The Malignant Intimacy: Doubles, Atheists, and Orphans in Frankenstein Unbound

by

Stuart Clarry III

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Schmidt College of Arts and Humanities

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida

August 1997 © Copyright by Stuart Clarry III 1997

ll The Malignant Intimacy: Doubles, Atheists, and Orphans in Frankenstein Unbound

by

Stuart Clarry III

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Robert A. Collins, Department of English, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Schmidt College of Arts and Humanities and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

SUPERVISORY COMMITIEE: ~=·=·=--...:,:----

J> '"'-;k? R- ll~ Gu,«c_)LG ~k ~~

Chairperson, Department of English

~ean, TheA Schmidt~ College of Arts and Humanities

~ -J 3- 97 D Date

1ll Acknowledgments

Although my name is on the cover of this thesis, it would have been virtually impossible to complete without the encouragement and support of several people. I would like to extend my appreciation to Stacy Acker, Jennifer Brachfeld, and the rest of the lunch crowd for allowing me to bounce ideas around and helping me create some kind of organizational plan. Many thanks to Dr. Howard Pearce for helping me organize these ideas and plans into something coherent. Thanks also to Traci Klass for always being that breath of fresh air in the doorway. Finally, heartfelt thanks go out to my Thesis Committee: Dr. Robert Collins, Dr. Carol McGuirk, and Dr. David Anderson, who patiently and faithfully guided me through this proJect.

Special thanks are due for three individuals, without whom this project would never have come to fruition. Monica Lewman has been a constant source of vital energy and encouragement; she made me believe that this could be done. Dr. Robert Collins provided critical guidance and support, from the genesis of my ideas through the completed manuscript. He also has the patience of Job! And finally, none of this would have been possible without my Mother's love and encouragement, and her unfaltering belief in my abilities (even when I wasn't sure). Thank you all!

IV ABSTRACT

Author: Stuart Clarry

Title: The Malignant Intimacy: Doubles, Atheists, and Orphans in Frankenstein Unbound

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Robert A. Collins

Degree: Master of Arts

Year: 1997

Brian Aldiss's Frankenstein Unbound is both a tribute to and exegesis of Mary

Shelley's novel. The central figure, Joseph Bodenland, the 'everyman' of modern technological society, emerges as a composite of Victor Frankenstein and the

Creature; he is the pivotal character through whom Aldiss revises and reinterprets

Shelley's themes. Bodenland's role as a double reveals how Aldiss has updated

Shelley's biographically inspired atheism and psychological orphanhood. As an atheist, Bodenland symbolizes technology and modern society's increasing separation from faith and God. Bodenland's sense of orphanhood suggests humanity's separation from the natural world, and by extension, the loss of individual identity in a technological, scientific world. Bodenland's status as the last man on Earth symbolizes Aldiss's concern that modern society has not been responsible for its acnons.

v To My Mother, and in Memory of My Grandparents TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ...... 1

Chapter One: Dualism and Doubles

I. Doubling and the Gothic Tradition ...... ll

II. Victor, the Creature, and the Dualistic Nature of Frankenstein ...... 15

III. The Double in Frankenstein Unbound ...... 18

Chapter Two: Frankenstein, God of Technology

I. Shelley's New Man ...... 31

II. Atheism and the God ofTechnology ...... 34

Chapter Three: The Orphaned Culture

I. From the Orphaned Child to the Orphaned Nation ...... 37

II. Joe Bodenland: Aldiss's "Last Man" ...... 41

Conclusion ...... 45

Notes ...... 50

Works Cited ...... 52

Vl LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

H . Fuseli- The Nightmare ...... 15

Poster Art for Roger Connan)s Frankenstein Unbound ...... 46

Vll Introduction

Like figures in a dream, all the people in Frankenstein have different bodies, and somehow, horribly, the same face, or worse--the same two faces. (Gilbert)

A the time of its publication in 1973, Brian Aldiss's Billion Year Spree represented the most complete history of science fiction. Aldiss argues that the genre of science fiction began with Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein. Although Aldiss's contention that Shelley wrote the first science fiction novel (and possibly the second in The Last Man) was controversial, he reaffirmed this position in Trillion Year Spree

(1986), a revised edition. Since the publication of Billion Year Spree, Frankenstein has received increasing critical attention. Aldiss must be given credit for recognizing a novel that has since become central in the feminist and mainstream canons.

Aldiss was so taken with Mary Shelley and her dark novel that upon completing Billion Year Spree he wrote Frankenstein Unbound, a contemporary retelling of the original novel. Of his novel, Aldiss writes that it was "designed to draw attention to its great original" (Trillion 18) and was "an act of homage to and exegesis of a novel that I regard as one of the very few rare masterworks of science fiction" (Griffin and Wingrove 162). 1 Frankenstein Unbound explores two central

1 themes in Shelley's novel: "man's confrontation with himself, . .. [and] the disintegration of society which follows man's arrogation of power'' (Billion 2 7) . Yet

Frankenstein Unbound is much more than a mere extension of Frankenstein. David

Wingrove argues that Frankenstein Unbound "imposes a Modernist framework upon the original gothic foundations to create something distinct from and yet immediately related to the original" (Griffm and Wingrove 163). Citing Ezra

Pound's five forms of criticism, 2 Wingrove declares that Frankenstein Unbound is an example of"criticism by new composition"; Aldiss "was not attempting simply to rewrite the original without its flaws, but to reinterpret it from our modern perspective" (163). Aldiss updates Frankenstein) showing its relevance to contemporary culture. He abandons Shelley's gothic and religious trappings in favor of addressing issues such as the world wars, the cold war, and racial extermination.

Richard Mathews also notes modernist features in Aldiss's novel, recognizing, for example, Aldiss's fascination with temporal breakdowns:

In Probability A, we learned that artists of the nineteenth century felt trapped in time; the twentieth century artist feels time slipping beneath him. Bounded by future shock and historical awareness of an unprecedented order, the literary artist [i.e., Brian Aldiss], particularly one influenced by T.S. Eliot's belief in "Tradition and the Individual Talent," finds that present-tense work is constantly subject to slips into the past and future .... In this novel, Bodenland experiences a shock of recognition which seems similar to what Aldiss must have felt when he recognized Mary Shelley's influence in his own work: "I felt myself in the presence of myth, and by association, accepted myself as mythical!" (51)

2 Relying on Eliot's modernist ideology, Mathews concludes that myths achieve an existence beyond time. Hence the novel's protagonist, Joe Bodenland, and the creature have the same mythic reality as the Shelleys. In the novel, Bodenland supports this idea of mythic transcendence when he reflects that "One thing you see

I had already accepted. I had accepted the equal reality of Mary Shelley and her creation, Victor Frankenstein, just as I had accepted the equal reality of Victor and his monster. In my position, there was no difficulty in so doing, for they accepted my reality, and I was as much a mythical creature in their world as they would have been in mine" (Frankenstein Unbound 89). For Joe Bodenland, reality is fleeting; with each successive timeslip, his physical and mental grounding becomes more tenuous. Aldiss invokes Derrida's philosophy that everything is a text, from Victor's fictive existence, to Shelley's mythic existence, to Bodenland's quickly fading eXIstence. Frankenstein Unbound runs the risk of deconstructing itself out of eXIstence. Additionally, reality's breakdown and the merging of fact and fiction in

Aldiss's novel forces the reader to address a disturbing question: is Joseph

Bodenland merely a fictional character in a story or has his fictive existence granted him a timeless "mythic reality'' as real as Mary Shelley's historical identity?

Extending this question, does Bodenland's mythic reality threaten our own reality-are we alive or merely fictional characters in yet another layered text? This thesis will attempt to assess Bodenland's role as a mythic figure and determine his

3 purpose in the novel.

Other critics have considered Frankenstein Unbound's central protagonist,

Joseph Bodenland. Much of the discussion on the novel revolves around the presence of this "new" character. Wingrove, approaching the novel from a modernist viewpoint, attempts to illustrate how Aldiss's post-Freudian characters are representative of the superego (Victor), the ego (Bodenland), and the id (the

Creature). Such a simple analogy is problematic, even in the case of the original novel. In Frankenstein, Shelley's original Creature is clearly a double to Victor, and the pair shares complementary characteristics which, when taken together, can be argued to create a single "whole" being. But to argue that Victor is the superego,

because he is a man of conscience and inaction, and the Creature is the id, because of

his dynamic and destructive energy, is unsatisfactory. In many ways, the Creature

appears the more noble of the characters; his actions represent justifiable responses

to Victor's inaction and he answers to his actions in the fmal scene. Victor, on the

other hand, is responsible for the deaths of several innocent people, and yet he

cannot fathom that any of his actions have been morally wrong.

