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Frankenstein

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Novels

   CAPTION: Frankenstein

   Book covers for Frankenstein have taken many forms over the years which
   emphasize different themes of the novel such as gothic horror, science
   fiction, and romanticism.
   Author Mary Shelley
   Country England
   Language English
   Genre(s) Gothic horror, Science fiction novel
   Publisher Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones
   Released 1 January 1818
   Media Type Print ( Hardback & Paperback)
   ISBN NA

   Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel by Mary Shelley.
   First published in London, England in 1818 (but more often read in the
   revised third edition of 1831), it is a novel infused with some
   elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement. It was also a
   warning against the "over-reaching" of modern man and the Industrial
   Revolution. (The novel's subtitle, The Modern Prometheus, alludes to
   the over-reaching and punishment of the character from Greek
   mythology.) The story has had an influence across literature and
   popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories and
   films. Many distinguished authors, such as Brian Aldiss, claim that it
   is the very first science fiction novel.

Plot summary

   Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.


   Frankenstein

   It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment
   of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected
   the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being
   into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the
    morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle
     was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished
     light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed
              hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.


   Frankenstein

   The novel opens with Captain Walton on a ship sailing north of the
   Arctic Circle. Walton's ship becomes ice-bound, and as he contemplates
   his isolation and paralysis, he spots a figure traveling across the ice
   on a dog sled. This is Victor Frankenstein's creature. Soon after he
   sees the ill Victor Frankenstein himself, and invites him onto his
   boat. The narrative of Walton is a frame narrative that allows for the
   story of Victor to be related. At the same time, Walton's predicament
   is symbolically appropriate for Victor's tale of displaced passion and
   brutalism.

   Victor takes over telling the story at this point. Curious and
   intelligent from a young age, he learns from the works of the masters
   of Medieval alchemy, reading such authors as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius
   Agrippa and Paracelsus and shunning modern Enlightenment teachings of
   natural science (see also Romanticism and the Middle Ages). He leaves
   his beloved family in Geneva, Switzerland to study in Ingolstadt,
   Bavaria, Germany, where he is first introduced to modern science. In a
   moment of inspiration, combining his new-found knowledge of natural
   science with the alchemic ideas of his old masters, Victor perceives
   the means by which inanimate matter can be imbued with life. He sets
   about constructing a man—perhaps intended as a companion—using means
   that Shelley refers to only vaguely. The main idea seems to be that
   Victor built a complete body from various organic parts, then simulated
   the functions of the human system in it. In the novel it is stated
   (chapter 4, volume 1) that he uses bones from charnel houses
   (repositories for the bones or bodies of the dead), and The dissecting
   room and the slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials; and often
   did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst,
   still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought
   my work near to a conclusion. However, this is at odds with him
   creating a similar Monster later in the novel on an island that would
   not have a large enough selection of corpses. An alternate theory is
   that the bones in the charnel houses' were used to understand human
   anatomy, and the body was made from base chemicals.Subsequent visual
   interpretations of the story have included the creation of
   Frankenstein's monster through alchemy, by the piecing together of
   corpses, or a combination of the two. In films, the body is often given
   the "spark of life" in the form of a channeled lightning bolt,
   conducted from a lightning rod during a stormy night.

   He intends the creature to be beautiful, but when it awakens he is
   disgusted. It has yellow, watery eyes, translucent skin, and is of an
   abominable size. Victor finds this revolting and runs out of the room
   in terror. That night he wakes up with the creature at his bedside
   facing him with an outstretched arm, and flees again, whereupon the
   creature disappears. Shock and overwork cause Victor to take ill for
   several months. After recovering, in about a year's time, he receives a
   letter from home informing him of the murder of his youngest brother
   William. He departs for Switzerland at once.

   Near Geneva, Victor catches a glimpse of the creature in a thunderstorm
   among the rocky boulders of the mountains, and is convinced that it
   killed William. Upon arriving home he finds Justine, the family's
   beloved maid, framed for the murder. To Victor's surprise, Justine
   makes a false confession because her minister threatens her with
   excommunication. Despite Victor's feelings of overwhelming guilt, he
   does not tell anyone about his horrid creation and Justine is convicted
   and executed. To recover from the ordeal, Victor goes hiking into the
   mountains where he encounters his "cursed creation" again, this time on
   the Mer de Glace, a glacier above Chamonix.

   The creature converses with Victor and tells him his story, speaking in
   strikingly eloquent and detailed language. He describes his feelings
   first of confusion, then rejection and hate. He explains how he learned
   to talk by studying a poor peasant family through a chink in the wall.
   He performs in secret many kind deeds for this family, but in the end,
   they drive him away when they see his appearance. He gets the same
   response from any human who sees him. The creature confesses that it
   was indeed he who killed William and framed Justine, and that he did so
   out of revenge. But now, the creature only wants one thing;
   companionship. He begs Victor to create a synthetic woman (counterpart
   to the synthetic man), with whom the creature can live, sequestered
   from all humanity but happy with his mate.

