UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
From Prometheus to Presumption:
Frankenstein’s Theatrical Doppelgänger
by
Brittany Reid
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
CALGARY, ALBERTA
AUGUST, 2013
© Brittany Reid 2013
ii
Abstract
This thesis examines the Doppelgänger relationship between Victor Frankenstein and the
Creature, as it is characterized through both Frankenstein and its first theatrical adaptation. With
a specific focus on Richard Brinsley Peake’s 1823 gothic melodrama, Presumption; or, The Fate
of Frankenstein I unpack how the novel’s cross-medium adaptation leads to a changed
conception of the relationship of its central characters. In Frankenstein, Victor is the focal figure
and acts as the Creature’s dominant counterpart. However, the characters’ cross-medium
adaptation from page to stage inverts this Doppelgänger relationship from Shelley’s initial
conception in the novel. Consequently, the Creature is privileged as the drama’s focal figure
while Victor is rendered both secondary and subservient. By contextualizing both texts within
their formal, generic, critical, and cultural milieus, this study explores the implications of this
significant role reversal to the Frankenstein myth.
iii
Acknowledgements
1. My supervisor, Dr. Anne McWhir, and my committee members: Dr. Susan Bennett
and Dr. Barry Yzereef.
2. The Government of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council for providing me with generous grant support to complete this study.
3. My professors and fellow students in the Department of English and the Department
of Drama at the University of Calgary.
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In loving dedication to my own fated doubles:
My family, my best love, my friends, my mentors, and my passions
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Table of Contents
Abstract …………………………………………………………...……………………………p. ii
Acknowledgments ………………….…………………………………………………..…….. p. iii
Dedication ………………………….……………………………………………..……p. iv
Table of Contents …………………….……………………………………….…….......p. v
List of Illustrations …………….……………………………………………………………....p. vi
Introduction: Frankenstein, At the Double………………...…..…………………………………..1
Chapter 1: Frankenstein’s Doppelgänger: A Study in Fiction …………………………………..15
Fated Counterparts………………………………..….…………………………………...22
Twin Descents…………………………………………………………………………....38
Chapter 2: Presumption’s Doppelgänger: A Study in Theatre………………………………….. 57
Starring “The Creature” as “_______” ……………………………………..……………62
Also Featuring Victor Frankenstein as “?”……………………………………………… 75
Playing the Part: Theatrical Case Study Analysis ……………………………………….91
A Final Curtain Call: Concluding Remarks………………………………..………………… 103
Works Cited and Consulted ………….…………………………………………………………106
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List of Illustrations
1. Plate 6 from William Blake’s Jerusalem……………………………………...…...……..6
2. Frontispiece to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein by Theodor von Holst ……………….10
3. A poster from Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein………………….…………..10
4. Frontispiece to the 1831 edition…………………..…………………….……………… 19
5. Detail of Constantin Hansen’s Prometheus Creating Man in Clay (1845) ...……...……25
6. Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818)……...………………43
7. Poster from Presumption’s 1826 remount…………………...………………...……...…67
8. Mr. T. P. Cooke……………………………………………….…………………………72
9. James William Wallack in Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein (1823) ……..…87
10. Mr. James William Wallack …………………………………………………………….90
11. Cover of Dicks’ Standard Edition of Presumption (1865) …………………..………….93
12. Image from Beraud and Merle’s Le Monstre et le magicien (1826)…………………… 96
13. Another image from Beraud and Merle’s Le Monstre et le magicien (1826)…………...97
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Introduction: Frankenstein, At the Double
In the nearly two hundred years since Frankenstein’s 1818 publication, the novel’s many
doubles and dualities have become integral to its literary legacy. In addition to the character
pairings, frame narratives, allegorical implications, and significant uses of intertextuality within
the novel, these mirrorings, doublings, echoes, and multiple meanings go beyond the pages of
Mary Shelley’s classic text by reaching into its critical and cultural heritages. For example,
Frankenstein has been adapted innumerable times for stage, screen, or page, creating an artistic
dual legacy for this Romantic text. As well, discussion continues as to whether the 1818 original
version or 1831 revision should be considered the novel’s definitive edition, permitting the story
two distinct yet interconnected literary identities. Continuing in recent years, Charles E.
Robinson’s illuminated edition of Frankenstein in 2008, entitled The Original Frankenstein,
credits Percy Bysshe Shelley as the novel’s co-author and renews discussion about collaborative
literary composition in the nineteenth century.
In “The Ambiguous Heritage of Frankenstein,” George Levine describes the significance
of these mirrorings and multiplicities in Frankenstein: “Such doublings and triplings, with
reverberations in and out of the novel in Mary Shelley’s own life and in modern psychological
theory, suggest again the instability and ambivalence of the book’s ‘meanings’” (15). Through
the interplay between its many textual, critical, and cultural doubles, Frankenstein offers limitless
new readings and allows for continued engagement with this canonical work.
This study participates in the continued re-imagination of Frankenstein’s infamous
doubles. For this reason, my study not only addresses Shelley’s novel, but also engages with the
broad and long-lived Frankenstein mythology. My research is grounded by a focused
consideration of the story’s most significant character doubles: Victor Frankenstein and his
2
Creature.1 From this point of departure, I demonstrate how Victor and the Creature’s innate
similarities and intrinsic connection cast them in a Doppelgänger relationship in Frankenstein.
With an inclusive interest in both the novel and its cultural legacy, I then observe how the
relationship between Victor and the Creature is changed from its fictional representation in
Frankenstein to the novel’s first theatrical adaptation in 1823: Richard Brinsley Peake’s
Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein. Through these twinned depictions, Victor and the
Creature’s Doppelgänger relationship is again doubled through its fictional and theatrical
representation. At once a distinct theatrical creation and a responsorial creative critique,
Presumption itself acts as an uncanny double for Frankenstein and, like the Creature to Victor,
maintains a natal link to its source. In this way, the relationship between Victor and the Creature
within the Frankenstein mythology is formally reflected in the story’s twinned legacies in fiction
and theatre. Consequently, as a cross-medium adaptation of Shelley’s source text, Presumption is
yet another of Frankenstein’s many doubles.
Before moving on, a cultural and critical context for the double and Doppelgänger is
needed to understand both how these terms apply to Victor and the Creature’s relationship and
why they have significant bearing on Frankenstein. The belief in figural doubles has ancient
origins. Twins, couples, duplicates, and pairs make frequent appearances in Classical writing and
often carry great symbolic significance. In Roman mythology Janus, the god of transitions and
new beginnings, is depicted with two faces: one looking back to the past and another ahead to the
future. In both Greek and Roman mythology, the eternal link between twin brothers, Castor and
Pollux, led to their immortalization as the Gemini, one of the zodiac constellations. Similarly,
For consistency and clarity, I will identify this character throughout my study as “the Creature.”
I will also identify the Creature using “him” rather than “it” to better reflect the sense of
sameness between him and Victor.
1
3
throughout the tradition of Judeo-Christianity, pairings such as Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, or
Jacob and Esau are described as mirrored opposites transfigured through familial love. 2 Closer
than kin, these biblical doubles exemplify the elevated risks and rewards of such innate
interpersonal connections by extending beyond the expectations of a typical husband/wife or
brother/brother relationship.
Although each depiction is unique, they all contribute to the rich collective mythology of
the double. Whether appearing as dual personalities, kindred spirits, or character complements,
these early doubles transcend the confines of prototypical human relationships to forge a complex
bond with each other. At their most foundational level, these relationships can be attributed to a
preternatural sense of “sameness” wherein the two individuals are distinct yet inseparable.
Although they are each autonomous and function individually, the pair is inextricably linked and
their symbolic significance is manifested through the ties which bind them.
But although the double relationship often implies a sense of symbiosis and mutual
benefit, this is not always the case. Even though Castor and Pollux are immortalized as the
Gemini, they are first separated through Castor’s death. Adam and Eve are thrown out of
Paradise, Cain kills Abel, and Jacob and Esau’s sibling rivalry brings their descendant nations
into combat. Since its earliest conceptions, the double presented dangerous potential. In “The
Shadow Within: The Conscious and Unconscious Use of the Double,” Claire Rosenfield
describes the double relationship’s dual potential as beneficial or parasitic:
2
For more information on these early doubles see, Ovid Fasti I 126-7, Pseudo-Hyginus Fabulae
224 , Genesis 2: 15-24, Genesis 4:8, Genesis 25:19-34, respectively.
4
To the sophisticated audiences of the Classical World, the Middle Ages, and the
Renaissance, Doubles were either facsimiles, bodily duplicates manipulated to divert us,
or allegorized opposites to instruct us. Perhaps not until after the development of the
novel have we been made aware of what primitives have always intuitively known: that
duality inspires both terror and awe whether that duality be manifested in a twin birth, or
man and his shadow, or in one’s reflection in water or in a mirror, or in the creation of an
artifact resembling the exterior self. (326)
Rosenfield’s characterization of doubles confounds a simplistic reading of these Classical
examples. Her inclusion of a “twin birth, or man and his shadow, or in one’s reflection in water
or in a mirror, or in the creation of an artifact resembling the exterior self” extends the initial
paradigm and allows for a much broader definition for figural doubles.
Moreover, her assertion that the double has always inspired both “terror and awe”
encourages further critical inquiry: Are all doubles true equals? Do both individuals mutually
benefit from this shared connection? If so many Classical doubles end in death, tragedy, or
dejection, what does this say about the operation of these relationships? And, philosophically
speaking, must both individuals in a doubling exist on the same ontological level? What would it
mean if they did not? Although these questions are timeless and carry with them the double’s
universal appeal, no one has been more preoccupied with answering them than the Romantics,
and their response came through the conception of the Doppelgänger.
In contemporary colloquial expression, the term “Doppelgänger” has come to mean a
close physical likeness between individuals. However, this simplification does not account for the
ideological context that gave birth to the Romantic Doppelgänger, nor does it capture its
emblematic use in literature from the late-eighteenth through the nineteenth century. The term
Doppelgänger, directly translated as “double-goer,” was first introduced by Johann Paul Friedrich
5
Richter in his 1796 novel, Siebenkäs.3 Throughout the following century, the concept developed
further and a new standard was set for reading and evaluating character foils, linked pairs, or
mirroring opposites in literature.
Edward J. Rose observes how this interest in character dualities or twinned souls across
realms and worlds is consistent with the central tenets of Romantic ideology: “The Romantics’
strong sense that there were two worlds—the real and the unreal, the unfallen and the fallen—and
their equally strong desires not so much to fuse them as to have a single perspective on them both
is reflected in their preoccupation with the theme of the double” (138). Building on the
mythology of symbolic doubles, the Doppelgänger nuanced this established paradigm and
initiated a cultural fascination with spectral shadows, look-alikes, or uncanny opposites.
In its Romantic conception, and my own application of the term, the Doppelgänger refers
to only one half or member of a particular kind of double relationship. Operating on a different
ontological level than his or her counterpart, the Doppelgänger is a secondary antitype of an
individual. Unlike doubles in general, the Doppelgänger is literally or figuratively created by the
dominant individual. Consequently, the existence of the Doppelgänger depends on an unequal
privileging within the pairing. From the implicit hierarchy of this bond, the Doppelgänger is most
frequently represented as a phantom double, evil twin, or abject opposite of its corresponding
counterpart. Compared to the equal balance of power possible in a double/double union, in a
Doppelgänger relationship the Doppelgänger is necessarily subjugated by the more sociallyprivileged individual. For this reason, while “double” is a blanket term for any pairing or partner
offering completion through an innate connection, the
3
For Richter’s original conception of the Doppelgänger see Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces; or,
the Married Life, Death, and Wedding of Siebenkäs, Poor Man’s Lawyer, trans. Alexander Ewing
(London: George Bell and Sons, 1897).
6
Illustration 1: Plate 6 from William Blake’s Jerusalem, 1821, Yale Center for British Art, New
Haven.
William Blake imagines the spectre as a shadow counterpart. Although an individual must strive
to banish his or her spectre, these entities are intrinsic to the human psyche and cannot be
destroyed. For more on the Blakean spectre and the fourfold nature of the human psyche see “My
Spectre Around Me Night and Day.”
7
term “Doppelgänger” is applied to only one member of the relationship, specifically, the one
considered secondary to the actions and behaviors of the other.
This disparity in the Doppelgänger relationship results from an understanding of the
Doppelgänger as the physical manifestation of an individual’s subconscious. As exemplified
through William Blake’s spectre or James Hogg’s preternatural lookalike,4 the Doppelgänger was
created from an individual and represented some darker impulse. The hierarchy implicit within
the relationship therefore reflects the privileging of the conscious over the subconscious.
Considered in this way, the Doppelgänger is literally the repressed or latent urges of an individual
brought to life. As such, these secondary entities are not fettered by the same social and moral
codes as their corresponding dominant counterparts. While this allows the Doppelgänger greater
freedom, it also means that he or she is not as socially normative as the individual and therefore
marginalized as an aberration or marked as a preternatural being.
In Percy Bysshe Shelley’s lyrical drama, Prometheus Unbound, he develops this view of
the Doppelgänger as a reflected image of life. Earth’s address to Prometheus in Act I offers one
of Romanticism’s most clearly stated descriptions of the Doppelgänger:
Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
For know there are two worlds of life and death:
One that which thou beholdest; but the other
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
See James Hogg’s 1824 novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and
the relationship between Robert and Gil-Martin (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010).
4
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The shadows of all forms that think and live,
Till death unite them and they part no more
(191-200)
Earth’s warning that there are two realms of existence, what lives and the ghosts of living forms,
carries with it the cautionary tale of the Doppelgänger relationship. Described in the drama as
“phantasms,” these shadows emulate life and mimic consciousness, but are attached to the actions
and ideas of those they represent. As Andrew Webber notes in Doppelgänger: Double Visions in
German Literature, the hierarchy between the individual and the Doppelgänger is often
challenged or questioned in Romantic fiction because “in the case of the Doppelgänger the ‘real’
is duplicated as phantasm in such a way as to defy distinction” (9). The resulting power struggle
between an individual and his or her Doppelgänger is an essential aspect of this relationship and
presents the primary source of conflict between them.
In “Grimaces of the Real, or When the Phallus Appears,” Slavoj Žižek provides a
contemporary response to this relational construct by delineating the root cause and function of
the Doppelgänger:
He is the subject’s double who accompanies him like a shadow and gives body to a
certain surplus, to what is in the subject more than subject himself. This surplus represents
what the subject must renounce, sacrifice even—the part in himself that the subject must
murder in order to start to live as a ‘normal’ member of the community. (54)
Even though Žižek describes this paradigm from outside its initial Romantic context, the power
dynamic remains the same and the conceit carries through into contemporary critical
perspectives. As a “certain surplus of the individual” and “what is in the subject more than
subject himself,” the Doppelgänger is both a distinct entity and direct effusion from an
individual. While doubles in general can be two autonomous individuals strengthened by an
9
innate bond, the Doppelgänger is created by his or her corresponding individual. Representing
what the individual must “renounce,” “sacrifice,” or “murder” to become a “normal member of
society,” the Doppelgänger is forced into a combative relationship with his or her dominant
counterpart. This sense of conflict and struggles reverberates through the Romantic conception of
the Doppelgänger and brings us back to Victor and the Creature’s relationship in Frankenstein.
Returning to Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and the Creature are perhaps the most
famous example of an individual and his Doppelgänger in Romanticism. As a testament to the
contemporary popularity of this critical reading, sample essays and beginner study guides now
flood the internet with claims that the Creature can be read as Victor’s twin. The sheer
pervasiveness of this reading has led some critics to consciously avoid the subject altogether. For
example, in their introduction to The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s
Novel, editors George Lewis Levine and Ulrich C. Knoepflmacher remark that this view has
become so widely held that “the writers of this volume assume rather than argue it” (14).
However, although this claim has become foundational to the reading of Shelley’s novel, the
discussion does not end there. Beyond the observation and identification of an exceptional
relationship between Victor and the Creature there still remains a vast field of opportunity for
critical and creative engagement.
For this reason, rather than take this position for granted, I explore the implications of this
reading to both the novel and its first theatrical adaptation, Presumption. Acknowledging that the
Frankenstein myth is comprised of a complex system of interconnected doubles, I unpack how
this particular Doppelgänger relationship is initially constructed, collapsed, and reconstituted
through cross-medium adaptation. Instead of shying away from this established critical
viewpoint, my study directly engages with Frankenstein’s rich cultural heritage to establish new
points of connection.
10
In Frankenstein’s Doppelgänger relationship, Victor’s privileging as the individual grants
him exclusive agency over the Creature’s actions. However, through the characters’ adaptation
from page to stage, their relationship is adjusted to suit a different performance mode and a new
genre: the gothic melodrama for the illegitimate theatre.
(From Left to Right): Illustration 2: Theodor von Holst’s Frontispiece to Frankenstein, 1831, The
New York Public Library: Pforzheimer Collection, New York. Illustration 3: An Engraving
Depicting Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein, 1826, Harvard Theatre Collection,
Cambridge.
As a result of this transition, their Doppelgänger relationship is reconceptualised and
inverted to better suit nineteenth-century theatrical conventions. Consequently, while Victor is
privileged above the Creature in Frankenstein, in Presumption, the paradigm is reversed to allow
the Creature to become the drama’s focal figure. In the following study, I explore this changed
dynamic and its implications for the reading and reception of this central relationship.
In my first chapter, entitled “Frankenstein’s Doppelgänger: A Study in Fiction,” I
consider Victor and the Creature’s relationship, as it is originally conceived in the novel. Using
11
Romantic love as a conceptual touchstone, I read Victor and the Creature’s Doppelgänger
relationship alongside generic conventions. I begin this chapter with a brief background of the
novel’s circumstances of composition and immediate critical reception. I follow that with a close
textual reading to determine how Shelley’s narrative presents the Doppelgänger within the novel.
Through the characters’ poignant interactions and the traditionally hierarchical nature of the
creator/progeny relationship, Shelley plays with expectations regarding similarity and contrast to
suggest a relational reading of Victor and the Creature. This close reading is situated within
Frankenstein’s current critical conversation and supplemented by the novel’s initial critical
response, context for composition, and ideological context.
In the first section of Chapter 1, “Fated Counterparts,” I trace Victor and the Creature’s
shared fixation with each other back to its point of origin. Although their relationship is corrupted
later on, their initial compulsion towards each other is in keeping with the paradigm of Romantic
ideal love and consequent disillusionment. In the second section, “Twin Descents,” I affirm
Victor and the Creature’s continued connection through their shared language and parallel
character arcs. Robbed of redemptive love and removed from the other character doubles, Victor
and the Creature are left alone in their grief and brought back together through a desire for
vengeance. After experiencing a sense of shared misery, creator and creation are fatefully and
fatally joined again by a desire for mutual destruction. Unable to truly separate and compelled
towards each other until death, Victor and the Creature confirm their roles as an individual and
his Doppelgänger.
In the second chapter, “Presumption’s Doppelgänger: A Study in Theatre,” I explore how
nineteenth-century dramatists read, reacted to, and responded to Frankenstein. Chiefly guided by
my interest in the novel’s representation of a Doppelgänger relationship, I trace Victor and the
Creature’s relocation from page to stage. Looking specifically at Peake’s Presumption; or, The
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Fate of Frankenstein as the first theatrical re-telling, premiering less than five years after
Frankenstein’s completion, I explore how the Doppelgänger relationship in Frankenstein is
changed, challenged or compromised by cross-medium and cross-generic adaptation. To this end,
my analysis reflects the turn from fictional to theatrical, psychodrama to melodrama, mythical to
moralistic, rarified to accessible, psychological to sensational, and imagined to incarnate as
represented in Frankenstein’s theatrical makeover.
