Frankenstein

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

Author

Country United Kingdom

Language English

Genre Gothic novel, horror fiction, science fiction[1]

Set in England, Ireland, Italy, France, Scotland, Switzerland, Russia, Germany; late 18th century

Published 1 January 1818 (Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones)

Pages 280 Dewey 823.7

Decimal

LC Class PR5397 .F7

Text Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus at Wikisource

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley (1797–1851) that tells the story of , a young scientist who creates a hideous sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20.[2] Her name first appeared in the second edition published in Paris in 1821. Shelley travelled through Europe in 1815 along the river Rhine in Germany stopping in , 17 kilometres (11 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before, an alchemist engaged in experiments.[3][4][5] She then journeyed to the region of Geneva, Switzerland, where much of the story takes place. The topic of galvanism and occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband Percy B. Shelley. Mary, Percy and Lord Byron had a competition to see who could write the best horror story. After thinking for days, Shelley dreamt about a scientist who created life and was horrified by what he had made, inspiring the novel.[6] Though Frankenstein is infused with elements of the Gothic novel and the Romantic movement, Brian Aldiss has argued that it should be considered the first true science fiction story. In contrast to previous stories with fantastical elements resembling those of later science fiction, Aldiss states the central character "makes a deliberate decision" and "turns to modern experiments in the laboratory" to achieve fantastic results.[7] It has had a considerable influence in literature and popular culture and spawned a complete genre of horror stories, films and plays. Since the publication of the novel, the name "Frankenstein" has often been used to refer to the monster itself.[8][9][10] In the novel, Frankenstein's creation is identified by words such as "creature", "monster", "daemon", "wretch", "abortion", "fiend" and "it". Speaking to Victor Frankenstein, the monster says "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel" (which ties to Lucifer in Paradise Lost, which the monster reads, and which relates to the disobedience of Prometheus in the book's subtitle). Summary Frankenstein is written in the form of a frame story that starts with Captain Robert Walton writing letters to his sister. It takes place at an unspecified time in the 18th century, as the letters' dates are given as "17—". In the story following the letters by Walton, the readers find that Victor Frankenstein creates a monster that brings tragedy to his life. Captain Walton's introductory frame narrative The novel Frankenstein is written in epistolary form, documenting a fictional correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville. Walton is a failed writer and captain who sets out to explore the North Pole and expand his scientific knowledge in hopes of achieving fame. During the voyage, the crew spots a dog sled driven by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the crew rescues a nearly frozen and emaciated man named Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein has been in pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton's crew. Frankenstein starts to recover from his exertion; he sees in Walton the same obsession that has destroyed him and recounts a story of his life's miseries to Walton as a warning. The recounted story serves as the frame for Frankenstein's narrative. Victor Frankenstein's narrative Victor begins by telling of his childhood. Born in Naples, Italy, into a wealthy Genevan family, Victor and his brothers, Ernest and William, all three being sons of Alphonse Frankenstein by the former Caroline Beaufort, are encouraged to seek a greater understanding of the world through chemistry. As a young boy, Victor is obsessed with studying outdated theories that focus on simulating natural wonders. When Victor is five years old, his parents adopt , the orphaned daughter of an expropriated Italian nobleman, with whom Victor (allegedly) later falls in love. During this period, Victor's parents, Alphonse and Caroline, take in yet another orphan, Justine Moritz, who becomes William's nanny. Weeks before he leaves for the University of Ingolstadt in Germany, his mother dies of scarlet fever; Victor buries himself in his experiments to deal with the grief. At the university, he excels at chemistry and other sciences, soon developing a secret technique to impart life to non-living matter. Eventually, he undertakes the creation of a humanoid, but due to the difficulty in replicating the minute parts of the human body, Victor makes the Creature tall, about 8 feet (2.4 m) in height and proportionally large. Despite Victor's selecting its features as beautiful, upon animation the creature is instead hideous, with watery white eyes and yellow skin that barely conceals the muscles and blood vessels underneath. Repulsed by his work, Victor flees when it awakens. While wandering the streets, he meets his childhood friend, Henry Clerval, and takes Henry back to his apartment, fearful of Henry's reaction if he sees the monster. However, the Creature has escaped. Victor falls ill from the experience and is nursed back to health by Henry. After a four- month recovery, he receives a letter from his father notifying him of the murder of his brother William. Upon arriving in Geneva, Victor sees the Creature near the crime scene and climbing a mountain, leading him to believe his creation is responsible. Justine Moritz, William's nanny, is convicted of the crime after William's locket, which had contained a miniature portrait of Caroline, is found in her pocket. Victor is helpless to stop her from being hanged, as he knows no one would believe his story. Ravaged by grief and guilt, Victor retreats into the mountains. The Creature finds him and pleads for Victor to hear his tale. The Creature's narrative Intelligent and articulate, the Creature relates his first days of life, living alone in the wilderness and finding that people were afraid of and hated him due to his appearance, which led him to fear and hide from them. While living in an abandoned structure connected to a cottage, he grew fond of the poor family living there, and discreetly collected firewood for them. Secretly living among the family for months, the Creature learned to speak by listening to them and he taught himself to read after discovering a lost satchel of books in the woods. When he saw his reflection in a pool, he realized his physical appearance was hideous, and it terrified him as it terrifies normal humans. Nevertheless, he approached the family in hopes of becoming their friend. Initially he was able to befriend the blind father figure of the family, but the rest of them were frightened and they all fled their home, resulting in the Creature leaving, disappointed. He traveled to Victor's family estate using details from Victor's journal, murdered William, and framed Justine. The Creature demands that Victor create a female companion like himself. He argues that as a living being, he has a right to happiness. The Creature promises that he and his mate will vanish into the South American wilderness, never to reappear, if Victor grants his