FRANKENSTEIN, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS

Bibliografia: S. GREENBLAT, M. H. ADAMS, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, fifth edition, New York, Norton, 1986, pp. 880-898 A. SANDERS, The Short Oxford History of English Literature, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 347 B. FORD, The New Pellican Guide of English Literature (from Blake to Byron), Harmondsworth, Cox & Wyman Ltd Press, 1984, pp. 48-122 R.C. CHURCHILL, The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature, third edition, London, Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 553 The New Encyclodia Britannica, 15th edition, London and Chicago, Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998 Appunti della lezione del giorno17/04/07

INTODUCTION: GOTHIC NOVEL HISTORY AND IMAGINATIVE RECONSTRUCTION The refusal to restrict cultivated interest to the prosperous strata of civilized Europe was at this time paralleled by a reaching out of sympathetic and appreciative interest into periods of history contrasting sharply with the eighteenth century. Once again an earlier fashion, the medievalism of Walpole (1717-1797) and other writers, had introduced an interest that the later period assimilated more seriously. The assimilation consisted partly in a reaction against the early extravagances of fantasy, a reaction to be seen in one form in Jane Austens Northanger Abbey. More positively it involved efforts of revival like Percys Reliques, and most notably, the serious effort of imaginative reconstruction seen in Scotts novels. THE EXPRESSION OF EMOTION The importance for general literature of this imaginative effort, as of all the other enlargements, lay its effect on the sentiments and emotional life of the time. The extended range of responsiveness made it difficult to maintain the earlier ideal of narrowly reasoned control in emotional life. The embarrassment about emotion is often connected with the seeming simplicity and ordinariness of the events that arouse with the feelings; they are often events (such as partings, reunions, sudden sights of natural beauty, examples of injustice, scenes of suffering) for which everyday conventions provide alternative responses that softpedal the emotion. The clichs and customary reactions are useful and partly adequate, but if nothing else is permitted the result is a gradual desiccation of life. There was a feeling after the Augustan period that the emotional side of life was getting lost. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FRANKENSTEIN AND PYGMALION There is a connection between Mary Shelleys Frankenstein, the myth of Pygmalion and Shaws play Pygmalion. The main subject of each of them is the possibility to give life to an unanimated materia. Pygmalion carved the perfect woman in stone and then fell in love with her. Aphrodite took pity upon him and endowed Galatea with life. George Bernard Shaw wrote his play Pygmalion in 1913. Now Pygmalion was the crusty Henry Higgins, a linguist with very little human compassion. And his creature Galatea is the cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle. Frankenstein also infuses life in his creation who was made out of human parts patched together.

THE NOVEL: FRANKENSTEIN Mary Shelley (1791-1851), the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1729-1822), conceived her novel Frankenstein as a divertissement during a wet summer in Switzerland. It arose in the first instance out of a discussion on ghosts and the supernatural that took place at the Villa Diodati near Geneva, between Byron, Shelley, Mary Godwin and Monk Lewis. Later when Shelley and Mary were again with Byron and his young Italian physician Polidori, Byron suggested that each of them should write a ghost story. Talk in this literary circle had, according to the novelists own introduction to her work, dwelt on philosophy and nature, on the origins and meaning of life, on the myth of Prometheus, and on the enterprise of modern science (experiments in galvanism of Dr Darwin). The proposal that each member of the circle should write a ghost story stimulated a sleepless night and a a fertile, unconscious drift into terror on Mary Shelleys part. The genesis of the novel was also related to the central attended by all kinds of Gothic circumstances. Mary Shelley dedicated her novel to Godwin, and it contains many of the ideas held by her parents, as well as those of her husband, as the sub-title, though, in that The Modern Prometheus indicates. There is an element of irony in the sub-title, though, in that the benefited mankind, whereas Frankenstein, consumed by pride and self-glorification, and prepared to sacrifice his friends and even his fiance for a sake of his scientific obsession, is in effect an enemy and traitor to the human principle. In a sense, Frankenstein has made a Faustian pact but is with that part of himself which exalts his experiments above everything else. He is the first modern embodiment of the theme of the scientists responsibility to mankind. Frankensteins crime is to have created irresponsibly a creature with human attributes but of such terrible appearance that he is condemned to wander the face of the earth, unloved and unable to give love. The monster, because he is patched together out of human parts, including a human brain, initially possesses this instinct. He yearns for human society; at one stage he begs Frankenstein to create a mate for him and Frankenstein in fact begins to do so but this time recoils from the task. When the monster, after escaping from Frankensteins care, rescues a young girl from drowning was shot by a peasant. So Frankenstein has compounded his crime by driving his creature to hatred and evil. Frankenstein is, more than simply a recall of Marys thrall of fear; its morally probing exploration of responsibility and of the bidy of knowledge which we now call science. The tendency amongst Byrons associates to push ideas to extremes, and to test sensation and experience, is here developed as a study of the consequences of experiment and of moving into the unknown. Frankenstein is also an imaginative expatiation of the principles of liberty and human rights so dear to the novelists parents. The interconnected layers of the fiction lead from one variety of intellectual ambition to another, from the first-person account of the solitary explorer, Robert Walton, to the confessions of Dr Frankenstein and his unhappy creation.