I begin this chapter by defining and contextualizing the genre chiefly used for
Frankenstein’s earliest adaptations: the gothic melodrama of the illegitimate theatrical tradition.
Looking at primary documents such as performance reviews, production images, and
promptbooks, I locate Presumption within its theatrical age and analyze its conventions through
nineteenth-century practices. To reflect this inter-modal shift, my focus on language and
characterization in my reading of Frankenstein is replaced by visual representation and action for
Presumption’s assessment.
I look at two versions of Presumption, a composite manuscript and performance text,
printed in Cox’s Seven Gothic Dramas 1789-1825, and the 1865 Dicks’ Standard Edition of the
play, printed in Forry’s Hideous Progenies: Dramatizations of Frankenstein from Mary Shelley
to the Present. Through this comparative reading, I expand the scope of my criticism to include
both a revision of the original play text (Cox) and the widely-distributed edition, based on the
play in production (Forry). By cross-referencing Frankenstein as source text, Presumption as
creative adaptation, and the drama’s performance history, Victor and the Creature can be viewed
from three distinct yet interrelated vantage points, providing further insight into the link between
Frankenstein and his infamous creation.
Building on these cultural and textual foundations, I appraise the dramatization of Victor
and the Creature’s uncanny relationship to understand how it was read, re-interpreted, and
13
ultimately, portrayed by nineteenth-century dramatists. Through key criticism, historical sources,
and close reading, the continuation of Frankenstein’s Doppelgänger in these early adaptations is
evidenced. However, although this paradigm is preserved, these first dramatizations subverted
Shelley’s original concept by recasting Victor as the Creature’s Doppelgänger.
With this shift in mind, my first section of Chapter 2, “Starring “The Creature” as
‘_______’” looks at the continued complexity of the Creature in these early adaptations. The
fictional Creature’s rich characterization is preserved through the coded iconography of the
melodramatic tradition. Looking specifically at archetypal representation and pantomime
performance, I return Presumption to its theatrical milieu to understand the intended effect of his
representation. Conversely, while the Creature survives this inter-modal shift, in Presumption,
Peake notably divests Victor Frankenstein of Shelley’s nuanced characterization.
In the second section of Chapter 2, “Also Featuring Victor Frankenstein as ‘?’” I examine
Peake’s uneven theatrical treatment of the novel’s central figure. Through the Creature’s
recasting as the Presumption’s central character, Victor is forced to take on the dual roles of
presumptive protagonist and apathetic antagonist. Contrasted with the Creature’s evocative
portrayal, Victor defies melodramatic convention in his theatrical debut by being neither heroic
nor villainous.
For this reason, in Peake’s Presumption, the relationship between Victor and the Creature
directly subverts the primary paradigm established in Shelley’s Frankenstein. Consequently, the
Creature ceases to be the embodied reflection and projection of Victor’s inner life by gaining
autonomy through dramatization. But rather than gain equal footing with his creator and destroy
the hierarchy implicit in the Doppelgänger relationship, through their intentionally unbalanced
representation, the Creature subsumes Victor’s stage identity to become the drama’s focal figure.
In my third and final section of Chapter 2, “Playing the Part: Theatrical Case Study Analysis,” I
14
consider the implications of this changed dynamic and observe how this focal shift was
practically enacted in the English minor playhouses
Throughout this study, I consider Victor and the Creature through the lens of the
Doppelgänger relational paradigm in Shelley’s Frankenstein and Peake’s Presumption. In
Frankenstein, Victor and the Creature’s individual characterization and innate connection mark
them as an individual and his Doppelgänger, respectively. But in the transition from fictional to
theatrical representation in Presumption, the relationship is reversed so that the Creature is the
privileged individual while Victor’s characterization is simplified.
These major differences in Victor and the Creature’s relationship from Frankenstein to
Presumption initiate important lines of critical inquiry. To begin, what are the implications of this
role reversal and how is Victor and the Creature’s relationship transformed as a result? What do
these changes tell us about Victor and the Creature’s original relationship in Frankenstein and
how it was initially perceived? How was Frankenstein reconceived for theatrical staging and how
was Presumption received by nineteenth-century audiences? And finally, how have these
alterations influenced Victor and the Creature’s textual, critical, and cultural legacies? With these
questions in mind, I will demonstrate how Victor and the Creature’s Doppelgänger relationship is
reflected through both form and content in Frankenstein and Presumption.
15
Chapter 1
Frankenstein’s Doppelgänger: A Study in Fiction
“We will each write a ghost story”
In June 1816, Mary Shelley participated in a now famous ghost story contest at Byron’s
home in Geneva. Along with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and John Polidori, Mary set out to write
a tale of terror. Prompted by Byron’s suggestion, the competition between friends provided the
impetus for Shelley to compose her most famous literary work. Looking back on this event in her
1831 introduction to Frankenstein, Shelley recalls her initial hope of creating a story that would
“speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader
dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart” (8). Compelled by
this desire and inspired by a dream in which “my imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided
me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual
bounds of reverie” (11), Shelley began writing what would eventually become one of
Romanticism’s landmark texts.
As “the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity” (2), writers and
political activists Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and future wife to poet Percy
Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley was defined by her familial doubles before she ever put pen to
paper. In “Rewriting the Family: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” Elisabeth Bronfen senses this
familial pressure within the Godwin-Wollstonecraft-Shelley circle and asserts that “from the
beginning, writing for Mary means affirming her parents as author-predecessors” (28). Carrying
the burden of these impressive literary legacies, Shelley spent the following year creating her
own work of fiction. But in the year it took her to compose and complete her “hideous progeny”
(15), she faced many trials and tribulations in her own life that greatly influenced her writing
process. After returning to England from Geneva, Mary and Percy married and she became
16
pregnant with their daughter, Clara Everina. The suicides of Mary’s half-sister, Fanny Imlay, and
Percy’s estranged wife, Harriet Shelley, greatly affected the Shelleys and their unsuccessful
attempt to gain custody of Harriet and Percy’s children was another crippling blow to the family.5
As George Levine notes in “The Ambiguous Heritage of Frankenstein,” Mary’s personal
struggles during the novel’s composition reflected the broader cultural ethos of the time and
allowed Frankenstein to “emerge from the complex experiences that placed the young Mary
Shelley, both personally and intellectually, at a point of crisis in our modern culture” (4). For this
reason, Shelley’s literary progeny was brought to term during a tumultuous period of personal
and cultural upheaval.
When it was first published in January 1818, no author was credited with Frankenstein’s
composition. Like the unnamed Creature in the novel, Frankenstein went forth into the world
without any explicit attachment to its creator. However, because Percy Shelley had submitted the
manuscript for consideration, popular opinion at the time was that he had authored the novel,
again reinforcing his role as one of Mary’s literary doubles. Sir Walter Scott was among the
critics who cited Percy as the probable author, causing Mary to write to him and clarify this
assumption.
In her letter of June 14th 1818, Mary explains why she wrote Frankenstein anonymously
and expresses continued humility about the quality of her work: “I am anxious to prevent your
continuing in the mistake of supposing Mr. Shelley guilty of a juvenile attempt of mine; to
which—from its being written at an early age, I abstained from putting my name—and from
respect to those persons from whom I bear it” (71). Describing Frankenstein as a “juvenile
attempt of mine” and not wishing her husband to be seen as “guilty” of its composition, Mary
For a timeline of the events surrounding Frankenstein’s composition, see Betty T. Bennett and
Charles E. Robinson, The Mary Shelley Reader (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990).
5
17
continues to express insecurity about the novel’s quality. Her decision to abstain from putting her
name “from respect to those persons from whom I bear it” reinforces the continued spectre of her
parents’ literary legacies on her own creative contributions. However, her decision to dedicate
the 1818 edition to her father underlines this paternal relationship, even while anonymous
publication eludes it. The resulting interplay between saying/unsaying and assertion/evasion adds
another layer of doubling and duplicity to Frankenstein’s literary origins.
From this initial confusion over authorship, immediate critical response to Frankenstein
was greatly polarized and represented two distinct viewpoints. Supporters of the novel praised its
originality, inventiveness, and high-minded approach. In his early review, Sir Walter Scott asserts
that the novel “impresses us with a high idea of the author’s original genius and happy power of
expression” and goes on to praise the author for having “enlarged the sphere of that fascinating
enjoyment” (620). Conversely, once Percy Shelley was identified as the possible author, critics
opposed to the text launched ad hominem attacks against both the Shelley and Godwin families,
with Mary Shelley at the juncture between the two. In one response from The Quarterly Review,
critic John Wilson Croker goes on the offensive against the novel and the literary families
associated with it:
Our readers will guess from this summary, what a tissue of horrible and disgusting
absurdity this work presents. – It is piously dedicated to Mr. Godwin, and is written in the
spirit of his school. The dreams of insanity are embodied in the strong and striking
language of the insane, and the author, notwithstanding the rationality of his preface,
often leaves us in doubt whether he is not as mad as his hero. Mr. Godwin is the patriarch
of a literary family, whose chief skill is in delineating the wanderings of the intellect, and
which strangely delights in the most afflicting and humiliating of human miseries. (382)
18
After discrediting the novel as a “tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity,” his true target is
revealed as Mary’s father and Percy’s father-in-law, William Godwin. Remarking that the
family’s “chief skill is in delineating the wanderings of the intellect” and principle interest is “the
most afflicting and humiliating of human miseries,” Croker makes his intention to attack the
literary family clear. But although baseless, such criticism was not exceptional and Frankenstein
continued to attract critical ire on the basis of familial associations.
Yet still, Mary and her novel were haunted by the spectre of her family’s
accomplishments, renown, or notoriety and once she was revealed as Frankenstein’s true author,
public scrutiny only intensified. But despite this initial critical division, the novel has since
achieved nearly universal acclaim and helped Mary Shelley secure her own reputation as one of
the Romantic period’s most respected writers. From these early compositional and influential
doubles, I return to the text itself to begin my study of another of Shelley’s literary doubles:
Victor Frankenstein and the Creature.
*
In the first image of Victor and the Creature, the frontispiece for Frankenstein’s 1831
edition, Theodor von Holst visually underscores the pair’s innate connection. Bathed in a pool of
moonlight and contrasted against the darkness of the scene, the tangled form of the Creature is
emphasized in the image’s foreground. Recalling Christ’s pose in Michelangelo’s Pietà, the
Creature is positioned as if in the arms of an absent or unseen protector. But although his
placement suggests a need for support, his unnatural strength is visually apparent. Set against the
frail frame of a nearby skeleton, the Creature’s astonishing physique and powerful musculature
belie his piecemeal composition.
However, in this pivotal moment, the Creature’s unusual appearance is not what stands
out most. As Victor steals away into the night, he looks back on his abandoned progeny one last
19
Illustration 4: Theodor von Holst’s Frontispiece to Frankenstein, 1831, The New York Public
Library: Pforzheimer Collection, New York.
20
time with an expression of fearful disbelief and recognition. Despite the many superficial
differences between the flailing Creature and his fleeing creator, their innate connection
undercuts these distinctions. Through their gaze, the uncanny likeness between Victor’s own
countenance and that of his discarded creation comes to light, allowing their intrinsic link to
show through.
In this image, Holst captures an essential aspect of Victor and the Creature’s troubled
relationship: the undeniable sense of sameness which binds them. Using this haunting image as a
point of departure, this section examines the complex nature of Victor and the Creature’s
relationship. With the Doppelgänger as my guiding theoretical conceit, I demonstrate how their
bond can be read as a distorted depiction of the ideal love paradigm.
A central feature of Romantic and Gothic literature, the concept of ideal love relies on an
emotional extension towards another individual with the ultimate hope of personal redemption.
Carrying the promise of completion through another, this perfect partner acted as an individual’s
“epipsyche,” another soul towards which he or she is continually drawn. 6 In Percy Bysshe
Shelley’s treatise on the subject, “On Love,” he identifies this yearning as an innate human
compulsion: “We are born into the world and there is something within us which from the
instance that we live and move thirsts after its likeness” (Shelley’s Poetry and Prose 473). This
Romantic love goes beyond symbolic mirroring to present two individuals who are both
complementary in character and emotionally intertwined through a shared connection. But at its
most foundational level, this ideal love is best understood as the recognition of the self in the
other. As Holst visually captures in his haunting image, this process of idealization, recognition
6
In Carlos Baker’s book Shelley’s Major Poetry: The Fabric of a Vision, he provides a critical
account of the Shelleyan epipsyche (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1948). For more on this topic, see
William A. Ulmer’s identification of “erotic supplement” in Shelleyan Eros: The Rhetoric of
Romantic Love (New Jersey, Princeton UP, 1990).
21
and realization carries particular significance for Victor and the Creature’s relationship in
Frankenstein.
In the novel, Victor has many possible character doubles and shares in several close
personal relationships. However, these bonds are eclipsed and ultimately destroyed by the
Creature, indicating the primacy of his tie with Victor as his Doppelgänger. While each of these
doubles represents more generically conventional examples of filial or romantic bonding, Victor
and the Creature’s innate connection and pervasive sense of sameness both corrupts and
consumes the novel’s other relationships. Although these figures show potential as ideal loves for
Frankenstein, each is replaced by Victor’s bond with the Creature. Whether his shared
camaraderie with Clerval, domestic romance with Elizabeth, or mutual bond with Walton, every
alternative path Victor pursues is blocked in turn by the dominating influence of the Creature.
Although the initial promise of love between creator and progeny is perverted into mutual
hatred, their shared fixation, elimination of competing interests, and paralleling descents into
misery mark Victor and the Creature as both diametrically opposed and intrinsically linked. For
this reason, in Frankenstein the redemptive love of the other is displaced by a narcissistic selflove which is expressed in the physical manifestation of the Doppelgänger figure. Acting as each
other’s epipsyches, Victor and the Creature are fatefully and fatally drawn together. But because
Victor and the Creature’s connection also complies with the creator/progeny and parent/child
relational paradigms, their bond is rendered even more complex. These many facets lend further
symbolic significance to Victor and the Creature’s relationship and complicate the characters’
interactions and expectations.
To understand this contentious relationship better, it is necessary to explore both why and
how this link was initially forged. To begin, I look at Victor’s scientific approach to demonstrate
how it relies on a synthesis between critical and creative faculties. His perspective on ancient and
22
modern sciences not only foregrounds his desire to create life, but also provides a useful context
for his attitudes towards the Creature.
*
Fated Counterparts
Although Victor’s escape act suggests ambivalence towards his Creature, his initial
reaction must be read in context. As Holst’s depiction accurately conveys, Victor’s horror is
mingled with a sense of pained recognition. In the following section, I unpack Victor’s actions
and ideas leading up to the animation of the Creature.
Before his fateful flight and the abandonment of his newly-formed Creature, Victor
Frankenstein was a passionate student and a champion of the old scientific methods. Afforded a
distinctly Romantic education during his childhood, in which “our studies were never forced; and
by some means we always had an end placed in view, which excited us to ardour in the
prosecution of them” (66), Victor was drawn towards the limitless scientific and creative
potential found in natural philosophy. Encouraged by his parents to think laterally and pursue
ideas which excited “ardour in the prosecution of them” (66), Victor took greater interest in
practitioners of the past than current scientific theorists. However, in his transition from the more
open studies of his youth to his formal university education in Ingolstadt, Victor’s pre-existing
beliefs and ideals collide with established institutional practices and the current intellectual
climate.
In his initial disenchantment with the state of modern science, Victor laments the limited
scope and scale of the new schools of thought: “When the masters of the science sought
immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed
and I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth” (75).
Seeking to build from the work of then-discredited scientific philosophers such as Cornelius
23
Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, Victor considers modern applications of these
principles, eventually leading to a fascination with galvanism and artificial animation.
Encouraged by the shared views of his professor, M. Waldman, Victor sets out to validate
Classical scientific ideas through modern advancements, with his chief curiosity being the
creation of life. Victor’s interest in the source of life is a departure from the more rational
endeavours of eighteenth-century practitioners and a return to the aims of an earlier age. Viewing
knowledge, imagination, metaphysics, and spirituality as intrinsically linked, Victor’s own beliefs
reflect the ideals of his formative predecessors, rather than the Enlightenment tenets of his own
time.
Through these philosopher-scientists of old, Victor finds a school of thought to which he
could ascribe and a creative paragon to aspire to. Notably, in his identification of these figures as
“the lords of my imagination” (70), Victor explicitly expresses his confluence between
imaginative and critical engagement. By venerating the “chimeras of boundless grandeur” of
early thinkers over the “realities of little worth” he perceived in modern science, Victor
emphasizes a more holistic approach and consciously subjective engagement with his
experiment.
Considered through this lens, Victor’s scientific ambitions and initial desire to create life
takes on even greater personal implications. Railing against the perceived restrictions of modern
science, his efforts to challenge the most unassailable limitation, the distinction between life and
death, can be read as an act both of creation and of rebellion. In either case, the success or failure
of the Creature carries deeply personal implications for the young student. For this reason, from
the experiment’s earliest stages, the unfinished Creature offers the hope of intellectual and
personal redemption for Victor Frankenstein.
24
With a greater understanding of the stakes associated with his experiment, Victor’s initial
obsession with the Creature can be understood. While the first sight of his completed creation
horrifies him, the intensity of his immediate hatred must be read alongside his initial hopes for
his progeny. In his narrative address to Walton, Victor expounds on his unrelenting pursuit of
success and the complex motives which guided his scientific foray into galvanism:
No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in
the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I
should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. 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 their’s [sic]. (81-82)
In this passage, Victor reveals the emotional tumult he experienced while contemplating the
import of his task; his ambition to “pour a torrent of light into our dark world” directly evokes
Promethean associations. The mythical Prometheus is integral to a symbolic reading of
Frankenstein and is alluded to in the novel’s subtitle “The Modern Prometheus.” In addition to
his theft of fire from the gods to bring to humanity, Prometheus is also credited with forming
humankind out of clay.7 By integrating both of these feats into this singular act of creation, Victor
brings mythical scope and scale to his task.
In Constantin Hansen’s 1845 painting, Prometheus Creating Man in Clay, Prometheus is
shown fashioning man in his own image. Completed after Frankenstein’s 1818 publication, this
painting notably depicts Prometheus as larger than his model man and with his hand in firm
7
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses I: 363-65, Prometheus is characterized as both fire bearer and creator
of humankind: “O for my father’s magic to restore mankind again and in the moulded clay
breathe life and so repopulate the world!” trans. A.D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008).
25
Illustration 5: Constantin Hansen’s Prometheus Creating Man in Clay (detail), 1845, The
Hirschprung Collection, Copenhagen.
26
control of his creation. Unlike this creation of a successful simulacrum, Victor’s own Promethean
endeavours result in an enormous distortion of the human form. Despite the later consequences of
his defiance, Prometheus’ creation of life is imbued with a sense of nobility and measured
control. But for Victor, this direct invocation of the myth of Prometheus forecasts the inevitable
result of his overreaching experiment and alludes to possible delusions of grandeur.
