1. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus ● Introduction ● Letters and Chaps 1 & 2 ● Narrative Frames & Family Relations

2. Outline  Introduction: Frankenstein – Relevance, Background and Major Themes  The Letters  Chaps 1 and 2  Notes

3. Frankenstein: What’s the Story about? The Making of the Monster Significance --1:05 – 6:30 Context (scientific and personal) -- 6:30- 9:10 Occasion of writing – 9:10 – 11:00 Prometheus 15:30 Story introduction 16:10 – 29:10 Frankenstein theatrical production 29: 10- Frankstein in films 32:09 James Wales’ 2 films version 36:00 Later variations: 45:29 comedy, comics,

4. Which Frankenstein Stories do you know? Frankstein & his Monster Scientist’s Ambition Creation: e.g. Genetic engineering Education: Improvement of English Colonization: by Culture, Force, Economy Monster’s Humanity CyborgElizaFriday Anything that we produce but lose control of

5. “The Monster” in the Sci-fi Tradition  Frankenstein (1931)  2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)  Blade Runner (1982)  (2001) (robot looking for his mother)  The Island (2005) (cloning)

6. “The Monster” & Postmodern Identity -- blurring the lines between  the machine and human  (genetic engineering and cloning) the human and the other animals’ genes -- human identity as a patchwork, piecing together of fragments

7. Frankenstein/Monster as a Romantic Hero  Prometheus –as an over-reacher  Romantic Hero -- a character that rejects established norms and conventions, has been rejected by society, and has the self as the center of his or her own existence. Features: introspection, the triumph of the individual over the "restraints of theological and social conventions," wanderlust, melancholy, misanthropy, alienation, and isolation (source)source  e.g. Rochester (Jane Eyre) Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) and Don Juan

8. Background  Mary Shelley – Eloped with Shelley 1814, leaving his pregnant wife behind. Her mother (Mary Wollstonecraft) dies of miscarriage; her own experience of child birth and infant death (1815), Harriet Shelley’s suicide in 1816 and then the deaths of her two children (1818, 1819) The novel comes out of Byron’s suggestion of a ghost story contest (pp. 7-8) (The Making of a Monster 6:40)

9. Background: A Period of Revolutionary Fervor & Scientific Invention  Contemporary Science: Invention and the Origin of Species Dr. Erasmus Darwin: (p. 8; grandfather of Charles Darwin); invents a speaking machine and a horizontal windmill, etc. the generation of life: (1) life evolved from a single common ancestor“ (2) animation (text p.9)  French Revolution (Monster= revolution) Beautiful, energetic and also destructive Ingolstadt – (in southern Germany) considered the origin of French RevolutionIngolstadt

10. Major Themes  Scientific Invention and its Possible Problems—or Scientist as God; Relations between Creator and Creature (Father and Son, or Double? "unwanted pregnancy")  Romantic Hero: solitary and idealistic over-reacher, finding solace in nature, seeking to explore and transcend human boundaries (like Dr. Faust) (Three types: Promethean hero, Byronic hero, Gothic hero- villain source; see p. vi for meanings of Prometheus.)source  Definition of Humanity (appearance vs. nobility of the mind); Responsibility and Guilt  The Roles of Women and NatureNature  The novel as a "Female Gothic“: Shelley "brought birth to fiction not as realism but as gothic fantasy, and thus contributed to Romanticism a myth of genuine originality." (E. Mooer)

11. Letters and Chaps 1 & 2  Major Issue (1):  Frame Narratives: Walton // Frankenstein What does Robert Walton desire and want? What does Robert Walton desire and want? How is he similar to but different from Frankenstein in his pursuit? How is he similar to but different from Frankenstein in his pursuit?

