FRANKENSTEIN AS A GOTHIC NOVEL
The Monster. It is horrific to look at, it commits murder and it has been constructed out of the body parts of dead people. The settings. Dimly lit laboratories, graveyards in the dead of night and hostile threatening foreign landscapes all appear. The weather. Thunderstorms, driving rain and icy blizzards all feature. Females in danger. Caroline Frankenstein dies of a fatal illness, Justine is executed, Elizabeth is murdered and Safie (the guest of the De Laceys) is victimised. Extreme emotions. Both Victor and the Monster vow to revenge themselves on each other. Atmospheres of mystery and suspense. We are never actually made aware of how the Monster is bought to life and at the end we cannot be really certain that it has died.
However, the structure of Frankenstein is much more complex as Mary Shelley uses a technique called embedded narrative. In an embedded narrative, the main st ory is told within a framing narrative (think of a painting in a frame fr ame which makes up the whole picture). In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley starts with a framing narrative (Walton's letters to his sister), before moving to the main narrative (Victor's story) and then contained contained within this is the Monster's story of survival and how he learns from the De Lacey family. There are three separate narrators. As readers, we learn directly about Robert Walton's expedition in his own words. He then meets Victor Frankenstein and his narrative is told to us through the letters which Robert Walton is writing to his sister. Finally, we hear the Monster's account of his development, but this is conveyed to us by Victor, which is in turn told to Walton who is telling it both to his sister and to us as readers. The novel then returns to Victor's point of view and then finally to Walton's framing narrative. By the time we get to the Monster's story in its own words, we are ready to believe that not only can it speak but that it can argue ar gue in a logical and rational manner. In Frankenstein,, three notable motifs are: the moon, the doppelganger (lookalike) and light In Frankenstein and fire. One of the first experiences the Monster has after it is created is of seeing the moon in the sky: Although it has no name for what it has seen, the moon fills the Monster with a sense of pleasure and wonder and acts as a guiding light light in the absence of any human contact. Thus a link between the Monster and the moon is created. The doppleganger
In Frankenstein,, it is possible to see the Monster as the dark side of Victor's nature. As the In Frankenstein young scientist pursues his studies, he divides his desire for knowledge from his feelings and responsibilities towards other people and therefore becomes more monstrous. The Monster for quite some time is rational and uses education to better itself - just like Victor. So the two
characters become increasingly alike and Shelley emphasises this by making them similar in many ways. Both Victor and the Monster are:
outsiders who are isolated from society passionate and driven by ambition
intellectually gifted
able to use language to persuade and control each other
driven by thoughts of justice and revenge
monstrous - one because of physical appearance and one because of t he actions he takes
Light and fire Many of the key events in Frankenstein take place at night or in dark and gloomy circumstances. Its opposite, light, is used to show the power of knowledge and discovery.
Like light, fire also both comforts and supports at the same time as being potentially dangerous. When the Monster first sees a flame it is 'overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it '. However he gets too close and discovers that it also has the power to harm: 2. Allusions
The full title of the novel is Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. In the ancient myth, Prometheus creates man from clay then steals fire from the Gods so that his creation can be more godlike. Victor Frankenstein, in a similar way, trespasses on what should be God's role when he created the Monster. Prometheus was continuously punished for his actions in the same way that both Victor and the Monster live lives of torment. Paradise Lost
John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost , written in 1667, is based on the Biblical story in which God creates Adam and then Eve. The reader is encouraged to link Victor to God, the Monster to Adam and the uncompleted female creature to Eve. The key figure in Paradise Lost , however, is Satan. He is an angel who rebels against God, is expelled from Heaven and brings sin and misery to the world. The Monster declares to Victor: ' I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom they drivest from joy for no misdeed. ' Victor also links himself to Satan when he says ' Like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell. ' One of the books the Monster finds in the forest and which helps him to learn to read is a copy of Paradise Lost . The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
In the poem, the mariner tells of a sea voyage to the Antarctic where his ship becomes ice bound. This directly parallels Walton's voyage to the Arctic and at one point Walton even directly refers to the poem. In Coleridge's tale, the mariner is guilty of shooting a harmless albatross. As a punishment, he is made to suffer continuously while all around him die.
Victor, too, exists in a living hell as his family and friends are killed. The mariner eventually becomes an outcast having little contact with society; this directly parallels the experience of the Monster.
