Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Philosophical and theological aspects of the first science fiction novel

Mary Wollstonecraft

Shelley (1797-1851)

She was only 19 when she finished writing „Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus” (May 1817; published

Mars1818).

Novel and the filmFilm

After the 1931 classic with Boris Karloff as the monster and Colin Clive as his creator, the popular image is of “Doctor” or “Baron” Frankenstein. We often name the monster Frankenstein.

The monster becomes an implacably brutal, murderous creature. At the film’s climax, man and monster are attacked by vengeful villagers swirling up the mountain to destroy the castle and its inhabitants.

Novel Victor Frankenstein is an egotistical undergraduate who tells himself he would be Prometheus but rejects the humanity he claims to want to help. Monster have no name

The innately noble monster is the most gifted character in the book.

A romantic community In mid-June 1816 outside Geneva at Villa Diodati, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), Mary Shelley, Lord Byron (1788-1824), Claire Clairmont (1798-1879), and J. W. Polidori (1795-1821) challenged each other one evening to write “ghost stories.”

These people lived and wanted to live Romantic lives.

Couples without marriage and with betrayals of legitimate wives

William Godwin, Mary’s father, was a famous advocate of free love. Mary Wollstonecraft, who died soon after Mary’s birth, was a famous feminist.

The plot…Frankenstein is written in the form of a frame story that starts with Captain Robert Walton writing letters to his sister. It takes place during an unspecified time in the 18th Century, as the letters' dates are shown as "17—".

The novel Frankenstein is written in epistolary form, documenting a correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton Saville.

Captain Walton's introductory frame narrative

Victor Frankenstein's narrative

Captain Walton's concluding frame narrative

Mythical background

The classic myth of Prometheus who have stollen the fire from the gods of Olympia and suffered the punishment - Victor sees himself as „modern” Prometheus.

Myth of Hyperborea - a land of happiness outside of the mountains of cold - Capitan Rober Walton seeks to find such place

Faust and Golem

Victor is, in many ways, a version of Faust, a legendary and literary character based on a real 16th-century German conjurer. (Shelley refers to Christopher Marlow’s version (1604) of Faust where he is at the end condemned to hell for what he has done) The monster recalls the 17th-century Jewish legend of the Golem. Man made of clay animated by Tetragrammaton.

The oldest description of the creation of a golem by a historical figure is included in a tradition connected to Rabbi Eliyahu of Chełm (1550–1583). The most famous golem narrative involves Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th century rabbi of Prague, also known as the Maharal

Monster’s list of lectures

Monster learns to read by overhearing and watching family in the mountain cottage.

Mary Shelley provides his list of lectures:

John Milton - Paradise Lost (1667)

Plutarch of Chaeronea - Lives (I century AD)

Wolfgang Goethe - Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

Frankenstein as Science Fiction novel: Science beyond human control

Frankenstein’s monster is an icon for science beyond human control.

Frankenstein is such an egotist that he thinks that thanks to science he can give a humanity the control over death.

He thinks that he can find nothing interesting in school, so he decides to study by himself.

He is the archetype of „mad scientist”, who in his laboratory studies continuously until he will have a result.

Frankenstein as Science Fiction novel: Gothic explique

Horace Walpole - The Castle of Otranto. A Gothic Story (1764)

Its subtitle, A Gothic Story, explicitly refers to the story’s setting. Gothic refers to grotesque British ideas about Roman Catholicism and southern European culture.

Gothic literature involves: mysterious works of supernatural (witchcraft), family curse, and final marriage to restore the balance and remove the curse.

Ann Radcliffe (1764—1823), as in The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), added a fantastic twist to the Gothic to produce the „Gothic explique”, the “Scooby-Doo” ending.

Frankenstein as Science Fiction novel: Gothic explique upside down

Mary Shelley, however, by moving Radcliffe’s naturalizing ending to the beginning, produced the model for science fiction.

