The novel's outermost layer is Mary Shelley's 1832 Introduction p.v

Written 16 years later--for me its the best part of the whole book.

The author's commentary frequently frames works of Romantics--emphasizing that art is the outward expression of inner or higher reality, rather than realistic imitation of the normal world--Expressionism

Mary starts with an account of creation as competition between Waking dream and Writing stories--like Piping vs. speaking vs. writing in Blake's "Introduction." It arises from the rivalry between

inspiration dream and vision to please herself vs. husband "forever inciting me to obtain literary reputation" (vi) or expected of "daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity" with" a story to rival those which had excited us to the task" (vii)

Mary says she wrote this introduction in answer to the question--how she "as a young girl came to think of and to dilate upon so very hideous an idea."

The idea is hideous--and has affected people ever since in strange ways. Preparing for this class brought back my first memory of it, from the year 1950. I was 8 years old, sitting on the sidewalk in front of my apartment block in New York City, with a cardboard box of old comic books to trade with other kids who had brought theirs. I'd always stayed far away from those horrifying "Crypt" comics which had decomposing corpses on the cover, because I was the kind of kid who had to run out of Walt Disney's Bambi during the forest fire scene. Anyway my friend Arthur had some Classic comics in his box and they seemed safe enough. I saw the cover of this one:

The word Frankenstein was as familiar to me as "bogeyman," but I didnt know much about the story. The opening pages about the trip to the north pole were harmless enough, but then came the really scary stuff about robbing the graves for body parts and assembling the monster. I leafed through them quickly and came to a few frames about an incident that doesnt appear in the novel we just read. Several men in ragged loincloths with very pink backs were tied by their hands to a tree branch and were being whipped by others, fully dressed. The monster observes this from the woods. I was cold with terror. Probably the impressions of the previous scenes had caught up with me. I threw Arthurs comic book back in his box and buried my head for comfort in one of my favorite Little Lulus. For about a year afterwards or maybe two, I would wake up regularly in a sweat, with nightmares about that whipping scene and what lay behind it.

Mary's book about a monster, is in fact a monster itself, and her narrative about its creation in the introduction is very similar to the story of Victor's creation of his own hideous progeny.

In describing briefly her childhood, Mary alludes to spending time alone in the country where she was sent by her father because she wasnt getting along with her stepmother.

She must have experienced herself as a kind of hideous progeny of parents who both shared alot with the character of Victor--brilliant, revolutionary and obsessive.

Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, in addition to having authored the classic Vindication of the Rights of Women, and other philosophical treatises, novels and children's books, tried twice to kill herself after love affiars with the gothic artist Henry Fuseli, and the American businessman Gilbert Imlay. At age 36 she had another affair with the famous philsopher and novelist William Godwin, got pregnant and then married him, bore their daughter Mary Shelly at age 38, and died a few days later of complications of childbirth.

Godwin raised his daughter as ungendered--he provided an excellent literary and philosophical, though not a scientific education; and tried to imbue her with his ideology of atheism and free love--partly in an effort to recreate his beloved Mary Wollstonecraft in her.

Unable to handle the task of raising three small children himself, he married Mary Jane Clairmont, who had two children of her own, and who could not get along with the independent and unconventional Mary and had her sent away.

The Introduction continues: "After this my life became busier and reality stood in place of fiction" vi. That is an understatement

Mary had returned to London at age 17 and entered a passionate relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley, the dashing poet from a wealthy family who was kicked out of Oxford for writing "The Necessity of Atheism," and "Queen Mab," a scathing critique of church, state, society and an appeal to youth for social revolution, free love and liberation from marriage-- similar to Blake's in SE and MHH. Percy idolized Mary's free thinking father Godwin. He and Mary got to know each other intimatleyin the cemetery at her mother's gravestone, which she visited every day.

However, Shelley was already married to a woman named Harriet, who provided him no intellectual inspiration, but had borne him two children. Shelley and Mary eloped to the continent, driving her father Godwin into a rage. He cut off contact with daughter but continued to accept money from Shelley to pay debts.

They were joined on their trip by Claire Clairmont, Mary's stepsister. Mary's first baby died, and she got pregnant with a second, later named William. Claire got involved with the even more dashing and decadent Romantic poet, Lord Byron, and then, pregnant, convinced the Shelleys to chase Byron to Switzerland, where they lived in adjoining villas and where the famous ghost story writing contest took place. Byron kept sleeping with Claire though he didnt like her. She also had a romantic, possibly erotic relationship with Shelley, while he tried to get Mary sexually involved with his friend James Hogg, while she was pregnant with his own baby.

