Lecture+and+Discussion+Notes+for+Frankenstein

=Lecture and Discussion Notes for //Frankenstein//=

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Dr. Lake's Lecture Notes:
Mary Shelley was born in 1797 to two very famous parents: Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Before I talk about Mary, it’s imperative that I tell you more about her parents both of whom were well known writers, philosophers, and political commentators in their lifetime. Mary Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, is often credited with being the first feminist. Wollstonecraft wrote a lot of different things: novels, children’s books, a history of the French revolution, and a travel guide, among others. She is most famous, however, for writing //A Vindication of the Rights of Woman//, which was published in 1792. This books responded to several texts. First, Wollstonecraft had written //A Vindication of The Rights of Men// in 1790 – a text that took on one of England’s most prominent philosophical and political bigwigs, Edmund Burke. Earlier that year, Edmund Burke had written his //Reflections on the Revolution in France//. Burke’s reflections on the revolution can best be summed up as: this revolution sucks! This was a surprising position to take, in large part because the tenets of the French Revolution seemed like good things (you might remember this from our discussions of //Persuasion)//. Essentially, the French were angry that the king and people who had lots of money could, you know, eat, when no one else could. So they took their cue from Americans and demanded equality. And for the record, Burke had supported the American Revolution. But the French Revolution scared him, and he backtracked, and he decided that the aristocracy was a good thing because it helped to maintain social order. Wollstonecraft disagreed. And she turned out to be especially pissy about how Burke thought women ought to be subservient in social orders. So after she wrote //A Vindication of the Rights of Man//, she wrote //A Vindication of the Rights of Woman//. She felt that women should have the same rights as men. Predominantly, people in the eighteenth century thought that women were fundamentally different from men – that their minds, especially, weren’t made the same as a man’s, and so women couldn’t work with big ideas, like the kinds of ideas about how society or governments ought to work. Wollstonecraft begged to differ.
 * Biographical Information About Mary Shelley**

As you might expect, it didn’t go over well. She became known as unconventional and radical. She had love affairs with well-known men; she had an illegitimate daughter; she travelled alone overseas; she tried to commit suicide; in short, she became a kind of spectacle of the crazy things feminists will do.

She was a perfect match, then, for William Godwin who married her in 1797. Like Wollstonecraft, Godwin was well-known as a radical thinker. And like Wollstonecraft, he wrote lots of things: novels, newspaper articles, political treatises, etc. He also supported the French Revolution. He probably best well known today as the father of anarchy. Godwin’s writings were especially influential to one Percy Bysshe Shelley – a romantic poet, to whom I will return briefly.

Godwin and Wollstonecraft married, and they had Mary right away (they married in 1797 and Mary Shelley was born in...August of 1797; you do the math). Wollstonecraft died ten days after giving birth in a painful and drawn out way. Godwin was left to raise Mary and Wollstonecraft’s other illegitimate daughter, Fanny. Godwin remarried in 1801,and Mary and Fanny acquired a stepbrother and a stepsister, Claire Claremont.

Because he was Godwin, Godwin made sure that his daughters, especially Mary, were well educated. He encouraged her to read and to know history; he sent her to Scotland, maybe to introduce her to radical politics (he told the Baxter’s, to whom he sent her to live for a little while, to train her to be a philosopher and a cynic). She also spent lots of time as a child with prominent thinkers and writers of the period, most notably – Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Godwin, though, was always in debt and borrowing money. He had a friendship and a business relationship with Percy Shelley: the oldest son of an aristocrat. Shelley was interested, like Godwin, in radical ideas. And he had family money to help them along. He published work on everything from vegetarianism to atheism, and he visited Godwin a lot. Even though he was married and had a child, when Mary was 17, they started to have an affair. Scandalous!

Essentially, Mary ran away with Shelley to Europe in 1814, taking Mary’s stepsister Claire with them (Shelley abandoned his wife who was pregnant with their second child). They lasted there until 1815, when they came back to England and found themselves without money and pregnant. They lived together, wrote together, dodged creditors together, and spent time with some of the most radical and unique writers of their generation. Mary’s baby was born prematurely and died; Shelley’s wife had his son; and then Mary was pregnant again. In 1816,Mary gave birth to a son and then that summer they travelled again to the continent with Claire who wanted to chase down Lord Byron after they’d had a brief affair. It was while they were in Geneva in the Summer of 1816 that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

They returned to England that fall of 1816. It was an eventful fall and winter: Claire was pregnant; Mary’s half-sister (Wollstonecraft’s other daughter) committed suicide; so did Percy’s wife; Percy was denied custody of the children he had had by his wife; Mary was pregnant again; and Mary and Percy married that December.