These same difficulties plague an analysis of Frankenstein Unbound when one

tries to apply Freudian labels to the main characters, particularly since Wingrove and

other critics tend to view Bodenland as a regressive character: he begins the novel as

an intellectual, but ends up little more than an instinct-driven savage. Over the

4 course of the story, he assumes various attributes of other characters. It is problematic to approach Frankenstein Unbound only as a post-Freudian modernist text.

Critics have also attempted to interpret Bodenland's place within the novel's tapestry. What is his purpose as the representative futuristic man in the novel? Why does Bodenland's identity devolve? Wingrove, for example, professes that

Bodenland's identity is lost during the course of the tale and that he assumes the persona of Victor Frankenstein (to the extent that he actually kills Victor) (164).

Conversely, Michael Collings writes that Bodenland becomes the "true

'Frankenstein's monster' of the novel, a co-creation (with the original monster) of

Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein" (44).

And there is a continuing debate about the conclusion of the novel, which presents Joseph Bodenland as the last man alive on a dying planet. Richard Mathews concludes that "the hero, for the first time. . . is in control of things, in possession

of a consciousness beyond the cycle of head and heart. . . . We leave Bodenland

stranded in time and heroic; and he reaches us past the timeslips-we have his report"

(54). Collings disagrees with Mathews' "overstated" interpretation:

In one sense at least, we are as fictional as Bodenland, since we are the intended audience for fictional transcripts. And, while the conclusion is highly mythic, there seems little indication that Bodenland is in control. He followed the monsters, bringing his nuclear-powered armored car with him. Then he discarded that remnant of his own time, to pursue the monsters on foot through frozen wastes, past

5 ghostly spires of cathedrals and castles, into the unknown, where he fmally sights the monsters as they approach the gates of an enormous city. At the last possible moment, he fires, first killing the female, then the male as it races toward him. The sense of control, however, passes from Bodenland-now the gun-wielding monster obsessed with murder-to the monster, who alone understands that he and Bodenland are more alike than different. (45)

After the creature dies, Bodenland "is alone on the ice; in the distance lights die in

[the] city, [and] Bodenland remains alone, waiting in the darkness" (45). Collings'

dark, solitary interpretation implies that only death awaits our "hero." Such a conclusion, of course, creates a logical flaw in the narrative: if Bodenland dies, how does a copy of his tape journal survive?

In Apertures, Wingrove identifies Bodenland's pursuit of the creatures as a symbolic or mythic pursuit of the self but comments that "at the end of Aldiss's novel, the interrelating levels of interpretation are at their most evident, and a reader unprepared to accept the ambivalence of the book's thematic structure will fmd the results confusing" (165). In his view, one of the novel's themes is that the advent of technology has weakened man's contact with nature-a theme also central to Brian

Aldiss's personal beliefs. 3 For Wingrove, "The vision of the future city is therefore a precognitive glimpse of the ultimate end of technology's self-perpetuating and life- diminishing process: the soulless and bleakly lit structure on the ice, peopled only by the soulless, spiritless creations of Man" ( 16 7).

So how is the contemporary reader supposed to interpret Joseph Bodenland

6 and the end of Frankenstein Unbound? Is Bodenland a hero from the future? A maniacal monster who slaughters both Victor Frankenstein and his fantastic creatures? The tragic last human in a dying world? Or is Bodenland the product of undisciplined technological progress? This thesis will attempt to provide answers to these questions through a close analysis of Aldiss's central figure. I will argue that

Bodenland is the pivotal character through whom Aldiss revises and reinterprets

Mary Shelley's novel.

Chapter One investigates the expanded use of duality and double themes in

Frankenstein Unbound. The chapter begins with a review of the role of the double and dualism in romantic ideology, starting with the earlier gothic novels and the art of Henri Fuseli. I then explore Mary Shelley's use of the double in Frankenstein, including the intimate relationship between Victor and his creature and between

Victor and Captain Walton.

Subsequently, I discuss Frankenstein Unbound, showing how Aldiss has expanded and changed the use of the double. As a new character in the

Victor/Creature relationship, Joseph Bodenland becomes the focal point of the

discussion. Bodenland is actually a composite double both of Victor and his creature

(not just one or the other, as critics have claimed thus far) . Through his role as a

composite of the pioneering scientist and his creature, Bodenland emerges as the

prototypical everyman of our technological world.

7 Chapter Two will consider the atheism shared by all the main characters in both novels. I will begin by reviewing the social and political ramifications of atheism in the Romantic period. Much of Shelley's inspiration for her novel was autobiographical; she and her associates were all atheists, and I will examine how this may have affected her writing. Scientific study was also just beginning and was viewed as atheistic, and with much skepticism, by many. In addition, the great

"democratic" French Revolution troubled English society and proved to be a disappointment for supporters like Byron and Percy Shelley. From this historical and autobiographical background, I will examine the presence and purpose of atheism in Frankenstein.

In Frankenstein Unbound, it is no surprise that Bodenland, as the composite double, is likewise an atheist. But unlike Victor, who in his time is a rare and marginalized scientist, Bodenland is a representative man of the technologically oriented future, where faith in God is the rarity and atheism is standard. Aldiss has changed Shelley's implied theme of atheism from a personal concern to the norm of

contemporary society. Through Bodenland, the chapter examines Aldiss's hopes and

concerns about a society where belief in technology has replaced belief in religion.

This thesis investigates what happens when humanity no longer attributes its

hardships and sorrows to God, but rather has only technology and itself to blame.

We can conclude, even here in the introduction, that Aldiss's prophecy is grim

8 indeed, for in his novel the hwnan race not only dies out, but the threads of "reality" also fall apart-hwnan reality itself becomes "unbound."

Chapter Three examines in detail another aspect of Aldiss's protagonist: his symbolic orphan status. Once again, Aldiss draws on one of Shelley's original themes but models it for his own purposes. The chapter begins with a discussion focused on Shelley's orphaned status and how her concerns over her mother's death are made evident in Frankenstein. Additionally, the chapter briefly examines the political orphanhood of France as symbolized by the creature. The French

Revolution left a country without a leader and caused the nation to be politically ostracized by the rest of Europe. In Frankenstein Unbound, Aldiss symbolically resurrects the orphan theme by stranding Joe Bodenland in another time. But

Bodenland's status as a temporal orphan is transcendent-he ends the novel not only orphaned from his time, but as the last man on Earth! The thesis examines

Bodenland's role as the consummate orphan, from his first appearance in the past, to the gradual loss of his twenty-first century technology (and thus the loss of his god), to the loss of"reality." As the representative future man, Bodenland's ostensible demise is a cautionary warning about the perils of modern society.

Through examination of several characteristics present in Shelley's original novel and Aldiss's contemporary retelling, this thesis reveals how Joseph Bodenland forms the nexus for Brian Aldiss's critique of contemporary life. Aldiss adopts

9 several of Shelley's themes and reinterprets them; his message is directed toward an audience of self-propagating Frankenstein creatures.

