California State University, Northridge HARY SHELLEY's Vie1t>J of HAN AS SEEN in FRANKENSTEIN and the LAST HAN a Thesis Submi

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California State University, Northridge

HARY SHELLEY'S VIE1t>J OF HAN AS SEEN IN \\ FRANKENSTEIN AND THE LAST HAN

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in English

Nona Hale

Received: Approved:

June, 1977 ,, '

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

I. A SHORT BIOGRAPHY . 1

II. THE TWO NOVELS 9

III. CONCLUSIONS . . • 2 7

NOTES • • • 3 2

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY • 34

ii I. A SHORT BIOGRAPHY

On 30 August 1797, a daughter was born to Mary

Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, who had married only

five months previously. Though believing that marriage was a stifling institution and that love should be free,

Mary Wollstonecraft had seen the effects of her liberal views on her first child, Fanny Imlay, and she now wished

to spare her second. Many of her perceptions of freedom had been formed while she lived in Newington Green among

the leading dissenters of her day, to whom "free" meant

"guided by one's own will." (To be guided by another's will was servitude.) These concepts had appeared in her

Vindication of the Rights of Men {1790). Two years later

she had written A Vindication of the Rights of Homen in which she insists that rights have no sexual basis: "what

they say of man I extend to mankind." She believed that

inequality is the cause of the world's evils. "Cruelty, depravity, irresponsibility toward children and all help

less persons--these'wrongs' are to be fought by elimi

nating institutionalized inequality and by educating the mind and heart of both meri and women, of all classes. The

right she is most concerned to vindicate, then, is the

right to become a rational, responsible, independent

adult." 1 Although she married Godwin, she never lived in his house except for the twelve days of this confinement

1 2

which ended in her death. Godwin, a crusty bachelor, found himself the widowed parent of two little girls.

Mr. Nicholson, a neighbor who was an amateur phrenologist a~d physiognomist, examined Mary when she was three weeks old and found signs of intelligence and good memory although there were also indications that the babe lacked persistence. Even at such an early age it is clear that much was expected of Mary. 2

William Godwin had found fame as a radical social philosopher with the publication in 1793 of An Enquiry

Concerning the Principles of Justice. "Truth, moral truth, it was supposed, had here taken up its abode; and these were the oracles of thought," wrote William Hazlitt about this book's effect. 3 Godwin differed from a reformer like

Thomas Paine by submitting that democracy is not the solu tion to the injustices of the feudal-mercantile system.

This is because he did not feel that the evils of society were due only to political suppression but also to eco nomic inequality. Even if kings, priests, courts, and criminal laws were changed so that the political rights of people were protected, the unequal distribution of property would lead to envy, dissatisfaction and revolt,

Godwin wrote.

In 1801 Godwin married a widow, Mary Jane Clair mont, who had two children, Charles and Jane (later 3

Claire). A son, William, was born to them in 1802. This confusion of children was Mary's early family. Because she adored her father and he seemed to see in her the reincarnation o~ his first wife, she appears to have suppressed her natural warm nature in order to seem the dispassionate intellectual he approved of. She and her stepmother were not compatible. This may be the reason that she spent parts of 1812 and 1814 in Scotland with the Baxter family. They were a conventional, middle class household and she enjoyed her visits with them.

It was in Scotland, she says 1n the 1831 introduction to

Frankenstein, that her "airy flights of . . imagination, were born and fostered."

During the summer of 1814 Shelley was a frequent visitor to Godwin. They shared many views: the innate goodness of man, the unifying force of love, the progres sion of society toward good. When Mary returned from

Scotland, she met Shelley at her father's house. Partly to elude her stepmother's tongue and partly out of longing for her own mother whose memory she had romanticized, Mary began to visit her mother's grave. There she would sit and read her beloved books, all those written by her mother and many others from Godwin's library. Fascinated by this beautiful daughter of his mentor, Shelley began to follow her to St. Pancras' churchyard. They talked 4

of Mary Wollstonecraft and Shelley confided his unhappi ness caused by his wife's neglect and lack of sympathy.

Shelley idealized Mary: not only was she the daughter of

two of his idols, but she seemed to possess everything he

thought the ideal woman should have--beauty, imagination

and intelligence, love of poetry, and sympathy with his

aspirations. No wonder they found themselves plunged in

to intense feelings. Hhen Godwin became aware of the

situation, he was the outraged father. Mary was only

sixteen; Shelley was married to Harriet Westbrook and the

father of two children. In July, the lovers eloped to

France and Switzerland, Claire accompanying them. Mary

felt no compunction in eloping, for they were, after all, only living out the philosophic views of her father.

