by Mary Shelley
10. This self-effacing version of the gestation of Frankenstein is contradicted by Polidori’s diary (The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori, 1816, Relating to Byron, Shelley, etc. (London: Forgotten Books, 2012), which records, on June 17, “The ghost-stories are begun by all but me” (125).
11. Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s faithful squire in Cervantes’s masterpiece, says, “methinks in this matter of government, the beginning is everything” (Part II, chapter 33, Margaret Oliphant, ed. and trans., Cervantes, [Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1880], 185).
12. In Hindu mythology, the world is supported on the back of the elephant Maha-pudma, who stands on the back of the tortoise Chukwa (per Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable).
13. The story, told by many (an early version may be found in Girolamo Benzoni’s Historia del Mondo Nuovo, published in 1565) and undoubtedly apocryphal, goes as follows: One night, while dining, Columbus became annoyed when a detractor complained that anyone could have found the lands to which Columbus had famously voyaged and that the simplicity of the feat made it trivial. Columbus replied that anything is easy once you know how it’s done. He demonstrated the principle by challenging the detractor to stand an egg on its end. The challenger appeared puzzled, whereupon Columbus crushed one end of the egg against the tabletop, permitting it to stand easily.
14. Polidori’s diary casts doubt on this as well, suggesting that it was a conversation on June 15 between Percy Shelley and Polidori, not Percy Shelley and Byron, that sparked Mary Shelley’s imagination; furthermore, Polidori’s medical background makes his participation in conversation involving Galvani’s work more likely than Byron’s. On the other hand, Mary Shelley’s journal describes the nightly conversations at the Villa Diodati as “tête-à-tête” between Percy Shelley and Byron (Jones, ed., Mary Shelley’s Journal, 184), while Polidori describes the June 15 conversation as being “about principles—whether man was to be thought merely to be an instrument,” rather than about the possibilities of reanimation.
15. There is no other record of a discussion of Darwin in the presence of Mary Shelley. Scholars speculate that she may be misremembering her reading of his epic poem The Temple of Nature, or The Origin of the Society (1802). In the “additional notes” to the poem, Darwin discusses the spontaneous vitality of microscopic animals:
Some of the microscopic animals are said to remain dead for many days or weeks, when the fluid in which they existed is dried up, and quickly to recover life and motion by the fresh addition of water and warmth. Thus the chaos redivivum of Linnæus dwells in vinegar and in bookbinders paste: it revives by water after having been dried for years, and is both oviparous and viviparous; Syst. Nat. Thus the vorticella or wheel animal, which is found in rain water that has stood some days in leaden gutters, or in hollows of lead on the taps of houses, or in the slime or sediment left by such water, though it discovers no sign of life except when in the water, yet it is capable of continuing alive for many months though kept in a dry state. In this state it is of a globulous shape, exceeds not the bigness of a grain of sand, and no signs of life appear; but being put into water, in the space of half an hour a languid motion begins, the globule turns itself about, lengthens itself by slow degrees, assumes the form of a lively maggot, and most commonly in a few minutes afterwards puts out its wheels, swimming vigorously through the water as if in search of food; or else, fixing itself by the tail, works the wheels in such a manner as to bring its food to its mouth; English Encyclopedia, Art. Animalcule. Thus some shell-snails in the cabinets of the curious have been kept in a dry state for ten years or longer, and have revived on being moistened with warmish water; Philos. Transact. So eggs and seeds after many months torpor, are revived by warmth and moisture; hence it may be concluded, that even the organic particles of dead animals may, when exposed to a due degree of warmth and moisture, regain some degree of vitality, since this is done by more complicate animal organs in the instances above mentioned.” (Additional Note I, paragraph 7)
Note that Darwin mentions vorticella, tiny protozoa, which Mary Shelley may have confused with vermicelli (“little worms”), a fine-stranded pasta. The “pasta” theory was first advanced by Desmond King-Hele, in Erasmus Darwin and the Romantic Poets (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986).
