Author: Mary Shelley
Year of Publication: 1818
Genre: Gothic novel; horror; science-fiction
Period Info: Mary Shelley was born at the dawn of 19th century England, near the end of Victoria’s reign, and right before the Industrial Revolution kicked into high gear. She was born at a time where women were still seen as inferior and were restricted in terms of employment and political opportunities. Most women still could not vote at this time. Mary was a married writer with a child, an unusual combination at the time in more than one way. For one thing, Mary was the daughter of two very influential writers and thus was unusually educated very well. Many of the few successful female writers quit their occupation after marriage, some reluctantly. Mary continued to write to her death, using the money she earned to support herself and her son Percy after Percy Shelley died in an accident. She began writing Frankenstein when she was seventeen, and she published the book anonymously because it was still somewhat taboo at the time for women to publish. Early 19th century England was going through a lot of unrest at the time. The Industrial Revolution pulled more people into the cities, lowered the number of people with specialized jobs, and changed family life dynamics. Divorce rates went up, the urban population went up, more people died in the cities and they got more crowded and dirtier. The jobs were dangerous, the days long, and the pay low, and most workers were untrained, many illiterate, and work related injuries were not uncommon. But there was no insurance, so an injured worker was simply fired and replaced. The machinery also invaded nature, and such movements as the Romantic Movement spawned as a response against its invasion into nature. Scientific advancements were abound as well, with Dalton’s atomic theory, Charles’ Law of Ideal Gas, and Antoine Lavoisier’s Law of Conservation of Mass advancing chemistry and Edward Jenner’s discovery of a vaccine against the deadly smallpox advancing medicine and Volta’s invention of the first battery. Romantics rejected these advancements and embraced nature and impulsiveness and emotion.
Plot Summary: Frankenstein opens with Robert Walton’s letters to his sister Margaret Saville, who is home in England. He is an explorer who is up in the Artic hoping to make some huge scientific discovery; it is in one of his letters to Margaret that he reveals that overnight his ship had become stuck and surrounded in ice. He also tells of the strange gigantic man who was being pulled by a dogsled across the ice field. The next day Walton and his crew discover another, smaller man adrift on a sheet of ice. He seemed ill and malnourished and the crew brought him on board. A week later, the strange man tells Walton his story. Walton records the story in his letters to Margaret.
The man’s name is Victor Frankenstein. He was born in Geneva. He relates the history of how his father met and married his mother Caroline, the daughter of one of Alphonse Frankenstein’s merchant friends. Victor was raised with Elizabeth Lavenza, whom he called his cousin, and his friend Henry Clerval. In reality she was a pretty orphan of a Milanese nobleman and his German wife, found by Caroline living among a peasant family. Victor described his childhood as very happy and he loved Elizabeth from childhood. His mother would have another two sons, Ernest and William. As a boy Victor was fascinated with alchemy. At 17 his parents decide to send him to the University of Ingolstadt to study. Before he leaves, Elizabeth comes down with scarlet fever; his mother insisted on nursing her back to health. Elizabeth recovered, but Caroline contracted the disease and died soon after.
At the university, he learns very quickly much to the impressment of his professors but Victor focused his attention on how to create life. After months of labor Victor had sewn together an enormous body consisting of body parts he stole from graves. Victor soon after discovers the equation to create life, though he does not reveal it to the reader, and one November evening he brings his monster to life. He is horrified by its appearance and fled from his laboratory. He lays ill for nearly two years, watched over by Henry. As he recovered, he believes that the monster must have perished.
Tragedy strikes when as he prepares to return to Geneva he receives a letter from his father conveying that Victor’s youngest brother, 7-year old William, had been murdered, and that the family servant Justine Moritz has been convicted for his murder after a locket that William had been wearing was found in her dress pocket. As Victor journeys home he sees the Monster, and knows that it was it who murdered William, but he know he cannot tell of the truth. Although Elizabeth tries to defend Justine she is found guilty and hanged. Victor tells Walton that he was guilty for William’s murder and Justine’s framing. Needing to be alone Victor took a journey alone into the mountains; there he encounters his creation yet again. The Monster forces Victor to sit down and listen to its story. The monster woke up disoriented and has no ability to speak or anything really. After Victor fled, it wandered into the forest, surviving for two years hiding in the trees and eating nuts and berries. The monster later finds a family living in a cottage in the forest; it is from them that the Monster learns to speak and read. And from the jacket it wore it found Victor’s notes and became convinced that Victor must pay for its misery. When the cottagers are out one day the Monster enters when only the blind old father is there and befriends the man but when the son returns he chases the monster away and the entire family moves soon after. The monster realizes that society was repulsed by its appearance and that it was unhappy because it was lonely. It later saved a drowning girl, only to be shot in the shoulder. From the letters the monster learned of Victor’s home. When the monster arrived in Geneva it encountered William. Upon learning who the child was, the monster strangled him, and framed Justine.