Back in London after that summer was over, Mary works on the novel Frankenstein and new incidents unfold: Fanny Imlay, Mary's half- sister commits suicide. Harriet, Shelley's wife, commits suicide--and afterward it turns out she was pregnant, but not with Shelley's child. Mary and Percy Shelley were married and reconciled with Godwin

With the publication of novel in 1818, Mary's literary career was launched but her son William died.

Four years later in June 1822, Marys almost died of another miscarriage, but shewas saved by Shelley's efforts. A month later, while they are living in Italy, Shelley went out sailing in a storm for fun, but he didnt know how to swim. Ten days later his drowned body washed ashore and several of his poet friends decided to cremate it on the beach. One of them rescued the heart from the flames, and gave it to another Leigh Hunt. Mary finally got possession of it from him after extensive wrangling.

So, with the phrase, "Reality stood in place of fiction," Mary passes over these events, recorded in letters and journals, goes on to describe the Genesis of the novel

They read ghost stories because of bad weather-- typical gothic horror stories with unstated psychological undertones

History of Inconstant Lover--about a man who tries to kiss new bride but finds self in arms of ghost of betrayed lover [Shelley's wife and Victor]--vi-vii

[vii]Tale of sinful founder of his race who bestowed kiss of death on younger sons of his house just when they reached age of promise...

[Songs of Experience: Song of Ancient Bard, Nurse, etc, also God in Paradise Lost--where reaching for experience is punished with death]

The writing contest

Mary's approach--like Viktor's and Walton--competitive ambition--confident that project will enhance control and power

Purpose: "speak to mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror" [Gothic conventions; stimulate emotions; the sublime--fear and fear of God]

Conception: (viii) Byron and Shelley's discussion of pseudo scientific theories of manufacturing life by males

Birth: they stay up all night, then she goes to bed; imagination guides her unbidden--the kind of waking dream whose uncontrollable power she always loved

"frightful"--pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside hideous phantasm of man stretched out ...human endeavor to mock stupendous mechanism of Creator of world

Revulsion (viii): Success terrifies artist and he runs hoping it will die, he runs away and goes to sleep; he's awakened and beholds the thing [mirror image of previous image] Identification between author and protagonist--reality and fiction; waking and dream

(ix) Segue from dream to her waking; terrified, she wants to get out of dream into reality

The solution--writing it down as a ghost story to escape from its threat; but also to compete

This is the sythesis of the separation of writing and imagining mentioned at the opening. The work of art, which is also the offspring, purges the interior horror of the unconscious and the emotions, and is also a source of pride and liberation.

This is opposite from Viktor, who cant affirm his work, hideous as it may appear, beautiful and human as it actually is

Envoi--Finale of introduction

"I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart."

She fondly remembers Shelley, who had contributed so much turmoil and pain to her; the life ugly and tragic has become beautiful and fruitful; she can affirm the terror in her past and also its product.

This is the positive answer to the negative question which begins her introduction: how she "as a young girl came to think of and to dilate upon so very hideous an idea."

My question: what about this hideous progeny would make her affirm it in restrospect with such affection?

The way it gave the girl of 18 a chance to bring together the tumultuous facts and uncontrollable circumstances of her life in a powerful voice and a meaningful shape.

She did this by creating a series of disguised portraits of Shelley and of herself, viewed from several contrasting and interrelated points of view--points of view that reflected her own contrary perspectives.

Writing the book left her healthy and balanced enough to raise her one surviving child as a single parent and independent writer, fulfilling the vision of her mother, while her friends and contemporaries committed suicide or destroyed themselves in other ways.

Professor Cushing has already spoken about the layered structure of the book as resembling both the relationship of unborn baby and mother as well as the layered structure of the mind. I'd like to look at that pattern one more time.

Walton's story--the outermost shell--gives voice to the Mary who idolizes and idealizes Shelley

In him she found a companion for her isolation. She followed him through polar climes-- the Alps, free love, revolutionary behavior--in admiration of his amazing creativity, his poetic skill, his courage, drive, sensitivity. He modelled, mentored and mirrored those same qualities in herself.

Her isolation, rebellion against father and family, her aspirations as artist, her pioneering feminism in an utterly sexist society.

