Frankenstein (5):

1
Frankenstein (5)

• Conclusion

2
Outline

• The novels structure and the function of Walton
  (passion vs. humanity)
• The roles of Women and the Others
• On Boundary-Crossing
• The Romantic Hero, or the Modern Prometheus
  ideal and responsibilities
• The novel
• as a science fiction
• as a gothic fiction and its personal implication
• References

3
The novels structure

• Three concentric circles about the stories of
  three mens ambition
• Walton (to Margaret) ?
• Frankenstein (to Walton) ?
• the Monster (to Frankenstein)
• parallel and contrast rescue, animation,
  communication
• What Walton does to F vs. what F does to the
  monster
• How Walton treats Margaret vs. how F treats
  Elizabeth
• Recurrent motifs
• Motherlessness or Loss of mothers Walton,
  Victor, Caroline, Elizabeth, Safie
• Dis-empowered fathers Carolines, de Lacey,
  Safies father

4
Robert Waltons Function

• He serves as
• The story-teller/letter-writer and a human
  connection of the three parts of the story.
• a foil for Frankenstein.
• Please see the similarities in their passion in
  ppt (1)

5
Robert Walton vs. Frankenstein Friendship

• Like Frankenstein, he is inspired by knowledge
  and desires glory. But he
• is self-educated (19)
• reads history of voyages and poetry. His desire
  is to go to a place never before visited (16).
• Like Frankenstein, he cherishes friendship, but
  Walton desires it because he has been lonely as
  a youth.
• Walton is more influenced by Margaret to dislike
  violence
• A youth passed in solitude, my best years spent
  under your Margarets gentle and feminine
  fosterage, has so refined the groundwork of my
  character that I cannot overcome an intense
  distaste to the usual brutality exercised on
  board ship (20).

6
Walton (vs. Frankenstein) (2) Adjustment and
Sympathy

• Waltons decision to go back I cannot lead them
  unwillingly to danger, and I must return." (216)
• Frankensteins responses
• (1) to be heroic (215)
• (2) will not return, feels himself justified in
  desiring the death of his adversary (217)
• (3) criticizes his own passion.
• Watching the untimely extinction of Fs
  glorious spirit, Walton says
• My tears flow my mind is over-shadowed by a
  cloud of disappointment. But I journey towards
  England, and may there find consolation (218)

7
Walton // Frankenstein

• Passion to cross human boundaries
• Injunction by their fathers (against their
  pursuit of a seafaring life or alchemy).
• In between the dichotomy between
• passion and the human concerns
• the public sphere and the domestic,
• Walton makes compromises.
• He is as male-centered as F.

8
Women in the novel Caroline

• Supportive the domestic field, or
  self-sacrificing in the public sphere
• Caroline Beaufort (Fs mother) does handiwork to
  support her father when he falls into poverty
• Rescued, Caroline becomes like an angel a
  guardian angel (34) to the afflicted and at
  home. ? She rescues Elizabeth and sets a model
  for her.
• My mother's tender caresses and my father's
  smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me
  (33)

9
Women in the novel Elizabeth

• Rescued, intended to be a gift for F
• Calmer than F (38)
• Poetic but empty
• she busied herself in following the aerial
  creations of the poets (38), in the appearance
  of nature.
• The world to F--a secret to E, it was a
  vacancy, which she sought to people with
  imaginations of her own. (36)
• Selfless, soft and kindness (40)? Her sympathy
  was ours
• Amused by her trifling occupations, which takes
  up her time. (64)
• A gentle companion (with soft looks of compassion
  190) to F when he is blasted and miserable never
  talks about her own problems.
• Passive, unable to help Justine or save herself.

10
Women in the novel Justine

• Rejected by her mother, Madame Moritz, who cannot
  stand Justine (64)
• Rescued by Caroline.
• Justine sees C as her model She thought her the
  model of all excellence and endeavoured to
  imitate her phraseology and manners, so that even
  now she often reminds meElizabeth of her. (65)
• When being wronged, the poor sufferer tries to
  comfort the others, assumes the air of
  cheerfulness and represses her tears. (88).