   At first, Victor agrees, but later, he tears up the half-made companion
   in disgust and madness. In retribution, the creature kills Clerval,
   Victor's best friend, and later, on Victor's wedding night, his wife
   Elizabeth. Victor now becomes the hunter: he pursues the creature into
   the Arctic ice, though in vain. Near exhaustion, he is stranded when an
   iceberg breaks away, carrying him out into the ocean. Before death
   takes him, Captain Walton's ship arrives and he is rescued.

   Walton assumes the narration again, describing a temporary recovery in
   Victor's health, allowing him to relate his extraordinary story.
   However, Victor's health soon fails, and he dies. Unable to convince
   his shipmates to continue north and bereft of the charismatic
   Frankenstein, Walton is forced to turn back towards England under the
   threat of mutiny. Finally, the creature boards the ship and finds
   Victor dead, and greatly laments what he has done to his maker. He vows
   to commit suicide. He leaves the ship by leaping through the cabin
   window onto the ice, and is never seen again.

Genesis


   Frankenstein

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


   Frankenstein

   During the snowy summer of 1816, the " Year Without A Summer," the
   world was locked in a long cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption
   of Tambora in 1815. In this terrible year, the then Mary Wollstonecraft
   Godwin, age 19, and her husband-to-be 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 vacation activities they had planned, so after reading
   Fantasmagoriana, an anthology of German ghost stories, Byron challenged
   the Shelleys and his personal physician John William Polidori to each
   compose a story of their own, the contest being won by whoever wrote
   the scariest tale. Mary conceived an idea after she fell into a waking
   dream or nightmare during which she saw "the pale student of unhallowed
   arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together." This was the germ
   of Frankenstein. Byron managed to write just a fragment based on the
   vampire legends he heard while travelling the Balkans, and from this
   Polidori created The Vampyre (1819), the progenitor of the romantic
   vampire literary genre. Thus, the Frankenstein and vampire themes were
   created from that single circumstance.

Publication

   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 Lackington, Hughes, 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.

   Critical reception of the book was mostly unfavourable, compounded by
   confused speculation as to the identity of the author, which was not
   well disguised. 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).

   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).

   The revised edition was changed in several significant ways: any
   indication that Frankenstein's monster was created by vice was removed,
   and the text details a benevolent creator who creates the monster
   merely for the purposes of science. Suggestions of an incestuous
   relationship between Victor and Elizabeth are also removed, by making
   Elizabeth an adopted child of the Frankensteins.

Name origins

The creature

   The creature – "my hideous progeny" – was not given a name by Mary
   Shelley, and is only referred to by words such as 'monster',
   'creature', 'daemon', 'fiend', and 'wretch'.

   During a telling she did of Frankenstein, she referred to the creature
   as "Adam", though, as a name, or as a reference to some for of being
   the "first" man, is not known.

   After the release of James Whale's popular 1931 film Frankenstein, the
   filmgoing public immediately 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.

   Some justify referring to the Creature as "Frankenstein" by pointing
   out that the Creature is, so to speak, Victor Frankenstein's offspring.

Frankenstein

   Mary Shelley always maintained that she derived the name "Frankenstein"
   from a dream-vision, yet despite these public claims of originality,
   the name and what it means has been a source of many speculations.
   Literally, in German, the name Frankenstein means stone of the Franks.
   Frankenstein is the former name of Ząbkowice Śląskie, a city in
   Silesia. There is a town called Frankenstein in the palatinate with
   Burg Frankenstein (Frankenstein Castle) and Burg Frankenstein near
   Darmstadt. Moreover Frankenstein is a common family name in Germany.

   More recently, Radu Florescu, in his In Search of Frankenstein, argued
   that Mary and Percy Shelley stayed at 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 by A.J. Day supports
   Florescu's position that Mary Shelley knew of, and visited ' Burg
   Frankenstein' before writing her debut novel. Day includes details of
   an alleged description of the Frankenstein castle that exists in
   Shelley's 'lost' journals. However, this theory is not without critics;
   Frankenstein expert Leonard Wolf calls it an
   "unconvincing....conspiracy theory".

Victor

   A possible interpretation of the name Victor derives from the poem
   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, 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 sympathizes with
   Satan's role in the story.

   Victor was also 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. 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.