Ashton Nichols, of the Department of English at Dickinson College, suggests that the connection to pasta in Mary Shelley’s recollection may have arisen from paragraph 3 of the same note, in which Darwin describes an experiment:
Thus in paste composed of flour and water, which has been suffered to become acescent [sour], the animalcules called eels, vibrio anguillula, are seen in great abundance; their motions are rapid and strong; they are viviparous, and produce at intervals a numerous progeny: animals similar to these are also found in vinegar; Naturalist’s Miscellany by Shaw and Nodder, Vol. II. These eels were probably at first as minute as other microscopic animalcules; but by frequent, perhaps hourly reproduction, have gradually become the large animals above described, possessing wonderful strength and activity.
See http://users.dickinson.edu/~nicholsa/Romnat/frankmis.htm.
Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks reference this confusion in an early scene in the film Young Frankenstein (1974) in which Dr. Frankenstein responds to a student who refers to Darwin’s preservation of a piece of vermicelli with the arch question, “Are you speaking of the worm or the spaghetti?”
16. Galvanism, bioelectrical force, was discovered in 1791 by Luigi Galvani. Galvani’s nephew, Giovanni Aldini, subsequently performed experiments with corpses, attempting to reanimate them with electricity. In 1803, he performed a public experiment at Newgate Prison on the corpse of the executed criminal George Foster. The popular Newgate Calendar, the almanac of executions and the lives of executed criminals, reported: “On the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion.” German natural philosopher Johann Ritter (1776–1810), whose first researches involved Galvani’s experiments, declared that “galvanic phenomena seemed to bridge the gap between living and non-living matter” (quoted in H. A. M. Snelders, “Romanticism and Naturphilosophie and the Inorganic Natural Sciences, 1797–1840: An Introductory Survey,” Studies in Romanticism 9, no. 3 [1970], 199).
17. See Preface, note 4, above.
APPENDIX 2
A Chronology of the Events of Frankenstein1
1772
Victor Frankenstein born
1776
Elizabeth Lavenza comes to live with the Frankensteins
1784
Justine Moritz enters the Frankenstein household
1785
Victor begins to read the alchemists
1787
Victor sees tree struck by lightning
1789
Victor’s mother, Caroline, and Elizabeth contract scarlet fever;
Caroline dies; Justine leaves to live with her mother;
Victor leaves for Ingolstadt
1791
Victor attains fame at university
Early 1793
Victor sick with nervous exhaustion
November 1793
Creature made
Late Autumn 1794
De Lacey family confrontation
May 1795
Victor and Henry Clerval tour Ingolstadt; death of Victor’s brother William;
Victor’s father, Alphonse, writes to Victor
June 1795
Victor returns to Geneva; Justine convicted of William’s death
July 1795
Interview with creature at Chamonix
August 1795
Victor departs Switzerland
September 1795
Victor and Henry arrive in England
March 1796
Victor and Henry depart Lo
ndon
August 1796
Victor relocates to island cottage; Henry stays in Perth
Autumn 1796
Female creature made and destroyed
September 1796
Death of Henry; Victor arrested
December 1796
Victor released from prison2
May 1797
Victor and Alphonse return to Le Havre
June 1797
Victor and Alphonse return to Geneva
Summer 1797
Marriage to Elizabeth; death of Elizabeth and Alphonse
January 1798
Victor begins pursuit of creature
December 1798
Walton arrives in Petersburg
July 31, 1799
Walton’s ship is icebound; crew spots creature
August 1, 1799
Walton meets Victor
August 20, 1799
Victor begins to tell Walton his story
September 11, 1799
Victor dies
September 12, 1799
Creature boards Walton’s ship, tells his story, and departs
1. Leonard Wolf, in “A Chronology of Events in Frankenstein,” The Annotated Frankenstein, has carefully calculated the length of the intervals of time elapsing between the events prior to and after the “birth” of the creature as described in the 1818 text. However, Wolf refrains from affixing specific years, because he is unable to reconcile the specific dates of Walton’s August 5 letter and William’s May 7 death. See note 43, Volume I, Letter IV, and note 5, Volume I, Chapter VI, above. Anne K. Mellor has worked out her own timetable, without explanation, and suggests that Mary Shelley chose dates overlapping with key events of the French Revolution (Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters, 238, n. 22).