After retelling its tale the monster demands that Victor make a female companion, and promises then to forever quit the world of man. Victor reluctantly agrees. Victor set up a new laboratory in Scotland and began work on the female. But he soon becomes convinced that new monster will be more evil than the first, and that the two creatures might together birth an entire new race of beings. The monster watched as Victor destroyed his work; furious, it vowed to be with Victor on his wedding night. That night, the creature strangled Henry, whom Elizabeth had sent to watch over Victor. Victor was framed with the murder and became extremely ill. His father comes to bail him out and Victor is found innocent.
They return to Geneva where Victor finally weds Elizabeth. But that night, as Victor worried that the monster would come to kill him, stood guard as Elizabeth went to their room. When Victor hears a scream from the room he realizes that the monster’s true intentions were and rushes in to find Elizabeth strangled to death, and the monster nowhere to be found. Soon after Victor’s father died from grief. Victor then vowed to spend the rest of his life determined to destroy his creation. He chases the monster up to the Artic, where he encountered Walton.
Victor dies soon after finishing his story. Walton closes the story in a few more letters for his sister, telling her about how the monster came the night of Victor’s death. The monster lamented over its creator’s death and told Walton about its struggles. It also tells Walton of its plans to burn itself on an enormous pier, and jumps out the window onto a floating slab of ice and disappears into the darkness.
Author Bio: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin) was born on August 30, 1797 to William Godwin, a radical anarchist and famed philosopher and author, and Mary Wollstonecraft, the famed feminist writer and author of The Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Wollstonecraft died eleven days after Mary’s birth from complications. Godwin later remarried Mary Jane Clairmont and Mary was raised with her two step-siblings from Clairmont, her half-sister from Wollstonecraft’s affair with an American officer Fanny Imlay, and a later born half-brother. She was informally educated by her father and had access to his expansive library.
She was raised to cherish the mother she never knew and was expected to live up to her namesake. Godwin encouraged his daughter’s interests and their home was all sorts of interesting people, including Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Aaron Burr, the former US Vice President. She began a romantic relationship with one of Godwin’s followers, the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, in 1814; later that year the couple fled England with Mary’s half-sister Jane. Godwin disowned Mary would not speak with her again for many years. As the couple traveled across Europe they faced financial difficulties as well as the loss of their first child in 1815, a girl who died only days after birth. The next summer, Mary, Percy, and Jane joined Lord Byron and John Polidori in Switzerland. One rainy night they amused themselves with a book of ghost stories. It was Bryon who put forth the challenge that they should each attempt to write a story of his or her own; Mary would be the only one who accomplished the challenge. That story would become Frankenstein.
Two suicides would come later that year: that of Fanny, and that of Percy’s wife, who was pregnant with their unborn child. Mary and Percy finally wed in December 1816 and Godwin reconciled with his daughter. In 1817 she published History of a Six Weeks’ Tour recounting her travels across Europe, and continued work on Frankenstein. She published Frankenstein in 1818 anonymously; most thought Percy had written the book since he had penned the preface. Frankenstein would become Mary’s best-known novel. That same year the couple moved to Italy and the following year their only surviving child Percy Florence was born. The Shelleys’ marriage was not the easiest; Percy was not always faithful and they suffered the loss of another two children. A worst tragedy occurred yet when Percy drowned in Gulf of Spezia while sailing with a friend in 1822. Mary was widowed at the age of 24.
To support herself and her son she wrote for some literary magazines and continued to edit her husband’s work posthumously. For many years she fought with her father-in-law who did not want Percy’s work or name published while he was still around, and he had always disapproved of Percy’s life choices anyhow. Mary would publish several more novels, including Valperga and The Last Man. Her son Percy married in 1848 to Jane Gibson St John; it was a happy marriage and she lived with them until her death on February 1, 1851 from what is said to have been a brain tumor. She is laid to rest at St. Peter’s Church in Bournemouth beside her parents and the ashes of her husband’s heart.