Mary worked on Frankenstein throughout 1817, and when it was published in 1818, many assumed that Percy (who was by then a much better known writer) was the author. Because they were mired in controversy and debt, the Shelleys and their two children – along with Claire who had had Byron’s illegitimate daughter – left England again for Italy in the Summer of 1818. They travelled, they socialized, they wrote. Both of Mary’s children died, however: one in 1818, the other in 1819. She had a fourth child, a son, in 1819. They stayed in Italy until 1822, during which they continued to write and socialize, often scandalously. Mary had another miscarriage that year. And Percy died in a boating accident. Mary returned to England in 1823 and wrote another novel, //Valperga//. She needed money badly and struggled to get it from Percy’s family (who wanted her to give them her son). Mary worked at editing Percy’s poems and trying to manage his literary estate. In 1826, she began work on a new novel, //The Last Man//, which was published that year: a dystopic narrative about, you might have guessed, the last man on earth. It is hugely biographical and terrifically depressing. From 1827-1840, Mary was a woman of letters. She wrote more novels, editorials, letters, and biographies; she revised //Frankenstein// and she continued to manage Percy’s literary reputation and deal with the fallout from their scandalous lifestyle.

She died in 1851.

During her own lifetime, Mary was known as a writer. But she was mostly known as Percy’s wife and as the daughter of Godwin and Wollstonecraft. She tried to scrupulously avoid controversy in the last ten years of her life. And her son tried to sanitize her reputation in the nineteenth century.

Shelley remains most famous for writing Frankenstein.


 * Information about Frankenstein**

Composition History Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein in the summer of 1816 when she was 18 years old. When she revised the novel in 1831, she told the history of its composition. Mary and Percy were sitting around on a rainy evening in Geneva with Lord Byron, and Byron’s physician, John Polidori. They were telling ghost stories. Mary describes it this way in 1831: “The circumstance on which my story rests was suggested in casual conversation. It was commenced partly as a source of amusement, and partly as an expedient for exercising any untried resources of mind... this story was begun in the majestic region where the scene is principally laid, and in society which cannot cease to be regretted. I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and rainy, and in the evenings we crowded around a blazing wood fire, and occasionally amused ourselves with some German stories of ghosts, which happened to fall into our hands. These tales excited in us a playful desire of imitation. Two other friends (a tale from the pen of one of whom would be far more acceptable to the public than any thing I can ever hope to produce) and myself agreed to write each a story founded on some supernatural occurrence.

The weather, however, suddenly became serene; and my two friends left me on a journey among the Alps, and lost, in the magnificent scenes which they present, all memory of their ghostly visions. The following tale is the only one which has been completed.”

Mary worked on the story, with Percy’s help, until 1817. It was published anonymously in 1818. Initially, //Frankenstein// was not particularly well received. Sir Walter Scott, who you might remember liked Jane Austen, enjoyed it – but few others shared his views. John William Croker described the novel as “ a tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity.” A play called // Presumption; or The Fate of Frankenstein // launched //Frankenstein// into mass popularity 5 years after its publication, in 1823. Stephen Behrendt estimates that 55,000 people saw the production. Another play, titled // The Man and the Monster! or, The Fate of Frankenstein // was produced in 1826. Another followed that year. And then yet another again in 1849. The plays made the novel a sensation. The second edition was published in 1823, after //Presumption; or The Fate of Frankenstein// was performed. Shelley published and claimed her authorship in the 1831 popular edition of the novel – for which she made significant revisions. Most critics find that these revisions tone the novel down and mask its radical politics. Since 1826, the novel has endured as a staple of British literature. According to Susan Wolfson, it is the most taught novel in college. And it has inspired films, comics, musicals, and appeared in countless popular media. Everyone knows the word Frankenstein. Most people, however, think it’s the name of the monster.

