Shelley, Frankenstein

A scientist builds a creature. The creature learns to speak, read, and feel. Then it kills everyone the scientist loves. Who is the monster? The question has never been settled.

About the work

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was first published in 1818, when Mary Shelley was twenty years old. A revised and more widely read edition appeared in 1831. The novel tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young Swiss scientist who discovers the secret of animating life and constructs a living creature from dead tissue, only to be horrified by what he has made. The creature, rejected by its creator and by every human it encounters, demands that Frankenstein create a companion for it. When Frankenstein refuses, the creature begins to kill the people Frankenstein loves.

The novel's subtitle invokes the myth of Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from the gods and was punished by being chained to a rock where an eagle ate his liver every day (it grew back each night). There are two Promethean figures in the novel: Frankenstein, who steals the divine power of creation, and the creature, who suffers eternally for a condition he did not choose. The ambiguity of the subtitle -- which Prometheus is "the modern Prometheus"? -- is characteristic of a novel that resists settling its own questions.

Mary Shelley was the daughter of the feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft (who died shortly after giving birth to her) and the radical political philosopher William Godwin. She began writing the novel during the summer of 1816, while staying at Lake Geneva with Percy Byssel Shelley (her future husband), Lord Byron, and John Polidori. The weather was terrible (it was the "Year Without a Summer," caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora), and the group passed the time telling ghost stories. Byron proposed that each of them write one. Mary Shelley's contribution became Frankenstein.

The novel's relationship to its author's biography has been a major focus of criticism. Mary Shelley had lost a child, had a complicated relationship with her father, and was living with a married man in a social environment that was not always welcoming. How much of this enters the novel is a matter of critical debate, not of biography.

Things to notice

The frame narrative. The novel does not begin with Frankenstein or the creature. It begins with Robert Walton, an English explorer on a ship in the Arctic, writing letters to his sister. Walton encounters Frankenstein on the ice, listens to his story, and records it. Frankenstein's narrative contains the creature's narrative, which in turn contains the story of the De Laceys, the family the creature observes from hiding. The novel is a set of nested boxes: Walton's letters contain Frankenstein's account, which contains the creature's account, which contains the De Laceys' story. Notice what this structure does: it distances every story from the reader by at least one layer of narration. We never encounter the creature directly; we encounter him as reported by Frankenstein, as reported by Walton, as written in a letter. The question of whose account is reliable -- and what each narrator has to gain by telling the story a particular way -- is one the structure forces you to consider.

The creature's eloquence. The most striking feature of the novel, for many readers, is the creature's ability to speak. When he tells his story (in Chapters 11-16), he is articulate, reflective, and emotionally precise. He describes his first experiences of light and dark, heat and cold, hunger and satiety, with a freshness and wonder that are deeply affecting. He teaches himself language by observing the De Lacey family. He reads Paradise Lost, Plutarch's Lives, and The Sorrows of Werther, and he understands them. The creature's eloquence creates a problem for any reading that treats him as a mere monster: he is the most sympathetic narrator in the novel. Notice also that the creature's eloquence is itself a product of education and observation -- he learned to be human by watching humans. This is the novel's most sustained argument for nurture over nature: the creature is not born a monster. He becomes one through rejection.

Frankenstein's irresponsibility. Victor Frankenstein's decision to abandon his creature immediately after animating it is the novel's pivotal act. He works for years on the project, achieves his goal, and then -- because the creature is ugly -- runs away and goes to sleep. When the creature comes to his bedroom, Frankenstein flees again. He does not return to check on the creature, does not try to teach it, does not take any responsibility for the life he has created. Every subsequent disaster flows from this initial abandonment. Notice that the novel does not present Frankenstein's scientific ambition as inherently wrong. The sin is not the creation but the refusal to care for what has been created.

The De Lacey family and the creature's education. The chapters in which the creature observes the De Lacey family from his hiding place are among the novel's most important. Through the De Laceys, the creature learns about family, love, music, language, and reading. He also learns about social exclusion -- he sees how the De Laceys treat the stranger who visits them, and he contrasts this with the violence he expects if he reveals himself. When he finally does approach the blind old De Lacey (who cannot see his appearance), the conversation goes well -- until the sighted family members return and react with horror. Notice that the creature's first experience of human kindness is immediately followed by his first experience of human violence. The sequence is devastating precisely because it presents a counterfactual: things could have been different.