I 1.., &.:1

10 Chapter One: Dualism and Doubles

I. Doubling and the Gothic Tradition

S ince Frankenstein Unbound is both a tribute to and extension of Mary

Shelley's Frankenstein, I begin with this earlier text. Shelley began writing her novel in Geneva as part of a ghost story competition among herself, Percy Shelley, Lord

Byron, and John Polidori. The initial inspiration for Frankenstein came from two sources. The first was a discussion of de Staell's De l~llemagne, which focused on

"whether the principle of life could be discovered and whether scientists could galvanize a corpse or manufactured humanoid" (Sunstein 122). A second source for the novel came the night following this discussion, when Shelley had a "'waking' hypnagogic nightmare" ( 122):

I saw the pale student of unhalllowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life .... His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away ... hope that ... this thing ... would subside into dead matter. .. he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains ... (Shelley x-xi)

These two intertwined figures from Shelley's dream would become the two central characters in her novel. Their relationship is unnaturally close: by the end of

ll the novel, it appears that one cannot survive without the other. In the fmal scene

ilie:r \c.t.at 'n.'ds rue(\, the c.reature mournfully addresses Walton, "I shall quit your

vessel on the ice-raft which brought me thither and shall seek the most northern

extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this

miserable frame. . . . He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no

more the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish" (230). Though

Frankenstein is a pre-Freudian text, Shelley's idea that the creature cannot survive

without Victor (even though both Victor and the creature mutually desire each

other's death) is confirmed in later psychoanalytic theory. In The Double: A

Psychoanalytic Study, Otto Rank comments:

The impulse to rid oneself of the uncanny opponent in a violent manner belongs, as we saw, to the essential features of the [double] motif; and when one yields to this impulse-as, for example, in The Student ofPrague-it becomes clear that the life of the double is linked quite closely to that of the individual himself. In Raimund's play, this mysterious basis of the problem becomes a conscious requisite of the test. In the last moment before the duel, Rappelkopf recalls this condition: "Both of us have only one life. Ifi kill him, I will kill myself." (16-7)

While Shelley's portrayal of human nature and the human mind is both

prophetic and insightful, it must be acknowledged that she did not invent the use of

the double. The Romantic and Gothic fascination with the double can be partially

attributed to the period's interest in Milton's Paradise Lost. Many of the principle

Romantic figures had identified with and even glorified Milton's portrayal of Satan

12 and Satan's struggle against God as being representative of the hwnan condition.

"One of the most omnipresent spectres called back in the gothic is that of Milton, whose version of the myth of fall and redemption, creation and decreation, is, as

Frankenstein again reveals, an important model for gothic plots" (Kilgour 40). The conflict between God and Satan inspired William Blake to provide his own version of the legendary struggle. In The Marriage ofHeaven and Hell, "Blake inverts the theology of Paradise Lost in order to provide a myth for his belief in an aboriginal calamity which divided man's nature, separating desire and energy from reason and control" (Sharrock 463). Blake also appears to have been the first romantic to recognize the dualistic nature of God and Satan: "according to his profound and peculiar vision, the Messiah and his opponent were not simply hero and villain with their usual roles reversed, but were divided halves of an original cosmic unity; each

therefore remained to some extent incomplete" (463). William Godwin, Shelley's

father, exhibited a less mystical view of the conflict, but still viewed Satan's struggle

as the fight of the individual against a more powerful tyrant: "He was not

discouraged by the apparent inequality of the contest. . . . He bore his torments

with fortitude, because he disdained to be subdued by despotic power'' (Godwin

309). While not directly invoking Milton or Satan, Godwin uses dualism in his

"political[ly] gothic" novel Caleb Williams. The story revolves around two central,

intertwined characters, Squire Falkland and Caleb Williams. The two characters

13 become so involved in each other's actions that, although each seeks the undoing of the other, neither man can exist alone:

Both Frankenstein and Caleb Williams are essentially novels of pursuit: the pursuit of Caleb by Falkland and the pursuit of Frankenstein by his creature (and later of the creature by Frankenstein) achieve the symbolic urgency of the human archetype. In both novels, the pursuer and the pursued have a crucial symbiotic relationship with each other. In Caleb Williams Caleb admires Falkland and seems to regard him as a substitute father, and is overcome with remorse when he finally brings him to justice. (Harvey 24)

Brian Aldiss also supports the correlation between Caleb Williams and Frankenstein, writing that the latter, pursuit-oriented part of Frankenstein "contains much of

Godwin's thinking, and of his _novel, Caleb Williams, which, as its preface announced, was a review of 'the modes of domestic and unrecorded despotism by which man becomes the destroyer of man"' (Trillion 41).

The double theme also haunts Gothic art, where it represents a dark, menacing side of the protagonist. The theme of the double can frequently be found in the work of Henry Fuseli, onetime lover of Mary Wollstonecraft. Fuseli is most famous for his work entitled The Nightmare. 4 Fuseli completed several versions of this painting, but all depict the image of a woman in the throes of a "violently erotic" dream while a small devil or demon hovers over her prone form. Fuseli, like Shelley, explores sexuality and the unconscious. Note the striking similarity between Fuseli's painting and Shelley's prophetic dream of the creature leaning over the sleeping

14 Victor Frankenstein.

Anne K. Mellor notes another relationship between The

Nightmare and Frankenstein in the scene where Elizabeth Lavenza is murdered on her wedding night:

"The corpse of Elizabeth lies in the very attitude in which Fuseli placed his succubus-ridden [sic] woman ...

Fuseli's woman is an image of female erotic desire, both lusting

H. Fuseli - The Nightmare for and frightened of the incubus that rides upon her, brought to her bed-chamber by the stallion that leers at her from the foot of the bed" (121). Fuseli's painting had a great influence on Mary Shelley's budding investigation of human psychology and sexuality.

II. Victor, the Creature, and the Dualistic Nature of Frankenstein

Mary Shelley owes much of her literary ability to the experience and education she received in her father's household. William Godwin provided young

Mary Shelley with an education designed to "sharpen her reasoning and Critical

15 faculties" (Hill-Miller 26). He once wrote "I am anxious that she should be brought

up . .. like a philosopher'' (26). Shelley's first novel is clearly the product of her

education and subsequent estrangement from her father. "The pivotal relationship

of Frankenstein-the interaction between a rejecting father and his rejected

creature-certainly has biographical resonance in Mary Shelley's life" (59). In

Frankenstein, Shelley relies heavily upon the Gothic notion of doubles, combined

with the Romantic interpretation of the Miltonic struggle between parent and child,

recalling Shelley's own conflict with her father. The Miltonic reference in

Frankenstein also emphasizes the dualistic nature of her main characters and invokes

the sublimity of the conflict between God and Satan (and Adam), and applies it to

the mortal conflict in Frankenstein.

Shelley also employs the doubling theme in the structure of her novel.

Frankenstein consists of three nested narratives: Walton's, Victor Frankenstein's, and

the Creature's. Walton's reckless pursuit of an earthly paradise at the North Pole

parallels Victor's dangerous and fatal pursuit of the Creature, which parallels the

Creature's pursuit of Victor and his kin. Regarding Miltonic influences, Sandra

Gilbert writes, "Walton's story is itself an alternative version of the myth of origins

presented in Paradise Lost . . .. Moreover, even the icy hell where Walton encounters

Frankenstein and the monster is Miltonic" ("Horror's Twin" 53). As an explorer seeking the mythical Utopia at the North Pole, Walton represents the new

16 discoveries promised by scientific exploration. Rather than settle for a heavenly utopia in the afterlife, "modern" science mandates the search for an earthly paradise.

Though Walton's intentions are honest and sincere, he runs afoul of nature, and risks his own life and the lives of his crew. In a similar manner, Victor constructs his creature to advance knowledge, but his plans go awry and he forfeits his life as well as those of his family in the quest to set things right. Shelley's two storylines mirror each other.

In addition to mirroring Shelley's own relationship with her father, how are

Victor Frankenstein and his creation related? On one level, Victor is God and his

Creature is Adam; after all, Victor creates the monster by assembling and reanimating various body parts. Following this interpretation, Shelley's Frankenstein becomes a condemnation of Man's attempt to play God through science. Since he is a man, Victor cannot create another Adam. Suitably, the creature Victor does create casts himself as Milton's Satan. Another interpretation casts Victor as the rash political mentality surrounding the French Revolution, and the creature as the out­ of-control nature of a society gone mad. On a biographical level, Shelley's portrayal of Victor and the creature might represent her own apprehensions concerning the wild and erratic natures of Percy Shelley and Lord Byron and her concern over the well-being of her son William. Finally, Frankenstein and the creature may be conceived of as two conflicting sides of a single being. Throughout his study at

17 Ingolstdat, Frankenstein possesses great energy and drive. With these qualities, he is able to construct and animate another living body. Yet, as soon as the creature is

animated, Victor becomes a pathetic, hapless creature. He wallows \n ms O.esp4ir .

His metamorphosis is suggested. b'J ms nervous breakdown and subsequent

prolonged illness immediately following the creature's birth. As the story progresses,

and the creature begins to exact revenge on Frankenstein's family, Frankenstein is

unable to stop the creature or to alert the authorities as to what is really going on.

Thus, Frankenstein allows both the creature and "the law" to continue punishing

innocent people. The creature has apparently absorbed all of Frankenstein's kinetic

energy, and uses it to wreak havoc on his world. David Wingrove writes "in that

pre-psychological age, Mary Shelley sensed the divided nature of man and depicted

Victor as a person continuously at war with himself: the amoral scientist fighting the

moral self of conscience" (Griffm and Wingrove 163). Through these

interpretations, it is clear that the creature serves as a double (doppleganger) to

Victor Frankenstein. In turn, this double relationship reflects many of Shelley's social

and political concerns, and a great deal of her personal history.

