A soulless creature made from parts of corpses and animated by supposed scientific means. In Mary Shelley's novel (1818), Frankenstein was the name of the monster's creator, but it has since become transferred to the monster itself. The story readily adapted to the cinema screen: it was made into a film in 1931 by James Whale, with Boris Karloff as the monster, and has since given rise to a whole genre of cinema films.
Frankenstein| Book covers for Frankenstein have taken many forms over the years which emphasize different themes of the novel such as gothic horror, science fiction, and romanticism. | |
| Author | Mary Shelley |
|---|---|
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Gothic horror, Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & Jones |
| Released | 1 January 1818 |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel by Mary Shelley.
Plot summary
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.The novel opens with Captain Walton on a ship sailing north of the Arctic Circle. This is Victor Frankenstein's creature. Soon after he sees the ill Victor Frankenstein himself, and invites him onto his boat. The narrative of Walton is a frame narrative that allows for the story of Victor to be related. At the same time, Walton's predicament is symbolically appropriate for Victor's tale of displaced passion and brutalism.
Victor takes over telling the story at this point. In a moment of inspiration, combining his new-found knowledge of natural science with the alchemic ideas of his old masters, Victor perceives the means by which inanimate matter can be imbued with life. The main idea seems to be that Victor built a complete body from various organic parts, then simulated the functions of the human system in it.
He intends the creature to be beautiful, but when it awakens he is disgusted. Victor finds this revolting and runs out of the room in terror. Shock and overwork cause Victor to take ill for several months.
Near Geneva, Victor catches a glimpse of the creature in a thunderstorm among the rocky boulders of the mountains, and is convinced that it killed William. To Victor's surprise, Justine makes a false confession because her minister threatens her with excommunication. Despite Victor's feelings of overwhelming guilt, he does not tell anyone about his horrid creation and Justine is convicted and executed. To recover from the ordeal, Victor goes hiking into the mountains where he encounters his "cursed creation" again, this time on the Mer de Glace, a glacier above Chamonix.
The creature converses with Victor and tells him his story, speaking in strikingly eloquent and detailed language. He begs Victor to create a synthetic woman (counterpart to the synthetic man), with whom the creature can live, sequestered from all humanity but happy with his mate.
At first, Victor agrees, but later, he tears up the half-made companion in disgust and madness. In retribution, the creature kills Clerval, Victor's best friend, and later, on Victor's wedding night, his wife Elizabeth. Victor now becomes the hunter: he pursues the creature into the Arctic ice, though in vain.
Walton assumes the narration again, describing a temporary recovery in Victor's health, allowing him to relate his extraordinary story. However, Victor's health soon fails, and he dies. Finally, the creature boards the ship and finds Victor dead, and greatly laments what he has done to his maker.
Genesis
During the snowy summer of 1816, the "Year Without A Summer," the world was locked in a long cold volcanic winter caused by the eruption of Tambora in 1815. In this terrible year, the then Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, age 19, and her husband-to-be Percy Bysshe Shelley, visited Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The weather was consistently too cold and dreary that summer to enjoy the outdoor vacation activities they had planned, so after reading Fantasmagoriana, an anthology of German ghost stories, Byron challenged the Shelleys and his personal physician John William Polidori to each compose a story of their own, the contest being won by whoever wrote the scariest tale.
Publication
Mary Shelley completed her writing in May 1817, and Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus was first published on 1 January 1818 by the small London publishing house of Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & It was issued anonymously, with a preface written for Mary by Percy Bysshe Shelley and with a dedication to philosopher William Godwin, her father.
Critical reception of the book was mostly unfavourable, compounded by confused speculation as to the identity of the author, which was not well disguised.
Despite the reviews, Frankenstein achieved an almost immediate popular success.
The second edition of Frankenstein was published on 11 August 1823 in two volumes (by G. Whittaker), and this time credited Mary Shelley as the author.
On 31 October 1831, the first "popular" edition in one volume appeared, published by Henry Colburn & This edition was quite heavily revised by Mary Shelley, and included a new, longer preface by her, presenting a somewhat embellished version of the genesis of the story.
The revised edition was changed in several significant ways: any indication that Frankenstein's monster was created by vice was removed, and the text details a benevolent creator who creates the monster merely for the purposes of science. Suggestions of an incestuous relationship between Victor and Elizabeth are also removed, by making Elizabeth an adopted child of the Frankensteins.
Name origins
The creature
The creature – "my hideous progeny" – was not given a name by Mary Shelley, and is only referred to by words such as 'monster', 'creature', 'daemon', 'fiend', and 'wretch'.