PSYCHOANALYSIS ANALYSIS - FRANKENSTEIN BY MARY SHELLEY Just as the creature haunts Victor Frankenstein, his creator, our unconscious can haunt us. At least, according to Freud's theory of psychic life. If we don't put in the work to acknowledge what's going on in deep in our heads and souls, we risk falling prey to the monsters within. Her creature represents human nature at its darkest. Dr. Frankenstein is now pursuing his creature, seeking revenge. Once a doctor but now an evildoer, he rushes toward a fate that he knows will ruin him. He really should have let well enough alone. In this sense he's a bit like Antigone: driven toward death by a desire to honor the dead. In, his case, the dead are his family and friends — those murdered by the creature he created. But Shelley's take on the death drive is a lot less hopeful than Sophocles's. There is nothing freeing about Victor Frankenstein's obedience to the impulse toward revenge. This impulse turns him into a slave, not a master. And the fact that the once-good doctor becomes a subordinate to his own unconscious is deeply ironic, of course. Victor was supposed to be the creature 's master, but now he's just a walking ball of brutal desires. In Frankenstein, Shelley uses rather mysterious circumstances to have Victor Frankenstein create the monster : the cloudy circumstances under which Victor gathers body parts for his experiments and the use of little known modern technologies for unnatural purposes. Shelley employs the supernatural elements of raising the dead and macabre research into unexplored fields of science unknown by most readers. She also causes us to question our views on Victor's use of the dead for scientific experimentation Frankenstein is set in continental Europe, specifically Switzerland and Germany, where many of Shelley's readers had not been. Further, the incorporation of the chase scenes through the Arctic regions takes us even further from England into regions unexplored by most readers. Victor's laboratory is the perfect place to create a new type of human being. Laboratories and scientific experiments were not known to the average reader, thus this was an added element of mystery and gloom. Likewise, the Frankenstein monster seems to have some sort of communication between himself and his creator, because the monster appears wherever Victor goes. The monster also moves with amazing superhuman speed with Victor matching him in the chase towards the North Pole.
Perhaps the most overlooked plot line, in terms of importance, is the monster 's story. Mary Shelley gives the monster a voice, and the reader can sympathize with his pain and suffering at the hands of mankind. n Shelley's novel, the secret is tinged with shame and fear. Victor is not trying to uncover another's falsehood, sin, or mistake. As the monster's creator, Victor is the author of his own fate. His secret is run amok. It's not buried in some ancient castle, nor is it hidden in the depths of a tomb, another Gothic convention. Victor has quite literally resurrected his secret from the grave and breathed life into it. It is an active agent able to seek out and destroy everyone Victor most wants to shield from it: his friends and family. One of the most prominent characteristics of Gothic literature is the constant threat, real or imagined, that the characters must suffer. Danger lurks at every corner. Shadows menace, populated by evils that have no face or name. Victor's shadow has a name and an agenda. The monster is an agent of rage, an instrument of revenge. He loathes his creator for rejecting him at birth then abandoning him to the cruelty of the human race. He blames Victor for subjecting him to loneliness and isolation when he was born with a heart craving love. He also begrudges Victor for failing to give him the one thing that would quiet his pain and prevent his war on humanity: a mate.
Dark Settings – There are lots of dark settings in Frankenstein. When the monster is created, Frankenstein describes how it was a, ‘P58 on a dreary night of November’. This pathetic fallacy sets the scene for the start of chapter five which features the birth of the monster. It is a foreshadows the darkness to come further on in the novel.
‘I saw, by the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement’. The moon is associated with the monster as being evil. Therefore, dark is evil. Therefore, Shelley is making the connection between the moon and the monster seeing that the monster had ‘P58 yellow skin’. This makes clear that the reader is meant to associate the monster with being something of darkness. If light represents life and heaven, then darkness represents death and hell. The moon is trying to be light, but it is tinted with the colour of death. The monster is alive, but it is tinted with death from the body parts used to make it and foreshadowing evilness.
Extreme Landscapes and Weather The start of the novel has the setting as the North Pole: a strange unknown and weird area that is a place God could potentially be. The remote setting of the North Pole creates a isolated and mysterious mood, (P25) ‘surrounded by ice, which closed in the ship on all sides’, ‘thick fog’, ‘vast and irregular plains of ice’, ‘lost among the distant inequalities of the ice’ and ‘many hundred miles from any land’.
Death, Decay, Darkness and Madness
I never saw a more interesting creature; his eyes have generally an expression of wildness, and even madness’. The reader’s first description of Frankenstein is of him being mad – this is a punishment for evil deeds.
The monster cannot be loved because of his ugly appearance which is Victor’s fault. Therefore, the monster destroys the people that love Victor so that Victor feels the same as the monster: loneliness (some sense of justice here maybe?). Passion-Drive, Wilful Villain-Hero or Villain Victor wants to kill the monster for killing his family. Frankenstein + monster = doppelgänger.