12. Robert Walton & his Letters 1) like a Romantic Hero His desire for exploring the Pole (pp. 15-17) 2) Walton  likes and is like Frankenstein (24-) Brings Frankenstein back to life; like a brother; Parallel: “You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did,“ pursue the same course(29) 3) Different from Frankenstein: Walton  Margaret Frankenstein  Elizabeth -- his want of friends(19) and understanding of his lieutenant (pp. 20-21). -- his need of her letters; Writes to his sister as much as possible (at every stop: St. Petersburg, Archangel, and then at North Pole) (e.g. 22)

13. Walton’s Desire for the Unknown Geographical Boundaries  The pole: land of beauty or of frost and desolation. (15) “I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man.”(16)  Desires for glory and the marvelous (21-22), conquering nature

14. Walton’s Desire out of Reading  Inspired by poets and his reading: 16-17, 21 16 reading histories of voyages 17 wanted to be a poet: These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions entranced my soul and lifted it to heaven.  failed 21 I am going to "the land of mist and snow," but I shall kill no albatross … I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets.

15. Walton  Frankenstein  First saw the monster p. 24  Frankenstein – wretched, fatigued and suffering. “restored him to animation by rubbing him with brandy… From this time a new spirit of life animated the decaying frame of the stranger.” Walton: p. 25 interested in F as a “creature” (wildness and madness + benevolence and melancholy) P. 27 “I begin to love him as a brother, and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion.” Sympathy 28; Honoring F’s double existence 29

16. Walton and Frankenstein  Is Walton a double of Frankenstein? A better version? Or a less heroic one?  Walton: softened and refined by feminine fosterage 20 isolated; wants friends 19

17. Chaps 1 & 2  Major Issue (2):  Friendship and Family Relations (among Parents and Children, and Siblings) Orphan & father’s death: F’s Father (Alphonse) and Beaufort: Father’s trying to help Father and his attachment to Caroline Beaufort pp. 32-33 Elizabeth 34-36– angelic, a present for Victor F’s childhood in Geneva. 33-34 – heavenly bliss  Frankenstein’s pursuit of knowledge in Chap 2: Elizabeth & Henry Cheval as foil. pp. 36-37, 38

18. Family Relations: Parents  Harmony and heavenly bliss  F. born to parents who are humanitarian and loyal to their friends  nobility of the mind and his childhood education (33)  Father attached to Caroline, who is weak in constitution  Both love F: “My mother's tender caresses and my father's smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me are my first recollections. I was their plaything and their idol” a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control (34)

19. Family Relations: Women  Women: “the loving, sacrificial mother; the innocent, sensitive child; and the concerned, confused, abandoned lover. ” (source)source  Parallel between Caroline (32-33) and Elizabeth (more later) : orphan, weak, beautiful and virtuous.  Elizabeth: an orphan with natural beauty (35) and goodness (pp. 36, 38) Hair: brightest living gold (35) Fairer than pictured cherub--a creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois ( 羚羊 ) of the hills. till death she was to be mine only. (36)

20. Friends  Elizabeth vs. F (36)  Differences between Clerval and F: that of Romantic poet ( books of chivalry and romance  adventurous exploits ) and scientist (37, knowledge)  Cheval – moral relations of things; Elizabeth: sympathy 38 ElizabethFrankenstein calmer and more concentrated disposition More intense Poetry and nature’s appearance Causes behind them

21. Frankenstein  Violent temper and passion  Desires to learn “the secrets of heaven and earth,” “the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world” (37).  Foreboding: p. 38 the birth of “that passion” (38)

22. F’s Pursuit of Knowledge The course of his interest as that of fate: “for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but,swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.” (38)  Natural Philosophy: “the genius that has regulated [his] fate” (38)  (pp. 39) The contrast between occultism and alchemy (represented by Cornelius Agrippa, `Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus) on the one hand, and modern science (represented by mathematics and the study of electricity)  (p. 41) a brief turn to modern science  defeated by “Destiny” (“Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.” 42)

23. Fate or Choice?

24. Notes: (2) Mer de Glace, a glacier above Chamonix 

25. Note (2): Ingolstadt, Germany  Where Frankenstein studies;the birthplace of the Illuminati, a secret society that introduced revolutionary ideas believed by many to have helped foment the revolution in France.

26. References  Reading: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20038/2003 8-index.html http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20038/2003 8-index.html