Re-imagining Frankenstein

HUM 2052: Civilization IISummer 2010Dr. PerdigaoJune 8, 2010

Frankenstein (1931, 1994)

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Frankenstein (1931, 1994)

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Postmodern Play

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• Mary Shelley’s biography—story of losses, mother Mary Wollstonecraft (during her birth), premature birth to daughter who dies February 1815, daughter Clara in 1818, son William in 1819, Mary almost dies from miscarriage in 1822, loses Percy at sea later in 1822, father William Godwin in 1836, herself dies on February 1, 1851

• Story’s genesis (9)

• Victory—Percy Shelley’s self-given name, name for protagonist (xxiv)

• Milton’s Paradise Lost and story of the fall, Mary had grown up reading, house they stayed at in Geneva was one Milton had (xxx)

• Creature as Adam and Satan

• Rousseau’s notion of an “unfallen” state, corrupted by society, Godwin’s own theories in Political Justice

• Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (xxxvii, 60)

• Mary Shelley reading Don Quixote while writing Frankenstein

Sources

• Robert Walton• Margaret Saville• St. Petersburgh: England

• Walton’s education (16), reading Uncle Thomas’ seafaring books, poetry

• As Coleridge’s ancient mariner, but will “kill no albatross” (21)

• First description of the creature (25)• Restores Victor “to animation” (26) with “spirit of life” (28), “so noble a

creature destroyed by misery” (28)

• Victor tells story of failed quest, hubris

• Story of Frankenstein family, Geneva, Beaufort, daughter Caroline (33)• Victor born in Naples, oldest child• Lake Como, visiting poor, find Elizabeth Lavenza, daughter of Milanese

nobleman and German mother who had died giving birth to her

Origins

• Henry Clerval as childhood friend, interest in chivalry and romance, for Victor, in metaphysical, “physical secrets of the world” (39)

• Elizabeth’s scarlet fever, to mother, death

• Attends university at Ingolstadt

• Krempe (47)• Waldman (49)

• Description of creature (54), vision of creature (59)

• Coleridge’s poem referenced with creation (60)

• Henry’s appearance, letter from Elizabeth, story of Justine Moritz (66-7), role of women?

• Introduction of William (68), death (71)—role of the innocent?

Educations

• Sees creature (78)

• Justine’s trial, Elizabeth’s testimony, Justine as “monster” (88)

• Encounter with monster, as romantic encounter with nature, sublime

• “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” (103).

• Story of his birth and journey

• Hovel as a “paradise” (109)

• Safie’s story (125)

Educations

• Creature’s education

• The Comte de Volney’s Ruins of Empires: philosophy of history

• “Was man, indeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base?” (122).

• Plutarch’s Parallel Lives (100 AD)• Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)• Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667)• “Romantic cyclopedia universalis” (271) (130)

• “Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination?” (131)

• Attempt to save young girl from drowning, to “restore animation” (143), encounter with William, Justine, creature’s attempt to “reason” with Victor rather than display passion (148)

CIV Readings

A Monster’s Education?

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/10-Books-that-Screwed-Up-the-World/Benjamin-Wiker/e/9781596980556/?itm=1#TOC

Table of ContentsIntroduction: Ideas Have Consequences     1Preliminary Screw-UpsThe Prince     7Discourse on Method     17Leviathan     31Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men     41Ten Big Screw-UpsThe Manifesto of the Communist Party     57Utilitarianism     73The Descent of Man     85Beyond Good and Evil     99The State and Revolution     115The Pivot of Civilization     127Mein Kampf     145The Future of an Illusion     165Coming of Age in Samoa     177Sexual Behavior in the Human Male     195Dishonorable MentionThe Feminine Mystique     211Afterword: A Conclusive Outline of Sanity     227Acknowledgments     233Notes     235Index     251

• “My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor; and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the chain of existence and events, from which I am now excluded.” (150)

A sequel?

An equal?

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• Trip to England, Oxford, Edinburgh, Orkneys

• Henry Clerval—as Romantic (161), idea of India (163-4)

• Victor’s ennui

• Idea of the female creation— “thinking and reasoning animal” (170); his reasons; destroys her

• “Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master—obey!” (172)

• “I shall be with you on your wedding night” (173)

• Gets rid of new creature, taken to magistrate Mr. Kirwin (178)

• Henry’s death, link to destruction of creature (181), return to Geneva with father

Revisions

• Wedding night

• Elizabeth’s death (199), father’s death (202)

• Retells story to magistrate (202), “Chinese box structure,” received as a fiction

• “he or I shall perish in mortal conflict” (206)—as Beowulf?

• Rewrites the story (213), corrections by Frankenstein

• “When younger. . . I believed myself destined for some great enterprise. . . From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition; but how am I sunk” (214)

• “Seek happiness in tranquility, and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries” (220)

• Victor’s death

Lessons

• Third representation of the creature (221), his story

• “Evil thenceforth became my good” (222)

• “I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filed with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness” (223).

• “I shall collect my funeral pile” (225).

Didacticism