Love was what bound two people together, not the insti

tution of marriage. When love was absent, the ties were broken. Marriage vows were not compelling and marriage

ceremonies were not necessary. Although Shelley agreed with Godwin that marriage was an evil social institution, he did not advocate promiscuous sex. A sexual relation

ship was proper only if it was the outgrowth of a spiri

tual relationship. B~cause he and Harriet no longer

shared such a relationship, he was able to leave her with no feelings of wrongdoing. He even invited Harriet to

join them as the sister of his soul. "Shelley never gave 5

up his belief that people ought to live naturally and rationally together, but he did come to recognize the 4 great practical difficulties. involved. "

After two months the lovers returned to England.

In February of 1815 a daughter was born to them, only to die within two weeks. A son, William, was born in Jan- uary of 1816. That summer they again traveled to Switzer- land where Mary began writing Frankenstein. After they returned to England in the fall, Harriet was found drowned. In December they were married, mainly in hopes of obtaining custody of Shelley's two children by

Harriet, but also to legitimize their child and to placate their families. Another daughter was born before they left for Italy in 1818.

Life was tumultuous for Mary. Before she was twenty she had given birth to three children. Before she /; was twenty-two she had lost them all. Add to this

Harriet's suicide, Fanny's suicide, the loss of Shelley's children to the court, the death of the daughter of Byron and Claire plus the constant hounding by Godwin and creditors for money, the ostracism from Shelley's family, the lack of funds because of Shelley's generous spirit and one wonders that Mary was able to write. Shelley had little doubt that she had an extraordinary gift and intellect, and it was probably due to his support that 6 ~ '

during this period she wrote History of~ Six Weeks' Tour,

Frankenstein, Valperga, and a novella, Mathilda. Her only child to reach adulthood, Percy Florence, was born in

November of 1819. She had a miscarriage in June of 1822, but her greatest tragedy occurred in July of that year:

Shelley was drowned while sailing off the coast of Italy.

An impoverished widow at twenty-four, Mary felt that she had but two obligations: the furthering of

Shelley's reputation and the caring for her only child.

After a year with the Leigh Hunt family in Italy, she returned to England, hoping that Sir Timothy, Shelley's father, would feel obligated to support his grandson.

But he would do so only if Mary relinquished custody.

She refused, and Sir Timothy compromised by giving Percy

Florence a hundred pounds a year. Mary provided for her self, her son and her debt-ridden father by publishing

Valperga (1823) and The Last Man (1826). In 1824 the publication of Shelley's Posthumous Poems and the notes

Mary had written for the book so angered Sir Timothy (who wanted nothing more than that the world should forget his errant son) that he stopped the small allowance. When

Harriet's son died in 1826 and Percy became heir to the estate, Sir Timothy relented and gave him an allowance of three hundred pounds a year.

Mary developed a life in London and a circle of 7

friends, but she clung to Shelley's memory and never re married. Replying to a proposal from Edward Trelawny she wrote, "Never, neither you nor anybody else. Mary Shelley shall be writte~ on my tomb . II She continued to support herself by writing and seemed almost morbid in her widowhood. Two novels were published, Lodore (1835) and

Falkner (1837), and she wrote notes to an edition of

Shelley's poems, Poetical Works_ (1839) . She also wrote five volumes of biography for Lardner's ~abinet Cyclo pedia. Her last work, Rambles in Germany and ~taly, is an account of two trips she took with her son and two of h~s friends. The final years of her life were free of poverty. At the death of Sir Timothy, who lived to age ninety-one, Percy succeeded to the title. Shortly after he married a widow, Jane St. John, who was devoted to

Mary. In 1851 Mary Shelley died and was buried between the graves of her mother and her father.

Mary Shelley wrote seven novels, two novellas, twenty published short stories, five volumes of bio graphies, numerous articles and essays for literary magazines, two books of travel, three poetic dramas and a number of poems. She edited works by Shelley, Godwin,

Trelawny and a short story by her stepsister, Claire

Clairmont. And yet she is chiefly remembered as the wife of Shelley, and by some as the author of Frankenstein. 8

She seems always to be a reflection of others--her mother, her father, her husband. Perhaps a better metaphor is that she is a window through which we are able to glimpse the romantic idealists of the early nineteenth century.