In 1959 her work Mathilda was published for the first time; it is perhaps her second most well-known novel, after Frankenstein. Her legacy lies with Frankenstein, which has been adapted into numerous plays and movies and spin-offs and sequels. The concept of the struggle between man and his creation has become a part of popular culture. Frankenstein remains relevant even today, as seen with the 2015 adaption starring James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe.
Period Characteristics: This is a Gothic and Romantic Era novel. The Romantic Movement emphasized the strange and the grotesque. It is a reaction against industrialization and the scientific breakthroughs of the era. It emphasized child-innocence and the preservation and embracement of the natural world and generally shunned scientific advancements. The era was not necessarily about love but many of the works involved reckless love. Nature was portrayed as untamed and powerful, a haven from an ever corrupting world. The movement emphasized emotions, particularly intense ardor and horror, and questioned humanity. The movement also somewhat brought back medievalism, many of the books having been set in medieval fictional cities of Europe. It placed a lot of emphasis on the naivety and innocence and pureness of children, free from corruption. They saw industrialization as evil as it destroyed nature. Some believed that God was with them, surround them within nature.
Author’s Style: Mary Shelley is a Gothic writer of the Romantic Era. She writes in a very elevated style, even for conversations; it is all very elegant and there is no informality whatsoever. Like many Romantics, she was influenced by nature and presented nature as a very powerful wild force. For Frankenstein’s monster, she leaves a lot up to the reader’s imagination, only vaguely describing a few characteristics of the being and leaving the reader to fill in the rest of the heinous details. Shelley is also heavy on the figurative language, with lots of motifs about life and death, nature vs. science, and the idea of a doppelganger, such as Victor and his monster. Shelley also uses personification, as she lets misery “welcome” Victor.
EX: “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.”
Memorable Quotes:
“One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race.”
In the fourth letter from Walton to his sister Walton is implying that the death of a person is not that big of a deal if he made some significant scientific contribution to the world. The letter was written prior to Frankenstein’s discovery by the crew, and Walton is up in the Artic trying to look for a passage through to the Pacific Ocean. He was pretty determined to achieve this goal, even if it resulted in his death. This is later paralleled with Victor’s determination to reanimate the dead, and then Victor’s quest to kill his creation that killed all whom Victor loved. It is after Victor finishes telling Walton his story that Walton realizes that no great scientific study is worth the misery or can replace being alive, and he concedes with his crew to turn back the ship.
“When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I when there have precipitated him to their base.”
Victor is angry at the creature, because it had killed his youngest brother William, and he wants revenge against his creation. Prior to the killing the Monster was a monster because it just looked ugly, but now that it killed an innocent child as revenge against the creator, the Monster fits his description entirely. But Victor blames himself as well, because it was HE who created the Monster in the first place, and therefore he had a hand in the death of William and Justine’s execution after she is framed. This also foreshadows how Victor will later literally go to the ends of the earth to hunt down his creation out of revenge for all the misery the Monster had caused him.
“I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel.”
The Monster is angry with Victor because it believes that Frankenstein is the source all of its misery because it was he would gave the Monster life in the first place, and it was he who was appalled with its appearance and abandoned the creature. It is a biblical parallel, but Victor was no God, and the Monster was no perfect human like Adam. The Monster likens himself more like Satan than Adam. When the Monster was created it was very much like a newborn in feature and mind, like Adam. But it was ugly, and it learned that it was his appearance that appalled humanity, and it questions why Victor brought its miserable being to life so that it may aimlessly wander the Earth and feel the rejection and loneliness.
“I murdered her. William, Justine, and Henry — they all died by my hands."
Victor feels as if he was the one who killed all of his family and friends. He created the very being that killed all those people. First his brother William was killed, then Justine who was framed and hung for the Monster’s crimes, then his friend Henry after Victor refused to make his monster a mate, then Elizabeth whom the Monster killed out of revenge, then his father who died from grief, and then finally Victor himself died. Victor tried to play God by reanimating the dead, and he feels as if his punishment for defying nature was the deaths of all whom he loved by the very creature he made. And Victor also knows that he is responsible for the Monster’s misery as well. The Monster may very well represent all the madness and irrationality of Victor, and the evils of science. Whether the deaths were Victor’s fault or the Monster’s own doing is debatable, but Victor feels as if all the tragedy was his fault, and thus he died trying to cover his sins by dedicating his life to eradicating the Monster.
