mary was pretty obsessed with her mother (not helped by the fact that she had a pretty unsatisfactory stepmother) and her mother’s writings. She tried to model her mother’s principles in her life choices but at the same time felt keenly the disapproval and rejection that resulted. At the time she was writing this, both her stepmother and her father had cast her off, and I imagine she smarted under the injustice, at least on her father’s part, of condemning her for acting (as she saw it) the same way her adored mother did.

For Mary Shelley’s drafts, and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s editorial contributions, look for “The Original Frankenstein” (Amazon listing title), edited by Charles E Robinson, and published by Vintage Classics in 2009. A Kindle version is available.

Shelley mostly “improved” the style, not always for the better.

Abigail wrote: "I agree about the turning-base-metals-into-gold side of the activity, but it’s my impression that the business of changing the nature of living things, and especially the pursuit of eternal life, w..."

European (and Islamicate) alchemy was not interested in immortality as such, at least not openly. That was a Chinese (Daoist) pursuit. Alchemists in the west were interested in the prolongation of life: Roger Bacon believed that one alchemist had lived for over a thousand years.

Some alchemists seem to have believed that lesser metals slowly “ripened” into gold while underground, under astrological influences, and that alchemy merely hastened this natural process. This also got around the Aristotelian rejection of the idea that one substance could be turned into another by invoking biological processes that were also imperfectly understood.

Some historians of science have questioned whether any alchemists believed this, but the idea shows up as a debated question in seventeenth-century English literature, so someone apparently did.

For a book that probably places too much emphasis on the idea, arousing the ire of specialists, see Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structure of Alchemy

This is a re-read for me, and I find myself with the same thoughts as on my first reading, the most important of which are these:

1. Victor Frankenstein is obviously a man who is very intelligent but also mentally unsound. In the letters from Captain Walton to his sister, he develops a fondness for Frankenstein, but he also says that "his eyes have generally an expression of wildness, and even madness." In Volume I, we see him seeking scientific glory by trying to create life. He goes for long periods of time without adequate sleep or food and essentially cuts himself off from friends and family, a sure recipe for a mental breakdown.
2. So far, we have only Frankenstein's observations that the monster actually exists. Captain Walton's observation of the monster is of a very large man in a dogsled whose features are unseen. We learn that Frankenstein is chasing such a man, but there is no absolute confirmation of identify. We learn of Victor's efforts to build the monster, of his observation of the monster coming to life, and of the monster invading his bedroom at night (or is that just a dream?). After Clerval arrives, Victor no longer sees the monster and tells no one of his invention. When William is murdered, Victor immediately, and for no discernible reason, decides the monster is responsible for the death, although there is no reason given as to how the monster would know the whereabouts of Victor's family; in addition, despite the family's love for Justine, there is good reason to think she may have committed the murder. Finally, upon observing the spot where William was murdered, Victor observes the monster scaling a mountain. No one else is there to confirm the observation, nor is there any logical reason given as to why the monster would linger in the area after killing a child.
I am not saying that the monster doesn't exist or that Victor is insane, but these were my thoughts on both readings.

I read the whole book in 3 days. it's very interesting, and so much to it that I can't get out of it this time around. Nancy, I had those same feelings. Up to the end of part 1 I was very aware that nobody apart from Victor seems to have seen the monster, and find it curious that he gives no reasons or thought to why he is not telling any other persons about it. Is this all to underline Victor's mental state and to properly make the reader unsure about the creature indeed being real?

This is actually the first time I have read this book, amazingly enough. I found victors decision to abandon his creation to be the most shocking thing of all. I can't believe that when he escaped, he did not try to look for him, and if he feared he might wreak havoc that he would not try to control that. His decision not to tell anyone about his work was also interesting. Maybe he became obsessive about his work, and really didn't communicate much with other people at that point. It does seem like he ultimately worked himself into a rather extreme illness.

I agree, Dianne. If the monster is truly alive and dangerous, then Victor has a responsibility to speak and warn people. His failure to do that seems ver much like cowardice.

I wonder if anyone has done a study of why so many nineteenth-century novels have weak-willed, neurotic protagonists. I can see the value of such characters for authors who want to spin out a long yarn, but as a reader I find myself often shouting at the page, “You’re creating so much unnecessary trouble for yourself and others!” Victor could have told his professors, his friend, or his father about the Being. After the death of William, if he believes the Being to be responsible, he has an obligation to warn them.

Very interesting perspective, Nancy. (view spoiler)[If this book had been written a century later, I expect the author would have taken the story in that direction, making it an extended delusion. (hide spoiler)] Victor’s emotional extremes made me quite uncomfortable at times; what people in the author’s day took for sensibility, a sign of genius, we tend to take as mental illness.

Abigail wrote: "I found the initial letters rather boring too, but things improved for me quickly."

Same for me. I've listened to an audiobook of this for first time and I remember that as the story progressed I enjoyed it even more.

Robin P wrote: "Percy "improved" it, which I think is a shame."

Do you know if the 1818 text was edited by Percy? Or was this all her? I know the original story was not as long but she continued to work on it.

A bit OFF TOPIC:

I am looking for (unsuccessfully) to come up with a story or two, longer than a short story, not long enough to be a novel that would fit "gothic" and/or "ghost stories" for Christmas. If you have any ideas please post them in the Gothic Reading Schedule.

I'm going to post this in a couple of places. Thanks!