By challenging the confines of mortality, Victor endeavours to be the first human to bring
life out of death and creation from destruction. Through statements like “many happy and
excellent natures would owe their beings to me,” his desire to produce life beyond this initial
experiment is made clearly apparent, as is his intention for his new species to be both perfected
and contented in his care. Through this massive undertaking, Victor aims to surpass the role of
parent and adopt the mantle of a superior god, asserting that: “No father could claim the gratitude
of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.” Importantly, by seeking gratitude for his
benevolent generosity, Victor reveals his desire for a mutual connection with his new species. In
this way, his task takes on another powerful emotional dimension, far exceeding the thrill of
objective scientific inquiry. Looking to this future species as the consummation of his intellectual
and personal toils, Victor’s emotional investment in the unfinished Creature is exponentially
heightened. Initially considering his creation as the Adam to future generations, Victor conceives
of the Creature as living proof of his success. In this way, his expectations for the Creature
approximate the hope of redemption through another.
However, the latent egoism of Victor’s pursuit is alluded to even prior to the Creature’s
completion and precludes a pure reading of Victor’s intentions. In “Mary Shelley’s Monster:
Politics and Psyche in Frankenstein,” Lee Sterrenburg asserts that “Victor foresees a utopia that
reflects his own subjective desires” (149). Chris Baldick similarly observes that “Frankenstein’s
creation of his monster is a very private enterprise, conducted in the shadow of guilt and
27
concealment, undertaken in narcissistic abstraction from social ties” (51). Victor’s act of creation
is too narcissistic and ego-driven to accommodate love and leads to a corruption of the ideal
Romantic paradigm. With a desire for gratitude and grandeur as Victor’s chief motivation, his
horror at the Creature’s loathsome appearance can be attributed to his wish for a perfect form
worthy of his efforts and adoration. Bearing Victor’s initial hopes in mind, the pain and
disappointment underlying his description of the Creature is palpable:
His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!—
Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath;
his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these
luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost
of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shriveled
complexion, and straight black lips. (85)
Victor’s devastation at the Creature’s appearance permeates the language of his account. In his
remark “Beautiful!—Great God!” he emphasizes the harsh disparity between his intended vision
and the horror of the Creature’s living reality. In “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Narcissus,”
Jeffrey Berman identifies this sense of horror and disgust as Victor’s “paralyzed overidentification with the Creature and subsequent revulsion and dread” (18). Believing himself to
be future god and savior to an advanced species, Victor refuses to acknowledge that a being
created by his own hand could be such an aberration. Consequently, his swift renunciation of the
Creature, the casting aside of his would-be Adam, is an attempt at self-preservation and a preemptive deferral of corrupted love. In his statement, “I had selected his features as beautiful,”
Victor demonstrates an unwillingness to be held accountable for the Creature’s ghastly
appearance and a refusal to identify himself with the corrupted outcome of his toils.
28
In his later remarks, Victor’s disappointment encompasses the pains of cruel heartbreak
and sudden disillusionment with a flawed ideal: “Mingled with this horror, I felt the bitterness of
disappointment: dreams that had been my food and pleasant rest for so long a space, were now
become a hell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!” (86). Having set
out to create a thing of beauty, Victor renounces all claims to the Creature for forming such a
“horrid contrast” with his initial ideal. Rather than witness the immolation of child, dream,
creation, and self in one decisive moment, Victor flees and abandons the long anticipated product
of his love and labors. As the primary individual in the Doppelgänger relationship, Victor has the
luxury of decisive action and can freely abandon the Creature for the time being. However,
despite his best efforts, Victor’s bond with the Creature cannot be broken.
*
As in the case of his creator, the Creature’s fixation begins with an ideal rather than an
individual. While Victor’s desire for discovery leads to an emotional attachment to his
developing progeny, in lieu of a present parent, the Creature projects his need for acceptance onto
an unknowing surrogate family. But while the Creator’s interest in the DeLacey family seems to
temporarily offset his governing fixation with Victor, it instead revitalizes this natal link.
Although he is unaware of the circumstances of his creation, the Creature’s later interactions with
humans, such as the DeLaceys, are haunted by the disillusionment brought on by Victor’s
abandonment. Whether in the villagers’ vicious rejections, the DeLaceys’ heartbreaking rebuff,
or in his creator’s journal, Victor’s initial act of rejection echoes through each of the Creature’s
failed interpersonal experiences. Even without his creator present, the Creature’s interactions,
ideas, and behaviors are formed by Victor’s pervasive influence. For this reason, although the
Creature has no memory of him, Victor is established early on as his dominant counterpart and
fated epipsyche.
29
For the retelling of Victor and the Creature’s first encounter, Victor is privileged as the
account’s narrator. As the novel’s central character and the primary figure in the Doppelgänger
relationship, Victor’s perspective helps inform reader response to both characters:
I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of
the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and
he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have
spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I
escaped, and rushed down stairs. (85-86)
By using terms such as “wretch” and “miserable monster” to describe the Creature, Victor
ascribes savagery to the being. But beyond these judgments, lines such as “his eyes, if eyes they
may be called, were fixed on me,” “his jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds,
while a grin wrinkled his cheeks,” and “one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me” also
convey a clear narrative. Despite Victor’s interpretation of the incident, his account suggests that
the Creature simply looked at his creator, tried to speak, smiled, and reached out to him, causing
Victor to flee in terror. This heightened emphasis on interpretation from this early point in the
narrative foreshadows the Creature’s failure to communicate and connect with others.
Consequently, this series of events proves significant later in the Creature’s tale, as this same
sequence is re-cast, re-situated, and replayed several times with similar results.
Although the Creature does not consciously recall this encounter, his subsequent
interactions with humans all take on a similar structure, highlighting the importance of this first
meeting. As the pattern progresses and these encounters render increasingly traumatic results, the
Creature’s connection to Victor correspondingly strengthens, causing him to seek out the source
of his initial torment. Consequently, the Creature’s inability to escape the set design of this first
encounter leads him back to Victor and affirms his unbreakable link to his creator.
30
After Victor flees the scene and leaves his newly-formed Creature to fend for himself,
neither Victor nor the reader knows the character’s fate. Only after their meeting in the mountains
does the Creature finally get to tell his tale and fill in some of the gaps left by Victor’s firstperson narration. Abandoned without the necessary tools for survival, the Creature seeks
protection in a nearby village. Although his early encounters with humans are comparatively
minor incidents in the novel, they bear significance for a comparative reading with his initial
meeting with Victor and set a precedent for later events. Upon first arriving in the village, the
Creature enters a cottage and surprises its inhabitant:
“Finding the door open, I entered. An old man sat in it, near a fire, over which he was
preparing his breakfast. He turned on hearing a noise; and, perceiving me, shrieked
loudly, and quitting the hut, ran across the fields with a speed of which his debilitated
form hardly appeared capable.” (131-32)
Taking place early in his intellectual and social development, this episode lacks the emotional
stakes of his later dealings with humans. But even in this early transaction, the sequence of events
directly recalls his first encounter with Victor and the Creature’s appearance alone triggers a
fearful response and immediate desertion. In the Creature’s recollection of the event, the details
of the cottage are more impressive than the confusing behavior of the strange man whose
appearance was “different from any I had ever before seen” (132). The Creature’s shock is
telling, as he is not yet aware that this incident is part of a progressing pattern of rejection.
Consequently, rather than take issue with the old man’s flight, the Creature is confused by his
bizarre reaction. However, as the frequency and severity of these rejections increases, he begins
to intuit his own abject status.
Shortly after this first episode, the Creature enters another cottage and finds a family
inside: “I hardly placed my foot within the door, before the children shrieked, and one of the
31
women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously
bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country” (132).
Although the pattern of revelation, as initiated by the first two incidents, is here maintained, the
threat level is raised considerably. The violence and vehemence of this encounter marks an
escalation from Victor and the old man’s frightened departures. The heightened risk of physical
threat anticipates later instances of violent recourse in his tale, such as the Creature’s spurned
efforts to save a child from drowning. While he is confused at first by the old man’s hurried
departure, the Creature learns from the villagers’ collective confrontation that he is something to
be feared and abhorred. Although the Creature maintains hope that more benevolent humans can
look past his apparent deficiencies, these initial rejections contribute to his eventual rejection of
humanity.
Even in Victor’s absence, the aftershocks of his abandonment of the Creature course
through these first encounters. While the Creature’s appearance elicits the villagers’ negative
responses, responsibility for his deformity and outcast status ultimately falls to Victor. By having
to revisit and relive his creator’s own dismissal through the horror of strangers, the Creature is
pulled back to the initial act of abandonment which leads to his marginalization. In this way,
Victor’s pervasive influence on the Creature’s life can be sensed in these mirroring reactions and
their set pattern of revelation and rejection. Like seeing the face of lost love at every turn, the
Creature is fatally compelled towards the image and actions of his deserted creator, thus
confirming Victor’s role as the Creature’s epipsyche.
As Victor’s Doppelgänger, the Creature is directly tied up in his creator’s actions and, as
such, his own behavior responds to that of Victor. For this reason, though far away, Victor’s
initial and decisive rejection of the Creature came to define his subsequent encounters with
32
humans. But although this pattern is established through these first interactions, the Creature still
maintains hope for redemption through another group of outcasts.
Deprived of his creator and spurned in his first interactions with humans, the Creature
finds a temporary balm for his loneliness in the DeLacey family. Displaced from their homeland
and taking refuge together, the family is likewise removed from others like them. This
marginalized status, coupled with their apparent benevolence, presents the promise of a new
beginning for the exiled Creature. Having wandered through the lonely woods and taken refuge
in a nearby hovel, the Creature observes the family from afar and imagines himself as one of
them. His immediate affinity for the cottagers leads him to believe that they are different from the
villagers:
Nothing could exceed in beauty the contrast between these two excellent creatures. One
was old, with silver hairs and a countenance beaming with benevolence and love: the
younger was slight and graceful in his figure, and his features were moulded with the
finest symmetry. (135)
Enchanted with their bucolic charm and beauty, the Creature sees the family as his new hope for
kinship and transcendence through another. Immediately following his negative experiences with
the villagers, the Creature’s chance encounter with the DeLaceys shows the potential to break the
pattern of rejection, as initiated by Victor’s departure.
Beyond his initial fascination, the Creature’s interest quickly grows into a desire to be one
among them and share in their familial affection. Once watching the DeLaceys from afar is no
longer enough to satisfy his need for inclusion, he soon thinks of ways to approach them and
appeal for their approval. By secretly helping them in their labors and studying their behaviors,
the Creature hopes to approach them and enjoy the love they shared for each other. Desperately
33
craving their acceptance, he dedicates himself to personal betterment and the acquisition of
language in the hope that he could be considered worthy of their perfect love:
I looked upon them as superior beings, who would be the arbiters of my future destiny. I
formed in my imagination a thousand pictures of presenting myself to them, and their
reception of me. I imagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanour
and conciliating words, I should first win their favour, and afterwards their love. These
thoughts exhilarated me, and led me to apply with fresh ardour to the acquiring the art of
language. (141)
By becoming well-versed in “the art of language,” the Creature hopes to be found deserving of
the benevolent mercy of these “superior beings.” But while his emotional stakes and level of
engagement are raised considerably from his unsuccessful encounters with the villagers, this
episode with the DeLaceys is an extended repetition of his first failed meeting with Victor. In the
absence of his creator, the Creature temporarily projects his longing onto the DeLaceys and recasts them as his unknowing surrogate family. Staging an extended remount of his first denial of
redemptive love, the Creature is doomed to suffer the same disastrous consequences as before
with Victor and the villagers in the leading role.
Again repeating the pattern initiated by his encounter with Victor, the Creature’s selfeducation and acquisition of language are analogous to his earlier attempt to articulate and
physically reach out to his creator. Although the means and methods are more complex, the
sentiment behind them remains the same. Even though he had no conscious memory of his
abandonment, he unknowingly substitutes in the DeLaceys as a stand-in for Victor.
Consequently, the Creature’s deferred love of the absent Victor is projected onto the present
DeLaceys and results in the same devastation and disillusionment.
34
While the DeLaceys represent the possibility of happiness for the Creature, this hope is
quickly dashed at first sight. After years of second-hand education and socialization outside their
cottage, the Creature finally gathers the courage to enter their home and introduce himself to his
beloved family. Despite these efforts and the persistent hope that the DeLaceys would deviate
from the pattern set by Victor and perpetuated by the villagers, their reaction to him nearly
replicates those rejections from years before:
Who can describe their horror and consternation on beholding me? Agatha fainted; and
Safie, unable to attend to her friend, rushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and
with supernatural force tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung: in a transport of
fury, he dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick. (160)
Even though the Creature spends years improving himself, learning about the family, and secretly
assisting them in their labors, his efforts are immediately and violently dismissed by the
DeLaceys. Despite the blind father’s open acceptance of the well-intentioned Creature, his
family’s reaction directly recalls the villagers’ myriad responses to the hideous being, including
fainting, fleeing, and fighting. This outright refusal to accept the Creature as one of them, despite
his warm gestures, mimics Victor’s initial rejection and reinforces his continued control over the
fate of his progeny.
Although Victor is not directly responsible for the DeLaceys’ actions, his refusal to be
held accountable for the fate of his Creature locks him into a systemic cycle of rejection and
alienation. Unable to overcome this first show of neglect and locked into an unbreakable bond
with Victor as his creation and Doppelgänger, the Creature’s subsequent interactions with
humans are all colored by this initial hurt. But beyond this symbolic show of Victor’s continued
influence, in another instance in the Creature’s tale, he directly intercedes in his progeny’s life.
35
Even before the Creature was spurned by his beloved DeLaceys, his desire to find others
like him persists. During the course of his education outside the cottage, he learns about human
nature through the works of writers such as Milton, Volney, Plutarch, and Goethe. Their texts
greatly inform the Creature’s self-actualization and influence his perceptions of others. Hearing
of no other like himself in any of these works and dogged by a crisis of identity, the Creature
constantly seeks answers to his questions, yet receives none: “But where were my friends and
relations? No father had watched my infant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and
caresses; or if they had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I distinguished
nothing” (147).
Through his persistent anxieties and assertion that “no father had watched my infant
days,” the Creature alludes to Frankenstein’s thematic connection with Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Beyond its significance as one of the texts the Creature first encounters, Milton’s retelling of
Adam and Eve’s removal from Paradise and the fall of Satan is suggested earlier through Victor’s
desire to create a species in his own image. After the failure of this idealistic experiment, Victor
abandons the Creature and, in keeping with this Miltonic construct, throws him out of Paradise
by leaving him to fend for himself.
In “Teaching the Monster to Read: Mary Shelley, Education and Frankenstein,” Anne
McWhir observes the influence of Paradise Lost on the Creature’s self-understanding:
There is more than one reading of Milton even in Frankenstein itself, as the creature
identifies himself now with Adam, now with “the fallen angel, whom [Frankenstein
drives] from joy for no misdeed” (95), and as he regards his “creator” now as divine, now
as demonic. The monster cannot at the same time be both innocent, virtuous, vegetarian,
natural man and be a demonic outcast. Yet he considers himself to be both, and is
destroyed by the same perplexities that confuse the reader. (81)
36
By casting himself as a fallen angel forcibly ejected from the company of his intended brethren,
the Creature consciously aligns his own outcast status not only with that of Adam but also with
that of Milton’s Satan. This sentiment is clearly expressed during his meeting with Victor
through the Creature’s bold assertion that: “I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam; but I am
rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed” (126). Through this
allegorical association, the Creature’s initial abandonment takes on mythical implications as his
connection with Victor is directly compared with Satan’s combative relationship with God.
Believing himself deserving of Victor’s paternal care and finding himself fatally compelled
towards him, the Creature acknowledges that his absent creator continues to define him. For this
reason, although the DeLaceys initially carry the hope of consolation, the Creature’s inability to
directly identify with them creates a persistent longing for what is forever lost.
Despite these lingering sentiments and remembered injuries, his affection for the
DeLaceys is unquestionable and his hope for their love is genuine. But like his earlier hopes for
companionship and consolation, this dream is similarly shattered. Upon finding himself alone in
his creator’s lab years before, the Creature steals away into the night, cloaked in Victor’s robes.
In the pocket of the robes, the Creature finds Victor’s journal documenting the process leading up
to his animation and the aftermath of the failed endeavor. Now empowered through knowledge
and able to discern meaning from the text, he learns of his infernal origins and Victor’s
disappointment with him as the unintended result of his experiment:
I sickened as I read. ‘Hateful day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. ‘Cursed
creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?
God in pity made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy
type of yours, more horrid for its very resemblance.’ (155)
37
While his failed interactions with humans are all reminiscent of his creator’s refutation, the
journal directly connects the events back to Victor, bringing him into the Creature’s field of
vision. The remark, “‘Hateful day when I received life,’” accurately identifies the source of his
pain and torment in that first moment of simultaneous creation and rejection. Now aware that his
dream of finding others like himself is impossible and his intended parent refuses to acknowledge
him as his own, the Creature understands the root cause and sheer enormity of his isolation.
Through the journal, Victor’s perceivable influence over the Creature’s fate is physically
manifested through his written denunciation of his progeny. Although the aftermath of this act of
abandonment reverberates through the Creature’s subsequent encounters with humans, the
journal provides a fixed locus and point of origin for the Creature’s misery. In linking his
hardships back to his absent creator, the Creature finally understands Victor’s defining influence
in his life and feels fatally compelled towards him. But rather than pursue him out of love, the
Creature’s initial desire for redemption through another is eclipsed by the need for retribution.
Now able to appeal to his creator, the Creature demands a bride in restitution for his injuries:
From you only did I hope for succor, although towards you I felt no sentiment but that of
hatred. Unfeeling, heartless creator! you had endowed me with perceptions and passions,
and then cast me abroad as an object for the scorn and horror of mankind. But on you
only had I any claim for pity and redress, and from you I determined to seek that justice
which I vainly attempted to gain from any other being that wore the human form. (164)
Acknowledging Victor’s role in casting him “abroad as an object for the scorn and horror of
mankind,” the Creature seeks immediate restitution for his creator’s reckless actions. By
conceding that Victor is the only human who owes him “pity and redress,” the Creature admits
the vanity of his earlier attempts to seek succor from “any other being that wore the human
38
form.” With his sights now turned on Victor, the Creature seeks vengeance for his ill-treatment
and hopes to benefit from their fated connection.
While Victor’s absence should have weakened this central relationship in the novel, the
Creature’s tale reveals his creator’s continued influence during their separation. In this way,
Victor continues to exert dominance over the Creature and, through his initial denial,
unknowingly fosters the link between them. Whether through the progressive pattern of rejection
established by Victor’s abandonment or his direct intercession through the journal, Victor’s
persistence in the Creature’s life is demonstrated through the documented events of these lost
years. Although Victor is able to escape his Creature during this time, the Creature’s role as his
Doppelgänger means that his actions and behaviors are defined by the initial precedent set by his
creator. Consequently, he is always caught following the shadow of Victor’s image and living in
the wake of his devastating desertion, until he decides to benefit from this intrinsic link and seeks
retribution. Even though Victor is able to temporarily assuage his guilt over the creation of his
progeny, their fated connection means that his reprieve cannot last for long.