An examination of her idea of man as it emerges from two of her novels, Frankenstein and The Last Man will aid us in this understanding. II. THE T\'V'O NOVELS

Because of the associations in her personal life,

Mary Shelley is considered by many to be a spokesman for the romantic view of man. In reality, she was much more conventional than her mother, her father, or her husband.

And from her works she appears to have had a much more pessimistic view of man. Although she agreed, for the most part, that man is basically good, there are inconsistencies, as we shall see upon examination of Franken- stein and The Last Man.

The legend of Frankenstein that has filtered down to us is concerned mainly with the creation of a monster.

Mary's concern was with the result of that creation and its use as illustration of the nature of man. She states in her preface that such a creation is an event that may not be based on fact, though it is not improbable, and that the use of this event is justified mainly because it enables the author to depict the nature of man in a much more comprehensive manner than would be possible if such a remarkable event had not been used as the departure point for the author's imagination. "I have thus endeav- oured to preserve the truth of the elementary principles of human nature, while I have not scrupled to innovate 5 upon their combinations."

9 10

~vhat did Mary see as the "elementary principles of human nature"? One of the most obvious from her writings is the natural goodness of man. The romantic view of sin is that it is caused by misery. "Man is innately good; the concept of original sin is alien to

Mary Shelley, as indeed it was to her father and her 6 husband." Godwin taught that happiness leads to virtue; treat a person ill and he will become wicked. Like

Godwin, Shelley "did not believe that evil was inherent in humanity but that it arose from corrigible social causes . [and that] this evil had been diminishing, that society had been progressing, and that it would progress further." 7 Mary illustrates this most fully in the monster. He is moved by the delights of spring and is filled with benevolent feeling when he is alone in the woods. One aim of the novel is to show that an Adam lacking a God for inspiration is still capable of happiness and virtue. He has an affinity for the natural world: the rising sun, the singing birds, the budding plants. 8 It is the rejection of Victor and all other men with whom he comes in con tact that makes him misera):>J:e and, therefore, malicious. He pleads with Victor, "I am

·------. ---~ .. --·· - -·· thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me . . I was benevolent and 11

good; misery made me a fiend. Nake me.happy, and I shall be virtuous" (F, 101). And he confesses to Walton near the end of the novel that as violent as he was, he received no pleasure from it and suffered from remorse and guilt (F, 238). Man has a natural tendency toward good.

Evil does not exist except as a corruption of human nature due to unhappiness. It is not a natural force in the world. One of Mary's purposes was "to show that evil has no autonomous existence of its own, independent of human life upon which it preys, but that it is of human 9 origin, a distortion of true human nature." He shall see later that the distortion is, perhaps, not so much a distortion as an unawareness of the conflict between man's reason and emotions.

Another example of a person who is impaired by ill-treatment is Perdita in The Last Man. Lionel describes his sister as "cold and repulsive . . unloved and neglected, she repaid want of kindness with distrust and silence. Poverty was the cloud that veiled her excellencies, and all that was good in her seemed about 10 to perish from want of the genial dew of affection."

Lionel, himself, as an "unprotected orphan" was the leader of a band of lawless shepherds who "owned but one law, it was that of the strongest, and my greatest deed of virtue was never to submit" (LM, 9). Through the 12

friendship of Adrian, Lionel "began to be human" when he discovers the true nature of man: "Not to be strong of limb, hard of heart, ferocious, and daring; but kind, compassionate artd soft" (LM, 19) . Man's emotions must be nourished in order for him to be good. It is the love and affection of Adrian that makes Lionel virtuous. However,

Hary is aware of something in man's nature that is not totally good. There seems to be some aspect of man that

"is for ever urging us on towards pain and misery . II

When Lionel sees Adrian suffering from his love for

Evadne, he concludes, "We are not formed for enjoyment; and, however we may be attuned to the reception of plea- surable emotion, disappointment is the never-failing pilot of our life's bark, and ruthlessly carries us on to the shoals" (LM, 23). This philosophy of the nature of man could be taken as the unenlightened sentiments of a young man and a stance from which Mary proposed to show the growth of that young man's understanding were it not that the same sentiments are echoed in the last pages of her story. There Lionel says, "Truly, we were not born to enjoy, but to submit. " (LM, 2 91) . After wit- nessing the destruction of the human race by plague,

Lionel does have reason for pessimism, but it seems that the plague is used as a vehicle in this novel to strip man of his pretensions so that his basic nature can be 13 i' .

shown. Man may be fundamentally good, but he is subject to many forces, among which is a pessimism resulting from man's reasoning nature.