Like the legendary Prometheus, who in some versions of Greek mythology, was the Titan who created mankind, and who was also the bringer of fire; he took fire from heaven and gave it to man. Zeus then punished Prometheus by fixing him to a rock where each day a predatory bird came to devour his liver, Frankensteins enterprise is punished but not by a jealous heaven; his suffering is brought upon him by a challenge to his authority on the part of the creature that he has rashly made. 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). A parallel is drawn not only between classical myth and modern experiment, but also between the story of Frankensteins miserable creature and that of Adam. This artificial man, like the ruined, questioning Adam, turns to accuse his creator with an acute and trained intelligence. Like Adam he insists on both his loneliness and his wretchedness. He also comes to recognize how much he has in common with Miltons Satan. Envy, defeat, and unhappiness express themselves in a course of jealous destruction which he sees as a vindicating his separate existence. The novel ends where it began in a wild and frozen polar landscape, a wasteland which both purges and purifies the human aberrations represented by Frankenstein and his flawed experiment. The shifting ice is not only effectively placeless, it also allows for the opening of new perspectives and uncertainties. Frankenstein is no meditation on his historical, pictorial, or mythological terrors; its fascination and its power lie in its prophetic speculation. Name origins: The creature Part of Frankenstein's rejection of his creation is the fact that he doesn't give it a name, and instead it is referred to by words such as 'monster', 'creature', 'daemon', 'fiend', and 'wretch'. When Frankenstein converses with the monster in chapter 10, he addresses it as 'Devil', 'Vile insect', 'Abhorred monster', 'fiend', 'wretched devil' and 'abhorred devil'. 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 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. Literally, in German, the name Frankenstein means stone of the Franks. The word "frank" means also "free" in the sense of "not being subject to". Victor

A possible interpretation of the name Victor derives from the poem Paradise Lost by John Milton, a great influence on Shelley. Milton frequently refers to God as "the Victor" in Paradise Lost, and Shelley sees Victor as playing God by creating life. In addition to this, Shelley's portrayal of the monster owes much to the character of Satan in Paradise Lost; indeed, the monster says, after reading the epic poem, that he sympathizes with Satan's role in the story. 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 Several of the motifs of the romantic period are brought together in Mary Shelleys Frankenstein, one of those second-rate works, written under the influence of more distinguished minds, that sometimes display in conveniently simple from the preoccupations of a coterie. The narrator is on a voyage of discovery to the North Pole: This expedition has been the favorite dream of my early years... You may remember that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good uncle Thomass library. And he attributed his passionate enthusiasm for the dangerous mysteries of ocean to the influence of Coleridges Ancient Mariner. The story of Frankenstein is given a background of typically romantic Swiss scenery with melancholy as one of its keynotes. The monster whom Frankenstein creates is a variant of the noble savage. He does evil only in response to the social injustice he suffers. After rescuing a girl from a drowning, he is shot by a terrified countryman: This then was the reward of my benevolence!...The feelings of kindness and gentleness which I had entertained but a few moments before gave way to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. The benevolence of the individual so long as he is unharmed by contact with social injustice is one of the axioms of the book. The monster wants love, but finds himself unjustly repelled because of the monsters wicked deeds, becomes a determination to harry him perpetually until both are annihilated. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; mistery made me a fiend. Make me happy and I shall again be virtuous...Believe me, Frankenstein: I was benevolent, my soul glowed with love and humanity: but am I not alone, miserably alone? It is not difficult to see among these characteristics of the monster some aspects of the Byronic role; and Byron of course was one of the party of friends who encourage Mary Shelley to write the story. Analysis Frankenstein is in some ways allegorical. The novel was conceived and written during an early phase of the Industrial Revolution, at a time of dramatic advances in

science and technology. That the creation rebels against its creator can be seen as a warning that the application of science can lead to unintended consequences. The book can be seen as a criticism of scientists who are unconcerned by the potential consequences of their work. Victor was heedless of those dangers, and irresponsible with his invention. Instead of immediately destroying the evil he had created, he was overcome by fear and fell psychologically ill. During Justine's trial for murder, he had the chance to come forth and protest to the fact that a violent man had recently declared a vendetta against him and his loved ones, thus saving the young girl. Instead, Frankenstein indulges in his own self-centered grief. The day before Justine is executed and thus resigns herself to her fate and departure from the "sad and bitter world", his sentiments are as such: The poor victim, who was on the morrow to pass the awful boundary between life and death, felt not, as I did, such deep and bitter agony...The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained by innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forego their hold. Frankensteins monster can also be seen as a symbol of social and racial intolerance. It is significant that among the subjects discussed at Villa Diodati during Lewiss visit was that of slavery. Frankenstein, however, has sought to create a creature that belongs to him, in effect a slave. There are other elements of a less theoretical kind, thouogh, in Mary Shelleys Epistolar novel Frankenstein. It is indirectly a commentary upon the split between intellect and feeling. Personal emotions, from deeper levels of her being, undoubtedly entered into Mary Shelleys story as well. It has been suggested, for example, that Frankenstein is a species of birth myth. The story can be view as a journey of pregnancy. The novel taps into the widespread fears of stillborn births and maternal deaths due to complications in delivery - Shelley had suffered a stillborn birth in the prior year, and her mother had died due to complications from her birth. Frankenstein - the Monster's parent, in a sense - is 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. However it must be noted that the creature was not born evil, but only wanted to be loved by its creator, by other humans, and to love a sentient creature like itself. It was mankind who taught it evil: Victor rejected it, and the creature's poor treatment by villagers taught it how to be evil. In this reading, the creature represents the natural fears of bringing a new innocent life into the world and raising it properly so that it does not become a monster. The presence of all these elements gives Mary Shelleys novel in spite of the fact that the writing is often undistinguished, a depth of texture that ensures its survival as a minor classic of the Romantic revival.