These are Promethean in a positive sense--she called the book, the Modern Prometheus:

Challenging God on behalf of man

The human form divine of Blake

Defies Jupiter's oppression by giving fire to man and then punished by eternal torture.

The sacrificial artist and scientist, who suffers to create a legacy for others--staining the water clear that every child may read.

Byron wrote a poem, Promethus in 1816

Shelley wrote Prometheus Unbound starting in 1818.

Walton is also Percy Shelley's own voice in the narrative, because he urged her to write it, and because he intervened as editor, to make Victor much more and the monster, much less sympathetic, according to the well documented research of Ann Mellor into the manuscript and early edition.

Victor--the next level or layer

Victor--the triumphant one--is a penname Percy gave himself. In Victor's self portrait we find a much less complementary portrait, one that provokes ambivalence if not outright hostility in the reader. In this self-portrait we also discover some of Mary's less than ideal traits. Never admitted outright, these negative traits are more powerfully confessed THROUGH the veneer of secrecy suppression and self-justification that the reader easily penetrates.

Victor's voice renders Prometheus not as a hero but a villain--a Doctor Faustus making a pact with demonic forces, an overreacher like Satan, challenging God, a usurper of the power of creation who turns it into the power of death and rightfully suffers the consequences.

This reflects Percy Shelley's narcissim, his harem psychology, his financial irresponsiblity, his radical political mission to liberate all the oppressed people of the world, his dabbling in science and neoplatonic alchemy.

One of Victor's most disastrous characteristics is his rejection of his own offspring, so eagerly created, his inability to parent, despite the desperate needs of his offspring and his own acknowledged responsibility.

Viktor labors 9 months and then abandons child--childs inarticulate sounds follow him

He's an abusive and neglectful parent--contrasted to DeLacy and Alphonse Frankenstein--both care for their motherless children

Shelley himself seems to have been indifferent to his own children, except when after Harriet died, he tried to gain custody of them. He showed no signs of regret over Mary's lost babies and certainly didnt do anything to provide her with a family environment that would be more conducive to child rearing than was her own.

But as Jim Cushing pointed out, Mary herself clearly had reason to be ambivalent about motherhood. In pregnancy, the foetus can look like a monster and render the mother monstrous looking. It is a voracious parasite and a rival, which takes nourishment and energy from you, destroys your youth, brings you close to death, and certainly competes for the time you want to devote to your professional or artistic career--as both Mary and her mother were so fully aware.

As author, Mary Shelley herself kills the child William, the same name as her father and the real baby who died soon after its publication.

Monster

In the center of the novel, Mary Shelley distances herself further from Victor and I think from Percy, as she identifies herself with the monster--giving voice to her own suppressed plight as orphan, rejected child, outsider and misfit. This is the most sympathetic voice in the novel.

We hear its cry of the child abandoned and abused: "I never asked to be born"

A literary woman without a mother itself a monster without identity--a non female; as much interested in the masculine creation of art, as the feminine creation of life. The ugliness of the monster's appearance corresponds closely with the way masculinized women might be regarded--lacking the passive, decorative beauty expected of the subordinate--a physical description often applied by ridiculing critics to her mother.

The monster's voice expresses the pathos of being an outsider from every alternate family it tries to join, once rejected by its parent: the farmer, the parent of the saved child, the DeLacy family, and by little William Lavenza.

The Monster gets a good humanist education, but is left with the lack of self esteem that keeps it desperately searching for love.

The monster is the French Revolution itself--abandoned humanity gone wild with rage; the offspring of thinking of Viktor and Shelly and Blake and Godwin as revolutionaries 82

Inmost level--monster peeking in the window--idealized family--enclosed in monster's narrative--he's excluded [Mellor's interpretation]

They are fugitives of the revolution; victims, not victors

DeLacey are an alternative: Felix =happiness, Agatha goodness, Safie=sophia wisdom; she comes because she's escaping oppression of women; Safie's mother instructed her to aspire to higher powers of intellect

Mary Shelley's ideal is an ethic of care--egalitarian family

Again and again, monster tries to realize this possibility--envisioned by her mother, rejected by Rousseau who wanted to keep women in their place when creating new society

Why cant this work?--Why is Victor the victorious one?