Man's reason sets him apart from the world. He has a desire for unity, a need for clarity, and a longing to solve the great mysteries of life. The race of man

II . had been the mere plaything of nature, when first it crept out of uncreative void into light, but thought brought forth power and knowledge; and, clad with these, the race of man assumed dignity and authority" (LM, 300).

Lionel says, "So true it is, that man's mind alone was the creator of all that was good or great to man, and that Nature herself was only his first minister'! (LM, 5).

However, man is capable of understanding the universe in only an anthropomorphic manner. "Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal. The eat's universe is not the universe of the anthill."ll As the plague progresses, Lionel sees the futility of all man's ·knowledge and reason. Con- sciousness is what is responsible for man's suffering.

Victor laments as he climbs the glacier in search of some comfort, "Alas! why does man boast of sensibil ities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire we might be nearly 14

free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows!"

(F, 99). Han's mind compels him to act in ways which bring unhappiness. Victor's imagination drives him to study the caus~ of life--so much that he begins to dream of creating life himself. "A new species would bless me as its creator-and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs" (F, 4 7) . The vision of his power becomes a hellish reality. Overcome by the magnitude of what he has created, Victor flees from his creature; and this abandonment is the great evil. Victor allows his reason to desert him, he does not accept the responsi bility for a successful scientific experiment. The monster accuses him, " . . you had endowed me with perceptions and passions, and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind" (F, 147).

Victor is unfeeling in his desertion of his creation.

Fathers claim the gratitude of their children for the nurture and protection they provide; Victor can have no such claim upon his progeny. The monster likens himself to Adam who "was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but . . he had come forth

. a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator" (F, 135). One of 15

theperceptions and passions with which the monster was endowed was a desire to know. As he wanders the world, he is much like Adam in the Garden of Eden, responding to the basic forces of the natural world. When he takes refuge 1n the hut beside the cottagers and secretly ob serves them, he has the opportunity to learn language and literature and the history of man. The monster regrets his loss of innocence and wishes that he could be free of knowledge. He reiterates Victor's prior cry. He wishes that he had remained a brute in his native wood " . nor know nor felt beyond the sensation of hunger, thirst, and heat!" (F, 125). "Increase of knowledge only dis- covered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was" (F, 137).

The reason Victor gives for telling Walton the story of his search for knowledge and its disastrous re sults is that he hopes to deter him from such a calamity.

"You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been" (F, 19).

Consciousness lS what makes man's fate tragic, but aware ness can lead to joy as well. Victor describes his creation as "the living monument of presumption and rash ignorance which I had let loose upon the world. II

(F, 78). What he does not see, what he is not aware of, 16

is that the monster is an emotional entity as well as a robot come to life. It is this disregard for the emotional side of his creature that prevents Victor from receiving any joy or pleasure in its creation. Mary, by telling his story, seems to be cautioning that man has a dual nature, that he is not only a reasonable creature but a feeling one as well and that both aspects must function in harmony.

In The Last Man she describes their need in another way. Lionel says his father "was one of those men on whom nature had bestowed to prodigality the envied gifts of wit and imagination . . without adding reason as a rudder, or judgment as the pilot for the voyage .

[his) impulses . . perpetually led him into difficulties. " ( LM, 5) • Because of this deficiency his father is eventually banished from the king's court and dies impoverished. The Countess of Windsor is the other extreme. "Never did any woman appear so entirely made of mind . . her passions had subdued her appetites, even her natural wants . . her body was evidently considered by her as a mere machine . . whose senses formed no part of her enjoyment. There is something fearful in one who can thus conquer the animal part of our nature. " (LM, 52) • She has subdued all emotions and is singlemindedly focused on one thing only: restoring 17

her son to the throne. This obsession alienates her from

her children, and it is only with the death of Idris, when

she realizes that reconciliation and forgiveness are no

longer possible, that regret makes her human. It is

interesting that Mary uses almost the same phrase to

describe the Countess in a disparaging manner as she does

to describe the reason for Adrian's goodness. She says

of him, "In person, he hardly appeared of this w6rld; his

slight frame was overinformed by the soul that dwelt with-

in; he was all mind" (LM, 18). In the first instance

mind seems to imply reason only; in the latter, reason

tempered by compassion and emotion.