III. The Double in Frankenstein Unbound

As stated earlier, Brian Aldiss recognizes that the creature is Victor's "double"

or doppleganger. In Frankenstein Unbound, he expands this theme by adding a new

18 protagonist, Joseph Bodenland, to Mary Shelley's original cast. The novel opens in the twenty-first century, symbolically a veiled extrapolation of our own contemporary society, during a destructive war. The tale's central figure is ex­ presidential advisor Joseph Bodenland. His lofty position marks him as a potential hero, or "representative man" of our time. Collings notes that his first name, Joe,

"suggests commonplace humanity'' (43). Collings also notes irony in the protagonist's last name: "Baden-the German word for 'floor,' 'ground,' or

'soil,'-suggests stability, doubly so when connected with 'land.' The irony is that

Bodenland enjoys no stability. In his own time and space, he is subject to timeslips, the fmal one carrying him beyond recognizable time" (43). At the outset of the story, nuclear devices have detonated in the atmosphere causing a destabilization of the time/space continuum. Through a "timeslip," Bodenland is accidentally transported to Geneva in 1816, where he meets Lord Byron and the Shelleys as well as Victor Frankenstein and his creature. Mary Shelley has not yet completed her manuscript, and she has no idea that her story is "real" and not just the product of her imagination.

Aldiss begins his novel with a brief view of Bodenland's "futuristic" society.

A5 the story opens, Bodenland is secretly observing the actions of his grandchildren and their friends. He remarks, "I have to admit I am becoming quite a voyeur in my old age; . . . . In this world of madness, theirs (the grandchildren's) is the only

19 significant activity'' (Frankenstein Unbound 4). The scene implies that Bodenland is little more than one of his spy cameras-a machine. Although he sees the children as performing the only significant activity, they too have been tainted by modern society. Bodenland writes that "neither Tony nor Poll have mentioned their parents since poor Molly and Dick were killed; perhaps their sense of loss is too deep, though there is no sign of that in their play'' (4). Yet shortly after this comment, another girl arrives on her scooter. What ensues is a mockery of a Christian funeral:

"The kids were burying Doreen's scooter! They had their spades and pails out, and were working away with the sand, making a mound over the machine. They were much absorbed. No one seemed to be directing operations. They were working in unison" (5). Note the total absence of emotion in this scene. No one is distressed.

Rather, they seem to be functioning like machines or automatons. The children are focused and working in unison; they are working together without being told how-almost like a hive mind or a machine. Ironically, they are ceremoniously burying a machine-not mourning their deceased human parents. Humanity is drained from this scene, and we are left with one group of Frankensteinian creatures burying another machine. Later in the scene, Bodenland comments that "I have for so long stifled my own religious feelings in deference to the rationalism of our times .

. . . As far as I know, Molly and Dick never taught their children a word of prayer.

Perhaps the traditional comforts of religion were exactly what these orphans needed"

20 (6). Aldiss implies that the total loss of religion is dangerous. Are these children really orphans because their parents are dead, or because, like Frankenstein's crearure, they have been abandoned in a "rational" world devoid of hwnanity and faith? The next chapter consists of a newspaper report about the "timeslips." Through the anicle, Aldiss objectively reports his primary concern in the novel: "The Intellect has made our planet unsafe for the intellect. We are suffering from the curse that was

Baron Frankenstein's in Mary Shelley's novel: by seeking to control too much, we have lost control of ourselves" (9).

Joseph Bodenland begins the novel as the representative twenty-first century man, and Aldiss quickly scripts Bodenland as the technologically oriented, but implicitly dangerous, "everyman" of his century. During the first times lip,

Bodenland decides to explore the local terrain. Concerned about his safety, he thinks, "I recalled that I had an old-fashioned Colt .45 automatic pistol in my desk; yet the idea of carrying it seemed repugnant to me" (15). Ironically, by the end of the novel, he freely and almost gleefully uses a gun to kill Victor and later the creature.

After his arrival in Geneva in 1816 (following another timeslip), Aldiss begins to prepare Bodenland for his doppleganger role. Upon waking at an inn, Bodenland reflects, "you might say that the thought uppermost in my mind was this: Joe

Bodenland, you have escaped the twenty-first century! ... Blackest despair-now

21 total euphoria! I was a different man, full of strength and excitement'' (27).

Bodenland is freed from twenty-first century reality and is ready to embrace a new identity: "I felt curiously unlike myself. Or rather, I could feel the old cautious

Bodenland inside, but it seemed as if a new man, fitted for decision and adventure, had taken control of me" (28). Wingrove observes: "Significantly enough, this sensation overwhelms Bodenland moments before his first encounter with Victor

Frankenstein .... As the novel progresses and Bodenland's sense of compulsive attachment to Victor increases, so his sense of individual existence begins to fade"

(164). But Bodenland is not just a futuristic "morally superior'' Victor Frankenstein, as Wingrove argues. At the beginning of chapter two, as Bodenland stealthily follows Victor, he remarks that "I felt myself in the presence of myth and, by association, accepted myself as mythical!" ( 34). Bodenland becomes the mythical cultural doppleganger; Wingrove suggests that he becomes a virtual clone of Victor, but Bodenland's transformation transcends the pathetic weakness of Victor

Frankenstein's character. At the conclusion of chapter four, Bodenland notes that only Victor and he know the truth about Justine's innocence. Bodenland is outraged at the corruption of justice, and confronts Victor in the clearing where William was killed. He tells Victor to confess his knowledge of the murder to the courts, and displays no particular reservations about doing away with the creature. In this scene

Bodenland does not behave like Victor's clone; Victor could never bring himself to

22 speak to the magistrate or lift a hand against his creation. Bodenland comments, "no doubt you will realize what was in my mind; supernaturally fast Frankenstein's creature may be, but the swivel gun would stop him" (51). His aversion to weapons and violence has completely disappeared; indeed, in this scene, his actions are similar to those of Frankenstein's creature. Michael Collings writes that as Bodenland's illusions, both of his own world and Mary Shelley's, are stripped away, "Bodenland replaces them with a more dangerous assumption-that he is to be equated with

Frankenstein's monster'' (42). So who is Joseph Bodenland-a Victor clone, a creature clone, or a time-traveling presidential advisor? He himself says in chapter six that: "My identity was becoming more and more tenuous" (57).

Bodenland's role as a modern cultural doppleganger to both Victor and his creation, are reflected in the long scene with Lord Byron and the Shelleys which serves both as a turning point in the story and as the inspiration for Bodenland's

violent behavior in the rest of the novel. It opens with Percy Shelley praising man's

intentions (not God)s intentions) to use science to make the world a better place.

Voicing Brian Aldiss's philosophy, Mary Shelley responds to Percy's comment by

asking, "Don't you think mankind will have to change its basic nature a little before

that happens, Percy?" ( 81). Drawing on his experience from the future, Bodenland

speaks of how machines will affect man's nature, then comments on the dangers of

complex systems and man:

23 ... the more they become involved in each other's affairs, the more reason they have to fall out. You may quarrel with your neighbor, you are unlikely to quarrel with someone else's neighbor in the next village. And so in other spheres. The greater the complexity of the systems, the more danger of something going wrong, and the less chance the individual will has of operating on the systems for good. First the systems become impersonal. Then they seem to take on a mind of their own, then they become positively malignant! (85)

Bodenland speaks from experience, drawing his ideas from what has occurred in his time: The timeslips are the result of a global war started because of racial conflicts.

He perceives his own futility in the situation: even as an ex-presidential advisor and opponent of racism, Bodenland, as an individual, has been powerless to stop what has begun. Victor, in his animation of the creature, has also created a monstrosity.

What system can possibly be more complex than a human being? By giving the creature life, Victor (in Aldiss's revisionary reading), has started an apocalypse on an individual scale. The physical and mental intricacies of the Creature symbolize the extreme complexity of our manmade technological society.

By chapter nine, Bodenland has decided his fate and the role he shall play.