// Frankenstein // hits a nerve in large part because the themes it deals with were prescient in its own moment and remain of concern today. It is often considered the first example of science fiction and an excellent example of the Gothic novel. I will deal with both of these today, starting with the Gothic novel.

Gothic Novel The Gothic novel is a subgenre of the genre known as, get this, the novel. Arising in the middle of the eighteenth century, novels are – as you probably know – big chunks of prose fiction that feature characters and plots. They are distinguished from other genres of writing, like poetry, by the fact that they don’t truncate their lines or feature rhymes and by the fact that they attempt in some way to narrate relatively realistic or believable experiences. Gothic novels are unique insofar as they tend to represent unbelievable experiences as believable. The first Gothic novel was published in 1764 by Horace Walpole, and it was titled //The Castle of Otranto//. It’s notable for featuring in its opening chapter a giant helmet that falls out of the sky and kills the main character’s son. This kind of novel challenged, in its way, the ideas of other novels and something called the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a period in culture that entailed several things. First of all, it entailed a questioning of religions, especially Catholic, dogma. That is to say, a whole bunch of people decided that no one should just believe blindly in God. They should believe in God, but their beliefs should be on reason and logic, rather than just on the things people like priests said. Another aspect of the Enlightenment was the focus on creating comprehensive encyclopaedic understandings of the world. People in the Enlightenment loved nothing better than making charts and dictionaries and long lists of observations based on first-hand and microscopic experiences. Consequently, a lot of science happened in the Enlightenment. People wanted to understand the world as it existed, rather than the world as other people described there. There was also an emphasis on politeness, civility, rationality, and logic. Gothic novels like //The Castle of Otranto// challenged this, however. They emphasized the imagination, the unexplainable, the supernatural, the wild and the crazy.

//Frankenstein// is a unique text because it seems to do both things at once: to be really interested in science and to be really interested in the wild and crazy. So not only does it reflect the state of society in the wake of the Enlightenment, it also reflects a certain kind of response to the Enlightenment: namely, this thing researchers call Romanticism. Now, don’t be confused. Romanticism, and the word Romantic when it’s used with a capital R, have nothing to do with love or true love or courtship or marriage. Romanticism might entail loving nature, but it doesn’t necessarily entail loving a person. Instead, Romanticism is best understood as an aesthetic movement – that is, as a period in art and literature where there was a shift away from the Enlightenment. Instead of focusing on reason and logic, Romanticists celebrated the imagination. They wanted to embrace the possibilities of the unknown and to delve fully into the unexplainable elements of how the world works.

Yet there were still holdovers from the Enlightenment – specifically, Romanticists were really into nature. So were people in the Enlightenment. In the Enlightenment, people were interested in using science to explain nature: they liked making minute and detailed observations of every thing that happened in the natural world. And then they liked to make charts and lists and to create taxonomies and teleologies of those observations. Romanticists, though, loved to revel in those observations. To think about what they didn’t know, what they couldn’t know, what mysteries remained in the world. So Romanticists were scientific in the sense that they paid careful attention to the things, but more Romantic in that they celebrated not being able to explain everything with science. In this way, Gothic novels like //The Castle of Otranto// both ushered in and anticipated the Romantic period, which reached its heyday in the late 1700s and early 1800s. So //Frankenstein// is both a Gothic novel and a Romantic text. It’s considered, in fact, one of the most important examples of both. And Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley are both considered ideal examples of Romantic writers.

Moreover, //Frankenstein// responded to the scientific developments of the Enlightenment and the Romantic period. The most notable of these entailed the experiments done by Giovanni Aldini. Giovanni Aldini thought that be experimenting with electricity, he could discover the very thing that made living things...well alive. In short, he practiced shocking dead bodies with electricity – and when they jumped, he thought that was evidence that they were briefly brought to life. Others were similarly enamoured with this quest for a life force as Enlightenment and then Romantic science sought to explain life without ultimate recourse to the authority of the church. You could find experiments as diverse as Dr. Graham’s magical bed for conception [explain] and as scintillating as Humphry Davy’s lavish displays of chemistry.

Mary and Percy moved in circles where these scientists and their experiments were well known. And both writers wondered about the nature of life. //Frankenstein//, then, takes as its central theme the problem of the unknowable and our desire to know it. It is infused with science and questioning, the tenets of both the Enlightenment and Romanticism, the limitless possibilities of and the inevitable constraints on humanity and the imagination.