request. Should Victor refuse his request, The Creature also threatens to kill Victor's remaining friends and loved ones and not stop until he completely ruins him. Fearing for his family, Victor reluctantly agrees. The Creature says he will watch over Victor's progress. Victor Frankenstein's narrative resumes Clerval accompanies him to England, but they separate at Victor's insistence at Perth, Scotland. Victor suspects that the Creature is following him. Working on the female creature on the Orkney Islands, he is plagued by premonitions of disaster, such as the female hating the Creature or becoming more evil than him, but more particularly the two creatures might lead to the breeding of a race that could plague mankind. He tears apart the unfinished female creature after he sees the Creature, who had indeed followed Victor, watching through a window. The Creature later confronts and tries to threaten Victor into working again, but Victor is convinced that the Creature is evil and that its mate would be evil as well, and the pair would threaten all humanity. Victor destroys his work and the Creature vows that he will "be with [him] on [his] wedding night". Victor interprets this as a threat upon his life, believing that the Creature will kill him after he finally becomes happy. Victor sails out to sea to dispose of his instruments, falls asleep in the boat, is unable to return to shore because of changes in the winds, and ends up being blown to the Irish coast. When Victor lands in Ireland, he is soon imprisoned for Clerval's murder, as the Creature had strangled Clerval to death and left the corpse to be found where his creator had arrived, causing the latter to suffer another mental breakdown in prison. After being acquitted, Victor returns home with his father, who has restored to Elizabeth some of her father's fortune. In Geneva, Victor is about to marry Elizabeth and prepares to fight the Creature to the death, arming himself with pistols and a dagger. The night following their wedding, Victor asks Elizabeth to stay in her room while he looks for "the fiend". While Victor searches the house and grounds, the Creature strangles Elizabeth to death. From the window, Victor sees the Creature, who tauntingly points at Elizabeth's corpse; Victor tries to shoot him, but the Creature escapes. After Victor gets back to Geneva, Victor's father, weakened by age and by the death of his precious Elizabeth, dies a few days later. Seeking revenge, Victor pursues the Creature to the North Pole, but collapses from exhaustion and hypothermia before he can find his quarry. Captain Walton's conclusion At the end of Victor's narrative, Captain Walton resumes the telling of the story, closing the frame around Victor's recounting. A few days after the Creature vanished, the ship becomes trapped in pack ice, and multiple crewmen die in the cold before the rest of Walton's crew insists on returning south once it is freed. Upon hearing and becoming angered by the crew's pleas to their captain, Victor lectures them with a powerful speech: it is hardship, not comfort and easiness, that defines a glorious undertaking such as theirs; he urges them to be men, not cowards. The ship is freed and Walton, owing it to the will of his unchanged men, albeit regretfully, decides to return South. Victor, even though in a very weak condition, states that he will go on by himself. He is adamant that the creature dies. Victor dies shortly thereafter, telling Walton, with his last words, to seek "happiness in tranquillity and avoid ambition". Walton discovers the Creature on his ship, mourning over Victor's body. The Creature tells Walton that Victor's death has not brought him peace; rather, his crimes have left him completely alone. The Creature vows to kill himself so that no others will ever know of his existence. Walton watches as the Creature drifts away on an ice raft that is soon "lost in darkness and distance", never to be seen again. Author's background Mary Shelley had a tragic life from the beginning. Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died from infection shortly after giving birth to her. Shelley grew a close attachment to her father having never known her mother. Her father, William Godwin, hired a nurse briefly to care for her and her half sister before he ended up remarrying. Shelley's stepmother did not like the close bond she had with her father, which caused friction and Godwin to then favor his other two daughters and sons. Her father was a famous author of the time and her education was of great importance, though not formal. Shelley grew up surrounded by her father's friends, writers and persons of political importance, that gathered often at the family home. This inspired her authorship at an early age. Shelley met Percy Bysshe Shelley, who later became her husband, at the age of sixteen while he was visiting with her father. Godwin did not agree with the relationship of his daughter to an older, married but separated man, so they fled to France along with her stepsister, Claire Clairmont. Later, Shelley gave birth and lost their first child. Over eight years she endured a similar pattern of pregnancy and loss, one hemorrhaging occurring until Percy placed her upon ice to cease the bleeding.[11] Mary and Percy's trip with Claire to visit her lover Lord Byron, in Geneva during the summer of 1816, began the friendship amongst the two couples in which Byron suggested they have a competition of writing the best ghost story. Historians suggest an affair occurred too, even that paternity of one Shelley child may have been a Byron.[11] Mary was eighteen years old when she won the contest with her creation of Frankenstein.[12][13] Literary influences Shelley was heavily influenced by both of her parents' works. Her father was famous for Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and her mother famous for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Her father's novels also influenced her writing of Frankenstein. These novels included Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams, St. Leon, and Fleetwood. All of these books were set in Switzerland, similar to the setting in Frankenstein. Some major themes of social affections and the renewal of life that appear in Shelley's novel stem from these works she had in her possession. Other literary influences that appear in Frankenstein are Pygmalion et Galatée by Mme de Genlis and Ovid with the use of an individual lacking intelligence and those individuals identifying the problems with society.[14] Ovid also inspires the use of Prometheus in Shelley's title.[15] Percy and Byron's discussion on life and death surrounded many scientific geniuses of the time. They discussed ideas from Erasmus Darwin and the experiments from Luigi Galvani. Mary joined these conversations and the ideas of Darwin and Galvani were both present in her novel. The horrors of not being able to write a story for the contest and her hard life also influenced the themes within Frankenstein. The themes of loss, guilt, and the consequences of defying nature present in the novel all developed from Mary Shelley's own life. The loss of her mother, the relationship with her father, and the death of her first child created the monster and his separation from parental guidance. In a 1965 issue of The Journal of Religion and Health a psychologist proposed guilt stemmed from her not feeling good enough for Percy because of the loss of their child.[13] Characters