The story of Lord Raymond in The Last Man is one

of reason overcome by passion and ambition. He knows

that "though I dream of a crown and wake for one, ever

and anon a busy devil whispers to me, that it is but a

fool's cap that I seek, and that were I wise, I should

II trample on it. ( LM I 4 0) . He marries Perdita,

Lionel's sister, but ambition is too strong for him to

be content, for "domesticity is not enough to contain the 12 psyc h 1c. energ1es. o-f t h e asp1r1ng . . m1n . d . " He consents to

being nominated for Lord Protector and wins the office.

Although not king, he is the ruler of his country and is

.involved in many schemes for the betterment of the people.

He has subjugated his dream of being a great conqueror 18

by being a great benefactor. His true ambitions are re~

vealed when Evadne, the beautiful Greek from his youth,

enters his life once more. Raymond says, "I cannot rule myself. My pas,sions are my masters; my smallest impulse my tyrant" (LM, 109). The loss of Perdita, the Protector

ship, and Evadne provides him with a reason to flee to

Greece to seek glory as a warrior once again. There he defeats the Turks and insists on entering the deserted

Constantinople in spite of the threat of plague. He will not be denied the opportunity to "leave behind a trail of light ~o radiant, that my worst enemies cannot cloud

it. I owe this to . . myself, the victim of ambition"

(Lr1, 141). The result of this driving impulse is that

Raymond is killed in an explosion in the city, and the

Greeks, the people he was fighting to free, are overcome by plague. The emotional passion for glory, overpowering reason, has led to disaster.

Lord Raymond could have said what Robert Walton writes to his sister as he journeys to the north. "My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path . " ( F , 6 ) . The ambivalent nature of man is obvious in Victor Frankenstein. He has spent days re galing Walton with his tale of suffering as a result of seeking knowledge and honor, using his unhappy life as 19

empirical evidence. Yet, when the ship is icebound and the crew, fearful of Walton leading them into new dangers, mutinies and demands to return if and when they are free from their present peril, Victor emotionally exhorts them,

"Do not return to your families with the stigma of dis- grace marked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered, and who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe" (F, 233).

Being a creature of both reason and feeling, man not only is aware of his separateness but also suffers from that awareness. The theme of loneliness dominates both Frankenstein and The Last Man. In the first book the monster is utterly alone because of the actions of man. In the second book Lionel is utterly alone because of the action of nature. Mary was nineteen when she wrote Frankenstein and was still influenced greatly by the teachings of her father and her husband. By the time she wrote The Last Man she had seen three of her four children die, her half-sister had committed suicide, her husband had drowned, she had had a miscarri~ge, her friend Byron had died. She must truly have felt as though the actions of man were no match for those of nature. She wrote in her journal, "The last man! Yes,

I may well describe that solitary being's feelings, feeling myself as the last relic of a beloved race, my 1 20 ' •

13 companions extinct before me."

In Frankenstein, Walton, Victor, and the monster are all examples of lonely individuals. The monster is the most tragic of the three because he is the only one who does not choose to be separate. But then do any of us so choose? Walton and Victor both select the scientific life; this results in their solitude. In fact, it may be that it is because Victor cuts himself off from his family and friends in order to pursue his studies that he is seduced into his dream of creating life and, having created that life, is unable to see it as more than just a living organism. Victor, even when warning

Walton of the dangers of his ambition, never sees that it was not the creation of the monster that causes him to suffer, but the rejection of that creation. Walton had written his sister, "I bitterly feel the want of a friend" (F, 7). Each man has a need to alleviate his loneliness by sharing it with another. Walton is not unique. When he rescues Victor from the ice floe, he finds his friend. Victor agrees with ~'lal ton that "we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves--such a friend ought to be--do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures" (F, 17). Here Victor is describing exactly what he should have been to his creature. He 21

created life in the monster but that left him "but half made up" because Victor then rejected him. It is only when he agrees to listen to the monster's story that he

"for the first time . . felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness"

(F, 103).

The monster is the personification of true loneli ness. He belongs to no one and has no one who belongs to him. His creator has spurned him as do all men with whom he comes in contact. He is unlike anything else in the world. The monster also seems to be the most human character in the novel, the one with whom the reader can most readily identify. Is it because this is really the state in which all men find themselves?

