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Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by Mary Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen and the novel was published when she was nineteen. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France.

Through research it can be determined the many influences the author was under during the creation of the novel. She had traveled the region in which the story takes place, and the topics of galvanism and such other occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions. Frankenstein is infused with some elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, and is also considered to be one of the earliest examples of science fiction. It was also a warning against the expansion of modern man in the Industrial Revolution, alluded to in the novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus. The story has had an influence across literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and films.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Walton's introductory frame narrative

Frankenstein begins in epistolary form, documenting the correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Walton sets out to explore the North Pole and expand his scientific knowledge in hopes of achieving fame and friendship. The ship becomes trapped in ice, and, one day, the crew sees a dogsled in the distance, on which there is the figure of a giant man. Hours later, the crew finds Frankenstein in need of sustenance. Frankenstein had been in pursuit of his monster when all but one of his dogs died. He had broken apart his dogsled to make oars and rowed an ice-raft toward the vessel. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion and recounts his story to Walton. Before beginning his story, Frankenstein warns Walton of the wretched effects of allowing ambition to push one to aim beyond what one is capable of achieving.

[edit] Narrative

Victor Frankenstein begins by telling Walton of his childhood. Born into a wealthy family of Geneva, Frankenstein is encouraged to seek a greater understanding of the world around him through science. He grows up in a safe environment, surrounded by loving family and friends.

As a young boy, Victor Frankenstein became obsessed with studying outdated theories of science that focused on achieving natural wonders. In particular, Victor studied the works of Cornelius Agrippa. He planned to attend university at Ingolstadt Germany. But, a week before his planned departure, Frankenstein's mother died, ironically after curing his adopted sister, Elizabeth Lavenza, who became ill with scarlet fever. The whole family was aggrieved, and Frankenstein sees the death as his life's first misfortune. At university, he excels at chemistry and other sciences and—in part through studying how life decays—discovers the secret to imbuing the inanimate with life. He also becomes interested in galvanism, a technique discovered in the 1790s.

While the exact details of the monster's construction are left ambiguous, Frankenstein explains that he collected bones from charnel-houses, and "disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame." He also says that the dissecting-room and slaughter-house furnished many of his materials. (However, these parts were for study and Victor admits that death cannot be reversed.) He had been forced to make the monster much larger than a normal man — he estimates it to be about eight feet tall — in part because of the difficulty in replicating the minute parts of the human body. The creature, which he had hoped would be beautiful, is instead hideous to his eyes, with a withered, translucent, yellowish skin that barely conceals the muscular system and blood vessels. After giving the monster life, Frankenstein is repulsed by his work: "I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” Frankenstein flees hoping to forget what he has created and attempts to live a normal life. Victor's abandonment of the monster leaves the monster confused, angry and afraid.

After his exhausting and secretive efforts to create a human life, Frankenstein becomes ill. He is nursed back to health by his childhood friend, Henry Clerval. It takes Frankenstein four months to recover from his illness. He has determined that he should return home when his five-year-old brother, William, is found murdered. Elizabeth blames herself for William's death because she had allowed him to have access to his mother's locket, which she believes caused a thief to murder William and steal the locket. William's nanny, Justine, is hanged for the murder based on the discovery of Frankenstein's mother's locket in Justine's pocket. It is revealed that the creature murdered William and then placed the locket into Justine's coat as she slept, and the back story for the creature's murder of William is given.

Frankenstein's monster travels to Geneva and meets a little boy in the woods. Hoping that, because the boy is still young and potentially unaffected by older humans' perception of his hideousness, the boy will be a companion for him, Frankenstein's monster plans to abduct the child. But the boy reveals himself as a relation of Frankenstein. Upon seeing the monster, the boy shouts insults, angering the monster. In an attempt to reason with the boy, the monster covers the boy's mouth to silence him. The monster ends up killing the boy by asphyxiation. Although not his original intent, the monster takes it as his first act of vengeance against his creator. The monster removes a necklace from the dead boy's body and plants it on a sleeping girl, Justine. Justine is found with the necklace, put on trial and found guilty. The judges at the trial are noted for their dislike of executing people when there is any doubt; but, under threats of excommunication, Justine confesses to the murder and is executed.