Though he is powerless and frustrated by his inability to stop timeslips and war in his own time, he decides to use his "individual will" to put an end to Victor and his creature. He knows it is too late to save Justine (a timeslip has occurred and she is already dead), but thinks," ... there was one thing I could do. I could eradicate

Frankenstein's monster. . . . What would Frankenstein do then?. . . Should I also anticipate that it was my duty to eradicate not only the monster but the author of the

24 monsters?" (89). H e becomes a myth . o 1og1ea1 avenger. When Boden1and finally confronts . . . VIctor m his secret tower he di v· scovers that Jctor has built a female companion for th . e creature and Is about reanimate her. Unlike the orig· 1 · rna nove 1' m Frankenstein Unbound th life. Symbolicall . . . . e creature's mate is brought to y, this Is significant becaus . e It portrays Victor as more comp1 1 fulftllin , . ete y g God s role m creating both Ad am and Eve. In Aldiss's tale there is no Eden; however th ' ese creatures are exiled at birth. Since these creatures are man-

t ~r n od: dt 1ruty, but simply show man the limits of his technological power. By animating the Crearure's companion, Victor has symbolically birthed a race (the machine, the man-made) that presages man's demise

in Bodenland's time. The symbolism of reproduction of artificial beings suggests the

imminent fall of humanity. In the original novel, Shelley only allows for one

creature, displaying the hope that humanity can correct its ways and ensure the

future. Aldiss, by comparison, dooms Man by introducing the second creature-we

have not heeded Shelley's warning, and now in Bodenland's "reality'' (and probably

ours), it is too late. Bodenland either cannot perceive his (and humanity's) fate or

will not accept it. He tries to convince Frankenstein to go to the authorities, but

Victor refuses. Bodenland's description of Victor is frightening: "His face was

shining, maybe from the heat of the lights. He looked more than ever as if stamped

out of metal" (152). Victor is already the product he is trying to create. Notice the

25 similar description when, shortly afterward, Bodenland sees the male creature in the laboratory: "The creature that now stared down at me looked like a machine, lathe- mrned" (163).

Bodenland, who later describes himself as a machine, does not realize that he is, by default, one of Frankenstein's creations (or, possibly, Victor himself is an "Ur-

Bodenland"). He asks Victor "Do you plan to populate the world with monsters?"

(152), yet fails to realize that, in his own future, this has already happened. The culminating evidence that represents Bodenland as a futuristic doppleganger to

Frankenstein's science comes at the end of chapter nineteen:

I wept for the mess of the world. "Oh, God!" I cried. There was a sound above me, and I looked upwards. A great beautiful face stared down at me. For a moment-then the skylight in the beamed roof was flung up, and Frankenstein's Adam came leaping down to stand before me in his wrath! (162)

The creature and the technology it represents are not only Frankenstein's Adam (and

Bodenland's )-they are his God, at least in their wrath and judgement.

Bodenland's role as a doppleganger to both Frankenstein and his creature is clear; he is a futuristic composite of both beings. Bodenland, though he cannot admit it-and probably does not realize it-is as much to blame as Victor. The proof of this is reflected in his actions for the duration of the story. Though he consciously sees himself as replacing Victor, Bodenland is a pawn, just as the creature lS.

26 -

His fmal hunt for the pai.r of cre'C\tures begins when he slays Victor

"Frankenstein. Wingrove remarks that, "After killing Victor, Bodenland .. . assumes

Victor's original role of pursuing the monster. . ." (165). He asserts that Bodenland has taken over Victor's personality (165). But Bodenland is more than

Frankenstein's double. He kills Victor when Victor justifies the creation of a female because then he will create a second male who will battle the first, resulting in mutual annihilation (a buzz-word of the cold war). What Bodenland carmot perceive is that he is that second creature. Unlike Victor, who in the original story follows, but carmot kill his creation, Bodenland is capable of murder, and in fact kills

both creatures with a Frankensteinian weapon-the swivel gun from his twenty-first century car.

As Bodenland pursues the two creatures he remarks, "my consciousness was

slipping towards the extreme brink of disintegration" (190), implying that mumal

annihilation has already begun. In so many words, Bodenland admits that he, too,

has become a Frankensteinian creature: "nothing interested me but purpose; I had

become machinelike" ( 196). In fact, it is because he has become "machinelike" that

he can catch the creatures. In his pursuit, Bodenland uses his Felder (a nuclear­

powered car) to overtake the creatures and his swivel gun to kill them. In Shelley's

novel, Victor is unable to catch the Creature (and dies), because he is merely human;

he is not enhanced. Bodenland is enhanced, using the same manmade science that

27 Victor used to make his enhanced crearure. Bodenland succeeds where Victor failed because Bodenland (with car and gun) is the Crearure.

He catches up with the two creatures just outside the strange "dystrophian"5 city, and initially speculates that the city must represent the last outpost of mankind in distant "fururity." But then, as it seems that the city is about to welcome the crearures, Bodenland reflects that "This was their sort of city. This was a city built and occupied by their own kind. The furure might be theirs and not ours" (209).

Bodenland does not realize that all three beings in the scene are Frankensteinian crearures. As a result, Bodenland attempts to shoot the pair of creamres with his gun-not realizing that in doing so, he is ensuring both Victor's prophecy of mumal destruction, and the mumal destruction visited upon his own culrure.

The female creature is killed in Bodenland's initial assault, but the male returns to where Bodenland stands. Mortally wounded, he utters the most powerful words in the novel:

In trying to destroy what you cannot understand, you destroy yourself! Only that lack of understanding makes you see a great divide between our natures. When you hate and fear me, you believe it is because of our differences. Oh, No, Bodenland!-it is because of our similarities that you bring such detestation to bear upon me!" (210)

Bodenland cannot agree with the crearure; he is obsessed with the idea that man, being born, is superior-he cannot see that he himself is a creation of Frankenstein.

The crearure responds, "Our universe is the same universe, where pain and

28 retribution rule .... Our deaths are both a quenching out'' (211). Bodenland, not comprehending the creature's meaning-that he too is a Frankensteinian creature-raises his gun to finish the monster off; the same aggression is most likely responsible for the war in Bodenland's time. Before Bodenland can act, however, the creature unleashes his prophecy, which, though too late and unheeded, is

Mankind's fate:

This I will tell you, and through you, all men, if you are deemed fit to rejoin your kind: that my death will weigh more heavily upon you than my life. No fury I might possess could be a match for yours. Moreover, though you seek to bury me, yet you will continuously resurrect me! Once I am unbound, I am unbounded! (211)

In killing the creature, Bodenland has sealed his own fate, and symbolically, he has also sealed humanity's fate. In Shelley's original, when Victor expires, the

Creature claims that he, too, will soon expire; he says that "the miserable series of my being is wound to a close" (Shelley 227), implying not only his own death, but death for his race (Brooks 603). In Frankenstein Unbound, when the "enhanced"

Bodenland finally does kill the "enhanced" Creature, he confirms his own death and the death of his own "series"-technological humanity. As a result, the lights in the city are slowly extinguished after Bodenland kills the creature. The message is clear: either Bodenland has been refused entry into this city of the future, or, more likely, his reality and that of the city will soon cease. Bodenland, as a symbolic doppleganger to both Victor and his creature, represents the ultimate doom that

29 awaits humanity as we continue to use science to play the role of God. Not only will we ultimately die, we will actually be unbound or undone, as symbolized by the deteriorating thread of reality in the novel.

30 Chapter Two: Frankenstein, God ofTechnology

I. Shelley's New Man

A a subtitle, The Modern Prometheus represents another ambiguity in

Mary Shelley's novel. The dualistic nature of Shelley's characters, discussed in the previous chapter, suggests that Victor and the Creature (and thus Bodenland) are both Promethean figures. Muriel Spark writes, "for though at first Frankenstein is himself the Prometheus, the vital fire-endowing protagonist, the Monster, as soon as he is created, takes on the role" (134). Although the subtitle refers to both figures, we can argue that the Creature could not exist unless Victor had brought it into the world. As such, Victor represents the perilous spirit of Mary Shelley's Brave New

Man. Patrick G. McLeod writes "Victor Frankenstein is the epitome of the unbridled intellect, soaring to dangerous heights like Icarus and with the same result, defying the law of God and nature like Prometheus and reaping a similar doom"

(159). Victor's ultimate failure, however, illuminates Shelley's concerns about the dangers of the pursuit of new knowledge.

Victor's soaring "unbridled intellect" transcends traditional religion and ethics in favor of Cornelius Agrippa and Albertus Magnus' mystical/intellectual knowledge.

