Frankenstein (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  This Novel thus rests its claim on being a source of powerful and profound emotion. The elementary feelings of the human mind are exposed to view, and those who are accustomed to reason deeply on their origin and tendency, will perhaps be the only persons who can sympathize to the full extent in the interest of the actions which are their result. But, founded on nature as they are, there is perhaps no reader who can endure any thing beside a new love-story, who will not feel a responsive string touched in his inmost soul. The sentiments are so affectionate and so innocent, the characters of the subordinate agents in this strange drama are clothed in the light of such a mild and gentle mind.-The pictures of domestic manners are every where of the most simple and attaching character. The pathos is irresistible and deep. Nor are the crimes and malevolence of the single Being, tho’ indeed withering and tremendous, the offspring of any unaccountable propensity to evil, but flow inevitably from certain causes fully adequate to their production. They are the children, as it were, of Necessity and Human Nature. In this the direct moral of the book consists; and it is perhaps the most important, and of the most universal application, of any moral that can be enforced by example. Treat a person ill, and he will become wicked. Requite affection with scorn;—let one being be selected, for whatever cause, as the refuse of his kind—divide him, a social being, from society, and you impose upon him the irresistible obligations-malevolence and selfishness. It is thus that, too often in society, those who are best qualified to be its benefactors and its ornaments, and branded by some accident with scorn, and changed, by neglect and solitude of heart, into a scourge and a curse.

  The Being in “Frankenstein” is, no doubt, a tremendous creature. It was impossible that he should not have received among men that treatment which led to the consequences of his being a social nature. He was an abortion and an anomaly, and tho’ his mind was such as its’ first impressions formed it, affectionate and full of moral sensibility, yet the circumstances of his existence were so monstrous and uncommon, that when the consequences of them became developed in action, his original goodness was gradually turned into the fuel of an inextinguishable misanthropy and revenge. The scene between the Being and the blind de Lacey in the cottage is one of the most profound and extraordinary instances of pathos that we ever recollect. It is impossible to read this dialogue-and indeed many other situations of a somewhat similar character-without feeling the heart suspend its pulsations with wonder, and the tears stream down the cheeks! The encounter and argument between Frankenstein and the Being on the sea of ice almost approaches in effect to the expostulations of Caleb Williams with Falkland. It reminds us indeed somewhat of the style and character of that admirable writer to whom the Author has dedicated his work, and whose productions he seems to have studied. There is only one instance however in which we detect the least approach to imitation, and that is, the conduct of the incident of Frankenstein’s landing and trial in Ireland. The general character of the tale indeed resembles nothing that ever preceded it. After the death of Elisabeth, the story, like a stream which grows at once more rapid and profound as it proceeds, assumes an irresistible solemnity, and the magnificent energy and swiftness as of a tempest.

  The church yard scene, in which Frankenstein visits the tombs of his family, his quitting Geneva and his journey thro’ Tartary to the shores of the Frozen Ocean, resembles at once the terrible reanimation of a corpse, and the supernatural career of a spirit. The scene in the cabin of Walton’s ship, the more than mortal enthusiasm and grandeur of the Being’s speech over the dead body of his victim, is an exhibition of intellectual and imaginative power, which we think the reader will acknowledge has seldom been surpassed.

  -from the Athenaeum

  (November 10, 1832)

  Questions

  1. What can be understood from what the monster reads? The collection of books he finds in the woods takes us from the spiritual history of the world to imperial decline to the concentrated essence of Romanticism. Does the monster’s reading lead him astray or equip him to deal with the world?

  2. How does the way in which the story of Frankenstein is told-that is, through letters and the characters’ speech-affect one’s reading of the novel?

  3. Frankenstein and many derivative books and films have been immensely popular. There is something about this story and its spin-offs that gets to us. What is it? The danger of scientific Promethianism-that is, daring to go beyond the realm of man and into that of the divine? The pathos of being an outcast? Fear of the dead coming to life and seeking revenge? The monster’s character as a marauding embodiment of our unconscious rage?

  FOR FURTHER READING

  Novels by Mary Shelley: First Editions

  Falkner. A Novel. 3 vols. London: Saunders and Otley, 1837.

