FRANKENSTEIN

Mary Shelley

 Link to Burg Frankenstein

QUOTE

“My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.”  

“Live, and be happy, and make others so.” 

“My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy,

and when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred,

it did not endure the violence of the change

without torture such as you cannot even imagine.”  

    
 

 I really wish I had a better word than like, I wish I had time to concentrate on choosing the perfect eloquent word. However, I feel really strapped for time to focus on those important details

Literally, in German, the name Frankenstein means "Stone of the Franks", confederation of Germanic tribes

I like Mary Shelley's novel FRANKENSTEIN (1816) I thought it was profound. I am intrigued by the notion of the young threesome traipsing thorough Europe, the youthful free intelligentsia albeit with tragic life stories. I thought it was fantastic that a young woman (19 years old) was such a great writer and that she gathered up the information she had learned from the people (albeit mostly men) in her life and wove the themes together in a story. I wondered if the writing is more complex because we are reading it in the language that it was written, it's not lost in translation. It is a peculiar story and the fact that the creature kills is tragic because I wanted to like him. I wanted him to be the gentle beast. I enjoyed how previous themes we have had before showed up in the book, the storm, immortality, principle of life, perfection, labour, worms just to name a few. The pop culture presence is fantastic!

I saw the creation of life from the dead, “bestowing animation upon lifeless matter” (53) as a form of resurrection or reincarnation.

Tonight we talked about “impossible ideals”, in Frankenstein this notion is also present, “Life and death are ideal bounds (55), “he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow” (54).

Obsessed, the scientist has in his grasp what has been the “study and desire since the creation of the world” (53). So creation, Gods realm, is within the man's ability. Eliminating the woman. For me it symbolized invention, the industrial revolution, the IT or A.I. development, the nuclear bomb, bringing something to life that has great power, is bigger than we are and that we can not control. Takes on a life of its own and is not what we expect, akin to the imagery of what the creature looks like (58).

WIKI

Mary Shelley believed in the Enlightenment idea that people could improve society through the responsible exercise of political power, but she feared that the irresponsible exercise of power would lead to chaos.

“I beheld the miserable monster whom I had created” (59) “...it became a thing such as Dante could not have conceived.” (59).

If you can think it, it exists - Descartes

“Your disaster is irreparable” (75)

“Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself...” (102).

The notion that perfection is a peaceful mind and that the deep engagement with one occupation is problematic (61). It is noted that one is born innocent with “benevolent intentions” (93) and “serenity of conscience” as life goes on we are seized by “remorse and guilt “ (94) this state of mind preys upon ones health and it takes courage to dispel the dark cloud (93).

Victor did not have a peaceful mind and lapsed into illness all winter long (63), after his “toil” is complete and he is confronted by the creature of his making. In the mountains the creature pleas with Victor to “Be calm! I entreat you to hear me.” (102)

I summed up the killings to the fact that its a ghost story, interesting analysis in class discussion.

Victor chooses to remain silent because he determined the story to be too “improbable” (79). The “cowardice of her pretended friends” allows Justine (Justice) to perish (86).

“praise the eternal justice of man” (103).

William and Justine, the innocent, boy child and young girl are the first “hapless victims to my unhallowed arts” (90). The injustices that that were ancient or imaginary have come home (95). “The fiend that lurked in my heart” (96).

Great Rousseau scene on page 94. Rowing to the middle of the lake and fantastic scenery descriptions reminiscent of Wollstonecraft’s sublime ( 97-101)

The discussion with creature page 102 seems psychoanalytic; an internal struggle

a creature to kill, the duty to ones creation, detest and spurn that to which one is bound,

life, despite anguish, is dear,

power, laws, enemies

“Misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous” (103).

The basic tenets of psychoanalysis include the following:

1. beside the inherited constitution of personality, a person's development is determined by events in early childhood;
2. human behavior, experience, and cognition are largely determined by irrational drives;
3. those drives are largely unconscious;
4. attempts to bring those drives into awareness meet psychological resistance in the form of defense mechanisms;
5. conflicts between conscious and unconscious (repressed) material can result in mental disturbances such as neurosis, neurotic traits, anxiety, depression etc.;
6. the liberation from the effects of the unconscious material is achieved through bringing this material into the conscious mind (via e.g. skilled guidance).
   
   “Yet it is within your power to deliver mankind from an evil ....”(103). Making Victor God-
7.  
8. WIKI
9. Victor Frankenstein is like Satan in Paradise Lost, and Prometheus: he rebels against tradition; he creates life; and he shapes his own destiny. These traits are not portrayed positively; as Blumberg writes, "his relentless ambition is a self-delusion, clothed as quest for truth".^[176] He must abandon his family to fulfill his ambition.^[177]

Poverty is an evil (114)

I really enjoyed the evolution of the creature on page 115-118; ideas appropriated to sounds, language, knowledge (with hopes this would help the cottagers overcome his deformity), motives, feelings. He truly seemed a gentle creature.

The creature suffers from the ill-treatment of discrimination. Responds to being hated. Meets expectations of the discrimination and becomes a monster.

looking in mirror the creature “became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am" (116).

“man so powerful, virtuous, vicious and base" (122)

evil,

noble, god-like,

highest honour

lowest degradation a condition more abject than the harmless worms (122)

Think Darwin

“to overcome the sensation of pain is death” (123)