*
Twin Descents
Through their paralleling character arcs, common language, and shift in the
pursuer/pursued paradigm, Victor and the Creature’s similarities become increasingly
pronounced as the narrative progresses. In their regressions from hopeful love, to misery, to
revenge, Victor and the Creature inevitably follow each other into twin descents. While they
spend years physically removed from each other, their shared fixation and fatal compulsion
towards each other lead their paths to converge. For this reason, although Victor and the Creature
follow divergent paths after their early separation, by Frankenstein’s final pages they are brought
back together. More than that, as they near one another, their individual characterization becomes
39
intertwined and their former distinctions are rendered intentionally unclear. By using fictional
ambiguity and character mirroring, Shelley completes the relational paradigm established early in
the novel and affirms the primacy of Victor and the Creature’s relationship as that of an
individual and his Doppelgänger.
Even though Victor’s immediate horror at the Creature’s appearance causes him to run,
their mutual fixation with each other ultimately brings them together and underscores the inherent
sense of sameness they share. After Victor first abandons the Creature, a stanza from Coleridge’s
“Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is quoted at length. Although Victor’s departure should mean
freedom from his Creature, this stanza foreshadows their inevitable reunion later on:
Like one who, on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And, having once turn’d round, walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread. (87)
This stanza not only reflects the dynamic of the Doppelgänger relationship, but its inclusion
immediately after the abandonment of the Creature anticipates the story’s later events. Even
though he has left the Creature behind, Victor still feels the presence of his “frightful fiend”
“close behind him.” This early sense of impending danger persists throughout the novel. Now
plagued by the Creature and inadvertently sanctioning him as his Doppelgänger, Victor and his
progeny are inextricably linked from the moment of creation.
Unable to share his secret with others while traveling down this dark and “lonely road,”
Victor is plagued with a sense of “fear and dread.” Overcome with the knowledge that his spectre
follows closely in his wake, Victor “walks on and turns no more his head,” attempting to resist
40
the persistent pull of the Creature for as long as possible. Despite Victor’s best efforts to ignore
his impending arrival, he “knows” rather than “thinks” that the Creature follows closely behind
him. But unfortunately, as Victor’s father tells him later in the novel, “a fatality seems to pursue
you” (204), and Victor confirms these suspicions by conceding that, from this point on, “I was
cursed by some devil, and carried about with me my eternal hell” (225). From this first encounter,
the die was cast and Victor and the Creature were fatefully and fatally joined. Bound together at
this initial point of convergence, the two characters spend the remainder of the novel mirroring
and moving towards each other.
As I established in my first section, Victor and the Creature both share the initial hope of
finding perfect love. While Victor’s Promethean ambitions led him to create a being in his own
image, the Creature’s desire for companionship causes him to subconsciously project Victor’s
image onto every human he meets. However, Victor and the Creature suffer a sense of shared
disillusionment as their potential love is instead warped into a Doppelgänger relationship.
Through this change of state, the happiness, redemption, and completion associated with ideal
love are exchanged for despair, revenge, and mutual destruction.
After spending years separated, Victor and the Creature are fatefully reunited in the Swiss
Alps. Following his repeated rejection and his discovery of Victor’s journal, the Creature seeks
out his creator for retribution. But although this confrontation can be summarized simply as a
meeting between Victor and the Creature during which the Creature tells his story and requests a
bride, Shelley’s thoughtful development lends mythical implications to this significant encounter.
Leading up to the Creature’s arrival, Victor observes the mountain scenery around him as he
journeys towards his fate. But rather than simple exposition, this thorough account lends a sense
of gravitas and thematic import to Victor’s travels. I quote the following section at length to
emphasize the detail of Shelley’s description and her attention to natural imagery in this scene:
41
I arrived at the top of the ascent. For some time I sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea
of ice. A mist covered both that and the surrounding mountains. Presently, a breeze
dissipated the cloud, and I descended upon the glacier. The surface is very uneven, rising
like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and interspersed by rifts that sink deep.
The field of ice is almost a league in width, but I spent nearly two hours crossing it. The
opposite mountain is a bare perpendicular rock, gazing on this wonderful and stupendous
scene. The scene, or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains,
whose aerial summits hung over its recesses. Their icy and glittering peaks shone in the
sunlight over the clouds. My heart, which was before sorrowful, swelled with something
like joy. (124)
While isolated in the wilderness, Victor is made acutely aware of his surroundings. Despite his
Creature’s impending arrival, Victor is drawn into this sublime vision of nature. Alone on the
mountain top and facing “the sea of ice,” Victor’s heart “which was before sorrowful, swelled
with something like joy.” Transformed through this encounter with nature, Victor is afforded a
temporary reprieve before meeting with his Creature.
Beyond contributing to the novel’s overall atmosphere, these descriptive sections expand
Frankenstein’s scale beyond basic prose to the level of psychodrama. By setting this fateful
confrontation in such a magnificent locale, Shelley lends a sense of immensity and vastness to the
scene. At once operatic in scope and elemental in composition, the Swiss Alps, and Mont Blanc
in particular, lend both visual grandeur and ideological associations to this important meeting. In
turn, Victor and the Creature’s relationship shares in this expansion and is imbued with greater
symbolic significance.
Shelley’s description of Victor in the mountains is visually mirrored in Caspar David
Friedrich’s “The Wanderer above The Sea of Fog” (1818). In this iconic Romantic painting,
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Friedrich captures a similar image of a man encountering the sublime through nature and
provides a visual double for Shelley’s fictional description. This vivid account in the novel also
recalls Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and the individual’s solo encounter with the
vastness of nature. Shelley’s explicit references to Coleridge’s poem throughout the novel
encourage a thematic connection between the texts and allow the mariner’s lamentations of
“Alone, alone, all alone/ Alone on a wide, wide sea” (233-34) to color Victor’s experience of
natural solitude.
Humankind’s relationship with nature also plays an important role in Romantic ideology
and Victor’s contemplative response to the wonders of the Alps consciously recalls this tradition.
In particular, Mont Blanc figures prominently in Romantic literature and is visited by William
Wordsworth in The Prelude, Lord Byron in Manfred, and Percy Shelley in “Mont Blanc.”
Notably, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s description of the Alps in History of a Six Weeks’ Tour as
“aerial summits” (151) is directly lifted for Victor’s description of the dependent mountains
“whose aerial summits hung over its recesses.” Shelley’s decision to borrow her husband’s
phrase and stage the action in a place they had recently visited and written about carries thematic
significance. Through her integration of autobiography and allegory, memory and myth, or
experienced and imagined, Shelley conjures up a literary vision that is at once simple and
sublime. Consequently, the mythical is rendered personal and the personal is rendered mythical.
Adding to this personalized experience of nature, Shelley sets the scene in a popular Romantic
location and, in doing so, consciously engages with the symbolic import and majesty of this
iconic environment. Consequently, her vivid description of Victor confronting the sublime in
nature before rejoining his Creature locates Frankenstein within the Romantic tradition and lends
43
Illustration 6: Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer above The Sea of Fog, 1818, Kunsthalle,
Hamburg.
44
both greater humanity and mythical implications to Victor and the Creature’s Doppelgänger
relationship.
Following this fateful encounter, Victor and the Creature each go their own way, but
never truly separate again. Now charged with the infernal task of creating a bride for his progeny,
Victor enters into a downward spiral with his Doppelgänger by his side. In both Victor and the
Creature’s stories, a discernible shift in language and tone occurs as their sense of initial hope
gives way to misery. Through the loss of love and a growing feeling of isolation, the characters
both experience a period of complete disillusionment. Although the sense of isolation brought on
by these feelings causes them to retreat within themselves, their shared emotions and experiences
render their language almost indistinguishable and reinforce their sense of sameness.
As the Creature’s tale begins, the beauty of the natural world gives him new confidence
that he has a fresh start and a brighter future ahead: “My spirits were elevated by the enchanting
appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the
future gilded by bright rays of hope, and anticipations of joy” (141). Envisioning a future “gilded
by bright rays of hope, and anticipations of joy,” the Creature moved on from his earlier pains,
which were now “blotted from memory.” But as he is forced to endure new and unforeseen
hardships, his faith is shaken and his initial hope gives way to deep despair. In recounting his
decline to Victor, the Creature reflects on the realizations which led to his misery. Initially
hopeful that he would be accepted and even loved by others, he came to learn that “there was
none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me” (161). Overwhelmed
by his difficult circumstances, the Creature’s confusion and growing frustration can be perceived
though his constant questioning. Trying in vain to appeal to an absent creator, his invocations
become more desperate as his circumstances worsen.
45
While learning about history, literature, and philosophy from outside the cottage, the
Creature failed to identify with the human condition, leading him to question his own place in the
world and with others. Thinking back on his earlier encounters, the Creature expresses anxiety
that he is an aberration unfit to keep company with humankind: “Was I then a monster, a blot
upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?” (146). Identifying
himself as a “blot upon the earth” “whom all men disowned,” his still-persistent hope for love is
tempered by suspicions of his own abject status. As his fears grow, his isolation is underscored
by the inability to have his questions answered: “‘What was I?’ The question again recurred, to
be answered only with groans” (147). Although the Creature asks for help, his forced solitude
means that he is given no consolation for his suffering. Only able to venture guesses about his
identity, the Creature and his pitiable condition become increasingly hopeless. Without the
assistance of others, his misery becomes overwhelming and his invocations reflect his growing
despair: “What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my
destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to solve them” (153). From
his initial hopefulness as the story begins, the Creature’s search for identity, eventual rejection,
and outcast state bring him to a place of complete despair. Disillusioned by the broken promise of
ideal love and forcibly marginalized, the Creature expresses his sorrow through the language of
dejection and constant questioning.
Although his transformation takes place much later in the novel, Victor ultimately
succumbs to this same feeling of misery. During his first formal meeting with the Creature,
Victor is charged with the duty of creating him a mate. Overwhelmed by the gravity of his task,
Victor makes his first appeal for help: “Oh! stars, and clouds, and winds, ye are all about to mock
me: if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as nought; but if not,
depart, depart and leave me in the darkness” (173). In asking for either death or desolation to free
46
him from his curse, Victor shows a sense of dread from early on. Once his loved ones are
murdered and the hope of all future happiness fades, Victor completely adopts the Creature’s tone
and language of despair.
After learning of Clerval’s death, Victor describes his feelings of incompleteness in terms
reminiscent of the individual/Doppelgänger’s dual existence: “I walked about the isle like a
restless spectre, separated from all it loved, and miserable in the separation” (194). With his dear
friend now gone, Victor feels like a shadow of his former self and distanced from all he once
loved and cherished. With the death of Elizabeth, this feeling of desolation is renewed through
his latest loss: “A fiend had snatched from me every hope of future happiness: no creature had
ever been so miserable as I was; so frightful an event is single in the history of man” (220).
Asserting that “no creature had ever been so miserable as I was,” Victor descends further into the
throes of despair. By claiming that a “fiend had snatched from me every hope of future
happiness,” Victor directly implicates the Creature and emphasizes the unjust and unexpected
nature of this transgression. His belief that “so frightful an event is single in the history of man”
highlights the intensity of his feelings and his sense of utter hopelessness in the wake of such
profound personal tragedy.
Again using the term “miserable” to describe his state, his language recalls the Creature’s
earlier lamentations. This shared language reaffirms Victor and the Creature’s innate connection
and calls attention to other examples of linguistic parallels. Beyond the borrowed use of the
Creature’s rhetoric, Victor similarly poses questions to some higher power during this difficult
time. Immediately after Clerval’s death, Victor wonders how and why he was allowed to go on
living:
Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into
forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of
47
their doting parents: how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the
bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of
what materials was I made, that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning
of the wheel, continually renewed the torture. (201)
By contrasting his own state with that of “blooming children” or “brides and youthful lovers,”
Victor further emphasizes his lack of vitality and readiness for death. Equating his endless trials
and tribulations with “so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed
the torture” Victor wonders “of what material” he was made that he could endure such hardship
while others are permitted to die and become “prey for worms and the decay of the tomb.”
In addition to the vivid imagery his language conjures, the notion of a “turning wheel”
that “continually renewed the torture” also evokes Promethean associations. After Prometheus
created humankind from clay and brought fire to the world, he was punished for his transgression
by being chained to a rock where an eagle would come each day to eat his liver. The next day, his
liver would grow back and the process would repeat itself for all eternity. 8 Given the Promethean
overtones of Victor’s initial act of creation, the continued punishment for his crime lends
mythological scope and scale to his suffering and provides an answer to his later question, “Alas!
Why did they preserve so miserable and detested a life?” (205). In addition to supporting a
mythological reading of the character and emphasizing his struggles during this trying time, these
questions also directly connect Victor with his Creature on a foundational level.
In his initial interrogations, “Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was
before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest?” Victor’s sense of loneliness and isolation
8
For the story of Prometheus’ punishment, see Hesiod’s Theogony, trans. Richard S. Caldwell
(Newburyport: Focus Information Group, 1987).
48
in the universe are emphasized. Furthermore, these same supplications were made earlier by the
Creature as he wondered why he had to endure his own agonies. Through examples such as,
“Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instance, did I not extinguish the spark of
existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?” (160), their mirrored emotional states and
common language are made apparent. Through this constant questioning and shared sense of
despair, the characters’ commonalities are emphasized. This mutual experience of misery and
period of anguish is another point of connection in Victor and the Creature’s parallel character
arcs.
From a place of shared misery, Victor and the Creature both emerge with revenge in their
hearts. Although their despair leads to a sense of complete isolation, their ensuing anger brings
them outside of themselves and, once again, compelled towards each other. While Victor and the
Creature were initially drawn together through love, the corruption of this ideal and the misery
they consequently experience leads them to pursue one other with vicious hatred. In this way, the
period of despair they both endure is a time of transition during which their ideal love paradigm
is reconfigured into their final Doppelgänger relationship. Now that any kind of love is forever
out of reach, their efforts are instead put towards seeking revenge for their cursed conditions.
Turning back towards each other, their despair gives way to anger and a mutual desire to destroy
their fated counterpart as the apparent source of their torment.
Although they had mutual desire early on, Victor and the Creature now find themselves
fatally drawn together through mutual hatred. Locked into a death spiral from which neither can
emerge, both creator and creation blame each other for their pains and seek retribution. Looking
at Victor’s language for his description of the Creature, his earlier hopes and ensuing misery are
both replaced by the desire for vengeance:
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My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be conceived. When I thought of him, I gnashed my
teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish the life which I had
so thoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and
revenge burst all bounds of moderation. (119)
The intensity of Victor’s “abhorrence of this fiend” is directly proportional to his earlier hopes for
his future progeny as the first of a new species created in his image. Now focused on the
Creature’s demise, Victor’s “hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation” and through his
ardent wish to “extinguish the life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed,” he himself becomes
monstrous. In his new attitude towards the Creature, Victor takes on a more vicious countenance
and hateful form than previously seen: “When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes
became inflamed.” This vivid description of Victor’s physical response captures the visceral
hatred he feels for his once-desired creation.
Furthermore, this account also anticipates the Creature’s later reaction when he realizes
that he is irreconcilably abject: “The feelings of kindness and gentleness, which I had entertained
but a few moments before, gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I
vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind” (166). The similarities in these descriptions
suggest a direct continuity between the two characters in their mutual hatred. The Creature’s
“hellish rage and gnashing of teeth” directly recall Victor’s own physical response: “When I
thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed.” In both accounts, “hatred” is
explicitly mentioned and Victor’s emphasis on “revenge” is mirrored through the Creature’s
desire for “vengeance.” These linguistic parallels conflate the two characters, joining them
together though their shared anger and underscoring their innate connection. Even though the
Creature’s malice is here directed towards “all mankind,” his desire for vengeance eventually
causes him to focus in on his creator as the source and continued spring of his torment. In this
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way, through their shared hatred and need for revenge, Victor and the Creature knowingly reengage with each other and willingly pursue their own eventual ends.
As the story progresses, Victor and the Creature’s rhetoric of revenge becomes even more
prevalent. With every loss he endures and every crippling blow he is dealt, Victor becomes
correspondingly more obsessed with the Creature’s destruction until it becomes his sole
motivation for carrying on. Having identified the Creature as the cause of his misfortunes, Victor
“desired and ardently prayed” that he might have the chance to “wreak a great and signal revenge
on his cursed head” (221). Compelled by this singular aim and focused on his task, “all voluntary
thought was swallowed up and lost” (223). In a direct parody of Victor’s obsessive interest in
bringing the Creature to life, destroying the Creature becomes Victor’s sole fixation and only
balm for the death of his loved ones. Now “hurried away by fury,” Victor confesses that “revenge
kept me alive; I dared not die, and leave my adversary in being” (223).
As revenge becomes Victor’s guiding fixation, the quest for vengeance also comes to
define the Creature. Blaming Victor for the pains and torments he endured, the Creature vows to
destroy his creator and rob him of all future happiness:
I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear; and chiefly towards
you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care:
I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you curse the
hour of your birth. (169)
The Creature’s hatred of his creator is palpable in these assurances of vengeance and retribution.
Identifying Victor as his “arch-enemy” to whom he swears “inextinguishable hatred,” the
Creature’s preoccupation with Victor is clearly evident and his commitment to vengeance
matches that of his creator. But while the Creature promises Victor that he will “desolate your
heart, so that you curse the hour of your birth,” this obsessive interest in his creator affirms rather
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than disrupts their continued connection. While both Victor and the Creature commit themselves
to each other’s destruction, their shared fixation still binds them together. Instead of feeling truly
ambivalent towards each other, their inextricable link dictates that, whether in hatred or love, they
cannot live without each other. Consequently, their mutual desire for vengeance and shared
rhetoric of revenge only further solidifies their bond.
In his book, In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century
Writing, Chris Baldick accurately conveys Victor and the Creature’s shared identity crisis as the
characters’ circumstances worsen:
All identities in the novel are unstable and shifting: the roles of master and slave, pursuer
and pursued alternating or merging. As in the Revolution debates, the accuser of
monstrous offspring is himself accused of being a monstrously negligent parent. When
Victor and his monster refer themselves back to Paradise Lost—a guiding text with
apparently fixed moral roles—they can no longer be sure whether they correspond to
Adam, to God, or to Satan, or to some or all of these figures. Like the iceberg on which
Frankenstein makes his first appearance in the novel, their bearings are all adrift. (44)
As Victor and the Creature face greater challenges, their earlier character distinctions are
questioned and the lines distinguishing them are blurred. Like many of the characters in Milton’s
foundational text, Victor and the Creature are forced to play multiple parts as they develop a
greater understanding of themselves and their fated purposes. Although Victor maintains
dominance as the primary individual in their Doppelgänger relationship, power shifts, role
reversals, and interchanges occur between the characters as new points of conversion emerge
later in the novel.
