7/11/07 - English Literature - Mary Shelley: Frankenstein

In the 1810s people began to question how it was possible for people to make a rational decision about the world. How could one tell what was natural? It was an issue much debated in literature, interestingly enough, manifested through Gothic language.

"Deprived of the old Government, deprived in a manner of all Government, France, fallen as a Monarchy, to common speculators might have appeared more likely to be an object of pity or insult, according to the disposition of the circumjacent powers, than to be the scourge and terror of them all. But out of the tomb of the murdered Monarchy in France, has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man. Going straight forward to its end, unappalled by peril, unchecked by remorse, despising all common maxims and all common means, that hideous phantom overpowered those who could not believe it was possible she could at all exist, except on the principles, which habit rather than nature had persuaded them were necessary to their own particular welfare and to their own ordinary modes of action."
[Edmund Burke, ‘Letters Addressed to A Member of the Present Parliament, on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France’]

Here the French revolution is described as a kind of Frankenstein's monster. The monster is "against nature." Burke blamed philosophers for the revolution, and said its supporters were unnatural because they were creatures of habit rather than nature. They think in social and conventional ways. And note also that Burke's monster is female.

"But, by the habitual slothfulness of rust intellects, or the depravity of the heart, lulled into hardness on the lascivious couch of pleasure, those heavenly beams are obscured, and man either appears as an hideous monster, a devouring beast; or a spiritless reptile, without dignity or humanity."
[Mary Wollstonecraft, The Origin and Progress of the French Revolution]

Wollstonecraft uses the same language as Burke but she takes the opposite view, when opposing the French royalty rather than the supporters of the revolution. She thinks royalty cannot think properly because it is obscured by luxury. Paine discusses his view that the inheritance of property to the oldest child is like a monster also, like a "cannibal feast."

The possibility of knowledge was consistent and natural. The "wisdom of nature," according to Burke. The reformers wanted new forms of knowledge but Burke reacted against this, saying that knowledge must be passed from generation to generation, and that the reformers were monstrous.

Wollstonecraft had said that women were deflected from knowledge by social pressures.

"Everything new appears to them wrong; and not able to distinguish the possible from the monstrous, they fear where no fear should find a place, running from the light of reason, as if it were a firebrand; yet the limits of the possible have never been defined to stop the sturdy innovator's hand."
[Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women]

She says it is possible to think new thoughts, while Burke thought this was false. Women could not think new thoughts because they were told that the alternative to conventional thinking was monstrous.

Is it possible to think new things for yourself? Shelley is ambivalent about the value of reason. Frankenstein seems to value to monster's independent thinking. When the monster hears Saffy reading to her mother he applies her words to himself; he therefore has innate reason.

"But 'Paradise Lost' excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting. I often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me, to my own. Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy, and prosperous, guarded by, the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature, but I was wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me."
[Frankenstein]

But the last sentence indicates that he can only understand the reason in terms of himself. Elsewhere, he has to learn how to apply Paradise Lost to the world. Shelley subverts the novel's notions.

"Remember 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. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend."
[Frankenstein]

The problematic result of this in the monster is that he cannot recognise who is who; he identifies with both Adam and Satan. He cannot work out the difference between good and evil. Like Eve he was created out of others' body parts.

"I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers--their grace, beauty, and delicate complexions; but how was I terrified when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas! I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity."
[Frankenstein]

The monster knows what he looks like. The passage is a reference back to Paradise Lost, when Eve admires her reflection in a pool of water.

As I bent down to look, just opposite,
A shape within the watery gleam appeared
Bending to look on me, I started back,
It started back, but pleas'd I soon returned,
Pleas'd it returned as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love; there I had fixt
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warned me, What thou seest,
What there thou seest fair Creature is thy self..."
[Milton, Paradise Lost]

Both Eve and the monster "start back." Shelley wanted to take away the original sin that blames Eve for the Fall, as did Wollstonecraft.

"We must get entirely clear of all the notions drawn from the wild traditions of original sin: the eating of the apple, the theft of Prometheus, the opening of Pandora’s box, and the other fables, too tedious to enumerate, on which priests have erected their massive structures of imposition, to persuade us, that we are naturally inclined to evil."
[Wollstonecraft, The Origin and Progress of the French Revolution]

Shelley does this by saying that good and evil can be contingent, not fixed. Modern Enlightenement thought and reason are commingled with the murdering nature of the monster.

The same also applies to Victor. He is single-minded, using science to achieve his goals. He sees the world only in terms of himself. He wants to reproduce himself in his monster. Both Victor and Walton are narcissistic. Victor also holds the idea that women are his possessions. If anyone compliments his wife he takes it personally because he sees her as an extension of himself. "I pursues Nature to her hiding places": Shelley plants pointers towards Victor's project, which is patriarchal and misogynistic. He ea second monster, but after his work is done he lists a number of problems with creating a female monster. He believes she will lack provocation in murdering; she will lack reason; she may not compact with her creation, i.e. she may not marry the male monster, "they might even hate each other"; and ugliness in women is far worse than ugliness in men. His final reason is that his female monster might desire him rather than his monster. He is afraid of female sexual autonomy and female reasoning. All the female characters die by the end of the novel. Left behind is an all-male community, the mutual dependence of Victor and the creatures. Victor is in love with his creature in a narcissistic way. His father even thinks he has neglected Elizabeth as if he is having a love affair. Well, in a way, he is. The ending is written like a Romantic novel, with a touching reunion of a man and his creation. Victor is a solipsist and for him, women are basically replacements for each other.

Does Shelley resolve the issue? She is interested in the mutually supportive bourgeois family. Children are mutually supportive and obedient to their family. There is something coercive in this enlightenment ideal; the family violently drive away the monster. If is difficult to say how people can react rationally to the world. Shelley debates the issue but does not offer a resolution.