Preface to the first edition say she says „The events on which this fiction is founded has been supposed by Dr Darvin and some of the physiological writers of Germany as not of impossible occurrence.”

In Frankenstein, science miraculously makes the fantastic plausible yet also something which can be dangerous and even cursed.

Frankenstein as Science Fiction novel: The first superhuman

Monster is the first embodiment of the problem of superhuman.

He is stronger than man, can live long time on a little amount of food. He learns very fast.

Victor decides to destroy the bride which he makes, because he fears that the new race can overcome and replace humanity.

The monster is the most literate and gentle creature - he is simply better than human.

Philosophical background Alienation from society

The monster gets no name in the novel. The words used for Victor’s nameless revealing his inability to live within the society:

wretched - comes from the old English word meaning exile miserable creature - worthy of pitty, creature - the made one monster - monare - to worn, or monstrare - to show (monstrum - omen of something to come) fiend - (foe) - evil spirit or the demon. enemy - from spanish en-amigo - not a friend

The novel reinforces the insight that community is crucial for guiding everyone, even discoverers. Captain Robert Walton resigns the attempts to discover Hyperborea when his crew wants to return, Victor on the contrary never stops even when society tells him so. The novel warns not against science but against science in the hands of an egotist alienated from the restraining wisdom of community. View on the man having the complicated relations with the society brings in mind the existentialists like J.P. Sartre with his famous sentence - Hell is other people.

Philosophical background Science and religion

Golem is animated by the power of the God while monster is animated by Victor by the power of science. Victor lives in godless world and he does not deal with God. He wants to allow the people to resurrect thanks to science.

This rises the question about whether science can replace religion.

Marry Shelley says “yes”, but in the novel such intrusion of science to the domain of religion ends in misery.

Philosophical background What is life

In the novel life is understood according to the newest discoveries of the beginning of 19th century

In medieval philosophy soul is the principle of being alive, but in 18th century such view is slowly replaced by the “scientific” view.

In conception of T. Hobbes and R. Descartes life is understood as the movement of the machine.

At the beginning of the 19th century first discoveries connecting life with electricity were made.

Soul seems to be no longer necessary to explain life, which is purely natural. The world and human being is “disenchanted”…

Nowadays life is commonly understood as the collection of physical processes in human body. But can we agree to that?

Philosophical background What is life (2)

St Thomas Aquinas explains simply that “Life is shown principally by two actions, knowledge and movement.” (ST I, q.75, a.1) To be “animated” (lat. animata) (to be alive) literally means to have soul.

Soul is “first principle of life” (primum principium vivendi) Body parts are “other principles of life” (quodcumque vitalis operationis principium)

And Aquinas says it strongly that “nothing corporeal can be the first principle of life”

Philosophical background What is life (3)

Insufficiency of naturalistic explanation of life occurs when we look closer at the understanding of death. Common definition of death in medicine says that man is dead when there is no electrical activity in the brain. But this definition was not formulated on Hayward because of the development of transplantation… This definition cannot explain many cases of clinical death…

Philosophical background What is life (4)

Understanding the life as the collection of processes cannot point at those collection of processes which are necessary to produce life. It leads unavoidably to “pale and heap paradox” (Eubulides of Miletus 4th c. B.C.) So the only accurate definition of death is to say that it is separation of soul from the body. Unfortunately this also means that death cannot be observed or detected by any medical instrument…

Philosophical background Noble savage

Both the self-education of Victor and the monster recall the problem of the relations between man and civilization - whether it makes him better of worst.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) wrote in 1762 his famous book Emile where he coined the conception of „Noble Savage”.

Rousseau claimed that man is nobel by nature he is „Noble Savage” and civilization makes him bed.

Victor finds nothing interesting in university of Ingolstadt and he decides to teach himself.

Victor’s monster has natural way of perceiving and understanding beauty - seeing his reflection in the water he recognizes himself as repelling. Civilization makes him murderer. Yet monster is something unnatural, artificial.