As the novel draws to a close and Victor and the Creature’s contentious relationship
finally reaches its inevitable conclusion, their shared quest for revenge leads them to a chase
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through the Arctic. Victor now acting as pursuer and the Creature as pursued, the creator follows
his creation through the ice and snow. But instead of letting Victor die in the cold, the Creature
leaves him sustenance and encourages him to continue on. Instructing him to “wrap yourself in
furs, and provide food, for we shall soon enter upon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy
my everlasting hatred” (227) the Creature feeds into their connection and prolongs this pursuit. In
one of the inscriptions left for Victor “on the barks of trees or cut in stone” (226), the Creature
made explicit his desire to drag out their suffering:
My reign is not over yet, you live, and my power is complete. Follow me; I seek the
everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to which I
am impassive. You will find near this place, if you follow me too tardily, a dead hare; eat,
and be refreshed. Come on, my enemy; we have yet to wrestle for our lives; but many
hard and miserable hours must endure, until that period shall arrive. (227)
Empowered by his superior tolerance of the Arctic conditions, the Creature asserts his dominance
by remarking “my reign is not over yet, you live, and my power is complete.” Although his role
as Victor’s Doppelgänger forcibly marginalizes the Creature throughout the novel, his
impassivity to the elements allows him to string his creator along during the final leg of their
journey and allows him to believe that he is in control of both their fates. Envisioning their
ultimate confrontation as a moment when they will “wrestle for their lives,” the Creature chooses
to prolong their hardship through “many hard and miserable hours” instead of ending their misery
immediately.
This deferral of their final confrontation speaks to the Creature’s motivations and
continued subjugation as Victor’s Doppelgänger. His reticence to sever all ties with his creator
demonstrates his inability to live without Victor and although revenge is his prime motivation for
much of the novel, the Creature implicitly understands that the murder of Victor will bring a kind
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of self-annihilation. Defined by his creator for his entire loathsome life, the Creature would lose
all sense of meaning and purpose without the guiding influence of Victor, as the primary
individual in their relationship. This acquiescence to Victor’s dominance can be observed through
the Creature’s later decision to end his own life once Victor finally passes away: “I shall collect
my funeral pile, and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light
to any curious and unhallowed wretch, who would create such another as I have been” (243).
Seeking death once Victor is gone, the Creature affirms the innate connection they share and
brings their relationship to its final and fitting close.
Having initially idealized each other as their hope for redemptive love, Victor and the
Creature are inextricably linked throughout Frankenstein. The pervasive influence of this bond
not only informs their characterization, but also aligns Victor and the Creature throughout the
novel as fated counterparts. From their initial fixation with each other, their resulting despair and
desire for revenge marks the continuation of their parallel character arcs. Through this shared
language and mirroring descents, Shelley reinforces Victor and the Creature’s unbreakable bond.
The resulting union is an inescapable and all-consuming bond which influences every other
relationship, interaction, and event in Frankenstein.
*
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor and the Creature are joined together through an
intrinsic link and an innate sense of sameness. As an individual and his Doppelgänger, Victor and
the Creature are initially bound by a shared fixation, and ultimately, brought together for their
final twin descents. Although their relationship is born out of the hope of ideal love and
redemption through another, this paradigm is shifted and their fatal compulsion towards each
other eventually ends in shared tragedy.
54
Although I have been emphasizing the two figures within this Doppelgänger relationship,
it is important to note how this connection is maintained through direct association with the
novel’s other characters. Despite the primacy of Victor’s relationship with the Creature, his other
conventional character doubles also play a formative role in this connection. In his introduction to
Making Monstrous: Frankenstein, Criticism, Theory, Fred Botting complicates Victor and the
Creature’s Doppelgänger relationship through a more complex configuration that accounts for
these other figures:
These dualities are not, strictly speaking, doubles, because they involve a third term to
hold them in place. The third term makes up a triad, a holy trinity perhaps, of which the
apex is an external gaze that structures the double within and as a frame and finds,
binding them in their difference, an absent pivot, an authorial voice. Thus, as duality, the
double is encased, framed by the unifying force of a positively human order and author
that establishes the limits, the constitutive poles of its own human identity. (24)
For Botting, this “third term” or “unifying force” can be found in the external presence of the
author through the act of composition. By identifying Mary Shelley as an organizing influence on
Frankenstein’s narrative, Botting acknowledges the need for another active participant, thus
opening up the restrictive Doppelgänger pairing. However, while he identifies the Victor,
Creature, Mary Shelley triad as his “holy trinity,” this allowance for a “third term” progresses the
paradigm and permits multiple configurations within the narrative itself.
Whether through his friendship with Henry Clerval or his later camaraderie with Robert
Walton, Victor is closely aligned with many characters throughout the novel. But perhaps his
most significant double, besides the Creature, is Elizabeth Lavenza. Described in the 1831 edition
as “my more than sister” (43), Elizabeth’s dual roles as family member and future wife cast her
as Victor’s erotic double. Identified as love object and emphasized through the element of desire,
55
Elizabeth symbolizes heteronormative fulfillment for Victor. Elizabeth’s privileged position as
Victor’s primary female counterpart also anticipates Carl Jung’s conception of the anima: shadow
archetypes within the male unconscious, represented as feminine inner personalities. 9 In keeping
with the Miltonic framework alluded to earlier on, Victor and Elizabeth’s relationship is
reminiscent of Adam and Eve and, specifically, the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib. Viewed in
this context, Victor’s innate bond with Elizabeth parallels his creator/progeny relationship with
the Creature and contributes to a revision of the novel’s Doppelgänger relationship as a
triangulation of terms. Further complicating this dynamic configuration, the Creature’s wish for
his own bride mimics Victor and Elizabeth’s erotic connection and creates another figural double
for Elizabeth. Through his unfulfilled desire for Elizabeth, or a corresponding female figure, the
Creature is again deprived of companionship while Victor secures his dominance through
Elizabeth as erotic double. Consequently, although Victor and the Creature’s relationship
undoubtedly maintains primacy throughout the novel, Victor’s other character doubles, such as
Elizabeth, extend the paradigm and allow for several reconfigurations.
In this way, although the Doppelgänger relationship is strictly comprised of two figures, it
relies on a third term to fix it in place and affirm its continued existence. Through the addition of
a “third term,” the complexity of Victor and the Creature’s fatal compulsion is mediated through
the novel’s secondary characters. However, because the individual and Doppelgänger are not true
equals, the Doppelgänger is not permitted his own external character doubles. As such, Victor is
offered romantic love and filial affection while the Creature is denied the love of his creator, the
For more on Jung’s conception of the anima, see Anthony Stevens’ On Jung (Princeton:
Princeton UP,1990).
9
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DeLaceys, and his unfinished bride. Consequently, Victor’s dominance over the Creature is
constantly reaffirmed through his close connection with each of his character doubles.
However, in the story’s transition from fictional to theatrical representation, Elizabeth
ceases to be important. In fact, all of Victor’s character doubles are demoted to background
players or secondary figures in the drama. In Presumption, these necessary changes mean that
Walton is cut entirely, Clerval is reduced to a straight man, and Elizabeth is recast in the more
conventional role of Victor’s sister. With these characters now sidelined, Victor and the Creature
are the only remaining character doubles in the play.
As for Botting’s “third term,” the position once filled by Mary Shelley as writer or
Elizabeth, Walton, and Clerval as character double is recast in the drama. Along with the
reduction of these character doubles and the story’s displacement from its fictional origins, a new
“third term” is needed to fix this relationship in place. In Presumption, responsibility for
constructing and maintaining the Doppelgänger relationship instead falls on the audience. The
importance of audience response to the illegitimate theatrical tradition meant that dramatists had
to cater to the public’s sensibilities. Consequently, audience seduction played an integral role in
the gothic melodrama and informed the dramatic composition of such texts as Presumption.
For this reason, Peake’s decision to make the Creature more appealing to audiences leads
to an inversion of Frankenstein’s Doppelgänger relationship in Presumption. While Victor’s
character doubles reinforce his significance in the novel, the drama’s reliance on audience
reception privileges the Creature as the focal figure. In the next chapter, I return Presumption to
its theatrical milieu to examine both how and why these changes were made and what they mean
for Victor and the Creature’s relationship.
57
Chapter 2
Presumption’s Doppelgänger: A Study in Theatre
Closely following Mary Shelley’s completion of Frankenstein in 1818, an impressive
tradition commenced of dramatizing the novel. Beginning in 1823 with Richard Brinsley Peake’s
Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein, the Frankenstein myth became an imaginative
preoccupation of nineteenth-century theatrical practitioners. According to Forry, within three
years of Presumption’s premiere, fourteen other dramatizations of the novel were staged,
spanning a wide variety of genres and styles (Hideous Progenies 3). In the same year that he
opened Presumption, Peake lampooned his own play with the parodic burlesque, Another Piece
of Presumption.
After Peake blazed the trail, dramatist Henry M. Milner adapted Frankenstein for the
stage with two very distinct productions. Milner’s 1823 effort, The Demon of Switzerland, was a
colossal failure with no surviving play text and scant critical response. However, his wildly
successful follow-up, Frankenstein; or, The Man and the Monster, provided Peake’s
Presumption with its first real competition. Premiering at the Royal Coburg in 1826, Milner’s
play relocated the novel’s action to Italy and staged the story’s climactic finale on the edge of the
crater of Mount Etna (204).
Meanwhile, interest in the Frankenstein myth had spread across the continent, causing
other nations to adapt the tale for their stages. Merle and Beraud’s French retelling, Le Monstre et
le magicien, opened in 1826, and its popular English translation by John Atkinson Kerr debuted
the same year. The play borrowed from the tradition of nautical melodrama by casting Victor and
the Creature out to sea for their final confrontation. When Presumption was remounted in 1826,
58
the play’s ending was changed to match this version’s exciting conclusion, thus indicating the
popularity and pervasiveness of this international adaptation (Forry 13). 10
Sparked by Presumption’s initial popularity, the story of Victor Frankenstein and his
Creature exploded onto the nineteenth-century stage and remained there throughout the following
century. Garnering critical and popular attention, these first productions contributed to the
resurgent interest, and subsequent revision, of the novel in 1831. But while Shelley’s text was a
favorite source for dramatists in the Romantic and Pre-Victorian periods, its shift from fictional
to theatrical presentation has divided audiences, reviewers, and contemporary critics for nearly
two centuries. Although these first productions gained widespread popularity in the minor
playhouses, readers have often found the connection to be problematic between these adaptations
and Frankenstein.
Taking the form of melodrama, parody, or burlesque, these first attempts at staging the
novel provoke many questions regarding cross-medium adaptation. For example, how can a
novel be appropriated for a performance mode? What method or standard applies to the
evaluation of these plays, both theoretically and in practice? And finally, which elements of the
original narrative are retained and which are discarded? My own line of inquiry picks up from
these questions as I compare and contrast Frankenstein with its theatrical progenies.
Although each of the novel’s contemporary adaptations contributes to Frankenstein’s
cultural legacy, my study specifically focuses on Presumption as the first and most formative
example. After the play’s initial run of thirty-seven performances in the summer of 1823, it
retained its popularity and continued in the repertoire until at least 1850 (Cox 385). And while
Presumption directly responded to Shelley’s source text, subsequent adaptations were influenced
The playbill for the remount advertises “an entirely new scene, conforming to the original story,
representing a schooner in a violent storm in which Frankenstein and the monster are destroyed”
(Cox 386).
10
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or informed by Peake’s interpretation of the novel. For this reason, Presumption is a creative
critique of the novel itself and, as such, offers useful insight into Frankenstein’s initial reception
and immediate critical response. Furthermore, as both the only production seen by Shelley and
the cause of Frankenstein’s renewed popularity, Presumption remains one of the most significant
cross-medium adaptations in the novel’s illustrious history.
*
The adaptation of Frankenstein for the theatre requires different modes of communication
and new methods of mythmaking. The change in medium required a contraction of Shelley’s
narrative to suit both theatrical constraints and generic conventions. Unlike closet dramas
intended for private contemplation, Presumption must necessarily be read alongside its
performance history and within the context of the nineteenth-century minor theatres in London.
Until 1843, the London theatre scene was distinctly divided. Because of the continuing
dominance of the Patent playhouses, a hierarchy persisted between the “legitimate” dramatic
tradition and that of the popular but peripheral minor theatres. Maintained through government
protection, Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Haymarket held exclusive rights to produce
“serious drama,” including comedic and tragic works. Forced to contend with these prohibitions,
the unsanctioned minor houses needed to develop alternative practices and conventions to remain
commercially viable outside Patent rule. From this place of creative restriction, the popular
tradition of “illegitimate” theatre emerged.
Gaining momentum throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, illegitimate
theatre marked a departure from the Classical forms and standards identified with the Patent
productions. Unable to make use of traditional conventions and forbidden from staging “spoken
drama,” practitioners in the illegitimate tradition were forced to find new styles and modes to
remain creatively competitive and commercially solvent. In the face of these strict limitations, the
60
minor theatres defied Aristotelian dramatic principles of plot, character, thought, and diction,
choosing instead to privilege music and spectacle. This decision allowed illegitimate theatre to
stay within formal and content restrictions and, in the process, helped characterize it as vibrant
entertainment for the general populace. From burlesques to pantomimes, comedic sketches to
musical acts, the minor playhouses became home to a broad range of alternative performance
modes.
But while each genre played to success on the illegitimate stage, one of the most popular
began as an import from the Patent tradition: the gothic melodrama. Boasting a piecemeal
aesthetic and cannibalistic in nature, the gothic melodrama borrowed heavily from other
mediums, styles, and stories to become a dominant dramatic form in the nineteenth century.
While it had previously thrived in the Patent playhouses, its formal hybridity and broad appeal
made it an iconic fixture of the illegitimate theatrical tradition. Due to an increased emphasis on
aesthetic appeal and audience accessibility, these melodramatic performances relied on
impressive stage pictures, loaded gestures, and coded iconography to express meaning.
Facilitated by landmark advancements in technical theatre, this increased reliance on stage craft
helped to enable visual storytelling.
In Romantic Drama: Acting and Reacting, Frederick Burwick explains how these
melodramatic conventions and coded images were implicitly understood by minor playhouse
audiences, thus enabling simplified narrative strategies: “With an audience of frequent theatregoers who were alert to familiar tropes and situations, playwrights could easily engage in a
conspiracy of allusions, knowing that many would perceive the cross-referencing and layering of
sources” (57). Without the need for lengthy exposition or detailed characterization, this
“conspiracy of allusions” permitted playwrights to distill language into key images and to swap
out rhetoric and monologues for action sequences and stunning visuals.
61
In the popular subgenre of gothic melodrama, part of this “conspiracy of allusions”
included direct reference to the gothic literary tradition. Sparked by the work of writers such as
Horace Walpole, Monk Lewis, and Ann Radcliffe, the resurgence of the gothic novel ignited
theatrical interest in the literary genre’s iconic tropes. In Michael R. Booth’s English Melodrama,
he describes the cross-medium adaptation of the gothic novel onto the nineteenth-century stage:
What the melodramatists did with the Gothic novel was to simplify and intensify:
wherever possible sensations were elaborated and the supernatural emphasized.
Improvements in stage mechanics facilitated a full display of ghosts, and where the
novelist tended to suggest horrors the playwright made a satisfying physical show of
them. (69)
Building on the gothic novel’s reliance on atmospheric terror, dramatists capitalized on
advancements in technical theatre to bring these tales of terror to the stage. By simplifying plots
or characters and intensifying sensational or supernatural aspects, illegitimate theatrical
practitioners successfully integrated the traditions of gothic literature and melodramatic
performance. Building from melodrama’s widespread popularity, the gothic melodrama also
played to great success in the Patent playhouses; but its generic hybridity and visual spectacle
made it an ideal fit for the minor theatres.
In the nineteenth century, the gothic melodrama became a fixture in minor playhouses,
such as the Royal Coburg and English Opera House. In keeping with continued restrictions on
content, character archetypes, generic conventions, narrative simplicity, gothic tropes, and a
declamatory style of acting became the favorite modes of communication in the genre. In a direct
departure from the Patent productions’ reliance on rhetoric and complex characterization,
illegitimate gothic melodramas were designed to shock, thrill, and delight enraptured audiences.
Capturing the imagination of the general populace through music, dance, and spectacle, the
62
gothic melodrama went on to become a key dramatic form in the Romantic era, and it is out of
this tradition that Peake’s Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein emerged.
How did a genre based on simplicity and visual appeal re-appropriate the novel’s complex
characters for the minor theatre? And furthermore, how is Frankenstein’s Doppelgänger
relationship changed to fit this distinctive genre?
*
Starring “The Creature” as “_______”
“How delineate the wretch whom, with such infinite pains and care, I had endeavored to
form?”
Initially posed by Victor after first seeing his Creature brought to life, this same question
is at the heart of a nearly two-hundred-year-old desire to conceive and communicate
Frankenstein’s Creature. In looking to the novel for clues, the Creature’s nuanced
characterization reveals an immense, unrelenting, otherworldly, and yet achingly human portrait
of Victor’s abandoned progeny. As the story progresses, any definitive conception of the Creature
is further complicated and contradicted. More questions linger for the eager reader until finally,
Victor’s hunt for the elusive Creature becomes our own.
In the Romantic and early Victorian periods, this same pursuit guided many dramatists in
their attempts to bring the Creature to life. Closely following the novel’s 1818 publication, the
Creature’s dramatic potential attracted the attention of illegitimate theatrical practitioners.
Beginning with Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein in 1823, the
Creature captured the imagination of the English theatre-going public and quickly became a
touchstone in popular culture. Despite Victor Frankenstein’s central role in the novel, it was the
Creature who stole the spotlight in the early dramas. The effect of this focal shift not only
influenced the portrayal and reception of the Creature, but radically reconfigured the relationship
63
between creator and creation in these early adaptations, specifically Peake’s Presumption. The
following section will explore the Creature’s movement from fictional to theatrical representation
during the nineteenth century is explored. Referred to in the play bill as “_______,” the Creature
was neither immediately defined nor limited by titles or terms. Furthermore, this “nameless mode
of naming the unnameable”11 alluded to the Creature’s search for identity in the novel and gave
the fictional character a new beginning as a theatrical figure.
By reading the play’s performance text and manuscript edition alongside Frankenstein, a
foundational continuity in the Creature’s characterization is established, despite a change in
genre. Consequently, critical claims that Peake’s depiction robs the character of his initial
complexity will be refuted. Drawing from gothic melodramatic conventions, my reading of
Presumption’s Creature focuses on performance practices and archetypal representation in the
illegitimate theatrical tradition. To that end, my study engages two interrelated aspects of Peake’s
Creature: appearance and performance. While Peake’s use of archetypal coding and pantomime
marks an apparent departure from the novel, a more nuanced reading of these tropes within the
context of the nineteenth-century minor playhouses is required. In considering the play text
alongside these generic conventions, Frankenstein as source text, performance reviews, and
cultural influences, Shelley’s Creature endures, despite his changed appearance in Presumption.
While the Creature is described primarily by others in the novel, intentional evasiveness is
one of Frankenstein’s greatest strengths, permitting the reader to conjure up his or her own image
of unutterable monstrosity. For this reason, any dramatization of the Creature must contend with
individual conceptions of the character, as we see from textual analysis. Through the Creature’s
Mary Shelley’s phrase to describe the Creature’s unusual crediting in the playbill (“To Leigh
Hunt, September 9th, 1823.”) Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1995, 135-39).
11
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dramatization, he ceases to be purely imagined and takes on a tangible physical presence. With
the need to show the character to the audience in some manner rather than simply tell of his
appearance and exploits, the Creature must be adapted to fit different formal and generic
conventions. Fictional ambiguity gives way to theatrical illusion as the Creature’s immensity
must somehow be contained and expressed onstage.