After the release of James Whale's popular 1931 film Frankenstein, the filmgoing public immediately began speaking of the monster itself as "Frankenstein". A reference to this occurs in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and in several subsequent films in the series, as well as in film titles such as Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
Some justify referring to the Creature as "Frankenstein" by pointing out that the Creature is, so to speak, Victor Frankenstein's offspring.
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley always maintained that she derived the name "Frankenstein" from a dream-vision, yet despite these public claims of originality, the name and what it means has been a source of many speculations. There is a town called Frankenstein in the palatinate with Burg Frankenstein (Frankenstein Castle) and Burg Frankenstein near Darmstadt.
More recently, Radu Florescu, in his In Search of Frankenstein, argued that Mary and Percy Shelley stayed at Castle Frankenstein on their way to Switzerland, near Darmstadt along the Rhine, where a notorious alchemist named Konrad Dippel had experimented with human bodies, but that Mary suppressed mentioning this visit, to maintain her public claim of originality. Day supports Florescu's position that Mary Shelley knew of, and visited 'Burg Frankenstein' before writing her debut novel. Day includes details of an alleged description of the Frankenstein castle that exists in Shelley's 'lost' journals.
Victor
A possible interpretation of the name Victor derives from the poem Paradise Lost by John Milton, a great influence on Shelley (a quotation from Paradise Lost is on the opening page of Frankenstein and Shelley even allows the monster himself to read it). Milton frequently refers to God as "the Victor" in Paradise Lost, and Shelley sees Victor as playing God by creating life.
Victor was also a pen name of Percy Shelley's, as in the collection of poetry he wrote with his sister Elizabeth, Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire. There is speculation that one of Mary Shelley's models for Victor Frankenstein was Percy, who at Eton had "experimented with electricity and magnetism as well as with gunpowder and numerous chemical reactions," and whose rooms at Oxford were filled with scientific equipment.
"Modern Prometheus"
The Modern Prometheus is the novel's subtitle (though some modern publishings of the work now drop the subtitle, mentioning it only in an introduction). Prometheus, in some versions of Greek mythology, was the Titan who created mankind, and Victor's work by creating man by new means obviously reflects that creative work.
Prometheus was also a myth told in Latin but was a very different story. In this version Prometheus makes man from clay and water, again a very relevant theme to Frankenstein as Victor rebels against the laws of nature and as a result is punished by his creation.
Prometheus' relation to the novel can be interpreted in a number of ways. For Mary Shelley on a personal level, Prometheus was not a hero but a devil, whom she blamed for bringing fire to man and thereby seducing the human race to the vice of eating meat (fire brought cooking which brought hunting and killing) For Romance era artists in general, Prometheus' gift to man compared with the two great utopian promises of the 18th century: the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, containing both great promise and potentially unknown horrors.
Byron was particularly attached to the play Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, and Percy Shelley would soon write Prometheus Unbound.
Analysis
Frankenstein is in some ways allegorical, and was conceived and written during an early phase of the Industrial Revolution, at a time of dramatic change.
One interpretation was alluded to by Shelley herself, in her account of the radical politics of her father:
Another standard critique of the novel is as a journey of pregnancy and the common fears of women in Shelley's day of frequent stillborn births and maternal deaths due to complications in delivery. Victor Frankenstein is often fearful of the release of the Monster from his control, when it is free to act independently in the world and affect it for better or worse. Also, during much of the novel Victor fears the creature's desire to destroy him by killing everyone and everything most dear to him. It was mankind who taught it evil, Victor rejected it, and the creature's poor treatment by villagers taught it how to be evil.
Representing a minority opinion, Arthur Belefant in his 116-page book, Frankenstein, the Man and the Monster (1999, ISBN 0-9629555-8-2) contends that Mary Shelley's intent was for the reader to understand that the Creature never existed, and Victor Frankenstein committed the three murders. In this interpretation, the story is a study of the moral degradation of Victor, and the "science-fiction" aspects of the story are Victor's imagination.
Alchemy was a very popular topic in Shelley's world.
The book also discusses the ethics of creating life and contains innumerable biblical allusions in this context.
In the 1931 film "Frankenstein," Boris Karloff plays the part of the Creature, and the scientist, played by Colin Clive, is renamed Henry Frankenstein. Shelley's character Henry Clerval does not appear in the film at all, which eliminates Victor's foil altogether. However there is a character called Victor who is after Elizabeth, Frankenstein's fiancee. Changing the doctor's name from Victor also eliminates some original irony, inasmuch as the novel ends after exposing the doctor's utter failure and destruction.
Frankenstein in popular culture
For Frankenstein in film, comics, games and other derivatives, see Frankenstein in popular culture. The complete original text of Mary Shelley's novel, fully annotated with thousands of facts and legends.
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