The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

The Gothic Project - Frankenstein: The 1818 Text, Week 3 (Volume III)

This week concludes our last novel for The Gothic Project. There will be two Christmas Short Ghost Stories that I'll put some information up about this coming week. I believe another moderator will also be putting up (an)other(s) Christmas story that will take us through the end of the year.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it!

1) Why does Victor delay fulfilling his promise to the creature? What reason do you think is most important?

2) Why is there no account of what Frankenstein learns from his contacts in London, “the information necessary for the completion of my promise” (here)? What might Victor need to learn to assemble a female creature that he did not already know?

3) There are differences between how Victor approaches his first experiment and how he approaches his second experiment, despite his solitude in the latter. What are they? Is there a relationship between his different attitudes and their respective outcomes? Does Victor have a clearer sense of the second experiment’s potential outcomes? Why?

4) Why does Victor decide to destroy the new creature? Is it simply because of the first creature’s appearance and a “countenance [that] expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery,” observed in the dimmest of light? If the creature had not appeared, would Victor have finished his work?

5) The confrontation between the creature—“You are my creator, but I am your master;—obey!” and Victor in this chapter is perhaps the most dramatic scene in the novel. Is the creature’s wrath justified? Have the tables turned as thoroughly as the creature imagines? Does Victor fully understand the scope of his decision not to cooperate with the creature’s demands?

6) Victor refers to destiny often in this chapter. Is choice now extinguished for him, and is fulfilling his destiny all that he has left to do? In what does Victor see his destiny? Are there points when he could have changed it? Is destiny the same thing as path dependency?

7) Why does Victor continue to insist to his father that he is a murderer?

8) Why does Victor not tell Elizabeth about the creature, especially before or at least on their wedding night? Are his potential reasons the same as or different from his reasons for not telling his father or Clerval? Why do you think that Victor never considered that Elizabeth would be harmed by the monster instead of himself??

9) Why, in his letter to Margaret, does Captain Walton tell her that he really believes Victor’s story? Is Victor’s account sufficient?

10) Even if science fiction, Mary’s novel is set in the past. Given that the novel is told through letters and stories passed from one person to another, do you think the readers of its day might have taken it as a real-life, nonfiction account? As an alternate history? As something like the radio broadcast of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds in 1938?

11) Do you agree with Walton that the creature does not feel true remorse but instead feels only frustrated that Victor is now free of him?

12) Do you believe the creature will extinguish himself? If you believe that promise, then do you believe the rest of his representations of his feelings and intentions? Why or why not?

Great questions! I’ll address the last one. I believe readers are supposed to be left in doubt that the creature will destroy himself. Throughout the story, all the characters has singleness of intent except for Victor and the creature. Those two are constantly changing their minds, and their unalterable convictions in the moment can’t be relied on. If the creature had really wanted to destroy himself, there was nothing to stop him from doing so within sight of Walton; he didn’t need to postpone it to some later place and time.

What the author seems to have been going for was debate among readers. I just argued for the ongoing deceptiveness of Victor and the creature; another reader could equally argue that because Victor and the creature are so deeply intertwined, once Victor was dead the creature had no reason for living and therefore would certainly destroy himself.

To take that argument a step further, one arguing that Victor and the creature are the same being could point out that the creature does not manifest itself to Walton until after Victor is dead—that he could not escape Victor’s psyche until Victor’s body failed. At each stage of the story there are multiple possible interpretations.

All of which gets to the heart of what I found pleasurable in reading this book—its ambiguities. It can be read as a literal narrative, taken at face value; or there are variant interpretations right up to a portrait of split personality disorder. Perhaps that multiplicity came from the book’s origin, as a story written for her traveling companions to read and debate.

To touch on some of the other questions raised by Gem, it’s interesting how Mary Shelley uses the tactics of her contemporaries’ realist fiction—the first-person report, the frame-tale character with no connection to the core story who exists to verify that report—to build a story of dubious veracity that can be interpreted in multiple ways. The author points toward the inherent deceptiveness of an author of fiction offering proofs of veracity. I kept wondering what Wuthering Heights would be like if the same structure were used to tell a more fantastical story.

My thanks to Gem and this group for all the work that went into the Gothic Project series of reads! I enjoyed the books I was able to read and they were very thought-provoking.

Here’s my review of Frankenstein: The 1818 Text, in case anyone is interested: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....

Abigail wrote: "My thanks to Gem and this group for all the work that went into the Gothic Project series of reads! I enjoyed the books I was able to read and they were very thought-provoking."

My pleasure Abigail, I'm glad you enjoyed it. This particular book is one of my favorites.

I can see why! I was really impressed with it and want to read more Mary Shelley. One of my real-world groups is reading Romantic Outlaws in December and January, so I’m on a Mary Shelley roll.

Abigail wrote: "I can see why! I was really impressed with it and want to read more Mary Shelley. One of my real-world groups is reading Romantic Outlaws in December and January, so I’m on a Mary Shelley roll."

That one is very good, although the way the author alternates between Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley gets confusing. I ended up reading all the Mary W chapters first, then going back to the other ones.

Mary Shelley didn't write much else and, much as I wanted to like it, The Last Man is just terrible. We read it in this group during the pandemic, since it involves a plague. But it's rambling and overwritten, the dialogue is ridiculous and the characters act randomly.

Oh dear, thank you for the warning about The Last Man—and for the good advice about reading Romantic Outlaws!

I wish I had something profound to say at this last point, but Abigail did such a great job of summation that I am lost in admiration! I think "ambiguities" really sums up the novel and is perhaps why I have never been sure the creature really existed. Although it may not be what Mary Shelley intended, there are layers and depths to the story that we could discuss for a long time!

Thanks for the kind words, Nancy! Your earlier comments certainly pointed me in the ambiguity direction.