1. Starter: How do these images relate to the opening of ‘Frankenstein’?
Think about the narrative voice at the beginning
How could you label each box?
Be ready to present your theory.
How do these images relate to the opening of ‘Frankenstein’?

2. Epistolary novel – series of letters or documents
Key Terms:
Epistolary novel – series of letters or documents
Frame narrative - the frame story leads readers from a first story into another, smaller one (or several ones) within it. Robert Walton is the frame narrator using the epistolary form.
Chinese Box Narrative
Embedded Narratives
[Robert Walton [Victor Frankenstein [Monster] Victor Frankenstein] Robert Walton]

3. Context A04 Traditional Novel Modern Novel (Frankenstein)
Reliable narrator
Familiar narrator
Narrator decodes and explains the story clearly
Reader’s are taken out of the equation
“readerly text” (Roland Barthes)
Passive reader – no interpretation needed
Unreliable narrator
Reader needs to actively be engaged
Reader needs to decode
“writerly text”
Encourages participation and judgment
Variety of narrators
Different points of view

4. Underline all vocabulary we are not certain about.
Reading Letter 1
Underline all vocabulary we are not certain about.

5. Context: The Romantics
Believed in the power of the imagination (as educational, religious, prophetic and political)
Glorified the role of the imagination
Believed in the supremacy of knowledge
Revered the ability of human kind to discover the secrets of nature
Celebrated acts of transgression (the violation of laws, transgression of rules, rejection of established order)
Had a passion for forbidden knowledge
A passion for the sublime
An obsession for power and dominance
Shelley problematises many of these beliefs by demonstrating the consequences, both positive and negative of following these ideas.
This was a modern outlook and a movement away from the Romantic movement, which so many of her friends and family were a part of.

6. Robert Walton and Victor Frankenstein Quotation and Annotation
Character Parallels
Extension: Can you make links between Robert Walton and Prometheus or Paradise Lost
Robert Walton and Victor Frankenstein
Quotation and Annotation
Both characters demonstrate obsessive natures.
“inspirited by this wind of promise, my daydreams became more fervent and vivid” p15
Both...
Walton is physically enlivened by the wind
Personification of wind suggests his faith in nature
His dreams reveal a loss of connection with reality. His passion for discovery is overtaking his understanding of the dangers or consequences he faces.

7. Robert Walton
Walton's letters to his sister begin and end Victor Frankenstein's tragic story. Walton captains a ship that gets trapped in the ice on the way to the north pole. As he waits for the ice to thaw, he and his crew pick up Victor, weak and emaciated from his long chase after the monster. Victor recovers enough to tell the story of his life, and then dies. Walton laments the death of a man with whom he felt a strong, meaningful friendship beginning to form.
Walton’s character parallels Victor's in many ways. Like Victor, Walton is an explorer, chasing after that “country of eternal light”—unpossessed knowledge. However Victor's story serves as an example of the dangers of heedless scientific ambition. In his decision to terminate his treacherous journey to the North Pole, Walton serves as a foil to Victor, either not obsessive enough to risk almost-certain death or not courageous enough to allow his passion to drive him.

8. Questions for discussion.
What impression do you get of the narrator Robert Walton?
Why might Shelley have chosen to use a frame narrative with Walton as the first narrator?

9. Why might Shelley have chosen to use a frame narrative with Walton as the first narrator?
Shelley constructs a Chinese box narrative, with Robert Walton acting as a frame narrator through the epistolary form. This narrative distancing may be reflective of other 'distances' in the novel; it may reflect the geographical distance and how all three characters are isolated in their own ways, it may reflect the moral distance between Victor and his fellow men or it may reflect Shelley's desire to be distanced from  any sort of female voice in the novel - perhaps in fear that a female voice would be seen to reflect her own views and beliefs, which would arguably be frowned upon at the time of writing. Furthermore, the parallels between Walton and Frankenstein allows Shelley to set up key themes at the beginning of the text including the dangers acquiring knowledge.

10. The Narrator and context
- James Clark Ross (lead the first successful navigation to magnetic North Pole in 1931)

11. The Narrator How does this painting represent man and nature?
The Sea of Ice, 1924
How does this painting represent man and nature?

12. The Narrator and context
Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century (peaking 1800 to 1840). Partly a reaction to the Industrial Revolution,[1] it was also a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.[2] It was embodied most strongly in the visual arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography,[3] education[4] and the natural sciences.[5] Its effect on politics was considerable and complex; while for much of the peak Romantic period it was associated with liberalism and radicalism.
The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension, horror and terror, and awe—especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories. Romanticism reached beyond the rational and Classicist ideal models to elevate a revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived to be authentically medieval in an attempt to escape the confines of population growth, urban sprawl, and industrialism, and it also attempted to embrace the exotic, unfamiliar, and distant in modes more authentic than Rococo chinoiserie, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape. The movement offered an escape from modern realities.

13. The Narrator
Organise yourselves into groups: Letter I Letter II Letter III Letter IV Philip John Douglas Tom Milo Matthew Jesse Justin Konrad

14. The Narrator
In your group re-read the letter and take notes on how Shelley characterises Walton. How does she convey:
- His loneliness and isolation
His ambition (what form does this take?)
The reasons for his ambition
Consider also:
The impression he creates of Frankenstein
The impression she creates of the creature
The way she generates suspense through the letter form

15. The Narrator To finish: What are the three structural layers?
What does the novel gain from the frame narrative?
Why might Shelley have Walton’s letters to open the novel?
What does an understanding of context at this time suggest about Walton’s character?
What aspects of his character do you think will be important to the novel and our understanding of Victor and the key themes?
What thematic depth is added by Shelley’s use of the frame narrative?

16. Homework for Friday
Research The Rime of the Ancient mariner…

17. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Frankenstein is heavily influenced by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’. Mary and her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, were great admirers of Coleridge’s work. Research this poem and find out the following information:
What is the poem about?
When was it written?
What is the ‘moral’ of the poem?
How is it similar to Frankenstein?