FRANKENSTEIN, OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS
Mary Shelley
Lecture Notes
Both Shelley and Austen critique Romanticism as well as expressing it; both women writers
Novel about love and failure to love; failure of imagination; essential to Romanticism
Human nature questions:
- What is it that makes us human
- What is the nature of good and evil
- On what do we base our moral code
- What is the responsibility of one individual to another, of the individual society
- What is the nature of the self, of truth, of reality
Nature is still important but often more as a backdrop rather than as a means of achieving oneness
with God or wholeness of self
Nature is at times awe-inspiring in Frankenstein; as a kind of terrifying beauty aligned with a
monstrous kind of otherness in its total disregard for humanity
Exploration of solitude on man
Shelley interrogates some of the assumptions of her contemporaries about the divinity expressed
and accessible in humanity in nature
Nature is not her primary theme; it revolves around the more ‘social’ and ‘moral’ issues of the
nature of human and individual responsibility
There is a degree to which Frankenstein interrogate the nature of authorship
Questions to think about:
- Does Frankenstein give birth to a monster
- Is his creature monstrous because a male has taken the role of woman or God
- Is the creature monstrous by birth or by circumstance
The point of view of literature:
- To what degree is the writer responsible for their creation
- Is it born fully ‘made’ or does it develop into something monstrous/beautiful
- What moral responsibility does the author have once published
Prometheus:
- What responsibility must go with the act of theft or the gift of fire
- Whose responsibility is this? Prometheus’ or Humanity’s?
- What is Shelley assimilating the gift of fire with? The creative act? With the gift of life?
- In giving ‘fire’ to his creature, Frankenstein must take responsibility for his creature’s actions,
must ensure that he acts responsibly for his creature’s actions
- Prometheus acted out of compassion – he acts out of empathy where Frankenstein acts of selfinterest
- Prometheus is punished for his actions, so too his Frankenstein; others are punished as a result
of their actions
Epigraph from Milton’s Paradise Lost: Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me
man/ Did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me?
Does the fault lie with the maker or the man? Text as a critique of man playing God, social/political
critique, critique of obsession/self-indulgence, or a gender critique
Themes:
Dangerous Knowledge
Victor Frankenstein attempts to play God, whilst Robert Walton attempts to surpass previous
human explorations
Similarly, the Monster reads Milton’s Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Greeks and
Romans, and Goethe’s Sorrows of Werter; this specific enlightenment of the Monster guides its
vicious behaviour
This pursuit of knowledge proves dangerous
Walton pulls back from his mission and survives whereas Frankenstein and the Monster
(supposedly) both die proving how destructive this pursuit can be
Sublime Nature
The sublime natural world was embraced by Romanticism as a source of unrestrained emotional
experience for the individual as well as spiritual renewal
This comes through in the text in the mountains where Victor finds reprieve, the spring that the
Monster welcomes
Monstrosity
Obvious in the Monster himself but also in the ambition of Victor
Victor’s ambition, secrecy, and selfishness alienate him from human society
Critics have labelled the text itself as monstrous also, considering that it is a stitched-together
combination of different voices, texts, and tenses
Motifs:
Passive Women
The novel is filled with passive women who suffer calmly and then expire
Arguably, Shelley renders her female characters passive in order to call attention to the obsessive
and destructive behaviour that Victor and the Monster exhibit
Abortion
Both the Monster and Victor lament the Monster’s existence
Victor also aborts the creation of a female Monster
Figurative abortion occurs in Victor’s description of natural philosophy
Symbols:
Light and Fire
Light symbolises knowledge, discovery, and enlightenment
Fire symbolises the dangerous aspects of this; as is reflected with the Monster’s first experience
with fire
The Modern Prometheus title alludes to the Prometheus myth in which the titular character gave the
gift of fire to humanity and was then punished for it
Important Quotations & Explanations:
I saw – with shut eyes, but acute mental vision – I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling
beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on
the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion.
Frightful must it be, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the
stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.
Introduction to Shelley’s 1831 edition of the novel
Describes the vision that inspired the novel and the prototypes for Victor and the Monster
The image evokes some of the key themes such as the unnaturalness of the Monster, the
relationship between creator and created, and the dangerous consequences of misused knowledge
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me Man, did I solicit thee / From darkness to
promote me?
Epigraph of the book; come from John Milton’s Paradise Lost (Book X, 743-5)
The Monster sees himself as a tragic figure, comparing himself to both Adam and Satan
Like Adam, he is shunned by his creator even though he strives to be good
These rhetorical questions epitomise the Monster’s ill will toward Victor for abandoning him in
hostile world with ugliness, leading to the Monster’s evil malice toward his creator
What may not be expected in a country of eternal light?
Comes from Walton’s first letter to his sister in England
Encapsulates one of the main themes of Frankenstein; light as a symbol of knowledge
Both Walton and Victor seek ultimate knowledge, both sacrifice to attain this
So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein – more, far more, will I achieve; treading
in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the
world the deepest mysteries of creation.
Comes from Chapter Three in Victor’s story
Victor’s reference to himself in the third person illustrates his sense of fatalism – he is driven by
passion, and unable to control it
Furthers the parallel between Walton’s spatial explorations and Victor’s forays into unknown
knowledge
I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.
Walton’s final letter to his sister, recounting the words that the Monster speaks to him after Victor’s
death
This angry self-pity questions the injustice of how the Monster has been treated and catches his
inner life, giving Walton and the reader a glimpse into its suffering – that is, if the Monster is a trusted
narrator
Evokes the motif of abortion; the Monster is an unwanted life, a creation abandoned and shunned
by his creator
Extra Notes
Reviews are either quick to express their moral outrage and disapproval or expressing a sense of
intrigue, fascination, and respect
Lots of ways of reading the novel: commodity culture and social structure; the body, medicine and
science; gender and queer theories; genre, literary form and literary history; language and psyche; race,
colonialism and orientalism
Frame Narrative Structure:
- A complex narrative structure: a frame narrative (Walton’s expedition), the creature’s story,
Victor’s story
- Victor’s story is presented in a collaborative fashion; Victor has “corrected and augmented”
the notes Walton has taken
- Victor is concerned about the believability of his narrative; it was only the physical evidence
of the letters of Felix and Safie and the sight of the creature that convinced him of its truth
- Narrative is inextricably linked to issues of responsibility and justice; the novel’s complexity
and openness to interpretation; partly derived from Walton, Victor and the creature being
unreliable narrators – narrators whose concerns are for self-vindication rather than accuracy
or objectivity
- The multiple first-person narrative places the reader as the true arbiter of political justice
- An encryption of autobiographical features in the novel (Walton’s letters dated around
Shelley’s conception and birth, and his sister and Shelley share the same initials: MWS)
- Linking the creation of her novel – her ‘hideous prodigy’ – to her own birth and its tragic
consequences in the death of her mother