31 His scientific endeavors parallel the radical thinking and philosophy espoused by the

GodwinjWollstonecraft/Shelley family. Godwin, Byron, and Percy Shelley were all atheists, and Mary Shelley, herself an atheist, was influenced by all these individuals.

Victor is not accidentally atheistic. Shelley assigns him this role because of her beliefs, and because Victor is her embodiment of the new Romantic hero-the man who defies his Miltonic God. Recognizing Victor's, and subsequently Bodenland's, status as god-defying is critical to a full understanding of the double/doppleganger theme in Frankenstein Unbound.

Victor's actions in Shelley's Frankenstein are irreligious in the sense that no devout individual would conceive of wanting to play god by animating a human being: even today, many people fear cloning research. His un-Christian identity is confirmed when the creature comes to regard him as the Creator and God of the

Creature's race. Victor fails miserably in his attempt to become an earthly god because "by playing God, Victor Frankenstein has simultaneously upheld the creationist theory and parodied it by creating only a monster. In both ways, Victor

Frankenstein has blasphemed against the natural order of things" (Mellor l 0 l ). His failure symbolizes Shelley's own philosophical concerns about atheism.

No one else in the story accepts Victor's science. Both Victor and his creation quickly become pariah figures, rejected by the rest of society. The Creature complains: "Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I

32 was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend" (Shelley 96). The Creature returns the favor by killing Victor's friends and family so that the two combatants are left to fight their own fatal personal war. Traditional society continues, unaffected, outside their struggle. Even at the conclusion, Shelley casts a glimmer of redemption: while Victor is doomed because of his Promethean actions, he has cast enough doubt in Walton's mind that this other "scientific explorer'' abandons his search for an earthly paradise (a Promethean concept in itself) and returns to the safety of traditional life. Walton's safe return (the proof of which is that we have

Victor's story) symbolizes Mary Shelley's hope. Indeed, by the conclusion of

Frankenstein, the reader must ponder whether Mary Shelley wished for a more conventional life than that which she had at the time with Shelley and Byron.

We have already discussed how modern society, as depicted in Frankenstein ..... Unbound) has embraced Victor's technology. A price ofVictor's science is the rejection of God. This conclusion is emphasized in Frankenstein Unbound, where

Aldiss transforms Shelley's biographically inspired theme of atheism into a dark commentary about the atheistic norm of contemporary society. Through Joe

Bodenland, as the modern double of Victor and his science, the reader perceives the inherent dangers involved in the loss of nature and God. As modern society's technological abilities advance, so does its responsibility towards itself and nature.

33 II. Atheism and the God of Technology

Frankenstein Unbound opens by acknowledging the disaster that humankind has brought upon itself. There seems to be little hope of redemption; Bodenland's

·<..c.ucm: ill. meUm.~ ~\) Q() 1\()t hd: e muc.n c.nmc.e of rectifying the future. Aldiss's

apocalypse is horrifying because humanity has not only extinguished itself, but has

caused reality to unravel. The atomic war in Bodenland's time has initiated the "de-

creation" of the world.

Bodenland is a staunch agnostic: as an ex-presidential advisor, swamped in

the politics of government, his lack of faith is not surprising. But Bodenland's non-

belief is the norm in this futuristic society. A5 he watches his grandchildren bury

Doreen's scooter, he is surprised by Doreen's sudden invocation of Jesus:

You [Mina] must wonder about this unexpected outbreak of Christianity in our agnostic household. I must say that at first it caused me some regret that I have for so long stifled my own religious feelings in deference to the rationalism of our times-and perhaps partly in deference to you ... As far as I know, Molly and Dick never taught their children a word of prayer. Perhaps the traditional comforts of religion were exactly what these orphans needed. (Frankenstein Unbound 6)

Bodenland watches his grandchildren and realizes that technology has robbed them

of myth.

After arriving in nineteenth-century Geneva, Bodenland concludes that

Victor's rash actions (or inactions), which will lead to the death of an innocent

woman (Justine), mirror modern society's specious thinking: mankind must

34 conquer nature (and God) whatever the price:

Was that not the whole weight of his argument [Victor's], that Nature needed in some way to be put to rights, and that it was man's job to see it was put to rights? And had not that song passed like a plague virus to every one of his fellow-men in succeeding generations? My supremely useless watch ... was a small example of how his diseased mentality had triumphed. The Conquest of Nature-the loss of man's inner self! (Frankenstein Unbound 45).

Bodenland is convinced that he can make a difference. Although his change of scenery grants him temporary insight into the larger issues, his vision is limited. By the end of the novel, he willingly employs his own Frankensteinian technology to hunt down and kill his two technological adversaries, unaware that he is merely committing suicide.

When Bodenland confronts Victor about Justine, he reprimands Victor for luxuriating in his sins. Victor's response illuminates one of the dangers of the scientific mind: "Since I am an atheist and do not believe in God, I do not believe in sin in the sense you intend the word. Nor do I believe that the zeal of discovery is a cause for shame" (Frankenstein Unbound 54). Although Bodenland has no

response for Victor, he does mourn the loss of faith and belief:

As science had gradually eroded the freedom of time, so had it eroded the freedom of belief. Anything which could not be proven in a laboratory by scientific method-anything, that is to say, which was bigger than science-was ruled out of court. God had long been banished in favor of any number of grotty little sects, clinging to tattered bits of faith ... The Frankenstein mentality had triumphed by my day. (Frankenstein Unbound 161)

35 I Bodenland perceives Victor's loss of faith, but he is powerless to object to Victor's stance, since Bodenland and the society he represents follow the same scientific

beliefs. In Bodenland's world, the machine is the priest.

While Bodenland's status as a double allows him to perceive the bias in

Victor's scientifically skewed vision of reality, his own grounding in that same

reality prevents him from halting Victor's destruction. Bodenland's mind conceives

of only one way to stop the Creatures: to hunt and kill them using his own godless

technology from the future. Bodenland places little value upon life (other than his

own), possibly because for him there is no Divine God; his own reality reigns

supreme. He kills Victor and assumes his position as avenger. He fails to realize

that slaying the monster with a weapon akin to its own technology merely

propagates the Frankensteinian hierarchy-'only the strong machines will survive.'

Bodenland does slay the Creature, but in doing so, he has marooned himself on a

dark and alien planet. Like the scientists responsible for the atomic conflict in his

own time, Bodenland, the self-appointed hero/God, acts without thinking of the

consequences. As a result, he has not destroyed the Creature, who prophesied,

"though you seek to bury me, yet you will continuously resurrect me! Once I am

unbound, I am unbounded!" (Frankenstein Unbound 211). Bodenland uses his

atheistic technology and, like the world around him, is ultimately undone.

36 Chapter Three: The Orphaned Culture

I. From the Orphaned Child to the Orphaned Nation

Examination of the orphan figure in Frankenstein Unbound reveals another of Aldiss's messages: not only has mankind embraced science and lost its faith and belief in God, but we have also rejected the natural world in favor of the machine. We have disavowed both our religion and our biological context in favor of Victor Frankenstein's science; in Aldiss's view, humanity has become the orphaned Frankenstein creature.

The American Heritage Dictionary defmes "orphaned" as "To deprive (a child) of one or both parents."6 If the death of one parent defines an orphan, then

Mary Shelley's original novel is replete with such figures, from the most minor of characters to, on a symbolic level, the two central combatants. Shelley's prolific use of orphan figures in Frankenstein has decidedly biographical overtones. As noted,

Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died a week after young Mary was born, qualifying her as an orphan according to our defmition. Wollstonecraft's untimely death had a great impact on Shelley, and although she read and reread

Wollstonecraft's works, "all reading about (or of) her mother's work must have

37 been painful, given her knowledge that the passionate feminist writer had died in giving life to her, to bestow upon Wollstonecraft's death from complications of childbirth the melodramatic cast it probably had for the girl herself'' ("Horror's

Twin" 50). Mary Shelley also experienced many of the traumas associated with orphanhood, as Jane Dunn writes, "for little Mary was already motherless, a harsh deprivation that was to shadow her life with a sense of solitariness and loss" (14).

Sandra Gilbert describes Shelley as an orphan, claiming that Shelley became interested in family histories, "especially those of orphans" (Madwoman 227). Such fascination serves as a partial explanation for the numerous orphans present in

Frankenstein. Gilbert also contends that Shelley's narrative is a combination of

Shelley's personal experience and her Romantic education, "For Milton's Adam and

Eve, after all, began as motherless orphans reared (like Shelley herself) by a stern but kindly father-god, and ended as beggars rejected by God (as she was by Godwin

[sic] when she eloped)" (227). Thus, the orphan motif in Shelley's novel is established by her own motherless status (and subsequent rejection by her father) and the education she received during her formative years.