Frankenstein is a plea for companionship and freedom from isolation. The monster, the product of

Victor's ambition, is given a voice in which it pleads for release from its desperate solitude. He begs Victor to create a companion for him. "I am alone, and miser- able; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me"

(F, 152). The monster feels his loneliness would be bearable if shared. The feeling is so strong in him that he becomes threatening, promising to destroy any 22

hope of. happiness Victor may have if he refuses to do as he is asked. He then realizes that the passionate._out burst is not aiding in his argument; Victor does not comprehend that he is responsible for the emotions of the creature. So the monster tries logic. "If any being felt emotions of benevolence toward me, I should return them an hundred and an hundred fold; for that one creature's sake, I would make peace with the whole kind" (F, 154). Being a reasonable man, Victor is per suaded. He begins to create a female, but "thought with a sensation of madness of my promise of creating another like him and trembling with passions, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged" (F, 177). Unaware of the emotional nature of his creature, Victor allows his own emotional nature to condemn his creature to a life of inexorable solitude.

Lionel Verney, in The Last Nan, begins his life alone as "an unprotected orphan among the valleys and fells of Cumberland" (LM, 8) . Lonely and longing for human companionship, he forms a band of boys similar to himself, rough and wild as the countryside in which they live and as untaught as the sheep they tend. He "owned but one law, it was that of the strongest, and [his] . greatest deed of virtue was never to submit" (LM, 9). It is only after Lionel meets Adrian and enjoys love and 23

sympathy that he feels himself to become human. It is 1n society that he experiences the hope of happiness, and it is there that his emotions are aroused. He discovers a strength greater than that of the physical body. "This

. 1s. power.I Not to be strong of limb, hard of heart, ferocious, and daring; but kind, compassionate and soft" (LM, 19) . His loneliness eases as he finds joy in intellectual pursuits, love in his marriage to Idris, and companionship in the society of Adrian. Then his happiness is taken from him; one by one, not only those closest to him, but all of humanity except himself dies.

He is left desolate; his loneliness is as final and irreparable as is the monster's. The plague, as it progresses across the world, rips away all man's pretensions: the political arena with its ambition, the intellectual life with its seeking for knowledge, and the imaginative glories of the arts. Man "is solitary; like our first parents. " (LM I 2 34) . For Mary Shelley, man is a solitary figure who may feel as though he is in communion with others like himself, but eventually will recognize an intense feeling of alienation.

Her idea is that "the condition of the individual being is 14 essen t 1a• 11 y 1so• 1 a t e d an d th ere f ore u 1 t 1mate• 1 y trag1c.• II

Mary used the glacier as a symbol of loneliness and desolation in Frankenstein and in The Last Man. It 24

is comforting to both Victor Frankenstein and Lionel

Verney to look out upon the cold, impenetrable ice and

feel as though man is but a small part of the hugh scheme

of the universe, a pawn of fate. Man with his intellect might believe he is able to overcome "the untamed yet

obedient element" (F, 11), or maintain as Adrian does,

"The choice is with us; let us will it, and our habita

tion becomes a paradise. For the will of man is omni-

potent. II ( LM, 54) . But the plague brought a

"painful sense of the degradation of humanity" (LM, 168),

as though nature had turned against man. Man might

classify and study and feel as though he has control, but

in reality he can be annihilated by the unpreventable

forces of nature.

Mary and Percy Shelley were reading Paradise Lost

the summer she wrote Frankenstein and its influence can be seen in the novel. Both works were "designed to

define man's place in the universe and give form to those

forces threatening to displace him . . although Mrs.

Shelley's God was certainly not Milton's, they shared 15 a feeling for a divinely created natural order." With

this idea of a natural order came the notion that,

although there were choices that man could make, there was also a fated path that he must travel. Victor

chooses to forego his efforts to penetrate the secrets 25

of nature when he sees the oak tree disintegrated by the bolt of lightning; suddenly he feels as though "nothing would or could be ever known" but in spite of his deci sion "destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction" (F, 33). Is it man's illusion that he has power over his destiny?

Raymond and Lionel have a discussion concerning free will and determinism. Raymond says, "I cannot . . run voluntary changes on my will. We are born; we choose neither our parents, nor our station; we are educated by others, or by the world's circumstance, and this culti vation, mingling with our innate dispositions, is the soil in which our desires, passions and motives grow."

Lionel replies, "There is much truth in what you say . and yet no man ever acts upon this theory . . Does he not . . feel a freedom of will within him, which, though you may call it fallacious, still actuates him as he decides?" (LM, pp.46-47). Even if what Raymond argues is true, man still acts as though he has free will and that action is what elicits hope.

Hope is what alleviates the tragic suffering of man's solitude. It may be a delusion, but it is "the last blessing of humanity" (LM, 226). Both the monster and Lionel, the most desolate of living beings, end their stories with a hope. The monster is going to the north 26

to build himself a funeral pyre. He hopes to find in the purifying flames rest and peace such as he never could find in his life. In death he will be free of the torment inflicted by the action of man. Lionel had contemplated suicide many times: II death by my own hands was a remedy, whose practicability was even cheering to me.