  The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck, A Romance. 3 vols. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1830.

  Frankenstein; or, The Modem Prometheus. 3 vols. London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mayor, and Jones, 1818. The original text, including Percy Shelley’s “Preface” (written in Mary’s voice).

  Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, 1831. Shelley’s revised edition of the 1818 text, with a new “Author’s Introduction.”

  The Last Man. 3 vols. London: Henry Colburn, 1826.

  Lodore. 3 vols. London: Richard Bentley, 1835.

  Mathilda. Edited by Elizabeth Nitchie. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 19 5 9 . Shelley wrote this novel in 1819 and 1820; because her father, William Godwin, was outraged by the incest theme, he suppressed its publication. This is the first published edition.

  Valperga: or, the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca. 3 vols. London: G. and W. B. Whittaker, 1823.

  Letters and Journals

  The Journals of Mary Shelley: 1814-1844. 2 vols. Edited by Paula R. Feldman and Diana Scott-Kilvert. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

  The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. 3 vols. Edited by Betty T. Bennett. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 19 8 0-19 8 8.

  Major Innuences on Frankenstein

  For a more thorough list, see Shelley’s reading lists for the period 1814-1818 in The Journals of Mary Shelley, volume 1, pages 85-103.

  Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Christabel and Other Poems. 1816.

  Davy, Sir Humphry. Elements of Chemical Philosophy. 1812.

  Godwin, William. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on General Virtue and Happiness. 17 9 3 .

  __________. Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1798.

  - Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams. 1794.

  Goethe, Johann Wilhelm von. Die Leiden des jungen Werthers [The Sorrows of Werter]. 1774; translated 1779.

  Milton, John. Paradise Lost. 1667.

  Plutarch. Parallel Lives. c.120 A.D.; translated 1579.

  Rousseau, Jean Jacques. Émile. 1762; read in French by Shelley.

  Volney, Constantin François de Chasseboeuf, comte de. Les ruines; ou, Meditation sur les revolutions des empires. 1791; read in French by Shelley.

  Wollstonecraft, Mary. Thoughts on the Education of Daughters. 1787.

  . A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. 1792.

  . Maria, or, The Wrongs of Woman. 1798.

  Works About Mary Shelley and Frankenstein

  Baldick, Chris. In Frankenstein’s Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity, and Nineteenth-Century Writing. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. The role of politics and technology in the creation of Shelley’s monster.

  Bloom, Harold, ed. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. Part of the Modern Critical Interpretations series; a collection of notable essays that includes important feminist criticism by Barbara Johnson and Margaret Homans.

  Forry, Steven Earl. Hideous Progenies: Dramatizations of Frankenstein from Mary Shelley to the Present. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990. Illustrated study of Frankenstein’s
appearance and reception on stage and screen, with full texts of seven plays (including Presumption) .

  Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. A foundational work of feminism that includes a chapter on Frankenstein.

  Levine, George, and U. C. Knoepflmacher, eds. The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. The first collection of scholarly essays on Frankenstein; includes Ellen Moers’s “Female Gothic” and Peter Brooks’s “Godlike Science/ Unhallowed Arts: Language, Nature, and Monstrosity.”

  Marshall, Tim. Murdering to Dissect: Grave-Robbing, Frankenstein, and the Anatomy Literature. Manchester, UK, and New York: Manchester University Press and St. Martin’s Press, 1995. A study of the relationship between crime, medicine, and the concept of the human body during Shelley’s time.

  Mellor, Anne. Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: Methuen, 19 8 8. Important study of the creation of Frankenstein, with special attention to Percy Shelley’s role.

  Poovey, Mary. The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Indispensable feminist critique of the work of mother and daughter.

  Shaw, Debra Benita. Women, Science, and Fiction: The Frankenstein Inheritance. New York: Palgrave, 2000. Shelley’s influence on science-fiction writers.

  Smith, Johanna M. Mary Shelley. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996. A thorough survey of Mary Shelley’s writings, including plays, poems, and literary biographies that are still on the margins of critical discussion.