 Victor Frankenstein – Protagonist and narrator of most of the story. Creates the monster.  The creature (Frankenstein's monster) – The hideous creature created by Victor Frankenstein.  Captain Robert Walton – Captain of the boat which picked up Victor. Brother of Mrs. Margaret Saville, and writer of letters addressed to her.  Mrs. Margaret Saville – Resident of England. Sister of Robert Walton. Addressee of letters written by him.  Beaufort – A Merchant. Caroline Beaufort's father. One of the most intimate friends of Victor's father.  Caroline Beaufort – Beaufort's daughter, Victor's mother.  Ernest – Victor's brother. Seven years younger than Victor.  Henry Clerval – Victor's best friend from childhood. The son of a merchant of Geneva.  Justine Moritz – Daughter of Madame Moritz. Moved in with the Frankenstein family at age of 12, and hanged for the murder of William.  Elizabeth Lavenza – Victor's fiance and adopted sister, sometimes referred to as his cousin.  William – Victor's youngest brother.  M. Krempe – professor of natural philosophy at university of Ingolstadt. He was an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science. Influenced Victor.  M. Waldman – A professor, at Ingolstadt. Influenced Victor.  De Lacey – Blind old man descended from a good family in France. Father of Agatha and Felix. His family was observed by the monster, and unbeknownst to them, taught him to speak and read.  Agatha – Daughter of De Lacey.  Felix – Son of De Lacey.  Safie – Daughter of a Turkish Merchant and a Christian Arab. Felix's girlfriend.  Mr. Kirwin – A magistrate.  Daniel Nugent – A witness against Victor in his murder trial.