What could I fear in the other world?" (LM, 332). He feels he cannot know the purpose behind man's creation, but he also feels he has been saved by fate for some reason. His hope is to discover that reason. "If my human mind cannot acknowledge that all that is, is right; yet since what is, must be, I will sit amidst the ruins and smile. Truly we were not born to enjoy, but to submit and to hope" (LM, 290). Q .

III. CONCLUSION

The view of man's nature that emerges from Mary

Shelley's two n~vels, Frankenstein and The Last Man, is difficult to categorize. Camus has noted that man has a need for clarity; his reason urges him to organize. How- ever, his universe defies rational efforts because it is lrratlona. . 1 . 16 Mary Shelley's ideas are not easily de- fined because her intellectual stance was so often un- wittingly affected by her emotions. She reasoned that

"A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity" (F, 49).

By the time she was twenty-three she felt she had reached enough emotional maturity to allow reason to control her feelings as her father ahd her husband had taught. They themselves were far less successful in following this teaching: Godwin held down his emotions until they erupted and he acted irrationally and Shelley's emotions were so complex that he was unable to use reason to ana- 17 lyze and subdue them. But it is apparent in her works that she was still subject to her emotions, although perhaps subconsciously. She had been well trained in liberal thought by both Godwin and Shel-ley; she had absorbed their ideas of a reasonable and benevolent

27 28

society, of the perfectability of man; she tried to sus-

tain these ideals. But she was really a more conservative

person. Her visits to the Baxter home in Scotland pro-

vided "her earliest, perhaps her only, taste of quiet

conventional life in a middleclass family. It is perhaps

s1gn1. . f.1cant t h at s h e enJoye . d 1t. . ..17 The conflict between what she wished to believe intellectually and what she

felt emotionally prevented her from developing a coherent

viewpoint~ Both her reasoning and her feelings are

revealed by the inconsistencies in the novels.

In Frankenstein the monster epitomizes Godwin's

theory; his basic goodness is distorted by ill-treatment

and he becomes evil. He asks, "Am I to be thought the

only criminal when all human kind sinned against me?"

(F, 240). The Godwin formula works for the monster, but

not for Victor. ~'Jhy should he come to such an unhappy

end? There is no answer to this puzzle if one considers

only the reasonable aspects of the problem. When one

perceives that Victor's suffering is the result of his

inability to respond with feeling toward his creation,

the result of seeing the life he created as only a

thinking organism rather than a thinking and feeling

being, then one understands that Mary is making a plea

for the emotions as well as the intellect.

In Political Justice Godwin foretold a society 29

in which all would have political and economic equality.

Mary may have agreed with her father in theory, but in practice she was not a republican. The heroes of her novels always belong to the aristocracy. The poor are shown to be, at best, innocent and kind, but still piti- able and ignorant. The monster discovers in his reading of history that what man most esteemed was "high and un sullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only one of these advantages; but, without either, he was considered . . doomed to waste his powers for the profits of the chosen few 11 (F, 124).

The Las~ Man can be looked upon as an argument against equality. Plague made all men equal materially and " . . near at hand was an equality still more levelling, a state where beauty and strength, and wisdom, would be as vain as riches and birth. The grave yawned

II (LH, 2 31) • The plague symbolizes that egali- tarianism which would destroy civilization. Walling quotes phrases from Valperga, an earlier novel, in which 19 Mary Sljeaks of the "contagion of liberty." Mary could write with sympathy of the liberal attitude, "but, for herself, she lacked the inner fire. Too much in the other camp attracted her: social living, gentle manners, the advantage of culture that in her day belonged far more exclusively to the hereditary titled class than they 30

do today . . she looks on the poverty of the masses as an established ordinance, a God-given scourge to be alleviated by charity, not abolished by egalitarian 20 measures." Although she tried to expound the reasonable, liberal view, her conventional attitudes and feelings seeped through and are revealed.

Intellectually, Mary agrees with the idea of man's innate goodness. However, she is instinctively aware that man's emotions affect his view of life. This awareness of the dual nature of man is evident in both the novels and is responsible for the view of man that emerges.