"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, and Victor's work by creating man by new
   means obviously reflects that creative work. Prometheus was also the
   bringer of fire who took fire from heaven and gave it to man. Zeus then
   punished Prometheus by fixing him to a rock where each day a predatory
   bird came to devour his liver.

   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 and as a result is punished by his creation.

   Prometheus' relation to the novel can be interpreted in a number of
   ways. For Mary Shelley on a personal level, Prometheus was not a hero
   but 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) For Romance era artists in
   general, Prometheus' gift to man compared with 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 Prometheus Unbound.

Analysis

   Frankenstein is in some ways allegorical, and was conceived and written
   during an early phase of the Industrial Revolution, at a time of
   dramatic change. The creation rebels against its creator: a clear
   message that irresponsible uses of technologies can have unconsidered
   consequences.

   One interpretation was alluded to by Shelley herself, in her account of
   the radical politics of her father:


   Frankenstein

    "The giant now awoke. The mind, never torpid, but never rouzed to its
   full energies, received the spark which lit it into an unextinguishable
      flame. Who can now tell the feelings of liberal men on the first
    outbreak of the French Revolution. In but too short a time afterwards
    it became tarnished by the vices of Orléans -- dimmed by the want of
        talent of the Girondists -- deformed and blood-stained by the
                                 Jacobins."


   Frankenstein

   A standard critique of the novel is as a journey of pregnancy and the
   common fears of women in Shelley's day of frequent stillborn births and
   maternal deaths due to complications in delivery. Mary Shelley
   experienced the horrors of a stillborn birth the prior year. Victor
   Frankenstein is often fearful of the release of the Monster from his
   control, when it is free to act independently in the world and affect
   it for better or worse. Also, during much of the novel Victor fears the
   creature's desire to destroy him by killing everyone and everything
   most dear to him. However it must be noted that the creature was not
   born evil, but only wanted to be loved by its creator, by other humans,
   and to love a sentient creature like itself. It was mankind who taught
   it evil, Victor rejected it, and the creature's poor treatment by
   villagers taught it how to be evil. In this way the creature represents
   the natural fears of bringing a new innocent life into the world and
   raising it properly so that it does not become a monster.

   The book can be seen as a criticism of scientists that are incompetent
   to deal with the results of their work. Victor was guileless and
   irresponsible with his invention. Instead of immediately destroying the
   evil he had created, he is overcome by fear and falls psychologically
   ill. During Justine's trial for murder he had the chance to come forth
   and protest to the fact that a violent man had recently declared a
   vendetta against he and his loved ones, thus saving the young girl.
   Instead, Frankenstein indulges in his own self-centered grief. The day
   before Justine is executed and thus resigns herself to her fate and
   departure from the "sad and bitter world" his sentiments are as such:


   Frankenstein

     "The poor victim, who was on the morrow to pass the awful boundary
      between life and death, felt not, as I did, such deep and bitter
       agony...The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was
     sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and
                        would not forego their hold."


   Frankenstein

   Representing a minority opinion, Arthur Belefant in his 116-page book,
   Frankenstein, the Man and the Monster (1999, ISBN 0-9629555-8-2)
   contends that Mary Shelley's intent was for the reader to understand
   that the Creature never existed, and Victor Frankenstein committed the
   three murders. In this interpretation, the story is a study of the
   moral degradation of Victor, and the "science-fiction" aspects of the
   story are Victor's imagination.

   Alchemy was a very popular topic in Shelley's world. In fact, it was
   becoming an acceptable idea that humanity could infuse the spark of
   life into a non-living thing ( Luigi Galvani's experiments, for
   example). The scientific world just after the Industrial Revolution was
   delving into the unknown, and limitless possibilities also caused fear
   and apprehension for many as to the consequences of such horrific
   possibilities.

   The book also considers the ethics of creating life and contains
   innumerable biblical allusions in this context.

   In the 1931 film "Frankenstein," Boris Karloff plays the part of the
   Creature, and the scientist, played by Colin Clive, is renamed Henry
   Frankenstein. Shelley's character Henry Clerval does not appear in the
   film at all, which eliminates Victor's foil altogether. However there
   is a character called Victor who is after Elizabeth, Frankenstein's
   fiancee. Changing the doctor's name from Victor also eliminates some
   original irony, inasmuch as the novel ends after exposing the doctor's
   utter failure and destruction. Since this film, the horror culture has
   confused modern audiences into replacing the scientist's name with his
   freakish creation. This event has stimulated much conversation in the
   literary criticism of Shelley's work. Attributing the name of the
   scientist to his creation reveals a deeper connection between the two,
   especially when the scientist realizes the great danger that the
   creation presents to himself and to the world.

Frankenstein in popular culture

   For Frankenstein in film, comics, games and other derivatives, see
   Frankenstein in popular culture.

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