As noted, one manifestation of the double relationship between Victor and his creature is that they both end up as orphans. Writing about Walton and Victor,

Gilbert comments, "Walton and his new friend Victor Frankenstein have considerably more in common than a Byronic Satanism. For one thing, both are

38 orphans, as Frankenstein's monster is" (Madwoman 227). "Frankenstein's monster'' is orphaned in several respects. He is initially orphaned when he is rejected by

Victor shortly after his "creation," and claims that he is "rather the fallen angel"

(Shelley 96). Brian Aldiss remains fascinated and puzzled by this scene where

Victor first rejects the crearure. It is curious how Victor, after assembling, with great excitement and anticipation, his transcendent man, can so suddenly revile his own creation. Aldiss professes that the birth scene is either a conscious or unconscious representation, by Shelley, of the guilt surrounding her own birth. 7

Subsequent to his creator's disavowal, the Crearure stumbles into the woods, only to be reviled and rejected by any people he meets. The Creature is also an orphan in the sense that he is the only one of his kind-he is alone. Even narure seems to reject the poor beast: the Creature spends most of its time scaling the snowbound •' ~ · mountains of Mount Blanc and the ice plains of the North Pole. The sublimity of these settings emphasizes both the Creature's unnarural existence and its role as the ultimate orphan in Narure. Finally, the Creature possesses many of the experiences traditionally associated with orphans: isolation, rejection, guilt, and alienation.

In a "new historical" political interpretation, the Crearure's orphaned std.te can also be likened to the orphaned state of Revolutionary France in Europe. The early Romantics, including Godwin, viewed the French Revolution as creating a heroic new nation for Romantic man. However, the other European nations

39 viewed France with great trepidation, as they feared such a revolution occurring in their own countries. After the Reign of Terror, even the Romantics assumed the great French Experiment to have been a failure. In a political sense, post­

Revolutionary France was very much akin to the Frankenstein creature: abandoned by its creators (the initial Revolutionaries) and rejected by the rest of its kind (the other European nations). Napoleon's brutal conquests and ultimately disastrous failures condemn the great French experiment in a manner similar to the fiery fate that awaits Frankenstein's creature. "Mary Shelley conceived of Victor

Frankenstein's creature as an embodiment of the revolutionary French nation, a gigantic body politic originating in a desire to benefit all mankind but abandoned by its rightful guardians and so abused. . . that it is driven into an uncontrollable rage" (Mellor 82).

Victor, on the other hand, does not start out an orphan, at least not in the literal sense. His devotion to science infers his separation from religion and God.

His rejection of God and faith is noted when he remarks, shortly after Justine's execution, that she was "the first hapless victim to my unhallowed arts" (Shelley

84). Victor's use of the term "unhallowed" infers his rejection of God and nature.

He adopts the cultural alienation of the orphan early in the story when he becomes fascinated with this new discipline called science. During Victor's time, scientific study in Europe was fmally on the verge of achieving general acceptance, having

40 been marginalized by the Church for many years as Satanic. His profession thus isolates him from general society. When he then subscribes to the wild theories of

Cornelius Agrippa, he also faces rejection, and symbolic orphanhood, from the scientific community. Victor is left with his fiancee and family. But, as the

Creature exacts his revenge upon Victor by destroying his family, Victor is left all alone. Like the Creature, Victor has nobody to turn to: his family is dead, the courts will not believe his story (so he claims), and his "unhallowed" science alienates him from God.

II. Joe Bodenland: Aldiss's "Last Man"

At the end of Frankenstein Unbound, Joseph Bodenland is, quite literally, the last man on earth. Aside from the unknown creatures inside the strange,

"dystrophian" city, Bodenland is all alone, "biding [his] time in darkness and distance" (Frankenstein Unbound 212).8 By crafting his central character as a composite double to both Victor Frankenstein and the Creature, Aldiss identifies

Bodenland as a symbolic orphan. But Joe Bodenland's "orphan" status is not solely based on his relationship to Victor and the Creature; at the beginning of the novel, he is already an orphan. Aldiss's purpose in invoking the orphan motif in

Frankenstein Unbound is not autobiographical or religious. He invokes the orphan theme to illustrate how modern humankind has orphaned itself from the natural

41 world, and, to a large degree, from "humanity'' itself; contemporary society has

become the orphaned creature of Victor's science.

Joseph Bodenland is an orphan, though not in the literal sense, even before he is transported back in time to Geneva. A5 an atheist/agnostic, he, and the technological society he represents, are alienated from God and nature; they

represent Victor's science on a societal level. But upon his arrival in nineteenth century Geneva, he is orphaned from both his time and his culture. Initially, his separation from his own time seems to be refreshing and invigorating. Mter spending his first night in the past, he wakes up to circadian rhythms instead of a nuclear watch. He thinks, "Blackest despair-now total euphoria!" (Frankenstein

Unbound 27). Temporarily, he becomes a "natural" man, unencumbered by the

artificiality of modern society: "it seemed as if a new man, fitted for decision and

adventure, had taken control of me" (28).

This new Bodenland becomes the self-declared champion of the untainted,

natural world. A5 discussed in chapter one, he witnesses Justine's trial and stumbles

upon Victor's scientific project and nefarious plans. His new self forces Bodenland

to try to stop Victor, and his quest takes him to the Shelleys's estate. He views

Byron and the Shelleys with great reverence; when they accept him into their

intellectual discussion (and Mary Shelley into her bed), he is overjoyed.

Bodenland's sense of being orphaned status is alleviated: he has found people who

42 can listen to his stories and philosophically discuss humankind's future. When he finally leaves the villa (after showing Mary his car-proof that her story is prophetic), he returns to Geneva only to experience a wrenching loss of cultural context.

Frankenstein's science invades Bodenland's pastoral life in the form of another timeslip, which deposits a huge lake right outside the city. The water level in the lake is several feet higher than the surrounding land, and everything is flooded. The flood allows Bodenland to escape from jail, but he soon discovers that his new allies, Byron and the Shelleys, are gone, their houses having stood where the foreign lake now resides. Once again, Bodenland is alone. His focus reverts to

Victor Frankenstein, and he fanatically believes that if he can stop Victor, he can fix the world's problems (literally). Bodenland becomes the futuristic avenger, but he fails to realize that his quest is futile.

As Bodenland pursues Victor, and subsequently the creatures, reality begins to break down. Ironically, as Bodenland's quest becomes more mono-maniacal, the deterioration of the world around him quickens: multiple moons appear in the sky, strange landscapes appear, and human contact disappears. Finally, Bodenland is left all alone in his pursuit of the monsters. His car, with its "swivel gun," is all that remains of his former, now non-existent reality.

His fmal confrontation with the Creature echoes the symbiotic relationship

43 between Victor and the Creature in Shelley's original. However, in Aldiss's novel,

Bodenland is not Victor; he is another machine-symbolically implying that

"natural" man is lost in the future. His slaying of the Creature leaves Bodenland as the last man on Earth--orphaned from everything except the "darkness and distance." "Gillespie refers to the ironic conclusion of the novel; we experience

Bodenland's tragedy, not the monster's, since by pursuing the monster Bodenland has 'extinguished his own humanity,' destroying that which he had been seeking throughout'' (Collings 46, Gillespie 154). And, if the symbiotic parallels from

Shelley's story hold, his remaining time on Earth will be short. Bodenland's solitary isolation and approaching doom suggest the dark fate that modern society brings upon itself by embracing the use of irresponsible science.

'I ·'

44 Conclusion

Frankenstein Unbound was published in 1973, during the height of the cold war. Seventeen years later, that conflict had subsided, but technology and

"machine science" continue to flourish and pervade most aspects of our own society. Possibly because books run the risk of becoming obsolete in our video oriented hypermedia world, Aldiss joined forces with Roger Corman to create a film, the critically underrated Roger Corman)s Frankenstein Unbound. The film version, while simplifying many aspects of Aldiss's original tale, nevertheless remains thematically true to the novel. Aldiss's central figure, named Buchanan, again chases the Creatures into the icy north, and again slays the female. The male creature escapes, however, and is pursued by Buchanan into a futuristic underground outpost. Artistically, the outpost's subterranean location signifies that, in this distant future, the natural world, through mankind's continued abuse, has become so inhospitable as to make life above ground impossible.