  Spark, Muriel. Child of Light: A Reassessment of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Had-leigh, Essex, United Kingdom: Tower Bridge Publications, 1951. The biography that introduced Shelley as a subject for serious academic study.

  Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989. A prize-winning biography of Shelley.

  a The publishers Colburn and Bendy selected Shelley’s 1831 edition of Frankenstein as the ninth novel in their inexpensive Standard Novels Series.

  b A high-perched nest.

  c Shelly married the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) in 1816; he died by drowning.

  d According to legend, Tom of Coventry was struck blind when he looked at Lady Godiva.

  e The tomb of the Capulets is where Romeo and Juliet end their lives in Shakespeare’s play.

  f The preface was written by Percy Shelley, in his wife’s voice.

  g In this sense, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth, OED), “The maintenance of the proper relation between the representations of nearer and more distant objects in a picture ... the maintenance of harmony of composition.”

  h “A heavy sea in which large waves rise and clash upon the coast without apparent cause” (OED).

  i Some sources, notably the OED, distinguish the meaning of daemon (“inferior divinity”) from that of demon (“evil spirit”), but Shelley seems to use these words interchangeably.

  j Chief magistrates.

  k Sewing.

  l Italian for “slaves always fretting.” Elizabeth’s father is associated with Italians rebelling under the Austrian domination of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

  m A country house. Belrive is 4 miles from Geneva on the southwest shore of Lake Geneva.

  n Temperament; constitutional frame of mind; disposition. Note that in the preceding paragraph, Frankenstein claims that “it was my temper to avoid a crowd.”

  o By “natural philosophy,” Frankenstein means what is now called natural science.

  p A resort on the south (French) shore of Lake Geneva.

  q Beginners; novices.

  r Frankenstein is thinking of a poem by the Romantic writer Charles Lamb (1775-1834), The Old Familiar Faces (1798).

  s The air or manner of a person as expressive of personality or mood.

  t Buildings or other structures where dead bodies or bones are deposited.

  u The relation of cause and effect; the operation of causal force.

  v Author’s note: Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner.

  w Stagecoaches.

  x A grassy plain to the south of Geneva, used by promenaders.

  y A light two-wheeled, single-seated, one-horse carriage.

  z A suburb to the north of Geneva.

  aa Now called Chamonix; a beautiful valley that lies at the base of Mont Blanc and near the Mer de Glace (“sea of ice”), which Frankenstein describes on pages 87-88.

  ab Frankenstein is contrasting the rounded cone or dome (“dôme”) of Mont Blanc with the pointed peaks (“aiguilles”) that surround it.

  ac Branches of the river Arve.

  ad Author’s note: The moon.

  ae Food; provisions.

  af The former capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires; since 1930 it has been called Istanbul.

  ag A believer in the Muslim religion; also a now-obscure reference to a Turk.

  ah The fugitives’ journey to Turkey takes them through Mont Cenis, in southeastern France, and Leghorn (Livorno), an important Tuscan port.

  ai The sirocco, a hot, dust-filled wind from the deserts of Libya, in northern Africa, that blows on the northern Mediterranean coast, especially in Italy and its environs.

  aj An introduction to a discourse.

  ak (Strasbourg), a large city and major inland port 70 miles north of Basel, Switzerland.

  al Author’s note: Wordsworth’s Tintem Abbey.

  am Clerval and Frankenstein cross the English Channel and continue to sail west up the Thames River toward London.

  an In Oxford the Thames River is known as the Isis.

  ao Mental weariness and dissatisfaction; boredom.

  ap A cluster of islands off the north coast of Scotland.

  aq Haste.

  ar An omen; an indication of a future event.

  as Sessions of the superior courts held periodically in English counties for the purpose of trying civil and criminal cases.

  at Frankenstein’s reference in French to his homesickness for Switzerland.

  au The original name for the French port of Le Havre.

  av A small, goatlike antelope that inhabits the highest ridges of the mountains of Europe and the Caucasus.

  aw “Your vessel” is Walton’s ship; the words take readers away from the story of Frankenstein’s experiments and back out to the “frame tale” of Walton’s ambitious voyage.

  ax Emanation.

  ay In this context: astonishing, strange, surprising.