Characters:
Victor Frankenstein: The main character of the novel; he created the monster. He narrates the majority of the story. He was interested in alchemy as a child and when he was older, he created a monster out of various body parts and brought it to life one November night. He is repulsed by its appearance and flees, returning two years later thinking that it was long gone. He keeps his creation a secret but after it kills his youngest brother and an innocent woman is blamed for its death, he believes that he himself is to blame for it was he who created the abomination. He feels helpless as the monster kills everyone he loves. After the Monster murdered his wife Victor vowed to destroy it, and died in his pursuit after warning Walton of the dangers of becoming too obsessed with scientific achievement.
The Monster: The supposed antagonist of the story, it is the result of a bunch of body parts, chemicals, and lightning. It is eight feet tall and ugly, and its creator Victor fled upon its “birth”. Soon after the Monster wanders off in the forest living off of berries and nuts. The Monster is likened to a newborn, and learns to speak and read from overhearing cottagers he found in the forest. The Monster eventually develops into an intelligent being who resents Victor for bringing it into its miserable life. The Monster is alone and rejected for his appearances, and he vows revenge against Victor for his supposed transactions against it. It killed William out of hatred for Victor, then framed Justine. It wished for Victor to create for him a female so that he may longer be alone, but then murders Henry when Victor fails to do so. It then murdered Elizabeth out of revenge, spurning Victor to vow to destroy him. It mourns Victor after he dies, for he was the Monster’s only real relationship.
Henry Clerval: Victor’s childhood friend from Geneva. He nursed Victor back to health after Victor falls ill after he brings the Monster to life, and then gets murdered by the Monster later when Victor fails to create a mate of it. He is cheerful and had plans to become a scientist as well.
Elizabeth Lavenza: The adopted sister/cousin of Victor and his true love. They grew up together. She represents the generic female of 19th century Europe as she is passive and patiently waits for Victor. When they finally marry the Monster comes and strangles her on their wedding night.
Alphonse Frankenstein: Victor’s father. He breaks the news of William’s death to Victor and is very sympathetic and loving towards his son and supports him in times of need. He also reminds Victor of the importance of family.
Caroline Beaufort: Victor’s mother. She was the daughter of one of Alphonse’s merchant friends and later takes in Elizabeth from the poor peasant family she had been living with. She dies from scarlet fever she contracted from Elizabeth while nursing her back to health. Her last wish was for Victor and Elizabeth to marry and to be happy together.
William Frankenstein: The youngest Frankenstein child. He represents childhood innocence in the novel, and he is murdered by the Monster, which represents science. He is dotted on by the family and his death brings great guilt to Victor, who feels responsible for William’s murder.
Ernest Frankenstein: The older brother of William and younger brother of Victor. He is said to have wanted to join the Swiss Army. He appears to be the only one to survive all of the death and tragedy around him.
Justine Moritz: A servant of the Frankenstein household, she is framed for William’s murder, tried, and hung. She was a good person according to Elizabeth but even Elizabeth’s pleas could not save her.
The De Lacey family: Cottagers that the Monster found in the forest. The family consists of an aged blind father, and a daughter and son, and later an exotic woman whom the son loves. They used to be French noblemen, but were stripped of their titles and lands as traitors to the government. It is from them that the monster learns to speak and read.
Robert Walton: An Artic explorer who is trying to find a route through to the Pacific. His crew becomes stuck in ice and he writes letters to his sister to pass the time. He recounts how he found Victor, and then recounts Victor’s story through his letters to Margaret. After Victor dies, he encounters the Monster who mourns his death. The Monster tells Walton that it had struggled, much more than Victor, and then it jumps out the window on a piece of ice. Learning from Victor’s story, he relents his quest and turn back the ship.
Margaret Saville: Robert Walton’s sister back in England whom he writes letters to from his ship in the Artic. The book opens with his letter to her and closes with more of these letters. The story of Victor is recorded through Robert’s letters.
Setting: The story takes place across various parts of Europe and the Artic. The book begins with Walton in the Artic, then shifts back to Victor’s childhood in Geneva, Switzerland, then his time at the University of Ingolstadt, then England and Scotland for the creation of the female, and finally the Artic as he chases the Monster and encounters Walton.