When Frankenstein learns of his brother's death, he returns to Geneva to be with his family. Frankenstein sees the monster in the woods where his young brother was murdered, and becomes certain that the monster is William's murderer. Ravaged by his grief and guilt for creating the monster who wreaked so much destruction, Frankenstein retreats into the mountains to find peace. After some time in solitude, the monster approaches Frankenstein. Initially furious and intent on killing the monster, Frankenstein attempts to spring on him. The monster, far larger and more agile than his creator, eludes Frankenstein and allows the man to compose himself. Frankenstein encounters his creation while pursuing him to avenge William's death. The monster begins to tell Frankenstein of his encounters with humans, and how he had become afraid of them and spent a year living near a cottage, observing the family living there. The family had been wealthy, but was forced into exile when Felix De Lacey rescued a Turkish merchant wrongfully accused of a crime and sentenced to death. The man rescued by Felix was the father of his beloved, a girl named Safie. Once rescued, the father agreed to allow Felix to marry Safie. Ultimately, though, he could not stand the idea of his beloved daughter marrying a Christian and fled with his daughter. Safie returned, eager for the freedom of European women.

Through observing the De Lacey family, the monster becomes educated and self-aware, realizing that he is very different in physical appearance from the humans he watches. In loneliness, the monster seeks to befriend the De Laceys. When the monster tries to befriend the family, they are horrified by his appearance and react viciously, with violence against him. This rejection makes the monster seek further vengeance against his creator.

The monster concludes his story with a demand that Frankenstein create for him a female companion, on the basis that he is lonely since no human will accept him. The monster argues that as a living thing, he has a right to happiness and that Frankenstein, as his creator, has a duty to oblige him. He promises that he and his mate will vanish into wilderness uninhabited by man, never to reappear, if Frankenstein creates a companion for him.

Fearing for his family, Frankenstein reluctantly agrees and travels to England to do his work. Clerval accompanies Frankenstein, but they separate in Scotland. In the process of creating a second being on the Orkney Islands, Frankenstein is plagued by premonitions of the carnage another monster could potentially wreak. Given the murderous behavior of the first creature, Frankenstein is reluctant to compound his error, particularly as creating a female companion for the creature might lead to an entire race of monsters that could plague mankind for millennia to come. Frankenstein destroys the unfinished project. The monster witnesses this event and vows revenge on Frankenstein's upcoming wedding night. Frankenstein sails far out to sea to dispose of the parts of the unfinished project, and remains adrift and alone. Meanwhile, the monster murders Clerval and leaves the corpse on an Irish beach, coincidentally near where Frankenstein finds himself washed up after his unintentionally long voyage. Arriving in Ireland, Frankenstein is imprisoned for the murder of Clerval, and falls violently ill in prison. After being acquitted (he was proven to be on the Orkney Islands when the murder took place) and with his health renewed, Frankenstein returns home with his father.

Once home, Frankenstein marries his cousin Elizabeth and, possessing full knowledge of and belief in the monster's threat, prepares for a fight to the death with the monster. Wrongly believing the monster's vowed revenge meant his own death, Frankenstein asks Elizabeth to retire to her room for the night. Of course, the continued revenge of the monster is the destruction of those closest to Frankenstein, and the monster kills the secluded Elizabeth in her bed. Grief-stricken by the deaths of William, Justine, Clerval, and now Elizabeth, Frankenstein's father dies. Frankenstein's father was overwhelmed with the deaths of so many important family members. Frankenstein was infuriated. Frankenstein vows to pursue the monster until one of them destroys the other. After months of pursuit, the two end up in the Arctic Circle, near the North Pole, where we return to Walton's ship and the end of Frankenstein's narrative.

[edit] Concluding frame narrative

At the end of Frankenstein's narrative, Captain Walton resumes the telling of the story. A few days after Frankenstein has finished his story, the ship becomes entombed in ice and a deputation from Walton's crew insist on returning South once the ship is freed. In spite of a passionate and rousing speech from Frankenstein, encouraging the crew to push further North, Walton is forced to relent and head for home. Although Frankenstein is desperate to continue his pursuit of the monster and exact his revenge, he is critically ill and dies shortly after the ship heads for home. Walton discovers the monster mourning over Frankenstein's body. Walton hears the monster's adamant justification for his vengeance as well as expressions of remorse. The destruction of Frankenstein had not brought the monster peace - rather his crimes increased his own misery and alienation, finding his own emotional destruction in the destruction of his creator. He leaves the ship and travels toward the Pole to destroy himself on his own funeral pyre so that no others will ever know of his existence.