The film's plot diverges from Aldiss's novel in that the two adversaries enter the forbidden 'city,' revealing an enticing bit of authorial intent. The mood of this alien place remains consistent with the somber mood surrounding the novel's conclusion: the chambers are poorly lit, primarily in shades of orange and red, and have a decidedly alien atmosphere. Bodenland's fear that the city would be

45 populated by Frankenstein creamres proves false. Buchanan does ftnd a room full of strange, fumristic computers and other technological devices (in a sense, these machines are Frankensteinian creatures). Unfortunately, no humans or living creamres of any kind are discovered in the labyrinth. Much of the machinery seems to be shut down, implying that in this future, namre's wrath has not only driven humankind underground, but is on the verge of eradicating the human race.

Buchanan realizes that the room is both a real and symbolic representation of the excesses produced by unbridled technology. Aldiss has removed the ambiguity from the story's conclusion, and we can now surely declare that Bodenland bides his time, "in darkness and distance," alone.

The ftlm's visual representation of the Creature is also fascinating, supporting both the double/doppleganger theory presented in this thesis, and the loss of "man's inner [or individual] self'

(Frankenstein Unbound 45).

Each of the Creamre's irises are sewn together from several different colors. Its eyes clearly identify the creamre as unnatural and inhuman; the multi-hued eyes also represent Artworkfrom Roger Corman's Frankenstein Unbound depicting the Creature's eye.

46 the loss of individuality and identity, and to a degree, symbolize the fractured vision and outlook of contemporary society. The individual is lost in the technological world. The movie's depiction of the Creature's eye illuminates one of Aldiss's warnings in his novel: as our individual identity fades and technological identity increases, every person becomes a double to someone else and, as personal identities collapse and merge, the ultimate product is a machine, uninfluenced by humanity or the natural world. In Sandra Gilbert's words, already quoted, "Like figures in a dream, all the people in Frankenstein have different bodies, and somehow, horribly, the same face" (Madwoman 229).

Bodenland's role, as the descendant doppleganger to both Victor and the

Creature, is tragic and pathetic. He realizes his personal (and racial) guilt and culpability early in the novel, and believes he can change destiny by killing one man. I ,., I His attempt to correct history, however, fails, since he employs the same treacherous technology to fix the problem that technology has caused. Bodenland also fails because of his human, Promethean pride. Though Bodenland understands what Victor's technology and mentality will do to the future, he cannot transcend the flaws in human nature. Mellor writes that Shelley presents "Victor Frankenstein as the embodiment of hubris, of that Satanic or Faustian presumption which blasphemously attempts to tear asunder the sacred mysteries of nature" (94).

Bodenland's portrayal as Victor's double, and a fellow atheist, illuminates Aldiss's

47 warnings for modern society: while technology and science provide many advances, they may also cause great harm. It should be recognized, however, that Bodenland never condemns Victor's science outright. In fact, in his letter to Mary Shelley,

Bodenland concludes that modern society is preferable to Shelley's pastoral time.

He concludes that since human nature has always been imperfect, the future is preferable since science has provided many health benefits and other comforts.

Thus, Aldiss's story must be viewed as a warning to contemporary humanity-not a condemnation or rejection of it.

Aldiss's novel begins during an atomic war; Bodenland perceives that

Victor's science is symbolically responsible for the turmoil in his own time. But

Aldiss's concerns transcend the threat of nuclear war. Bodenland's story reveals that humanity's Promethean quest for scientific advancement permanently disrupts the natural world. Aldiss also presents Bodenland as an orphan to illustrate his belief that modern man risks losing his identity; we become parts of the technology.

Bodenland's reliance on technology reveals how it corrupts humanity and leads to the eradication of the individual. His fanatical and rash actions at the end of the novel are empowered by his own Frankensteinian devices and the knowledge that he has the power to destroy the 'superhuman' Creature.

Like Victor, Bodenland fails in his attempt at being the monomythical hero.

He is limited, like Victor, by his human flaws and pride. But Aldiss never intends

48 Joseph Bodenland to be the hero from the future; Bodenland is an everyman.

Through Bodenland and his role as a double, Aldiss suggests that Victor's science, coupled with Romantic ideology and corrupted human nature, has generated the standards of contemporary society. Aldiss reinterprets Mary Shelley's novel to warn

us that many of the monitory themes in her novel are still potent and dangerous in

our own tlme.

49 Notes l. It should be noted that the quotation from Aldiss, taken from Griffin and Wingrove's Apertures, is originally "from the sleevenotes to the Alternate World Recordings long playing record of Frankenstein Unbound (AWR 5911, 1976). The recording was taken from a BBC Radio London broadcast of 8 and 15 July 1974 , a dramatized version with five voices, Aldiss taking the pan of Bodenland."

2. According to David Wingrove, Ezra Pound's five forms of criticism were 1) discussion in prose, 2) by translation, 3) by exercise in the style of a given period, 4) by musical rendition, and 5) by new composition. In Wingrove's opinion, Billion Year Spree is an example of the first mode of criticism, and Frankenstein Unbound is an example of the fifth (162).

3. At the Eighteenth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, March 19-23, 1997, Brian Aldiss reassened his belief that in modern society technology has eroded the belief in Nature and God. Advances such as nuclear energy (and the atomic bomb) and genetic cloning grant modern society a Promethean version of godly powers. Thus, with the decline ofNature and God, and the rise of technology, Man must also learn to wisely control his own powers. The responsibility for the safety and well-being of the world is now in our hands.

4. Fuseli painted several versions of The Nightmare. The one depicted herein can be found on the Internet at http://www.sai.msu.su/cjackson/f/p-fuseli4.htm.

5. The American Heritage Dictionary defmes "dystrophy'' as "defective nutrition," or "Any disorder caused by defective nutrition." Aldiss may have used this word in his description of the city to emphasize its separation and deviance from the natural world.

6. The American Heritage Dictionary defmes "orphan" as "A child whose parents are dead; sometimes, a child who has lost one parent by death." Mary Shelley fits the latter pan of this defmition.

7. Brian Aldiss discussed this scene in Shelley's Frankenstein during a paper reading session, which included a preliminary version of this thesis, at the Eighteenth

50 International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Aldiss views Victor's reaction to the Crearure in the birth scene as problematic. Why would Victor, who is both proud of, and intimately familiar with, his creation (having put the crearure together), suddenly reject it when it is fmally brought to life? Victor's sudden reversal and horriftc description of the crearure are both paradoxical and unjustifted. Aldiss feels that Victor's strong rejection of the crearure must symbolize Mary Shelley's own guilt over the death of her mother during childbirth and her subsequent (and at the time Shelley was writing the novel) rejection by her father.

8. Patrick McLeod (in "Frankenstein: Unbound and Otherwise") cannily locates a very similar phrase, referring to the creature, at the end of Shelley's novel. Walton observes, "He [the Creature] was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance" (Frankenstein 231). Aldiss's intentional application of this phrase, this time applying it to his main ftgure, cements Bodenland's status as a modern Frankenstein crearure and a double to Shelley's original.

51 Works Cited

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Frankenstein Unbound. New York: Random, 1973.

Aldiss, Brian, and David Wingrove. Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction. New York: Atheneum, 1986.

Brooks, Peter. "Godlike Science/Unhallowed Arts: Language and Monstrosity in Frankenstein." New Literary History 9 (1978): 591-606.

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Dunn, Jane. Moon in Eclipse: A Life ofMary Shelley. London: Weidenfeld, 1978.

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Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political justice. New York: Penguin, 1976.

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McLeod, Patrick G. "Frankenstein: Unbound and Otherwise." Extrapolation 21 (1980): 158-168.

Mellor, Anne K. Mary Shelley: Her Lifo) Her Fiction) Her Monsters. New York: Methuen, 1988.

"Orphan." American Heritage Dictionary.

Rank, Otto. The Double: A Psychoanalytic Study. Trans. by Harry Tucker, Jr. Chapel Hill: U ofNorth Carolina P, 1971.

Sharrock, Roger. "Godwin on Milton's Satan." Notes and Queries NS 9 (1962): 463-5.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein) or the Modern Prometheus. Everyman's Library 62. New York: Knopf, 1992.

Spark, Muriel. Child ofLight: A Reassessment ofMary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Essex: Tower, 1951.

Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.

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