In the case of Peake’s Presumption, the leap from the fictional to theatrical character is
further extended by the exaggerated aesthetic of the gothic melodrama. In a genre where realism
and nuance typically succumb to archetypes and tropes, a literary figure such as the Creature will
look unfamiliar under stage lights. But while his portrayal is altered by this cross-medium and
cross-generic transition, the Creature’s appearance is not disconnected from his fictional
conception, despite modern interpretation. Instead, by adapting the character to suit the gothic
melodrama’s distinct modes of communication, Peake devises a theatrical counterpart to
Shelley’s fictional Creature.
Because of melodrama’s reliance on aesthetic appeal, visual elements such as costume,
gesture, pose, and stage picture all help tell the story. Unable to rely on language to the same
extent as the Patent productions, illegitimate dramatists employed visual cues to aid
characterization and help delineate the hero from the villain or the rustic from the nobleman. To
assist audiences, dramatists frequently capitalized on physiognomy, the once-accepted scientific
practice of assessing personality traits on the basis of physical features,12 to allow for the
immediate identification of character features or moral leanings.
12
For more on the theoretical conception and practical application of physiognomy in the
nineteenth century, see James D. Redfield’s Comparative Physiognomy or Resemblances
Between Men and Animals (New York: Clinton Hall, 1852).
65
For minor theatre audiences accustomed to this use of coded iconography and archetypal
representation, the physical appearance of the ghost, ghoul, or goblin at the centre of a gothic
melodrama was of chief interest. As a way of first bringing the monsters onto the stage, a
dramatic reveal was staged to emphasize the supernatural being and its horrifying form. Often
eliciting audible audience reaction, these unveilings were intended to cause ladies to faint and
children to weep with fear.
Maintaining this convention, before the Creature’s first onstage appearance in
Presumption, Victor’s vivid account of the character’s ghastly form helps build suspense. In
words lifted almost directly from the novel, Victor’s speech prepares the audience for the
Creature’s highly-anticipated arrival:
I saw the dull yellow eye of the Creature open, it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion
agitated its limbs. What a wretch have I formed, his legs are in proportion and I had
selected his features as beautiful—beautiful! Ah, horror! His cadaverous skin scarcely
covers the work of muscles and arteries beneath, his hair lustrous, black, and flowing—
his teeth of pearly whiteness—but these luxuriances only form more horrible contrasts
with the deformities of the monster. (143)
Peake’s decision to leave Shelley’s description of the Creature almost completely intact is telling.
By keeping Victor’s account from Frankenstein as a point of connection, Peake maintains a natal
link to the Creature’s fictional origins. Rather than dismiss this description entirely, Peake
attempts to preserve the novel’s initial conception of the Creature, despite the change in medium
and genre. However, despite textual borrowing from Frankenstein, the realization of the Creature
onstage is discernibly different and the character’s appearance is altered significantly to be more
in keeping with melodramatic conventions. The stage directions for the Dicks’ Standard Edition
66
of the play suggest the following for the Creature, on the basis of T.P. Cooke’s costuming in the
role:
Dark black flowing hair—à la Octavian—his face hands, arms, and legs all bare, being
one colour, the same as his body, which is a light blue or French gray cotton dress,
fitting quite close, as if it were flesh, with a slate colour scarf round his middle, passing
over one shoulder. (136)
Although Peake took pains to retain Victor’s description of the Creature from the novel, his
practical execution of the character did not maintain the same standard. According to Forry, the
phrase “à la Octavian,” to describe the Creature’s hair is believed to reference “the wild dress of
the Spaniard Octavian in Colman’s The Mountaineers” (Hideous Progenies 15) and is a notable
addition to the character’s initial description. Based on Don Quixote, The Mountaineers was an
exotic adventure-drama from the Patent playhouses. Premiering in 1793 at the Haymarket, the
production played to great acclaim and its roguish hero, Octavian, quickly became a beloved
dramatic figure (Sutcliffe 60). Peake’s explicit goal of having Creature’s appearance emulate that
of the handsome Octavian is telling.
Rather than present the character as visually grotesque, as both the novel and play text
would seem to suggest, Peake’s reference to Octavian is the first of many changes intended to
enrich the Creature’s physical representation and undercut his apparent monstrosity. Choosing
not to replicate the Creature’s proportions, yellow eyes, or musculature, Peake’s stage notes
instead call for “a slate colour scarf round his middle, passing over one shoulder.” This
description of the Creature’s clothing clearly evokes a robe or toga. Along with these stage
directions, original production images similarly depict the Creature in Greco-Roman attire.
In this image from the play in production, the Creature’s dominating stance, heavy brow,
dignified expression, powerful frame, and ancient apparel conjure heroic associations. While
67
Illustration 7: An Engraving Depicting Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein, 1826,
Harvard Theatre Collection, Cambridge.
68
Shelley dubs Victor “The Modern Prometheus” in Frankenstein’s subtitle, in Presumption, Peake
visually associates the Creature with antique tradition. However, this costuming takes on greater
symbolic significance when read alongside the Creature’s Classical education in the novel. In
addition to Milton’s Paradise Lost and Goethe’s Sorrows of Werter, Plutarch’s Lives has a
formative influence on the fictional Creature’s intellectual, moral, and social development in
Frankenstein. Crediting Plutarch for teaching him “high thoughts” and elevating him “above the
wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages” (153), the
Creature consequently feels an “ardour for virtue” and “abhorrence of vice” (154). By clothing
the Creature in Classical apparel, Peake implicitly acknowledges this important narrative and
thematic thread in Frankenstein. Although the Greco-Roman influence on the character’s
costume is original to Presumption, the tie between the Creature and Classical tradition has
precedent in the novel.
Having considered Cooke’s costuming in Presumption, an apparent disparity persists
between Victor’s description of the Creature in the novel and play and the character’s onstage
appearance. Although they share some commonalities, Peake’s additions of wild hair, blue skin,
and ancient apparel appear to run counter to the Creature’s described appearance. How then does
Peake negotiate Shelley’s initial description of the character in the novel with his practical styling
of Cooke as the Creature?
By returning Presumption to the theatrical medium and gothic melodramatic genre, these
stage directions and Cooke’s costuming are shown to reflect melodrama’s suggestive staging
practices and the importance of audience engagement. Having heard an explicit description of the
Creature before his arrival, the audience would have projected this stated vision of the character
onto the actor playing the role. Although technical theatre saw landmark advancements in the
69
nineteenth century, there were still limitations as to what could be convincingly staged in the
gothic genre.
Through Peake’s use of archetypal associations conventional to the gothic melodrama, the
actor’s physical presence and the Creature’s stated features could be reconciled by the knowing
audience. Mirroring the reader’s active role in imagining the Creature in Frankenstein, the
audience would likewise connect the stated vision of the Creature and his physical manifestation
onstage. Because of Peake’s borrowed use of Frankenstein’s original description and suggestion
of the Creature’s intended effect, the audience would become complicit in his vision for the
character.
Having considered the Creature’s appearance in Presumption, I now look at the effect of
performance style on the character’s continued complexity. Following Presumption’s 1823
premiere, critics, audiences, and even Shelley herself were enraptured by the Creature’s dramatic
representation. However, despite the Creature’s landmark success in the illegitimate theatrical
tradition, his silencing has led many modern critics to chide Peake for limiting the character to a
mute monster. Notably, Baldick rejects Presumption’s speechless Creature as a perversion of
Shelley’s initial conception: “From a sensitive critic of social institutions, the monster has been
transformed into a rampaging embodiment of Victor’s unleashed ‘impiety,’ who is never given a
hearing” (59). But although the Creature no longer appears as “a sensitive critic of social
institutions,” his silence should not be misread as inanity, nor should his changed relationship to
his creator be misconstrued as continued subjugation. And although the novel’s Doppelgänger
relationship is reinforced through Victor and the Creature’s verbal expression, the Creature’s
muteness allows for a different mode of communication.
Highlighted through contrast and melodrama’s visual emphasis, it is the mute Creature
who comes to prominence in Presumption. Consequently, the silencing of the Creature allows for
70
a regeneration rather than reduction of the character’s fictional characterization. While the
decision to render the Creature mute has been regarded as a misinterpretation of Shelley’s
thematic intentions, the Creature’s silent expression in Presumption transcends these apparent
limitations. Without the ability to articulate his anxieties and ambitions, the dramatized
Creature’s internal struggles are evocatively expressed through pantomime performance.
Characterized by broad gestures and musical underscoring, pantomime was a wellestablished performance mode in the nineteenth century and its borrowed use in melodrama was
a common occurrence. A perfect complement to the melodrama’s visual emphasis, broad appeal,
and musical interludes, the pantomime imbued movement and gesture with greater significance.
In keeping with the restrictions on “serious drama” in the minor playhouses, the pantomime’s
reliance on physicality and corporeal language helped evade textual limitations. But in addition to
its practicality, Peake’s employment of the pantomime tradition for the dramatization of the
Creature is symbolically and thematically significant. Robbed of speech, the Creature’s feelings
and intentions are physically expressed rather than verbalized, as they are in the novel. However,
rather than become a supporting character as a result of the change, the Creature comes to the
drama’s forefront through innovative modes of communication.
Without the use of speech, the actor must physically express the misery, longing, and
alienation lamented by the Creature in the novel. Uneducated and pre-verbal, the Creature’s
bodily expression and innate musicality allow him to operate on a different theatrical plane than
the other characters. While he is not able to speak or sing, the Creature’s lyrical movements and
fascination with song mark his characterization as distinctly melodramatic. By incorporating the
communicative abilities and artistic appeal of dance, music, and gesture, the Creature’s agency is
maintained in Presumption.
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To understand how pantomime performance helped the Creature transcend his mute
presentation, it is necessary to return Presumption to its performance history. Celebrated for his
athletic prowess and physicality on stage, Thomas Potter Cooke was a noted performer before
appearing in Presumption for the unnamed Creature’s theatrical debut. First appearing in
Presumption’s initial run at the English Opera House in 1823, Cooke was then cast in Merle and
Beraud’s French adaptation Le Monstre et le magicien in 1826. Following his return to the
English Opera House in 1826 for Presumption’s successful remount, The Illustrated London
News (15 October 1853) estimated that by the half century, Cooke had played the role of the
Creature at least three hundred and sixty-five times. Cooke was a key component in the initial
success and endurance of Frankenstein’s dramatic legacy, receiving enthusiastic response to his
pantomimic performance.
Following Presumption’s 1823 premiere, critics were quick to commend Cooke’s
masterful performance and mute communication of the Creature’s nascent development. In a
review from The Theatrical Observer, Cooke’s performance was lauded as the play’s greatest
triumph: “Nothing could be more excellent than the acting of Mr. T.P. Cooke, as the nameless
monster, in marking the first effects of some of the most striking objects of art and nature upon
his new-created faculties” (29 July 1823). A later review from the same publication noted that
Cooke “represents in dumb show with infinite accuracy, the varied feelings supposed to arise
from the extraordinary condition of his nameless character” (13 August 1823). Even Mary
Shelley herself applauded Cooke’s successful turn as the Creature. In a well-known letter to
Leigh Hunt, she was quick to observe the subtlety and clarity of his silent performance: “Cooke
played the part extremely well—his trying to grasp at the sounds he heard—all indeed he does
was well imagined and executed” (1: 378).
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Illustration 8: T. P. Cooke. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: Muller
Collection, New York.
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To understand how the Creature’s silent expression could be effectively conveyed with
emotional quality, one need only to look at Peake’s elaborate stage directions in Presumption.
Confronted by Victor and the DeLaceys in an adapted scene, the Creature is attacked by his
intended protectors and responds with violent force. In the original manuscript edition, the scene
plays out with minimal suggested directions: “Music.—Felix discharges his gun and wounds the
Demon, who writhes under the wound.—In desperation pulls a burning brand from the fire—
rushes at them” (413).
However, in the Dicks’ Standard Edition based on the play in performance, the stage
directions are significantly elaborated to reflect Cooke’s silent subtext. These detailed additions
include moments such as the Creature wanting to attack Felix but “deterred by repetition of the
wound,” a sympathetic appeal where “The Monster rushes up to Frankenstein, and casts himself
at his feet, imploring protection,” and a complex bit of pantomime in which “Frankenstein
endeavors to stab him with his dagger, which the Monster strikes from his hand—and expresses
that his kindly feelings towards the human race, have been met by abhorrence and violence; that
they are all now converted into hate and vengeance” (153). Although unable to speak, the
Creature still communicates with his creator through meaningful movements and gestures. These
extended stage directions in the performance edition are indicative of Cooke’s expressive abilities
and also attest to Peake’s sophisticated understanding of the source text. In addition to placing the
Creature within the gothic melodramatic tradition, the use of pantomime performance served as a
physical referent to events and ideas from Frankenstein. Put into practice, this meant that
significant moments or concepts from the novel could still be retained despite cross-medium and
cross-generic adaptation. Through the distillation of Shelley’s rhetoric to meaningful gestures
underscored by suggestive musical leitmotifs, Frankenstein’s Creature lived on in Presumption.
This effective adaptation can be observed by comparing exemplary moments in the novel and
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play, such as the Creature’s discovery of fire. I quote the following section at length to emphasize
Shelley’s thorough description of this episode in the novel:
One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been left by some
wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it.
In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry
of pain. How strange, I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects!
I examined the materials of the fire, and to my joy found it to be composed of wood. I
quickly collected some branches; but they were wet, and would not burn. I was pained at
this, and sat still watching the operation of the fire. The wet wood which I had placed near
the heat dried, and itself became inflamed. I reflected on this; and, by touching the various
branches, I discovered the cause, and busied myself in collecting a great quantity of wood,
that I might dry it, and have a plentiful supply of fire. (130)
The Creature’s first-person account of encountering fire is thorough and highly contemplative.
His intellectual process and emotional response is chronicled through this lengthy description and
his conscientious attention to detail indicates the significance of this formative discovery. In
Peake’s treatment of this same event in Presumption, the shift in medium requires new modes of
expression:
Hammerpan and the Gipsies shriek and run off. The Demon descends, portrays by action
his sensitiveness of light and air, perceives the gipsies fire, which excites his admiration—
thrusts his hand into the flame, withdraws it hastily in pain. Takes out a lighted piece of
stick, compares it with another faggot which has not been ignited. Takes the food
expressive of surprise and pleasure. (403)
Although this pantomimic sequence distills the description in the source text, Peake retains the
action, intellectual engagement, and emotional response covered by Frankenstein’s detailed
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depiction. Even though Shelley’s rhetoric is silenced, it is successfully transfigured into loaded
gesture and enlivened action. Viewed through the lens of gothic melodrama and the illegitimate
theatrical tradition, this piece of stage business would have had the same meaning and intended
effect as the lengthy account found in the novel. Through the distillation of image and action, the
symbolic import of this sequence would have been clearly communicated to audiences in the
minor theatres.
Considered through Presumption’s performance history, Peake’s decision to render the
Creature mute approximates the Creature’s complex characterization in Frankenstein. Through
the added implications of silencing, othering, and marginalization, Peake’s creative choice further
alludes to the novel’s thematic undertones. Taking into account the long history of pantomime,
the gothic melodrama’s emphasis on action and gesture, and Cooke’s highly-praised
performance, the Creature’s muteness is the result of cross-medium adaptation and not an act of
senseless character reduction. By retaining the Creature’s complexity and keeping his portrayal
consistent with gothic melodramatic conventions, Peake privileges the character as
Presumption’s focal figure. This decision marks a decisive focal shift from the novel’s emphasis
on Victor Frankenstein and anticipates a subversion of Frankenstein’s Doppelgänger
relationship.
*
Also Featuring Victor Frankenstein as “?”
By the time Frankenstein returned to the silver screen for Universal Pictures’ classic film
version in 1931, Shelley’s novel had already undergone over a century of cross-medium
adaptations. This iconic filmic adaptation of the novel is most famously remembered for Boris
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Karloff’s portrayal of the mute Creature.13 Like T.P. Cooke before him, Karloff brought a
sensitivity to the role that complicated the Creature’s apparent monstrosity. But although the
Creature’s representation received the most critical acclaim and is still celebrated today, what
about Victor?
In the film, Victor’s nuanced characterization in the novel is reduced to a parodic
representation of the mad scientist archetype. Now renamed Heinrich Frankenstein, his bizarre
obsession with reanimating corpses becomes his definitive character trait. After succeeding in his
fiendish labors, the maniacal Dr. Frankenstein celebrates his apparent triumph with his strange
assistant, Igor. Contributing to this image of Frankenstein as an evil genius, his crazed
exclamations of “It’s Alive!” have echoed throughout the character’s legacy.
But where did this conception of the character come from? How did Victor get so far
away from Frankenstein?
From Victor Frankenstein’s theatrical debut in 1823’s Presumption, the stage was already
set for his total character overhaul. Displaced from his fictional conception, the character was
free to be reimagined and reinterpreted on the illegitimate stage. But although he is the novel’s
eponymous and central character, this first cross-medium adaptation of Shelley’s tale sidelines
the creator in favor of his creation and initiated a pattern that could carry on for years.
While Peake’s use of coded iconography and pantomime performance enlivened the
Creature, close reading and critical response indicate Victor’s archetypal refitting as not
successfully realized. Consequently, although modern critics often take issue with the Creature’s
reductive representation, it is in fact Victor who is lost in translation. As a result of this focal
shift, the relationship between Victor and the Creature, as re-imagined in Presumption, is the
In Albert J. Valley’s “The Stage and Film Children of Frankenstein,” his survey of adaptations
includes both Presumption and this film version from 1931 (The Endurance of Frankenstein:
Essays on Mary Shelley’s Novel [Berkeley: U of California P], 1979).
13
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mirrored image of Frankenstein’s initial configuration. In this way, while the novel positions
Victor as the primary individual and the Creature as his Doppelgänger, Peake’s privileging of the
Creature leads to Victor’s narrative subjugation and subsequent re-casting as the secondary antitype to his Creature.
From this observation, my study of the novel’s protagonist and his displacement in
Frankenstein’s theatrical tradition begins with one important question: is Victor Frankenstein
strictly limited to fictional representation and, if so, how did mid-nineteenth-century dramatists,
such as Peake, treat him differently from his Creature? To answer this question, I evaluate how
Victor’s dramatization reflects or rejects gothic melodramatic conventions. As a formal
framework, I appraise Victor’s appearance, actions, and performance in relation to two central
melodramatic archetypes: the hero and the villain.
By reading Presumption’s portrayal of Victor alongside conventional descriptions of the
archetypal hero and villain in melodrama, I observe how his inconsistent characterization makes
him ill-suited for the gothic melodrama and its character expectations. Even though Victor’s
nuanced motivations and actions in the novel are neither purely villainous nor purely heroic, his
lack of clear dramatic identity impedes his melodramatic transformation. Rather than commit to
either archetype for Victor’s representation, Peake’s curious decision to flip-flop between the two
is revealing. While the Creature is transfigured to reflect the shift from fictional to theatrical
representation, Victor’s characterization is neither retained from the novel, nor altered to adhere
to Presumption’s generic conventions. Based on this observation, this chapter demonstrates how
Victor’s theatrical afterlife is a kind of spectral shadow to his presentation in the novel, adding
yet another double to the many duplications of Frankenstein.