Heroine with the Tendency to Faint and Need to be Rescued Although the women are stereotyped in the novel as powerless, it is Frankenstein that it closest to being that of Heroine. P181 ‘passed like a dream from my memory’. Victor faints at the sight of Clerval’s dead body. This should have been the typical reaction for a women – Victor is feminised. This creates the juxtaposition from the doppelgänger that Victor is feminist and the monster is masculine (an example binary opposition too).
Horrifying Events or the Threat of Such Happenings
Gloom, Mystery, Suspense, the Dramatic, Macabre and Sensational (P25) ‘the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature’. This is the first sight of the monster which is a dramatic moment to the plot of the novel. Already, the reader can tell this ‘thing’ is not normal and possesses abnormal qualities. P55 ‘I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay?’ Here, it is clear Frankenstein is obsessed with death with him knowing that what he is about to do is cruel. P90 ‘graves of William and Justine, the first hapless victims to my unhallowed arts’. This sets the reader up for Volume 2 because it foreshadows the monster as something that is likely to kill again. P133 ‘Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?’ This mimics when Adam complained to God in Paradise Lost . P138 ‘my feelings were those of rage and revenge’. The monster was born innocent. However, with his bad experiences with humanity, he has turned vengeful towards them. P222 ‘I [monster] abhorred myself’. From everyone hating the monster has led the monster to hating himself.
THE SUBLIME IN FRANKENSTEIN ‘Sublime’ refers to the effect of nature on the human -the beauty and/or terror of the scene creates a sense of awe in the observer.
While the natural landscape ispresented as a place of tranquillity and beauty, it is also amidst this naturalbeauty that Frankenstein’s monster confronts him and commits some of his atrocities. ANALYSIS OF MONSTER
Monstrous? We'll say. And when you take a closer look at this description, the real horror seems to be the contrast: flowing black hair and white teeth juxtaposed with his shriveled face and "straight black lips." Unfortunately, Victor isn't the only one who's terrified of the monster on sight. The sweet, gentle family he's been spying on in the forest falls to pieces when they see him: Agatha faints, Safie runs away, and Felix beats him with a stick (15.37). Not a good beginning. Even Walton, who knows the whole story, can't deal: "Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face," he says: "I shut my eyes involuntarily" (24.56). Heart of Gold? When the monster describes himself, it's all sunshine and light. He has visions of "amiable and lovely creatures" keeping him company (15.11); he admires Agatha and Felix as "superior beings" (12.17); he describes himself as having "good dispositions" and tells De Lacey that "my life has been hitherto harmless and in some degree beneficial" (15.25); and he uses "extreme labour" to rescue a young girl from drowning" (16.19). But no matter what he does, his actions are always misinterpreted. Felix and Agatha think he's come to attack their father; the public assumes he's trying to murder the young girl instead of rescuing her; William Frankenstein assumes that he's going to kill him. The moment he's accused of trying to murder the girl is a real turning point for the monster. Essentially, Shelley seems to be saying that we (society) get the monsters we deserve. By neglecting and shunning people with socially unacceptable appearances or behaviors, we create mass murderers. If we accept the monster's word — that he was born good and made evil — then one of the book's major moral points is that we as a society have a responsibility to reach out to our outcast members.
But what if we saw the monster as a Romantic figure, too? Check out his description of himself: If you leave out the bit about the "hideous" person, this is a pitch-perfect description of a Romantic hero: a radically independent dude who won't let the man tell him what to do, a kind of superhero who sets out to solve the mysteries of life. Monster? Maybe. But if you closed your eyes, he'd sound a lot like a better version of humanity. Lone Ranger
But being a superhero isn't all it's cracked up to be. It's lonely at the top, and not just because the monster is "shunned and hated by all mankind" (17.5). He's shunned and hated by all womankind, too: "Shall each man," he says, "find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone?" (20.11). Even our cold hearts are touched by this plea. He begs Frankenstein to make him a mate, and he really seems sincere when he says that he's just planning to move to South America and eat "acorns and berries" (17.9).
Essentially, the monster has no community. Even Satan, he says, had fellow fallen angels — but the monster is totally alone. No wonder he has a death wish. Adam or Satan? The Adam/ Satan duality is super important, because one of the monster's favorite books is Paradise Lost. In Paradise Lost, Milton suggests that Satan is jealous of Adam for having Eve and a sweet garden to live in. Sounds a lot like the monster, right? Sure. Eating berries, living in the "wilds," sleeping in the leaves, not to mention being "created" rather than born: it sounds a lot like Book 5 of Paradise Lost. So, which is it?
Well, both. The whole point (we think) is that the monster is both. He's both good and bad. He's a little scientist, trying to figure out the secrets of life — and then setting fire to the ants he's been studying with a microscope. (Figuratively, folks.) He loves people, but he hates them. He wants to run away and live in the woods, and he just wants his mommy to love him. In other words, he's a lot like us.
