Mary Shelleys Frankenstein March 23 2015 Dr Solomon

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein March 23, 2015; Dr. Solomon Agenda • Background • Technology and Nature • Bases of Community-formation and Exclusion: story and sympathy • Becoming (or not becoming) human: learning, language, self, sympathy

Background • What are the limits and contradictions of Enlightenment thinking? • What is Romanticism?

Mary Shelley • 1797 -1851 • Mother: Mary Wollstonecraft (Vindication of the Rights of Men, 1790; Vindication of the Rights of Women, 1792) • Father: William Godwin (Enquiry concerning Political Justice, 1793) • Husband: Poet Percey Shelley

Contemporary Science: animation of lifeless bodies

Contemporary Science: animation of lifeless bodies

Contemporary Science: animation of lifeless bodies “On the first application of the process to the face, the jaws of the deceased criminal began to quiver, and the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and one eye was actually opened. In the subsequent part of the process the right hand was raised and clenched, and the legs and thighs were set in motion” (“George Foster” in Newgate Calendar)

Victor Frankenstein to Walton “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world” (Vol. I, p 32).

Bad Science: Frankenfoods

Promethus: Maker of Man A creature of a more exalted kind Was wanting yet, and then was Man design'd: Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast, For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest: […] [with] Earth, but new divided from the sky, And, pliant, still retain'd th' aetherial energy: Which wise Prometheus temper'd into paste, And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast. (Ovid “The Creation of the World” ll. 77 -84)

Promethus: Maker of Man A creature of a more exalted kind Was wanting yet, and then was Man design'd: Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast, For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest: […] [with] Earth, but new divided from the sky, And, pliant, still retain'd th' aetherial energy: Which wise Prometheus temper'd into paste, And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast. (“The Creation of the World” ll. 77 -84)

Promethus: Maker of Man A creature of a more exalted kind Was wanting yet, and then was Man design'd: Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast, For empire form'd, and fit to rule the rest: […] [with] Earth, but new divided from the sky, And, pliant, still retain'd th' aetherial energy: Which wise Prometheus temper'd into paste, And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast. (“The Creation of the World” ll. 77 -84)

Prometheus: Giver of Technology Prometheus came to inspect the distribution, and he found that the other animals were suitably furnished, but that man alone was naked and shoeless, and had neither bed nor arms of defence. The appointed hour was approaching when man in his turn was to go forth into the light of day; and Prometheus, not knowing how he could devise his salvation, stole the mechanical arts of Hephaistos and Athene, and fire with them. Plato, Protagoras 320 c - 322 a (trans. Jowett)

Prometheus Bound (Rubens, 1611 -1618)

Who is the real monster?

Three concentric 1 st-person narratives

Robert Walton of Victor Frankenstein “I begin to love him as a brother; and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion” (15)

Frankenstein’s science • “I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit” (32) • “how often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation” (32)

Three concentric “I”-narratives • Vol I: – 1) Walton to sister (Course pack: Letter 4) – 2) Frankenstein to Walton • Vol II: – 2) Frankenstein to Walton (Course pack: Chap 9) – 3) Creature to Frankenstein (Course pack: Chaps 38) • Vol III: see Vol. I

The bonds of sympathy

Becoming (or not) Human • By what steps does the creature develop? • How does he learn? From whom? • With whom does he identify?

Sympathy and Self-recognition “As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and condition. I found myself similar, yet at the same time strangely unlike the beings concerning whom I read, and to whose conversation I was a listener. I sympathized with, and partly understood them, but I was unformed in mind; I was dependent on none, and related to none” (86).

Self-consciousness “My person was hideous, and my stature gigantic: what did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred but I was unable to solve them. ” (86)

• What does reading do to the creature • What does it do to us when we read the creature’s story?

The Humanities make humans? “Literature, taken in all its bearings, forms the grand line of demarcation between the human and the animal kingdoms” – William Godwin, “Of an Early Taste for Reading” – What is human according to our readings this semester? According to this reading?

Concluding Questions • Are we to blame Frankenstein for creating the creature? Or for abandoning him? • Was the creature always already (biologically) a monster from the moment of his animation? • Or was he made into a monster through his treatment by humans? Through the absence of companionship and sympathy? • Would it be possible to be human without a community that accepts and recognizes him as such?