Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Lecture Notes

Genre
- Romantic novel: Romantics relied on their feelings, imagination and rejected science.
Since this is a romantic novel, Mary Shelley wanted to show the reader the power of
nature and how humans will suffer if they defy it. She tries to convince the reader to rely
on nature by showing that scientists will never make a creature as perfect as nature’s
creatures.
- Gothic novel: Frankenstein is also a gothic novel. Mary Shelley’s text is a horror story
with a gloomy atmosphere; rainy nights and isolated caves also give a mysterious
element to the novel. Furthermore, this novel uses other gothic elements such as death,
supernatural creatures, and scary settings (the cemetery).
- Science Fiction: Shelley’s text could also be read as a science-fiction narrative. the main
idea involves a scientific experiment that is advanced and unlikely to happen, the
narrative involves a hideous creature who is alien-like, and the story is very imaginative.

Context Then and Now

- The protagonist can be either Frankenstein (as a scientist who defies nature) or the
Monster (as the victim who was bullied and was made evil by the society).
-Mary Shelley was interested in science because she lost her child. She was desperate to
bring her back to life and for that reason, she read a lot about science and biology hoping
that she can find resurrect a dead body.
-Mary Shelley published different versions of the novel. The last version was changed a
lot and the main idea behind the story is lost because of the changes; it focuses on how
humans can’t control their fate and they might do things that are out of their control.
- She thought of her novel as her child because she worked hard and stayed up taking
care of for a long time, and also called it her “monster” because of the way society treated
the narrative and rejected her as a writer. Also because the novel grew and changed
through the different versions.
-This novel is full of parallels. Elizabeth and Justine are very similar; both of them don’t
have a family and they also used to live in poverty. Robert is similar to Frankenstein;
both are young and wanted to achieve something great.
-Frankenstein and the Modern Prometheus is a groundbreaking novel because people still
reference it in movies, in politics, and in social discourses till nowadays.
-The monster in movie adaptions wasn’t as scary as Shelley’s description.

Critical Analysis
The following notes are all based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Second Norton
Critical Edition, edited by J. Paul Hunter (1996).
- Ecological reading: Critics argue that the novel does not provide a logical explanation
as to why the monster is very ugly even though it is a collection of perfect and beautiful
human body parts. But 19th century philosophers believed that parts are only beautiful as
part of the whole. The parts represent inner beauty and inner thoughts. Therefore, it is
believed that the monster is dark, evil, and ugly because he is a representation of Victor’s
inner self and a result of the dark secret lab he was created in.

- Psychoanalytic reading: It can be argued that Victor Frankenstein and his monster are
the same character. That is to argue that Victor is a schizophrenic character and the
monster represents one of his inner personalities. Thus, Victor kills his family members
directly and indirectly. This reading is a possible one because Victor and his creature are
always present at the same places and they both perish in the same day. The similarities
between the two characters include: they are both isolated from societies; while Victor
was lonely for the most part of his life by choice because he was perusing science, the
monster is reject by the society for his physical appearance. They were both raised up
without the warmth and love of a mother, as Victor lost his mother when he was a child,
and the monster woke up to be alone with no one around. They ended up being each
other's companions. And the monster killed everyone Victor loved and thought of as
family, then Victor destroyed the only companion the monster could have had. So, they
were both fueled by hatred and anger.

- Metafiction reading: It can be easily argued that Mary Shelley is the monster in the
narrative given her background and lineage. She and her mother were both severely
rejected in their societies and had to endure bullying and live feeling alienated and lonely.
And the books the monster reads closely and falls in love with are all Mary Shelley’s
favorites; for example, Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

- Formalistic reading: Mary Shelley toys with editorial authority; Walton is writing letters
to his sister and it is expected that the sister has the manuscript to the novel and is the one
who publishes it; the sister’s name is Margret Walton Seville; the initials to the name are
MWS which could also represent Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.

- Political reading: The novel had and still has a large impact on sociopolitical discourses.
European colonialism of the indigenous population of America is called the American
Frankenstein. And any lab experimentation on humans or animals that goes wrong is also
linked to the novel up until today.

- Neo-Miltonic reading: There are multiple references in the text to Milton’s Paradise
Lost. The monster is not sure if he is an Adam or a Satan-figure as Victor stands for God.
Nonetheless, some critics believe that Victor represents Eve and not God. Here is why:
Victor gives birth to a monster (one way or the other), he runs away from his monster
right after the monster opens its eyes which can be equated with post-partum depression,
he is fragile and weak; always having nervous break downs, he is a sinner and the
religious creation story states that Eve eats from the apple and then tempts Adam to do
the same making her the sinner, Eve by eating from the tree of knowledge shows her
desire for discovery and Victor is a scientist with a fatal hunger for knowledge, and
finally both their actions cause them dearly.

- Romantic reading: As a romantic novel nature is focal in the narrative. Victor

Frankenstein identifies nature as feminine. He nonetheless eliminates the role of the
female when he creates a species without needing a mother, thus nature severely punishes
him for his sin.

- Feminist reading: The novel undeniably sheds light on gender issues. Mary Shelly uses
her mother’s writings and ideas to show how dangerous it is to value males over females
in societies. But it is also important to note that Victor creates his male monster without
ever pausing to think of what this creature might think or want, while when he starts to
create a female monster and it occurs to him that this female might have a free will and
might not be obedient the idea scares him so much that he instantly destroys her.

- Racial science reading: The skin color of Mary Shelley’s monster is yellow. As race
studies were emerging in the 19th century, Mary Shelley’s readers would have identified
the monster as a dangerous eastern figure, because yellow was used to describe the
Mongolian race (eastern group of people). Walton in the novel also describes the monster
as a non-European savage which solidifies the argument that the monster in the text is a
representation of an eastern figure thus making the text an orientalist text. Though the
monster’s skin color is not the only element that makes Shelley’s narrative orientalist and
racist; Safie and her escape from her eastern oppressive father, and Caroline describing
Elizabeth’s white skin color when she first saw her reflects white supremacy because
white skin was considered beautiful and pretty while darker skin was considered ugly,
amongst many other various details also supports this argument.