[edit] Composition

Draft of Frankenstein ("It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld my man completed ...")

How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?^[2]

During the rainy summer of 1816, the "Year Without a Summer," the world was locked in a long cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815.^[3] Mary Shelley, aged 18, and her lover (and later husband) Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was consistently too cold and dreary that summer to enjoy the outdoor holiday activities they had planned, so the group retired indoors until dawn.

Among other subjects, the conversation turned to galvanism and the feasibility of returning a corpse or assembled body parts to life, and to the experiments of the 18th-century natural philosopher and poet Erasmus Darwin, who was said to have animated dead matter.^[4] Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company also amused themselves by reading German ghost stories, prompting Byron to suggest they each write their own supernatural tale. Shortly afterwards, in a waking dream, Mary Shelley conceived the idea for Frankenstein:

I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for SUPREMELY frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.^[5]

She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into a full-fledged novel.^[6] She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life".^[7] Byron managed to write just a fragment based on the vampire legends he heard while travelling the Balkans, and from this John Polidori created The Vampyre (1819), the progenitor of the romantic vampire literary genre. Thus, two legendary horror tales originated from this one circumstance.

Mary's and Percy Bysshe Shelley's manuscripts for the first three-volume edition in 1818 (written 1816–1817), as well as Mary Shelley's fair copy for her publisher, are now housed in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The Bodleian acquired the papers in 2004, and they belong now to the Abinger Collection.^[8] On 1 October 2008, the Bodleian published a new edition of Frankenstein which contains comparisons of Mary Shelley's original text with Percy Shelley's additions and interventions alongside. The new edition is edited by Charles E. Robinson: The Original Frankenstein (ISBN 978-1851243969).^[9]

[edit] Publication

Mary Shelley by Richard Rothwell (1840–41)

Mary Shelley completed her writing in May 1817, and Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was first published on 1 January 1818 by the small London publishing house of Harding, Mavor & Jones. It was issued anonymously, with a preface written for Mary by Percy Bysshe Shelley and with a dedication to philosopher William Godwin, her father. It was published in an edition of just 500 copies in three volumes, the standard "triple-decker" format for 19th century first editions. The novel had been previously rejected by Percy Bysshe Shelley's publisher, Charles Ollier and by Byron's publisher John Murray.

The second edition of Frankenstein was published on 11 August 1823 in two volumes (by G. and W. B. Whittaker), and this time credited Mary Shelley as the author.

On 31 October 1831, the first "popular" edition in one volume appeared, published by Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley. This edition was quite heavily revised by Mary Shelley, and included a new, longer preface by her, presenting a somewhat embellished version of the genesis of the story. This edition tends to be the one most widely read now, although editions containing the original 1818 text are still being published. In fact, many scholars prefer the 1818 edition. They argue that it preserves the spirit of Shelley's original publication (see Anne K. Mellor's "Choosing a Text of Frankenstein to Teach" in the W.W. Norton Critical edition).

[edit] Name origins

[edit] Frankenstein's creation

Main article: Frankenstein's monster

An English editorial cartoonist conceived the Irish as akin to Frankenstein's monster; illustration from an 1843 issue of Punch.^[10]

Part of Frankenstein's rejection of his creation is the fact that he does not give it a name, which gives it a lack of identity. Instead it is referred to by words such as "monster", "daemon", "fiend", "wretch" and "it". When Frankenstein converses with the monster in Chapter 10, he addresses it as "vile insect", "abhorred monster", "fiend", "wretched devil" and "abhorred devil".

During a telling of Frankenstein, Shelley referred to the creature as "Adam".^[11] Shelley was referring to the first man in the Garden of Eden, as in her epigraph:

Did I request thee, Maker from my clay

To mould Me man? Did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?