Mary Shelley sees man as a creature of both reason and feeling. His reason makes him conscious of his separateness, his fate, and his death. It makes him see life as a curse, death as a release, and himself as a helpless pawn of nature. But reason also creates an awareness which enhances the quality of life and arouses man's emotions. These emotions lead him to seek comfort in the love and companionship of oth~rs, to defy fate by taking responsibility for his life, and to increase life's value in a revolt against death. "Is one to die 21 voluntarily or to hope in spite of everything?" Reason tells man life is tragic; emotion persists in hoping. 22 "There is so much stubborn hope in the human heart." 31

Mary views man as isolated and ultimately tragic, but she shares with her husband a hope for his salvation. "To the skeptical idealism of the mature Shelley, the hope in the ultimate re~emption of life by love and imagination is not a certainty, but a moral obligation. We must cling to hope because its contrary, despair about human possibility, is self-fulfilling, by ensuring the permanence of the conditions before which the mind has surrendered its aspirations. Hope does not guarantee achievement, but it keeps open the possibility of achievement, and so releases man's imaginative and creative powers, which are its only 23 available means." Reason tells man he is isolated and doomed; it also creates an awareness that enhances life.

Emotion tells man to hope.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night; To defy Power, which seems Omnipotent; To love and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change nor falter nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Mary Shelley attempted to follow her husband's credo in her life and her work, but was burdened by her bourgeois conventionality. NOTES

1Eleanor L. Nicholes, "Mary Wollstonecraft," in Roman tic Rebels.: Essays on Shelley and his Circle, ed. Kenneth Neill Cameron (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 52.

2 christopher Small, Ariel Like a Harpy (London: Victor Gollancz, 1972), p. 30.

3 Kenneth Neill Cameron, "h'illiam Godwin," in Romantic Rebels, p. 20.

4 Frederick L. Jones, "Mary Godwin to J. J. Hogg: the 1815 Letters," in Romantic ~ebels, p. 90.

5 Mary W. Shelley, Frankenstein (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1963), p. 1; subsequent references to this edition are cited as F in the text.

6 R. E. Dowse and D. J. Palmer, "Introduction," Frankenstein, Hary W. Shelley (London: J. H. Dent and Sons, 1963), p. ix.

7 Kenneth Neill Cameron, "Percy Bysshe Shelley," in Romantic- Rebels, pp. 10-12.

8 Small , p • 6 2 .

9 Dowse and Palmer, p. vii.

10 Mary Shelley, The Last Man (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965)-·-, -p-.-rG; subsequent references to this edition are cited as LM in the text.

11 Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,.l961), p.--u.---

12Hilliam A. Walling, Mary Shelley (New York: 'I'wayn~ Publishers, Inc., 1972~. 85.

32 33

13 Mary Shelley's Journal, ed. Frederick L. Jones (Norman: Univers1ty of Oklahoma Press, 1947), p. 192.

14 Hugh J. Luke, Jr., "Introduction," The Last Man, Mary Shelley (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), p. xvii ..

15 Martin Trapp, Mary Shelley's Monster (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976)~- 69.

16 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 21.

17 Noel B. Gerson, Daughter of Earth and Water: A Biography of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (New York: Morrow andCompany, 1973), p. 150.

18 Sylva Norman, "Mary lvollstonecraft Shelley," in Romantic Rebels, p. 61.

19 Wa ll"1ng, ~:lary S h e~,ll p. 91 .

20 Norman, "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, " p. 70.

21 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 6.

22 Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 103.

23 M. H. Abrams, ed., The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 3rd ed. ~ew York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1974), II, 507. Q .

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abrams, M. H., gen. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 3rd ed. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, ~974. II. Cameron, Kenneth Neill, ed. Romantic Rebels: Essays on Shelley and his Circle. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973.

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. New York: Alfred A-.-Knopf, 196~-

Gerson, Noel B. Daughter of Earth and Water: A Biography of Mary Wollstonecratt Shelley. New York: William Morrow and Company, 1973.

Glut, Donald F. The Frankenstein Legend: A Tribute to Mary Shelley-and Boris Karloff. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1973.

Jones, Frederick L., ed. Mary Shelley's Journal. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1947.

Nitchie, Elizabeth. Mary Shelley: Author of· "Franken stein". New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953.

Shelley, Mary W. Frankenstein. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1963.

Shelley, Mary. The Last Man. Lincoln: ·University of Nebraska Pres~965.

Small, Christopher. Ariel Like a Ha~py. London: Victor Gollancz, 1972~

Trapp, Martin. Mary Shelley's Monster. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976.

Walling, William A. Mary Shelley. New York: Twayne Publishers, 19~