Frankenstein (5):

1. Frankenstein (5): Conclusion

2. Outline • The novel’s 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 novel’s structure • Three concentric circles about the stories of three men’s ambition: • Walton (to Margaret)  • Frankenstein (to Walton)  • the Monster (to Frankenstein) • Recurrent motifs: Lacking Parents • Motherlessness or Loss of mothers: Walton, Victor, Caroline, Elizabeth, Safie • Dis-empowered fathers: Caroline’s, de Lacey, Safie’s father • Transcending human boundaries • parallel and contrast: rescue/animation vs. rejection, communication vs. lack of it • What Walton does to F vs. what F does to the monster • How Walton treats Margaret vs. how F treats Elizabeth

4. Robert Walton’s 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 [Margaret’s] 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 • Walton’s decision to go back— • “ignorant and disappointed” (215) • “I cannot lead them unwillingly to danger, and I must return." (216) • Frankenstein’s 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. (217) • Watching the “untimely extinction” of F’s 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). • Struggles in between the dichotomy between • passion and the human concerns • the public sphere and the domestic Walton makes compromises, but he is as male-centered as F. (e.g. 212-13 “what will be the state of your mind?)

8. Women in the novel: Caroline • Supportive in the domestic field, or self-sacrificing in the public sphere • Caroline Beaufort (F’s 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) • Elizabeth—calmer and more concentrated disposition

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; expects to be a care-taker. • Passive, unable to help Justine or save herself; die unknowningly

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 me[Elizabeth] of her.” (65) • Selfless: 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: Clerval—believes that his knowledge can assist colonialism (158) • Humanity Denied : • Treatment of the Arabs (Safie’s 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’ “Ode on 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 what’s beyond the boundaries • “My Last Duchess” “Porphyria’s Lover” • Loss of “Self” and Family: Can lead to neglecting our location, or our own duties for the immediate environment; • e.g. Victor’s delay and irresponsibility • The return of the repressed: Internal/Psychological Boundaries: • Why are we afraid of what’s 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.’ • Frankenstein’s and the monster’s 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 I. Gothic genre –popular since late 18th century • emotions externalized in a radically new way; • supernatural or unnatural phenomena, and even inanimate objects. •  the unconscious: fear of imprisonment or entrapment, of rape and personal violation, of the triumph of evil over good and chaos over order •  the historical: 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 2. F as Shelley’s hideous progeny or a Feminist Gothic • exposure of its misogyny – treatment of women as weak or evil • criticism of male creation and exposure of its deepest fear: the monstrous female

18. 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.”

19. Frankenstein as a Feminist Gothic • The student—herself, or Shelley; what’s put together – herself, the dead mother, or child. • Mary Shelley’s 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, Shelley’s first wife • her fear of being a victim of the omnipotent Utopianism of her husband (ref. Britton)

20. 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