Based on his first appearance in Presumption, Victor Frankenstein shows every sign of
being a true stage villain. From the start of the play, frequent allusions are made to Victor’s
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villainous potential in the drama. While Victor’s authority as the primary narrator in
Frankenstein allows him to influence reader reception, the shift from fictional to theatrical
representation changes the way the character is both presented and perceived. Initially described
by his servant, Fritz, in no uncertain terms as one whom “holds converse with somebody below
with a long tail, horns, and hooves, who shall be nameless” (137), Victor is under constant attack
for his presumptuous behavior.
As I discussed in my first chapter, the name of the novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern
Prometheus, privileges Victor as the eponymous character and establishes thematic parallels
between him the mythological Prometheus. However, the novel’s re-imagination as a gothic
melodrama for the illegitimate stage requires a new title more in keeping with a changed
approach to the central character: Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein. Although Victor is
still referenced in the drama’s subtitle, the leap from Frankenstein to Presumption reflects both a
focal and tonal shift. Emphasizing the crime and not the character, Victor’s grand aspirations are
persecuted rather than ennobled. With Shelley’s mythical allusion abandoned for a moralistic
commentary, Victor’s vice of presumption is highlighted as his most definitive character trait.
From this initial identification of Victor’s sinful behavior, a case can be built for his
casting as the drama’s villain. In addition to this titular reference to Victor’s presumption, the
character’s appearance also arouses audience suspicion about his morality. In the stage directions
for the Dicks’ performance edition of Presumption, Victor’s costuming is highly suggestive:
“Black velvet vest and trunk breeches—gray tunic, open, the sleeves open in front, slashed with
black—black silk pantaloons and black velvet shoes—black velvet hat.” On the basis of his outfit
alone, Victor’s moral leanings and social status would be clearly forecasted to the audience.
In keeping with melodrama’s reliance on visual storytelling, color associations assisted in
characterization and clarified meaning for the audience. Bearing in mind this implicit
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identification, Peake’s decision to clothe Victor in nearly all black is telling. Contrasted with the
earth tones used for the gypsies, rustics, and servants or the Creature’s varying shades of gray,
Victor’s dark attire visually distinguishes him as a villainous figure. Recalling that the world of
melodrama is “a world of absolutes where virtue and vice coexist in pure whiteness and pure
blackness” (Booth 14), Victor’s black costume clearly marks him as a “bad guy” and limits his
potential for change or growth within the drama. Choosing to forgo traditional heroic white for
villainous black, Peake intentionally bars a favorable reading of the character, instead guiding
audience sympathy elsewhere.
In addition to colour symbolism, Victor’s costume also places him firmly within the upper
class. Outfitted in a velvet vest, shoes, and hat with silk pantaloons, Victor’s luxurious clothing
would be intentionally alienating to some members of minor theatre audiences. Attracting a wider
range of patrons than the Patent productions, illegitimate dramas played across social spheres and
economic classes. The broader demographic of the minor theatres helped lower-class characters
gain audience favor, a tendency encouraged by melodramatic conventions. In a genre where the
lovable working class was often at odds with the wicked aristocracy, Victor’s opulent clothing
would have immediately piqued audience suspicion. Coupled with Peake’s choice of dark color
palette and the play’s telling title, Victor’s duplicitous or immoral potential is strongly alluded to
from the beginning. In viewing the character’s appearance through the lens of gothic melodrama,
Victor’s costuming is conventionally consistent with the archetypal villain. This aesthetic choice
sets early precedent for a changed approach to the character’s treatment throughout Presumption.
But although Victor’s costuming and the play’s title would suggest that he is re-cast as a
conventional stage villain in Presumption, the character is not treated consistently throughout.
While the play’s title and Victor’s costuming suit the conventional trappings of a nineteenthcentury scoundrel, Peake does not cast Victor as a true melodramatic villain. Although
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Frankenstein’s Victor is neither purely villainous nor purely heroic, melodramatic characters had
to adhere to a strict moral binary or conventional code of behaviors. While Peake is able to evade
this limitation with the Creature through the nuanced use of pantomime performance, his
portrayal of Victor does not key into any one practice, archetype, or approach conventional to
illegitimate gothic melodrama. Consequently, Victor is unevenly characterized and wavers
between heroic potential and villainous action throughout the drama. The resulting theatrical
character is both disconnected from his fictional origins in Frankenstein and rendered inert on the
illegitimate stage.
In looking at Victor’s language in Presumption, his character inconsistencies become
increasingly apparent. Although melodrama’s emphasis on showing rather than telling eliminates
the need for Frankenstein’s frame narrative, Victor’s reliance on language is maintained in the
story’s staging. But while detailed description and rhetorical phrasing are integral to fictional
characterization, long-windedness and a facility with language are unattractive features for a
melodramatic character. While Aristotle suggests that diction is among the most important
elements of a play (Poetics 56), the gothic melodrama’s emphasis on music and spectacle
subverts this traditional paradigm. As a result, this privileging altered the purpose of language
from poetic artistry to utilitarian functionality. Consequently, characters defined through rhetoric
and oratory, such as Presumption’s Victor, are stifled within the melodramatic context. Although
Victor’s thoughtful discourse in the novel is in keeping with the medium, it marks a departure
from generic conventions in Presumption.
Rather than elicit audience sympathy, both the form and content of these lengthy tracts
further distance spectators and raise audience suspicions about the character. As Michael R.
Booth notes in his seminal work, English Melodrama, “villains are unable to keep quiet and are
much given to self-revelation through gloating soliloquies and confidential asides” (22).
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Observed in practice, Victor’s soliloquies take on a different tone through their changed context.
In a soliloquy from scene one, Victor boldly asserts his intention to create life. In words almost
directly borrowed from the novel, he shares his grand plan with the audience. But while these
confessions read as deeply contemplative in Frankenstein, in Presumption, these early
declarations signal Victor’s brash insolence:
I have seen how the fine form of man has been wasted and degraded—have beheld the
corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life! I have seen how the worm
inherits the wonders of the eye and brain—I paused—analysing all the minutiae of
causation as exemplified in the change of life from death—until from the midst of this
darkness the sudden light broke in upon me! A light so brilliant and dazzling, some
miracle must have produced the flash! The vital principle! The cause of life!—Like
Prometheus of old, have I daringly attempted the formation—the animation of a Being!
To my task—away with reflection—to my task—to my task! (139)
By borrowing choice selections from the novel, Peake freely integrates adapted and original
writing for Victor’s speeches. The resulting effect is more cannibalistic than constructive as these
re-appropriated sections work in stark contrast with the usual fixtures and fittings of the gothic
melodrama. For example, Victor’s reference to Prometheus in this soliloquy is a relic from the
character’s fictional conception. As I demonstrated in my first chapter, Prometheus is integral to
Frankenstein and contributes to a thematic reading of the novel. Peake’s brief allusion to the
mythical figure therefore pays homage to Victor’s fictional identity as “the modern Prometheus.”
However, because the drama is notably devoid of the novel’s Promethean allegory, this reference
does not carry the same symbolic significance as it does in Frankenstein. Consequently, because
Victor’s soliloquies are lifted from Frankenstein without formal revision, the character is
ostensibly caught between fictional and theatrical representation. By having the character speak
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summarized and decontextualized passages from the novel as dramatic soliloquies, Peake
produces a strange theatrical effigy of the novel’s focal figure.
In the scene leading up to this speech, the audience is given additional clues for
interpreting the character’s language. Having interrupted Clerval’s musical interlude, Victor’s
self-aggrandizing statements continue to arouse suspicion from both his friend and the audience.
Declarations such as, “Ha! I see by your eagerness that you expect to be informed of the secret
with which I am acquainted. That cannot be,” and “none but those who have experienced can
conceive the enticements of science” (139), suggest delusions of grandeur and a sense of
intellectual entitlement, characteristic of a conventional villain. In reaction to his friend’s superior
airs, Clerval appeals directly to the audience and acknowledges his friend’s strange behavior.
Lines such as “How wild and mysterious his abstractions—he heeds me not,” “Again in reverie!
This becomes alarming—surely his head is affected,” and “He heeds me not—tis in vain to claim
his notice” (139) work in comic contrast against Victor’s arcane responses and confirm the
audience’s initial distrust of this aristocratic figure in black.
In addition to undercutting the serious tone of Victor’s contemplation, Clerval’s asides to
the audience work the double duty of self-reflexively questioning the authority of descriptive
language in the melodrama. By granting the audience early liberty to question and criticize the
legitimacy of Victor’s rhetoric, Clerval plants the seed for the continued scrutiny of the character
throughout the drama. Encouraged to mistrust the beguiling power of language onstage, minor
theatre audiences would have been deterred by Victor’s reliance on rhetoric. In having Clerval
break the fourth wall and share in the audience’s confusion, Peake acknowledges Victor’s
inappropriate placement in the melodrama. Rather than reimagining the character to better suit
the form and genre, Peake juxtaposes Victor with more conventionally appealing characters to
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emphasize the stark contrast between them. Because Victor’s authoritative, literary language is
generically inconsistent, he is rendered intentionally inaccessible to minor theatre audiences.
However, as the play progresses, Victor’s harsh tone and superior attitude quickly and
completely change. After the pivotal creation scene, Victor’s language changes from villainous
rhetoric to heroic declarations. Following act one’s climactic finale, Peake relies far less on
Shelley’s adapted text for Victor’s speeches, instead opting for his own original dialogue. In
choosing to diverge from Frankenstein’s narrative, Peake needed to compose original lines to suit
these changed circumstances. As a dramatist known for his farces, burlesques, and melodramas,
he was well-versed in the standard dialogue of illegitimate gothic melodrama. Consequently,
Victor’s lines in acts two and three are more conventionally consistent with the gothic melodrama
and take on an overtly moralistic tone.
Now speaking in the traditional language of melodrama, Victor cries out for his beloved
and laments his certain fate: “Agatha! Dearest Agatha! Her name recalls my sinking spirits—
where—where is she to be found? Oh, would that I ne’er had been robbed of her! ‘Twas her loss
that drove me to deep and fatal experiments!” (401). While the character’s earlier speeches deal
with life’s greatest mysteries, his new-found obsession with his beloved Agatha is more
characteristic of melodrama’s archetypal stage hero. Through his claims of loneliness and
heartache, Victor’s grand aspirations are abruptly and completely dismissed for a new guiding
fixation: love. To this end, his moral transgressions are explained away as a symptom of love lost
rather than as the consequence of his Promethean ambitions.
Consequently, as the language of Frankenstein is phased out in favor of Peake’s original
writing with a more heroic bend, the link between Victor’s fictional and theatrical depictions
becomes increasingly tenuous. After the Creature is brought to life, Victor’s mournful tone and
repentant attitude can be sensed through his highly bombastic soliloquies. Histrionic expressions,
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such as “the fangs of remorse tear my bosom” (422), capture the discernible shift in Victor’s
language from Frankenstein to Presumption and mark a signal change for his theatrical
makeover. But while this linguistic turn should make Victor a more dramatically viable character,
this sudden turn does little to salvage his melodramatic representation. Having been vilified from
the play’s beginning, Victor’s hurried recasting as a contrite sinner muddies rather than nuances
his characterization. Never advancing beyond penance for his “sinful” act of creation, Victor`s
language is limited to confessions of guilt and promises of repentance. Referring to himself as a
“miserable and impious being” (399) and “the author of unalterable evils” (423), Victor decries
his own “impious labor” (144), wishing to “extinguish the spark which I so presumptuously
bestowed” (144). Victor’s last-minute recasting does little to remedy his poor placement in the
genre.
Even though his language is made more in keeping with melodrama’s accepted style of
discourse, early indications of his potential villainy preclude a heroic reading of the part.
Furthermore, while his language progresses from devious declarations to apologetic admissions,
his actions become increasingly nefarious throughout the play. While melodramatic audiences
might have been willing to accept a repentant sinner as their drama’s hero, Victor’s increasingly
villainous behavior precludes a favorable reading of the character.
Although Victor’s language early on in the play alludes to his villainous potential, his
behavior immediately following the creation scene carries the continued hope of his heroic
redemption. Determined to rid the world of his hideous progeny, Victor endeavors to destroy his
creation and protect his loved ones. His quest to save his beloved and vanquish the monster
through courage and strength of character follows a highly conventional melodramatic plotline
influenced by the tradition of chivalric romance. In keeping with generic protocol, Victor
doggedly pursues the Creature for the remainder of the play, attempts to free his child brother
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from captivity, and saves Agatha from the burning cottage by bearing her “in his arms over the
couch, in the midst of which parts of the building fall” (153). But while all these brave actions,
paired with his conventionalized rhetoric, would point to Victor’s innate heroism, several telling
events undercut this positive character reading and archetypal association.
Following the 1823 premiere of Presumption, critics opposed to Victor’s immoral actions
focused their complaints on his impious animation of the Creature. Variously described in one
leaflet as “improper,” “pregnant with mischief,” and “the promulgation of such dangerous
doctrines” (Hideous Progenies 5), the creation scene attracted most critical ire. However,
although this scene is considered the source and summit of Victor’s sinful action, his animation
of the Creature is neither his last nor his most severe crime in Presumption.
As Victor’s failed attempts to kill his creation become increasingly brutal, his remorseful
tone correspondingly intensifies. The effect is a discord between action and language that
prevents a clear reading of the character. Constantly punishing himself for his sins while still
viciously pursuing the Creature to no avail, Victor is paralyzed by his angst. The result is a
dramatic figure both ill-suited for the melodramatic stage and greatly distanced from his initial
characterization in Frankenstein.
After first bringing his creation to life “Frankenstein endeavors to stab him with his
dagger, which the Monster strikes from his hand” (152). This first act of violence towards the
then innocent Creature forecasts Victor’s destructive impulses in the play. While in Frankenstein
Victor’s dual role as creator/destroyer is effectively counter-balanced through the dynamic
interplay of the individual/Doppelgänger relationship, his vicious tendencies are heavily
emphasized in the drama. Consequently, as Victor’s language becomes more conventionally
heroic, his villainous behavior correspondingly worsens.
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After his first attack at the end of act one is easily rebuffed by the Creature, Victor returns
in act two with a new attitude and a new weapon. Although Victor previously delighted at the
prospect of creating life, he now chastises himself for his overreaching and his language reflects
this self-admonishment. But although Victor bemoans his “impious labour” and affects innocence
through his claims that he cannot kill the Creature because that would be “murder—murder in its
worst and most horrid form” (144), in his next appearances, he arrives carrying a pistol (157).
After yet another failed attack on his progeny, Victor appears in the next scene with “two loaded
pistols and a musket unloaded” (159). As the threat of physical violence intensifies and Victor
becomes increasingly desperate, the heroism of his quest is greatly diminished. Unable to beat the
Creature through more honorable methods, Victor relies on weapons alone to defeat a being with
only “the mind of an infant” (144). Having seen the Creature’s “gestures of conciliation” (144)
towards Victor in their first meeting, the audience would be aware that he meant his creator no
harm. For this reason, Victor’s unprovoked assaults on the Creature would be viewed as strictly
villainous, despite their conventionally heroic framework.
Having considered Victor’s appearance, language, and action in Presumption, I now look
at the play in performance to determine how his dramatic portrayal lent itself to archetypal
melodramatic associations. Following Presumption’s 1823 premiere, reviewers primarily focused
on T.P. Cooke’s portrayal of the unnamed Creature. But while critics were quick to commend
Cooke’s Creature, James William Wallack’s performance as Victor Frankenstein was given only
a cursory nod and few explicit mentions. Having unsuccessfully taken on heroic roles in
American productions of Hamlet, Macbeth, or Richard III, Wallack returned home to England
where he found relative success playing refined comedy parts in Patent productions. Following
these failed attempts at playing the hero and a stagecoach accident in 1822 which fractured his
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Illustration 9: James William Wallack in Peake’s Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein, Ed.
Stephen C. Behrendt. Romantic Circles.
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leg and ended his acting career shortly thereafter, Wallack’s 1823 turn in Presumption was not
expected to impress.
Considered through the context of Wallack’s performance history and physical
limitations, his casting in the role of Victor speaks to Peake’s approach to the character. Rather
than cast one of the many actors known for playing heroes or villains on the illegitimate stage,
Peake’s decision to bring in an injured and understated performer from the Patent playhouses is a
telling moment in Victor’s dramatic afterlife. In casting an actor from outside the tradition of
illegitimate gothic melodrama, Peake consciously chose to forgo a more conventionally
consistent version of the character.
In addition to Wallack’s theatrical reputation, visual representations of the character in
performance suggest an atypical treatment of the drama’s would-be leading man. Having already
argued that Peake’s approach to the character inconsistently tottered between archetypal heroism
and villainy, these renderings confirm Victor’s liminal characterization. In looking at images of
Victor in Presumption, his pose and posture consistently evoke the passion of “fear.”
Passions were the prevailing aspects or attitudes of dramatic characters, physically
expressed through identifiable postures, stances, or movements. Whether courage or cowardice,
joy or sorrow, each emotion or attribute could be physically enacted and seen onstage. Although
the passions were foundational to nineteenth-century acting in general, their emphasis on clear
expression of character types made them an ideal fit for the gothic melodrama. In a 1759
dramatic treatise entitled A General View of the Stage, Thomas Wilkes and Samuel Derrick
describe the innate connection between the physical manifestation of the passions and the
emotions or intentions conveyed by each: “every passion and sentiment has a proper air and
appearance, both of countenance and action, stamped upon it by Nature, whereby it is easily
known and distinguished” (109). The condition that they be “easily known and distinguished”
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was important because the passions were not subject to individual interpretation. Instead, a
universally understood code of physical signs broadcasted character types and traits to attuned
audiences. Rather than infer intended characterization, nineteenth-century actors and audience
members could consistently recreate and interpret these fixed poses.
Considered in the context of this formulaic approach, Wallack’s defined pose in the above
image, and the many others like it, offers important information about how the character
was portrayed and received. Published in 1810, The Thespian Preceptor was one of many
popular handbooks offering prescriptive directions for the performance of the passions. In it, the
description for playing “fear” matches the included image of Wallack as Victor:
FEAR, violent and sudden, opens the eyes and mouth very wide, draws down the eyebrows, gives the countenance an air of wildness, draws back the elbow parallel with the
sides, lifts up the open hand (the fingers together) to the height of the breast, so that the
palms face the dreadful object, as shields opposed against it. One foot is drawn back
behind the other; so that the body seems shrinking from danger, and putting itself in a
posture for fight. The heart beats violently; the breath is fetched quick and short, and the
whole body is thrown into a general tremor. (34)
The popular decision to depict Victor in a state of fear is telling for his theatrical characterization.
A direct visual link with fear not only reinforces Victor’s apparent cowardice in the play text, but
also precludes a purely heroic or villainous reading of the character. In the description of how a
hero should act, The Thespian Preceptor dictates that one “cannot have a cringing and contracted
deportment: for that denotes both mental and bodily debility, and the consciousness of superior
power is never absent from the hero” (26-27). Similarly, as Booth observes, this behavior is also
inconsistent with the archetypal villain who instead “thinks, chooses, initiates action, alters his
plans makes new ones” (18) without reservation or fear of recourse. The common depiction of
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Illustration 10: James William Wallack in Peake’s Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein,
ed. Stephen C. Behrendt. Romantic Circles.
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Victor in a state of “fear” for Presumption’s production images suggests how nineteenth-century
minor theatre audiences perceived the character and confirms his inability to be read as a true
stage hero or stage villain.