This can especially be seen in its subtitle, “the modern Prometheus.” In Greek mythology, Prometheus was charged by Zeus with the making of man. He did so out of clay, but then he messed everything up by stealing fire from the gods and giving it to mankind. As punishment, Prometheus was sentenced by Zeus to be tied to a rock where every day a vulture would eat out his liver. Prometheus’s liver would re-spawn every night, and then every day again, the vulture would peck it out. Prometheus was an important figure for the Romantics. Specifically, he symbolized the ambition of the Romantic poet, who sought to bring his unique insight and creative potential to the world in order to enlighten and better it. At the same time, he symbolized the suffering of such an undertaking – the inevitability that one would be punished or misunderstood or have to undergo extreme sacrifice as he pushed for radical changes in both the material existence of individuals and in their mindsets. Like Prometheus, Frankenstein makes a man from nothing. And like Prometheus, Shelley tries to impart new insights to her readers. At the same time, the creation and the insights are deeply fraught. And a reader is drawn to question the ultimate value of Frankenstein (and Prometheus’s) creation.

As you probably know, since you’ve read the book by now, Frankenstein is an epistolary novel – which means it’s written as a series of letters and readers imagine themselves as the recipients of those letters. Frankenstein also features what’s known as a frame narrative: the original letters don’t have anything to do with Dr. Frankenstein and his monster: they’re reports from Captain Walton to his sister as he undertakes an expedition to the North Pole.

On his expedition, he encounters Dr. Frankenstein who is chasing his monster. Frankenstein relates his history to Captain Walton. We learn that Dr. Frankenstein is from Geneva and that since childhood he’s been preternaturally interested in science – studying first ancient sources on alchemy and then later attending university. Meanwhile, he and his cousin, Elizabeth, develop a close relationship, he enjoys a friendship with Henry Cleval, and his mother dies. At university, Frankenstein supposedly discovers the secret of life and how to use electricity to animate dead bodies. He builds his monster, is repulsed by his creation, and gets sick – Henry Cleval nurses Frankenstein back to life while the monster disappears and feels abandoned.

Frankenstein’s younger brother is murdered and then a beloved servant, Justine, is accused of murdering him and is hanged. Frankenstein glimpses the monster in the woods near his home and immediately decides that the monster must have murdered his brother. The monster and Frankenstein talk, and Frankenstein learns that the monster has spent a year observing the De Lacey family and reading books, including Paradise Lost. Although the monster has tried to be kind and thoughtful, for example by saving a girl, he has not been treated well by society (he was shot once). Consequently, he now feels really antagonistic towards the human race. He did kill Frankenstein’s little brother, but accidentally. Now, he wants Frankenstein to make him a companion so that he won’t be lonely.

Victor reluctantly agrees. As he travels to undertake the project alongside Clerval, he becomes convinced that the monster is following him and increasingly dubious about making the monster his companion. He decides to abandon his project; the monster gets angry, kills Clerval, and Frankenstein is imprisoned for the murder. He is recused and then he travels back home. There, he marries his cousin, Elizabeth, but the monster wants revenge. Frankenstein attempts to chase down the monster, believing that the monster plans to kill him – but instead, the monster kills Elizabeth as a kind of tit for tat for Victor having disposed of the companion monster he was building. Frankenstein has chased the monster to the North Pole – they will fight to the death.

Here, the frame narrative steps in again and we find that Walton’s ship must sail south. Frankenstein dies and the monster shows up to grieve his death and to justify its actions. The monster will commit suicide On Wednesday, I’m going to spend some time drawing your attention to specific scenes and themes. I will also try and review for your what other contemporary researchers have had to say about the novel.