John Milton, Paradise Lost (X.743–5)

The monster has often been mistakenly called "Frankenstein." In 1908 one author said "It is strange to note how well-nigh universally the term "Frankenstein" is misused, even by intelligent people, as describing some hideous monster...".^[12] Edith Wharton's The Reef (1916) describes an unruly child as an "infant Frankenstein."^[13] David Lindsay's "The Bridal Ornament," published in The Rover, 12 June 1844, mentioned "the maker of poor Frankenstein." After the release of James Whale's popular 1931 film Frankenstein, the public at large began speaking of the monster itself as "Frankenstein." A reference to this occurs in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and in several subsequent films in the series, as well as in film titles such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

[edit] Frankenstein

Mary Shelley maintained that she derived the name "Frankenstein" from a dream-vision. Despite her public claims of originality, the significance of the name has been a source of speculation. Literally, in German, the name Frankenstein means "stone of the Franks, Franks' stone." The name is associated with various places in Germany, such as Castle Frankenstein (Burg Frankenstein) in Mühltal, Hesse, or Castle Frankenstein in Frankenstein, Palatinate. There is also a castle called Frankenstein in Bad Salzungen, Thuringia. Furthermore, there is a municipality called Frankenstein in Saxony, and before 1946, Ząbkowice Śląskie, a city in Silesia, Poland, was known as Frankenstein in Schlesien.

More recently, Radu Florescu, in his book In Search of Frankenstein, argued that Mary and Percy Shelley visited Castle Frankenstein on their way to Switzerland, near Darmstadt along the Rhine, where a notorious alchemist named Konrad Dippel had experimented with human bodies, but that Mary suppressed mentioning this visit, to maintain her public claim of originality. A recent literary essay^[14] by A.J. Day supports Florescu's position that Mary Shelley knew of, and visited Castle Frankenstein^[15] before writing her debut novel. Day includes details of an alleged description of the Frankenstein castle that exists in Mary Shelley's 'lost' journals. However, this theory is not without critics; Frankenstein expert Leonard Wolf calls it an "unconvincing...conspiracy theory."^[16] According to Jörg Heléne, the 'lost journals' as well as Florescu's claims could not be verified.^[17]

[edit] Victor

Main article: Victor Frankenstein

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A possible interpretation of the name Victor derives from Paradise Lost by John Milton, a great influence on Shelley (a quotation from Paradise Lost is on the opening page of Frankenstein and Shelley even allows the monster himself to read it). Milton frequently refers to God as "the Victor" in Paradise Lost, and Shelley sees Victor as playing God by creating life. In addition to this, Shelley's portrayal of the monster owes much to the character of Satan in Paradise Lost; indeed, the monster says, after reading the epic poem, that he empathises with Satan's role in the story.

There are many similarities between Victor and Percy Shelley, Mary's husband. Victor was a pen name of Percy Shelley's, as in the collection of poetry he wrote with his sister Elizabeth, Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire.^[18] There is speculation that one of Mary Shelley's models for Victor Frankenstein was Percy, who at Eton had "experimented with electricity and magnetism as well as with gunpowder and numerous chemical reactions," and whose rooms at Oxford were filled with scientific equipment.^[19] Percy Shelley was the first-born son of a wealthy country squire with strong political connections and a descendant of Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet of Castle Goring, and Richard Fitzalan, 10th Earl of Arundel.^[20] Victor's family is one of the most distinguished of that republic and his ancestors were counsellors and syndics. Percy had a sister named Elizabeth. Victor had an adopted sister, named Elizabeth. On 22 February 1815, Mary Shelley delivered a two-month premature baby and the baby died two weeks later. Percy did not care about the condition of this premature infant and left with Claire, Mary's stepsister, for a lurid affair.^[21] When Victor saw the creature come to life he fled the apartment, though the newborn creature approached him, as a child would a parent. The question of Victor's responsibility to the creature is one of the main themes of the book.

[edit] Modern Prometheus

The Modern Prometheus is the novel's subtitle (though some modern publishings of the work now drop the subtitle, mentioning it only in an introduction). Prometheus, in some versions of Greek mythology, was the Titan who created mankind. It was also Prometheus who then secretly took fire from heaven and gave it to man. When Zeus discovered this, he eternally punished Prometheus by fixing him to a rock where each day a predatory bird came to devour his liver, only for the liver to regrow the next day; ready for the bird to come again, until Heracles (Hercules) releases him.