As the first theatrical adaptation of Frankenstein, Presumption set the standard for how
Victor Frankenstein was performed on stage and screen for years afterwards. The lasting
influence of this first production can be sensed through the character’s unsympathetic treatment
or uneven characterization in many subsequent adaptations of the novel, including the famous
1931 film version. In returning Presumption to its theatrical milieu, Victor’s inconsistent
treatment marks him early on as a dramatic anomaly. In the context of illegitimate gothic
melodrama, his indeterminate status was not seen as an asset, but instead, an irreconcilable
character flaw. Consequently, Peake’s Victor is neither an effective melodramatic figure, nor in
keeping with Shelley’s initial conception of the character.
*
Playing the Part: Theatrical Case Study Analysis
Earlier in this chapter, I individually appraised Victor and the Creature’s cross-medium
adaptation for Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein. Through the
comparative close reading of Frankenstein and Presumption, Victor and the Creature’s dramatic
representations were considered in relation to their fictional characterizations. Returning now to
my guiding interest in the Doppelgänger and its applications in the Frankenstein myth, I bring
Victor and the Creature back together to determine how their relationship in the drama (d)evolves
from Shelley’s initial paradigm. Although their Doppelgänger relationship is maintained in
Presumption, Victor and the Creature switch roles and the Creature becomes the story’s most
privileged and governing character. Using the Creature’s animation, the cottage scene, and
Presumption’s climactic finale as my three case studies, I conclude this chapter by demonstrating
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how Victor and the Creature’s theatrical transformations in Presumption directly subvert
Frankenstein’s Doppelgänger relationship.
The cover for Dicks’ Standard Plays’ edition of Presumption captures the changed
dynamic between Victor and the Creature and visually recreates this first fateful encounter.
Artfully positioned with one leg extended and the other on the table, the Creature easily leans
back and appraises his alert creator. Decked out in Classical Roman garb, the Creature’s scanty
attire, sinewy muscles, coy smile, and open pose undeniably express a sense of latent sexuality.
In this picture, the Creature ceases to be abject and his former monstrosity is replaced with
flirtatious charm and physical beauty. For Victor’s part, his dwarfed frame, unsure posture, and
turned back generalize him to the point of comparative obscurity. Furthermore, in keeping with
melodrama’s visual codification, the decisions to clothe Victor in black and the Creature in white
projects a clear good/evil binary onto the characters and is consistent with Peake’s production
notes. Beside his attractive Adonis, Victor is minimized, thus underscoring his ambiguous
representation in Presumption.
In moving from fictional to theatrical presentation, the Creature’s remarkable origins
become increasingly important to the Frankenstein myth. In the novel, this scene fatefully unites
Victor and the Creature and initiates their fatal compulsion towards one another. But while
Shelley emphasizes the emotional implications of this act rather than the experiment itself, the
staging possibilities for such an unusual event enticed many illegitimate theatrical practitioners in
the nineteenth century. Allowing dramatists the opportunity to bring thunder, lighting, electricity,
machinery, and corpses to the minor house stages, the creation scene became integral to
nineteenth-century adaptations of the play. But in addition to the scene’s spectacular prospects, it
still marks the first encounter between Victor and the Creature and offers early insight into the
nature of their relationship.
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Illustration 11: Cover of Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Brinsley Peake,
Bodleian Library, Oxford.
94
Immediately preceding the Creature’s entrance in Presumption, the following action
occurs: Sudden combustion heard, and smoke issues, the door of the laboratory breaks to pieces
with a loud crash – red fire within (144). Providing a formative template for later theatrical and
filmic adaptations, this stage picture is loaded with many of the tropes now associated with this
climactic arrival: the loud explosion, rising smoke, shattered door, and ominous fire all
contributing to a sense of dread and impending doom. Emerging from this disastrous scene, the
Creature is immediately associated with his infernal origins. For a minor theatre audience
acquainted with coded imagery and melodrama’s simplified approach to morality, his birth from
chaos and christening by fire would forecast his later turn towards destruction and apparent evil.
From the Creature’s bold entry onto the stage, Peake returns to Shelley’s description of
this first meeting with a moment of attempted intimacy: “Music. – The Demon looks at
Frankenstein most intently, approaches him with gestures of conciliation. Frankenstein retreats,
the Demon pursuing him” (144). In the novel, Victor can only guess at the Creature’s intentions
as “one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me” (86). Although Victor conjectures that
the Creature meant to detain him, in Presumption, the stage directions clear up this ambiguity by
stating that the Creature approaches with “gestures of conciliation.” Through Cooke’s skillful
pantomime, the Creature’s attempt to appease Victor would be clearly perceived by the audience,
causing them to question their initial perceptions of the mysterious being.
However, while this scene foreshadows the Creature’s innate humanity despite his
menacing appearance, it also anticipates Victor’s reckless behavior and use of force to solve
problems throughout the play. While in the novel Victor flees instead of engaging with his
Creature, Peake’s adaptation robs Victor of his character arc by immediately setting him towards
violent recourse, declaring “Its unearthly ugliness renders it too horrible for human eyes! (The
Demon approaches him.) Fiend! do not dare approach me – avaunt, or dread the fierce vengeance
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of my arm wrecked on your miserable head” (144). As the action intensifies, the music swells,
and the first act comes to its climactic finale, Victor’s malicious intentions towards his hated
Creature are physically expressed:
Music. – Frankenstein takes the sword from the nail, points with it at the Demon, who
snatches the sword, snaps it in two and throws it on stage. The Demon then seizes
Frankenstein – loud thunder heard – throws him violently on the floor, ascends the
staircase, opens the large window, and disappears through the casement. Frankenstein
remains motionless on the ground. – Thunder and lightning until the drop falls.
In a distinct departure from Victor’s abandonment of the Creature in Frankenstein, Peake’s scene
has Victor rebuff his Creature’s advances and try to stab him. While the Creature’s tentative
approach in the novel recalls a parent/child relationship, gothic melodrama’s emphasis on visual
appeal lends itself to a more overt display of rejection. Through Victor’s attempts to inflict pain
on his progeny, the emotional damage caused through Victor’s departure is visually expressed.
As I demonstrated through my analysis of the novel, one of Shelley’s greatest
achievements in Frankenstein is the narrative paralleling of Victor and the Creature and their
mirroring descents into misery. Peake’s choice to make Victor hell-bent on the Creature’s
destruction from the start locks him into a limiting and antagonistic role with no potential for
growth. Conversely, the dynamic interplay between the Creature’s appearance and potential for
both good and evil creates tension, intrigue, and interest in the dramatic figure. In Frankenstein,
Victor denies the Creature, leaves him to fend for himself, and unknowingly establishes a pattern
of behavior which eventually leads them back together. Presumption’s creation scene instead
brings the action to a head by forcing a confrontation between creator and creation. In response to
Victor’s physical threats, the Creature dismissively throws him to the ground, escaping his
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Illustration 12: Le Monstre, 1826, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
These images from Le Monstre et le magicien (1826) feature Frankenstein’s infamous creation
scene. It is significant that their composition is consistent with Presumption’s performance
images and that the characters’ costuming and poses are retained. This continuity speaks to
Frankenstein’s immediate popularity as a nineteenth-century theatrical source text and
Presumption’s pervasive influence on these subsequent adaptations.
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Illustration 13: Le monstre et le magicien, 1826, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.
98
aggressive advances. In doing so, the Creature subverts the hierarchy implicit in Shelley’s
creation scene by instead abandoning Victor.
As the act closes, the Creature’s agency is maintained while “Frankenstein remains
motionless on the ground.” Unlike in the novel, the Creature of the drama does not pursue his
creator, but instead “ascends the staircase, opens the large window, and disappears through the
casement” (144), leaving Victor behind. This power shift defines Victor’s dramatic identity in
relation to a Creature dominant from the outset. These early changes in characterization not only
influence the representations of Victor and the Creature, but also subvert Frankenstein’s
depiction of the individual/Doppelgänger relationship. For this reason, from their first meeting
onward, Victor takes on a secondary and responsorial role to the Creature.
As the play continues, this central conflict between Victor and the Creature persists. In the
novel, the Creature’s role as Victor’s Doppelgänger accounts for their fated connection and
paralleling character arcs. Fatally pulled towards his dominant creator, the Creature of
Frankenstein is forced to follow Victor like his spectral shadow. However, in the drama, it is
Victor who dogs his Creature, pursuing him at every turn and preventing his hopes for happiness.
At the end of act two, Peake stages another confrontation between the two characters. Building
on the spectacle of the first act’s finale, this second showdown takes place at the DeLacey cottage
and ends with disastrous consequences.
In Frankenstein, after the Creature leaves the DeLacey cottage he encounters a child
drowning in a rivulet and saves her, only to be rejected again because of his fearsome
appearance. In Peake’s adaptation, this meaningful scene is retained. But in order to condense the
original narrative for melodramatic presentation, Agatha DeLacey, Victor’s new love interest in
Presumption, takes the place of the child in the woods. Surprised by the sight of the Creature,
Agatha falls into the river, personifying the archetypal “damsel in distress” of melodrama.
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Peake’s sequence of stage directions reveal the Creature’s heroic intentions as he leaps in
to save the drowning Agatha: “The Demon leaps from the bridge and rescues her,” “The Demon
places Agatha, insensible, on a bench near DeLacey,” and “The Demon tenderly guides the hand
of DeLacey and places it on Agatha.” After a beat, “Agatha recovers. – The Demon hangs over
them, with fondness.” Key phrases in these stage directions such as “tenderly guides” and “hangs
over them, with fondness” suggest the Creature’s innate humanity and love for the family as his
own. As in the novel, the DeLaceys renew the Creature’s hopes for redemptive love. In
Presumption, the Creature’s benevolent gestures towards the family are punctuated with this final
act of heroic salvation. However, this moment of brief peace is immediately shattered as, “Felix
and Frankenstein suddenly enter.”
Although the transition from novel to play necessitates a simplified plot, the significance
of bringing Victor into the DeLacey storyline cannot be overstated. By integrating the Creature’s
primary “parent” into his surrogate family, Peake shatters the Creature’s illusions of autonomy
and self-assertion. In the novel, Victor’s enduring influence on the Creature is observed through
the Creature’s compulsive repetition of his initial abandonment and his discovery of Victor’s
journal. In Presumption, Victor’s persistent role in the Creature’s life is literalized through his
physical presence in the DeLaceys’ cottage and his romantic relationship with Agatha DeLacey.
While the Creature’s tale in Frankenstein is his recollection of past experiences,
Presumption’s linear timeline allows Victor to freely intercede and pluck the Creature from his
utopian safe haven while taking Agatha for his own. Victor’s violent re-entry into the Creature’s
life is punctuated by another attempt to destroy him: “Music. – Felix discharges his gun and
wounds the Demon, who writhes under the wound. – In desperation pulls a burning branch from
the fire – rushes at them – beholds Frankenstein – in agony of feeling dashes through the
portico.” In response to this attack, the Creature likewise responds with physical force, as he did
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at the close of act one, and sets “light to the thatch and Rafters, with malignant joy – as parts of
the building fall.” This quick sequence of tit-for-tat retaliation shows the physical abuses suffered
by the well-meaning Creature.
Acting more like a raging fury than a sovereign individual, Victor is prematurely defined
by his as yet unjustified fixation with the Creature. Peake limits Victor’s characterization by
forcing him to play the story’s ending from the beginning. Consequently, a directionless Victor
determinedly seeks retribution for a crime not yet committed and an injustice still to be enacted
by the blameless Creature. As a result, when the Creature finally rebels at this late stage in the
play, the flailing Victor has no room to grow, proving himself to be a faded remnant of Shelley’s
original conception of the character. This reduction of Victor from a Promethean scientist in the
novel to a wailing harpy in the drama re-focuses the story and shifts audience sympathy onto the
Creature. This shift in characterization contributes to the Creature’s privileging in Presumption
and allows him to take the center stage as the play’s central figure, despite generic expectation
and Shelley’s original conception.
Victor and the Creature’s escalating conflicts throughout the drama ultimately lead to
their final confrontation. In Frankenstein’s cross-medium adaptation, the story’s space and scale
had to be altered to adhere to theatrical expectations and minor theatre regulations. Consequently,
the vast geographical distances covered in the novel were radically reduced to fit within the
physical confines of the stage. In the process, the action in Presumption is primarily confined to
the domestic sphere. But although Frankenstein’s Swiss Alps, English countryside, and Arctic
tundra are necessarily lost in translation, this final showdown between Victor and the Creature in
the mountains pays tribute to the text’s Romantic origins.
Even though he initiated the battle, in Presumption’s final act, Victor declares that “this
recontre shall terminate his detested life or mine” (159). This statement is a reminder of Victor’s
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ineffectual efforts to defeat his Creature up to this point. Having doggedly pursued him into the
mountains, Victor meets the Creature in one last stand-off:
Music. – Frankenstein discharges his musket. – The Demon and Frankenstein meet at the
very extremity of the stage. – Frankenstein fires – the avalanche falls and annihilates the
Demon and Frankenstein. – A heavy fall of snow succeeds. – Loud thunder heard, and all
the characters form a picture as the curtain falls.
Although the stage directions for this sequence are brief, the impressive technical capacity of
nineteenth-century theatres would have made this conclusion spectacular. For this reason,
illegitimate theatrical conventions must be kept in mind while reading these directions. This
third and final confrontation between Victor and the Creature maintains the progressive pattern of
enhanced spectacle and heightened kinetic energy, as initiated by the concluding scenes from the
first and second acts. From the flash and fear of the creation scene in act one to the terror and
danger of the fiery cottage in act two, the grand finale’s power would have rocked the English
Opera House and, as critics have confirmed, left audiences cheering for more.
However, beyond the spectacular quality of this colossal conclusion, it is necessary to
unpack if or how this ending serves as a fitting consummation of Victor and the Creature’s
Doppelgänger relationship, as re-imagined by Peake. As I mentioned before, this climactic
confrontation comes from Victor’s desire to end their conflict. Once again, it is Victor who
brings the crisis to a head, forcing the Creature to engage in violent combat. Now armed with a
musket, significantly raising the threat-level from the sword and dagger of their earlier
altercations, Victor is determined to kill his creation at any cost.
In Frankenstein, Victor and the Creature’s shared pursuit of one another locks them into a
death spiral until each is finally devoured by this fatal obsession. In the novel’s closing moments,
the Creature willingly seeks his own end since Victor’s death leaves him without his twinned
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soul and dominant counterpart. This conclusion marks an appropriate end for Shelley’s narrative
by implicitly confirming Victor’s continued influence over the Creature.
In Presumption’s final moments, Victor’s repeated attempts to master the Creature
similarly lead to a common fate. The discharged musket and the avalanche it triggers provide an
appropriate ending for Peake’s drama and reflect the changed nature of Victor and the Creature’s
relationship. For this reason, the final stage picture with creator and creation destroyed by
Victor’s continued insolence places the blame squarely on his shoulders and serves as an
appropriate ending to this tale of presumption.
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A Final Curtain Call: Concluding Remarks
In her introduction to Frankenstein’s 1831 edition, Mary Shelley recounts the vision of
Victor Frankenstein and the Creature that first inspired her to write the novel: “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” (9). The feeling of first seeing these characters
in the theatre of her mind inspired Shelley to compose her tale, thus marking the beginning of
Victor and the Creature’s Doppelgänger relationship. But although she could not have guessed it
at the time, Shelley experienced this same sensation of seeing Victor and the Creature only a few
years later when she watched her characters come to life onstage. In 1823, only five years after
the novel’s initial publication, Shelley attended a performance of Richard Brinsley Peake’s
theatrical adaptation of Frankenstein, Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein at the English
Opera House. That night, she saw her infamous character doubles reimagined and her first act of
literary creation replayed before her eyes.
In this study, I returned to Shelley’s novel and Peake’s act of creative reinterpretation to
consider how each presented Victor Frankenstein and the Creature’s Doppelgänger relationship.
By comparing Frankenstein’s text with Presumption’s script and performance history, I explored
how this central relationship was changed through cross-medium adaptation in the nineteenth
century.
Beginning with my close reading of Frankenstein, I observed Victor and the Creature’s
fatal compulsion towards each other. Looking at their initial fixation, shared disillusionment, and
twin descents, I read their relationship as a perversion of the ideal love paradigm. With this
conceit in mind, I demonstrated how Victor’s hierarchical privileging in the Doppelgänger
relationship derails both characters’ hopes of happiness and irrevocably joins them together.
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Turning my attention towards the novel’s adaptation and afterlife, I established a
connection between Victor and the Creature’s fictional and theatrical representations. Using the
novel’s first adaptation for the stage, Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption; or, The Fate of
Frankenstein, I explored points of connection and contrast between these two representations of
Victor, the Creature, and the ties which bind them. Returning Presumption to its theatrical
context, I considered both how and why different conventions were used to adapt these characters
for the illegitimate gothic melodrama. Through an emphasis on historical context, performance
history, critical accounts, and stage directions, I showed that Victor’s melodramatic adaptation
was not as successful as his Creature’s. Consequently, their Doppelgänger relationship in
Frankenstein is subverted and the Creature is privileged as the drama’s focal figure.
But having observed these changes, what significance do they ultimately bring to the
continued reading and interpretation of both Frankenstein and Presumption? Although
Presumption has not been staged in over a century, its lasting influence still lives on in
Frankenstein’s stage, film, and cultural afterlives. In popular conceptions of the Frankenstein
myth, the Creature is often silent, brightly colored, and given his creator’s surname:
Frankenstein. On the other hand, Victor as Dr. Frankenstein is alternatively cast as a madcap
scientist, maddeningly devoted to his work, or just simply mad. The persistent association of
these melodramatic tropes with Victor and the Creature speaks to Presumption’s pervasive
influence on the general understanding of the characters.
In addition to its privileged role as Frankenstein’s first creative adaptation, Presumption
also serves an important critical function as a contemporary commentary on the novel.
Furthermore, its broad appeal, landmark success, and immediate imitators confirm the drama’s
formative influence on the public reception of Shelley’s novel in its own age. As a result,
Presumption’s ubiquity in the nineteenth century rekindled interest in the novel and contributed
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to the Victorian renaissance of Mary Shelley and her writing. On the heels of Presumption’s
immediate fame, Shelley was approached by publishers to prepare another edition of
Frankenstein, a clear indication of the novel’s resurgent popularity. The fact that Shelley saw
Presumption in performance forges an even more immediate connection between the drama and
the novel, making it possible to read her liberal edits for this 1831 edition alongside the drama’s
significant alterations to its source text. Victor’s revised description of his Creature as “the living
monument of presumption and rash ignorance” (65) affirms this viewpoint and suggests a more
nuanced creative continuity between the drama and the novel. In this way, both Frankenstein and
Presumption act as each other’s source text and maintain a reciprocal relationship directly
mirrored by the changed dynamic of Victor and the Creature through cross-medium adaptation.
For this reason, although Frankenstein and Presumption offer seemingly contrary
depictions of Victor and the Creature’s Doppelgänger relationship, they both contribute to a
mutual understanding of each other and should be read as two equally valuable perspectives on
one remarkable story. While Presumption’s continued success as a play does not compare with
Frankenstein’s legacy in literature, its formative influence on the novel’s history forges an
intrinsic link between the two. Like Victor and the Creature, Frankenstein and Presumption are
joined together as yet another example of Frankenstein’s many doubles.
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