Females have minor roles only--as victims, though novel written by female daughter of feminist

Genevan separation of male and female roles creates weak women and heartless men, public and private--cf. Justine's sacrifice.

fThe destruction of the female is implicit in Frankenstein's stealing female control over reproduction...no need for females at all--science, politics can be males.

Also domination of science over nature--genetic engineering; digital reproduction

Fear or rejection of female is fear and jealousy of female sexuality and fertility

No explicit sexuality--it erupts only as violence

This leads into the final movement of the book--most difficult to make sense out of

The death of the bride

At the end of his narrative, Monster argues that bride he can love is only thing that will tame his evil passions. Victor vacillates but promises to create a woman--as ambivalent as God in Milton's paradise lost who has to be convinced by Adam of that need.

He states his "repugnance to the task...I could not compose a female..." 108

This creation from the start is linked with his marriage with Elizabeth

Just like the monster, Father pressures him to marry 109--but "idea of immediate union with my Elizabeth was one of horror and dismay." 110 First he needs to create wife for monster.

After many delays, he travels to the inhospitable Orkney Islands in the far north to carry out the task

Ch.20--Destroying the Bride--read 120-121

Relate this to passage read by Cushing--creation of first monster

to seeing demon awakening in chapter 5 and running away--and then dreaming of embracing Elizabeth and the dead mother

But why in this case does he abort rather than desert the second child?

He's afraid of independent female will, her desires not controlled by his male creature

Female desires might be sadistic--10K times worse than mate

More ugly, so male will turn in disgust

She might rape males

Afraid of reproductive powers

What he truly fears is female sexuality as such

Violently asserts control over the female body, as in a rape---mangled the living flesh--passion is fear, lust and hostility--124

Goes out in boat to dump the relics of his work--tools, ingredients and body parts--in the ocean. "Felt as if I was about the commission of a dreadful crime....But it refreshed me, and filled me with such agreeable sensations...I slept soundly"125--abandonment and death

Demon comes to him with warning: "I shall be with you on your wedding night" 123--destruction of the Bride of the monster turns into the destruction of Elizabeth

Ch.21--Clerval's death; return of father--movement toward tragic denoument, everything leading up to it...the wedding night;--"I will be with you on your wedding night"

Clerval is flattering portrait of Shelley--alter ego, former self reined mind lover of natural beauty learner of languages--like Wordsworth, imaginative man capable of deep and abiding love

Ch.23--The Wedding Night--the climax: death of bride/sister and death of father--inevitable tragedy--read 144-5

Based on the painting of Fuseli's The Nightmare

Image of open acceptance...Victor fears brides sexuality; sends her in alone to be killed. Embraces her with ardor when she's dead--like memory of earlier dream before creating monster--corpse of mother; deepest desire to possess lost mother.

Rape of nature, violent penetration or usurpation of females hiding places--he and his society replace nature with technology

"The monster encodes, like the succubus, his own lust"--monster is instrument of usurpation of female power of reproduction

Father also dies--organic forbear

Ending:

Getting rid of both father and wife, means that Frankenstein and Monster are alone together in pairing of love and hate, revenge and obsession.

The monster's in charge--he's after it until he dies and monster escapes; they never forgive each other.

Monster's rage may figure Mary's understandable rage and the tranfer of her search for love into a search for revenge.

The difficult ending--Victor dies after urging men onward toward the north and seeking revenge himself; and then reversing and giving Walton the lesson like Faustus at the end, of repentance and caution and also self-justification. 162

Monster ends up forgiving and repenting as well --totally ambivalent about his relation to Viktor whose death he mourns

"That is also my victim...in his murder my crimes are consummated; the miserable series of my bieng is wouind it its close. O Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst. Alas! He is cold he cannot answer me." 163

He suffers more without his partner and creator than he ever suffered with him, like Mary Shelly grieving for Percy at the end of her Introduction--

My hideous progeny was the offspring of happy days...Its several pages speak of ...when I was not alone; and my companion was one who, in this world, I shall never see more. ix

And the monster's final departure for the North Pole where he will collect his funeral pyre and "consume to ashes his miserable frame" is uncannily prophetic of Shelly's funeral pyre on the beaches of Italy.

But the last lines of the novel dont narrate his death and leave Victor's surviving progeny with an unknown future.

And Mary's hideous progeny has prospered even more than she did, fulfilling perhaps the very fears that made Victor destroy the monster's feminine partner--for Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" has populated the earth much more prolifically than the writings of her famous husband.