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Summary Frankenstein - narratives and genres
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Notes on narrative and genres that influenced/are a part of the novel and important context on Mary Shelley and the publication of the novel
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Narratives/genresScience fiction
- Frankenstein composed in 1816 – viewed as first true work of science fiction
One of most subversive attacks on modern science
- Shelley – interested in literary and scientific controversy
- Recent experiments in electrical resurrection techniques and new anatomical theories around the
time
Also possible existence of an electrical ‘life-force’ and the unique nature of human consciousness
Controversial ideas fed into novel – especially moral issues raised about perils of scientific
interference with nature
- Proclaims that the alien, outcast, rejected finally must have claims on our humanity
And also have claims on our science
Gothic horror/drama
- Myth of victor Frankenstein – crazed but idealistic young scientist who lets loose his monstrous
creation and struggles to accept responsibility
Cocktail of gothic melodrama and disturbing speculation
- Early novels of genre – heavily feature discussions of morality, philosophy and religion
Evil villains often act as metaphors for some sort of human temptation that the hero must
overcomes
Novels’ endings – often unhappy and romance is never the focus
- Trademarks of a gothic horror novel – battle between humanity and unnatural forces of evil within an
oppressive, inescapable and bleak landscape
- Frankenstein – marked a shift in gothic horror
Changed typical gothic villain from an evil man/supernatural creature into a physical embodiment
of human folly brought to life through the power of science
Moral fable/parable
- Fable – type of literary genre
Usually brief – just enough to convey the moral
Animal characters – often exhibit human traits like the ability to speak, think and behave like
humans
Moral lessons – heart of every fable is its moral/life lesson that is imparts
- Used as teaching tools – effective way to teach important values and ethics
Faustian legend – ‘Faustian pact and’ ‘over-Reacher’
- Legend that goes back to middle ages
- Great scholar who wants to know even more – desire for total knowledge
- Faustian bargain – pact where a person trades something of supreme moral/spiritual importance
(such as personal values/the soul) for some worldly/material benefit such as knowledge, power or
riches
Made with a power that the bargainer recognises as evil/amoral
By nature tragic/self-defeating for the person who makes them – what is surrendered is ultimately
more valuable than what is obtained whether or not they appreciate the fact
- Legend of Faust – character in German folklore and literature who agrees to surrender his soul to an
evil spirit (Mephistopheles – representative of Satan) after a certain period of time in exchange for
otherwise unattainable knowledge and magical pleasures
Outcast/’eternal wanderer’ tale – ‘ancient mariner’ 1798
- Prominent piece in literary romanticism
, - Coleridge 1789 poem ‘rime of the ancient mariner’ – encountered psychology of guilt and
abandonment
- Determining elements mirrored in Frankenstein – literary technique, narrative structure and
intertextual themes
- Alluded to in Frankenstein – creature describing his fear of loneliness and fear of his creation
Quotes Coleridge’s work – used to convey to the audience how this experience has greatly altered
Frankenstein’s life
- Both use hyperbole – select phrases that overemphasise a statement by adding a grander effect to the
piece
- Foreshadowing used as a major narrative technique within both books
Moon mentioned every time before the monster appears
- Coleridge – uses narrative structure than includes a frame story prior to the main narrative
Allows writer to distance himself further from the narrator in order to expose unreliability
o Frankenstein – third person narrator begins the story, transitions to Frankenstein being
the narrator and then the monster narrating
- Both stories emphasise the power of natural forces – monster in Frankenstein
Epistolary novel
- Told through letters
- Frankenstein – complex structure with three autobiographical narrative one within the other
Each bring a different interpretation of the Frankenstein myth
- Robert Walton – told in form of letters to his sister
Presents a moral enigma – is Frankenstein essentially philanthropic, blindly ambitious or simple
insane
Is the creature evil or innocent, an ugly outcast or a persecuted victim longing for love
- Second autobiography is Frankenstein’s own – particularly his thrilling discovery of deep enticements
of science
Early chapters – fictional presentations of the education of a young scientist evoking mysteries of
experiment
o Transformed into sophisticated references in 1831 – references to galvanism, intoxicating
delights and dangers of charismatic science lecturing
- Third narrative is the creature’s – held back until halfway through
Written in a different stylistic register – swings between desperate exclamations, poignant appeals
and furious menacing’s
Creature paradoxically becomes more expressive and human than Frankenstein – produces arias
of speech, begs for justice, understands, compassionate
Promethean creation myth – Aeschylus
- Prometheus – Greek immortal and trickster figure who was punished by Zeus
Got his liver teared out by eagles every day – did he deserve it?
- Victor’s monster – resembles the modern Prometheus
Signifies the liberation from a creator
- Prometheus’ link to Frankenstein
Victor’s science gives humans what only gods had – immortality
o Prometheus stole sacred fire
Prometheus’ liver is torn out – victor’s loved ones are taken from him
Slow torture – punishment for involving themselves in matter that humans should not
‘adamic’ creation story – ‘paradise lost’ john Milton
- Theme of demonic outcast
- Paradise lost – poem by john Milton
Epic poem written in blank verse telling the biblical tale of the fall of mankind
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