11
Women in the novel Safie and her Mother

• The mother is an exception.
• She teaches the daughter to aspire to higher
  powers of intellect, and an independence of
  spirit forbidden to the female followers of
  Mahomet (p. 124)
• Safie still plays the roles of angel and the
  rescued, though she actively searches for Felix.
  

12
The Others in the novel the Oriental, Arabian
and Irish

• Exoticized p. 69 Oriental writings
• life appears to consist in a warm sun and a
  garden of roses,--in the smiles and frowns of a
  fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own
  heart. How different from the manly and heroical
  poetry of Greece and Rome!
• Exploited Clervalbelieves that his knowledge
  can assist colonialism (158)
• Humanity Denied
• Treatment of the Arabs (Safies father) by the
  court, and then by the novel
• The Irish nurse (p. 177) She was a hired
  nurse, the wife of one of the turnkeys, and her
  countenance expressed all those bad qualities
  which often characterize that class.

13
Conclusion on Boundary-Crossing

• Between the human and the immortal crossed only
  in imagination
• Empathy and Differentiation in Keats Odes
  Autumn, the Grecian Urn
• Mortality vs. Art and Nature Ozymandias
• Breaking the Constraint (of convention, etc)
  Song The Lady of Shalott terrifying but
  liberating
• Othering Can involve invasion, belittling or
  even sacrificing whats beyond the boundaries
• My Last Duchess Porphyrias Lover
• Loss of Self and Family Can lead to neglecting
  our location, or our own duties for the immediate
  environment
• e.g. Victors delay and irresponsibility
• The return of the repressed Internal/Psychologica
  l Boundaries
• Why are we afraid of whats actually familiar or
  similar to us? e.g. Frankenstein and The
  Tell-Tale Heart

14
Romantic Hero Re-Educated but not Released

• Romantic Hero solitary and idealistic
  over-reacher, finding solace in nature, seeking
  to explore and transcend human boundaries (Three
  types Promethean hero, Byronic hero, Gothic
  hero-villain source see p. vi for meanings of
  Prometheus.)
• Both Frankenstein and his monster, in their
  obsessive pursuit of revenge, have been not only
  isolated but also degraded.
• Frankensteins and the monsters confirmation and
  denial of passion? peace or not? (p. 223)

15
No Peace Endless Stories Follow

• Frankenstein as a feminist sci-fi poses questions
  such as
• Can we be responsible for our scientific
  creations? And how?
• How do we distinguish between the human and the
  inhuman (scientifically reproduced or
  artificially made)?
• Can Man play the role of God, or mother?

16
Frankenstein as a Feminist Gothic

• emotions externalized in a radical new way
• supernatural or unnatural phenomena, and even
  inanimate objects.
• fear of imprisonment or entrapment, of rape and
  personal violation, of the triumph of evil over
  good and chaos over order
• The historical moment characterized by increasing
  disillusionment with Enlightenment rationality
  and by bloody revolutions in America and France.
  (ref)

17
Frankenstein as a Feminist Gothic

• P. 9 a waking dream I did not sleep, nor
  could I be said to think. My imaginations,
  unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the
  successive images that arose in my mind with a
  vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie.
  I saw - with shut eyes, but acute mental vision -
  I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts
  kneeling beside the thing he had put together.
• The studentherself, or Shelley whats put
  together herself, the dead mother, or child.
• Mary Shelleys personal life? the novel
  (completed in 1817)
• her own birth which killed her mother (1797)
• her own baby's death at ten days (1815)
• the disturbing presence of her step sister Claire
  Clairmont pregnant by Byron
• Suicide of Harriet, Shelleys first wife
• her fear of being a victim of the omnipotent
  Utopianism of her husband (ref. Britton)

18
Reference

• James Brown. "Through the Looking Glass Victor
  Frankenstein and Robert Owen Extrapolation 43,
  no. 3 (fall 2002) 263-76.
• Ron Britton.  Belief and Imagination
  Explorations in Psychoanalysis.
  www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/newlibr2.htm