Additional Notes Provided by Students:
Mary Shelley was born to Mary Wellstonecraft and William Godwin Mary W. is considered the first active feminist: She wrote Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) in response to Burke's Vindication of Man. She was angry at Burke's representation of women. Example: Enquiry... Sublime and Beautiful (1757) illustrated men as sublime and women as being not intellectually robust enough. (hmph) Mary W. argued equality for women and became known as a bit of a radical and as being unconventional. She had affairs, pregnancy out of wedlock, and made a failed suicide attempt. Godwin also a radical, supporter with Mary W. of France's Revolution (Burke supported the Rev for a short time until switching political ideologies) He is known as "Father of Anarchy" Godwin remarries after Mary W.'s death from an infected placenta after giving birth to Mary Shelley. Claire Clairmont is Mary G/S's (not married yet to Shelley) half sister* and much of what is known about Mary S. is through letters to Claire. Godwin encouraged Mary G/S. to be educated "educate her as a philosopher and cynic"

As a child she spent time with Coleridge Percy Byshe Shelley helped Mary G/S's family along with money and radical thoughts. He was at this time married to Harriet and had one child by her. When Mary G/S.. was 17 she had an affair with Percy Mary G/S, Percy, and Claire ran off to Europe in 1814, left for home in 1815 when they were broke and Mary was pregnant. 1815That child was born prematurely and died. Percy Shelley's wife Harriet has child Mary is pregnant with second child--son that lives(for now) Winter 1816

Claire attempted to track down Byron, found Lord Byron and became pregnant in 1816. During this time Mary S writes Frankenstein.

Fanny commits suicide, maybe over Percy; Harriet also commits suicide, most definately over Percy. Mary G/S. gives birth to daughter in 1818. 1818Percy attempts to gain custody to no avail. Percy and Mary. wed (possibly to allow custody) Percy is an established writer Godwin disowns Mary due to the scandal surrounding her.

late 1818 Percy, Mary, their 2 children, Claire and her daughter Allegra go to Italy Mary's children die in Italy---now childless 1819 Lord Byron and his daughter by Claire: Allegra. Claire is broke and needs Byron to raise her, and he does so as long as she leaves him and the child alone. Claire follows the rules and Allegra is put in a convent where she dies. 1819 Mary is pregnant with son; This child, Percy, survives. There are claims that Percy fathers a child with Claire. Italy 1822, Mary S miscarriages, nearly causes death, Percy saves her by putting her in ice water. Percy drowns at sea. Percy and Byron proponets of free love. Byron was bisexual. After death Mary S. stays with Hunts and returns to England 1873. Percy's family would only giver her money if Mary S gives her son to them, Mary S does not. Mary S writes Valperga Mary S tries to manage Percy's reputation Mary S writes The Last Man (1876) ..Byron dead, she is the only surviving member of her small group of friends. Revises Frankenstein in 1839. Tries as hard as possible to avoid scandal, dies 1851. Her son tried to improve her image _

Summer of 1816 wrote Frankenstein, edited 1831. story goes she sat in Geneva around a fire with Percy and Byron telling ghost stories and they wanted to tell their own story. Frankenstein is the only story completed. Published 1818. Sir Walter Scott (Persuasion!) enjoyed it, generally, however, not well received. "tissue of absurdity" Play - Presumption-Fate of Frankenstein in 1823 made it famous. 1823 published second version 2 in 1826, and 1 in 1840's (play production) 1831 toned novel down, masked radical politics inspired countless movies, plays Hits a nerve and remains today Frankenstein was one of the first examples of both a science fiction and a Gothic novel Gothic Novel: Subgenre/genre --novels try to include realism, but gothic novels include unbelievable or unexplainable things no novels before 1740, novels are large chunks of prose. no rhyme, make semi-believable experiences believable. First novel was Castle of Otronto by Walpole Enlightenment: 1660's-1790's reason/logic, science was celebrated, along with the unexplained and unknown; -focus on encyclopedic understanding --people made charts, lists, and anything else they could think of to help them figure out and understand the world around them Romantics Frankenstein, the novel, wants science, unknown, and romantics. --it's a mixture of science and imagination --it's one of the most important examples of both a Gothic and a Romantic novel Romanticism-"loves nature, not boys" Dr. Lake --shift from enlightenment --reveling in the unknown and the mysterious uncharted --careful attention to nature, but focused on the unknown Percy/Mary S romantic writers.. connected to big thinkers Giovanni Aldini experiments on human/animal bodies with electricity Modern Prometheus-Shelley, Byron, Mary S. named it --symbolized suffering for radical thinking --reader drawn to question Frankenstein it's an epistolary, romantic, comic, gothic science fiction novel. frame narrative because it starts out with the captain talking

1318017924 edited and added to by1318030939 also added to by 1319127132

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