Frankenstein

1
Frankenstein

• Exploration
• Romantic Revolution
• Scientific Revolution
• Social Revolution
• Psychological Revolution

2
Two scenes of Creation

• 934-5 It was on a dreary night of November that I
  beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an
  anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I
  collected the instruments of life around me, that
  I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless
  thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in
  the morning the rain pattered dismally against
  the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out,
  when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished
  light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature
  open it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion
  agitated its limbs.

• 911-12 Many and long were the conversations
  between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a
  devout but nearly silent listener. During one of
  these, various philosophical doctrines were
  discussed, and among others the nature of the
  principle of life, and whether there was any
  probability of its ever being discovered and
  communicated. They talked of the experiments of
  Dr. Darwin,... I began that day with the words,
  It was on a dreary night of November, making only
  a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking
  dream.

3
What is the significance of this doubling?

• Narrative/literary creativity is like monstrosity
  (male parturition)
• both promethean activities
• acts of imagination have profound social and
  filial consequences
• modern mythmaking
• Romantic conventions are clearly established
• monster becomes a profane sign of all that
  society rejects (race, class, gender)

4
Justines trial

• 949 Ch. 7
• Justine also was a girl of merit and possessed
  qualities which promised to render her life
  happy now all was to be obliterated in an
  ignominious grave, and I the cause! A thousand
  times rather would I have confessed myself guilty
  of the crime ascribed to Justine, but I was
  absent when it was committed, and such a
  declaration would have been considered as the
  ravings of a madman and would not have exculpated
  her who suffered through me.

• 952 I did confess but I confessed a lie!

5
Sublime landscape

• 958
• The next day..

• 959 Mutability
• The monster