Symbols:
Fire: The alternative title of the book is The Modern Prometheus; there is a definite correlation between this story and that of the Ancient Grecian Titan. The story of Prometheus is that he stole fire from the Gods to aid mankind, and then Zeus punishes him by chaining him to a rock where an eagle ate his liver out each day, as Prometheus was immortal and could not die. For helping mankind, Prometheus was condemned to eternal suffering…much like Frankenstein’s creation. The Monster helped the cottagers, and they beat it and fled soon after. The Monster saved a girl from drowning, then got shot of it. Fire in the story is also symbolic for life, as in the forest it kept the monster warm and cooked his food. The Monster itself was brought to life with a spark, just like fire. On the opposite end, it represents destruction as the Monster burned down the cottage soon after its occupants fled. Victor also feels the flames of guilt and they’re eating away at him.
Opening Scene: Frankenstein is a frame story, a story that begins at its end and is told through a flashback. It is also an epistolary. The book open with Walton’s letters home to his sister back in England detailing how he intended to find the passage to the Pacific Ocean through the Artic. He then tells of how he saw the Monster on a sled, whom Walton described as an enormous figure. The day after he spots a smaller man on a sled on a floating piece of ice: Victor Frankenstein. He brings Victor aboard and nurses him back to health. A recovered Victor then tells Walton his miserable life story. Victor does so because he recognizes himself in Walton, and wants to warn that the quest he has undertaken will lead to misery.
Closing Scene: The book ends with Victor finishing is his story, as recounted by more of Walton’s letters addressed to his sister. Walton has agreed to give up his voyage, but Victor does not. The book both begins and ends with Walton’s letters to his sister, and the story both begins and ends with a warning against performing acts that are reserved for God and God alone, such as creating life, less it lead to great misery. It was Victor’s pride and want to defy nature that ultimately killed him. In the end, Victor dies, and the Monster is seen mourning over his death before he goes off to kill himself, and Walton has agreed to turn the ship around and spare himself of the tragedy that befell Frankenstein.
Themes:
Science: The Monster was created from a bunch of sewn up body parts, some chemicals, and what is believed to have been lightning; basically he’s a giant science experiment gone wrong. Romantics believed that science and industrialization were evil. The Monster represents those evils, and the destruction that it causes is synonymous with the damages of real-life industrialized England. Not only that, but Victor went directly against nature by bringing something back from the dead. He tried to play God, and God punished him for it by killing everyone he loved. The book questions where the limit is. Yes science can improve lives but at what price? Even if Victor’s experiment had not gone wrong, and he indeed perfected a way to bring back the dead, is it right?
Fate: It’s still debatable about whether the deaths were indeed Victor’s fault, or could the events have gone another way. On one hand, Victor tried to give life, a task that was reserved for God, and it was unnatural, going against Romantic beliefs. He also then abandons the Monster, and then he keeps it a secret. But in his defense, he did not set out to birth evil; he was doing it in the name of science in the belief that someday this discovery will help humanity eventually. The Monster was born with the mind of a child, and it learned firsthand both the cruelty and kindness of humanity. The Monster was not born evil, but simply became so after it experienced so much suffering and loneliness. It helped humans but only been punished in return because it was ugly. Yet, it murdered William and framed Justine and then killed Henry and Elizabeth. Yes Victor abandoned but the Monster then killed innocent people just to make Victor suffer, taking some perverse joy from his agony. Perhaps the unfortunate series of events were unavoidable from the start because Victor had defied God. Or perhaps it was the Monster, so driven by his emotions, like the child it was, to kill and find joy in other’s pains.
Nature: Nature plays a significant role a few times in the novel. The book opens with Walton up the in the Artic, and then Nature traps him when his ship becomes enclosed in ice. Thus, the power of nature over man. Geneva, Victor’s childhood home, is bright and happy, reflecting the happy childhood Victor enjoyed with Elizabeth and Henry. The Monster is born on a dark rainy November night, foreshadowing the terror that was to come. After William death, and thus the death of Victor’s childhood innocence, Geneva and its happiness seem to mock him. The Monster itself fled into the forest soon after its creation, mirroring how Romantics would retreat into nature to escape reality. And it is in the mountains that the Monster encounters Victor again and tells him its story. After each tragedy that befalls his life Victor retreats not to his family but into nature to be alone and brood about his existence and his mistakes.
Rejection: The Monster describes itself as an abortion, rejected by the very person who made it. In addition, the description of the Monster is eerily similar to that of a newborn baby. The Monster is absolutely hideous, but initially it is not evil. It was simply rejected because it was tall and ugly and scary looking. Abandoned by its creator and shunned by society, the fiend is angry and blames Victor foe leaving it and vows revenge.