Prometheus was also a myth told in Latin but was a very different story. In this version Prometheus makes man from clay and water, again a very relevant theme to Frankenstein as Victor rebels against the laws of nature (how life is naturally made) and as a result is punished by his creation.

In 1910, Edison Studios released the
first motion-picture adaptation of Shelley's story.

The Titan in the Greek mythology of Prometheus parallels Victor Frankenstein. Victor's work by creating man by new means reflects the same innovative work of the Titan in creating humans. Victor, in a way, stole the secret of creation from God just as the Titan stole fire from heaven to give to man. Both the Titan and Victor are punished for their actions. Victor is reprimanded by suffering the loss of those close to him and the dread of being killed himself by his creation.

For Mary Shelley, Prometheus was not a hero but rather something of a devil, whom she blamed for bringing fire to man and thereby seducing the human race to the vice of eating meat (fire brought cooking which brought hunting and killing).^[22] Support for this claim may be reflected in Chapter 17 of the novel, where the "monster" speaks to Victor Frankenstein: "My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment." For Romantic Era artists in general, Prometheus' gift to man echoed the two great utopian promises of the 18th century: the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, containing both great promise and potentially unknown horrors.

Byron was particularly attached to the play Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, and Percy Shelley would soon write his own Prometheus Unbound (1820). The term "Modern Prometheus" was actually coined by Immanuel Kant, referring to Benjamin Franklin and his then recent experiments with electricity.^[23]

[edit] Shelley's sources

Shelley incorporated a number of different sources into her work, one of which was the Promethean myth from Ovid. The influence of John Milton's Paradise Lost, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, are also clearly evident within the novel. Also, both Shelleys had read William Thomas Beckford's Gothic novel Vathek.^{[citation needed]} Frankenstein also contains multiple references to her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and her major work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman which discusses the lack of equal education for males and females. The inclusion of her mother's ideas in her work is also related to the theme of creation and motherhood in the novel. Mary is likely to have acquired some ideas for Frankenstein's character from Humphry Davy's book Elements of Chemical Philosophy in which he had written that "science has...bestowed upon man powers which may be called creative; which have enabled him to change and modify the beings around him...".

[edit] Reception

Initial critical reception of the book mostly was unfavorable, compounded by confused speculation as to the identity of the author. Sir Walter Scott wrote that "upon the whole, the work impresses us with a high idea of the author's original genius and happy power of expression", but most reviewers thought it "a tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity" (Quarterly Review).

Despite the reviews, Frankenstein achieved an almost immediate popular success. It became widely known especially through melodramatic theatrical adaptations — Mary Shelley saw a production of Presumption; or The Fate of Frankenstein, a play by Richard Brinsley Peake, in 1823. A French translation appeared as early as 1821 (Frankenstein: ou le Prométhée Moderne, translated by Jules Saladin).

Frankenstein has been both well-received and disregarded since its anonymous publication in 1818. Critical reviews of that time demonstrate these two views. The Belle Assemblee described the novel as "very bold fiction" (139). The Quarterly Review stated "that the author has the power of both conception and language" (185). Sir Walter Scott, writing in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine congratulated "the author's original genius and happy power of expression" (620), although he is less convinced about the way in which the monster gains knowledge about the world and language.^[24] The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany hoped to see "more productions from this author" (253).

In two other reviews where the author is known as the daughter of William Godwin, the criticism of the novel is an attack on the feminine nature of Mary Shelley. The British Critic attacks the novel's flaws as the fault of the author: "The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment" (438). The Literary Panorama and National Register attacks the novel as a "feeble imitation of Mr. Godwin's novels" produced by the "daughter of a celebrated living novelist" (414).

Despite these initial dismissals, critical reception has been largely positive since the mid-20th century.^[25] Major critics such as M. A. Goldberg and Harold Bloom have praised the "aesthetic and moral" relevance of the novel^[26] and in more recent years the novel has become a popular subject for psychoanalytic and feminist criticism. The novel today is generally considered to be a landmark work of romantic and gothic literature, as well as science fiction.^[27]