Based on Wolf’s computation of the intervals, this editor has worked backward and forward from the date determined for the “birthdate” to determine the dates set forth in the table. Charles E. Robinson, in The Original Frankenstein, speculates that Shelley herself constructed a chronology at some point, for she clearly made alterations in the intervals and ages given in the Draft and the final 1818 text. For example, the interval between Victor’s departure from Geneva and his return is indicated in three different places in the Draft as five years (which would shift many of the dates in this table forward a year), but this was corrected in the final text to six years. However, the following table relies only on the data in the 1818 text.
2. This date is based on the interval determined by Wolf but appears to be too early—see note 10, Volume III, Chapter V, above.
APPENDIX 3
On “Frankenstein.”
BY THE LATE PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY1
THE NOVEL OF “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus,” is undoubtedly, as a mere story, one of the most original and complete productions of the age. We debate with ourselves in wonder as we read it, what could have been the series of thoughts, what could have been the peculiar experiences that awakened them, which conducted in the author’s mind, to the astonishing combination of motives and incidents and the startling catastrophe which compose this tale. There are perhaps some points of subordinate importance which prove that it is the Author’s first attempt. But in this judgement, which requires a very nice discrimination, we may be mistaken. For it is conducted throughout with a firm and steady hand. The interest gradually accumulates, and advances towards the conclusion with the accelerated rapidity of a rock rolled down a mountain. We are held breathless with suspense and sympathy, and the heaping up of incident on incident, and the working of passion out of passion. We cry “hold, hold, enough”—but there is yet something to come, and like the victim whose history it relates we think we can bear no more, and yet more is to be borne. Pelion is heaped on Ossa, and Ossa on Olympus. We climb Alp after Alp, until the horizon is seen, blank, vacant and limitless, and the head turns giddy, and the ground seems to fail under the feet.
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 sympathise 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.2 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, are 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 though 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.3 It reminds us indeed somewhat of the style and character of Godwin 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 Elizabeth, 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 through 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.
1. Apparently written in 1818, the piece was first published in The Athenaeum for November 10, 1832, after publication of the 1831 edition (and ten years after the death of Percy Shelley). Although Percy Shelley may be viewed as one of the world’s first “sock-puppet” reviewers, it is fascinating to receive his understanding of the intent of the work he helped create—quite a differen
t intent, scholars observe, from what is now believed to be that of Mary Shelley.
2. As has been seen above, though this theme certainly figured as part of Mary Shelley’s intended message, there is so much more going on in the book that Percy Shelley may have been unable to recognize.
3. Characters appearing in William Godwin’s Caleb Williams, referenced in the dedication of Frankenstein.
APPENDIX 4
Frankenstein on the
Stage and the Screen
WHILE THE CRITICS may have been mixed in their reactions to the book, the public embraced it nearly instantaneously. By August 1818, five months after publication, a friend, the novelist Thomas Love Peacock,1 wrote to Mary Shelley, “I went to the Egham races. I met on the course a great number of my old acquaintance, by the reading portion of whom I was asked a multitude of questions concerning ‘Frankenstein’ and its author. It seems to be universally known and read.” A French edition of the book, the first foreign language version, appeared in 1821, and, as noted in the Foreword, an 1823 two-volume edition was published in England by G. & W. B. Whitaker. The 1818 text was reprinted numerous times, beginning in 1865, and it remained in print until 1942, when it appeared as an Armed Services edition. In 1831, a revised edition (though, as has been seen, Mary Shelley denied making any major changes) was published by H. Colburn and R. Bentley as part of their Standard Novels series. This contained the first illustrations, by Chevalier. The 1831 edition was reprinted by more than a half-dozen publishers in the nineteenth century and has been reprinted by countless publishers since.