The demand for a companion. The creature's request is reasonable on its own terms: he is alone, he is miserable, and he wants a companion like himself. He promises that if Frankenstein creates a female companion, the two of them will leave human society forever and live in peace. Frankenstein initially agrees, then destroys the half-finished female creature in a fit of revulsion, fearing that the two might produce offspring and that the female might be even more destructive than the male. The creature's response is predictable and catastrophic: "I will be with you on your wedding-night." Notice the impossibility of the creature's position. He cannot be accepted by humans. He cannot have a companion. He is condemned to eternal solitude, and his response is to make Frankenstein share that solitude by destroying everyone Frankenstein loves.

Nature and the sublime. The novel is saturated with descriptions of natural landscapes -- the Alps, the Arctic, the lakes and mountains of Switzerland, the Orkney Islands. These descriptions serve several functions. They locate the novel in the tradition of Romantic nature writing. They provide a contrast to the horror of the creature's existence (nature is beautiful; the creature's life is not). And they invoke the sublime -- that experience of awe and terror in the face of nature's power that was central to Romantic aesthetics. Notice that Frankenstein repeatedly seeks solace in nature but never finds lasting peace there. The natural world is beautiful but indifferent to human suffering.

The gender dynamics. The novel's treatment of women has been a major focus of feminist criticism. The female characters -- Elizabeth Lavenza, Justine Moritz, Safie, Margaret Saville (Walton's sister) -- are defined primarily by their relationships to men and by their suffering. Elizabeth is Frankenstein's adopted sister and eventual wife, killed by the creature on their wedding night. Justine is executed for a murder the creature committed. The female creature is destroyed before she is even animated. The novel's narrative is structured around male creators and male destroyers; women are the collateral damage. Whether this is a critique of patriarchal culture or a reflection of it is debated.

The 1818 vs. 1831 editions. The 1818 and 1831 editions differ significantly. The 1818 edition presents Victor as more actively responsible for his choices. The 1831 revision (made after Percy Shelley's death) makes Victor more of a victim of fate and gives Elizabeth a more passive, angelic characterization. The 1831 edition also adds a new introduction in which Mary Shelley describes the novel's origins in the Lake Geneva ghost story contest. Critics have debated which edition should be treated as authoritative. Anne K. Mellor, in Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (1988), argues strongly for the 1818 text as more politically radical and more consistent with Mary Shelley's original vision.

Questions to ask

Who is the monster? Is it the creature (who kills) or Frankenstein (who creates and abandons)? Can both be monsters? Can neither?
The creature learns to be human by watching the De Laceys, and he learns to be a monster through human rejection. What is the novel saying about whether monstrosity is innate or learned?
Is Frankenstein's scientific ambition a sin, or is his sin the abandonment of his creation? Would the novel be different if he had taken responsibility?
The creature asks for a companion and is refused. Is the refusal justified? Was the creature's promise to leave human society believable? Does Frankenstein have the right to create life and then refuse to create a second life?
What is the role of women in the novel? Are they characters, or are they symbols? Does the novel critique their marginalization or participate in it?
Why does the novel begin and end in the Arctic? What does the ice represent?
Walton mirrors Frankenstein in ambition and in his willingness to risk others' lives for his goals. Does Walton learn from Frankenstein's story, or is he destined to repeat it?
The novel never explains how Frankenstein animates the creature. Why? What does the absence of scientific detail do to the story?

What critics have argued

Psychoanalytic readings. Psychoanalytic critics have read Frankenstein as a fantasy of male childbirth -- Frankenstein creates life without a woman, then abandons the result. Marie Helene Huet, in Monstrous Imagination (1993), analyzed the novel in the context of Enlightenment debates about generation and reproduction. Other psychoanalytic readings have focused on Frankenstein's relationship with his mother (who dies of scarlet fever early in the novel, after which Frankenstein becomes obsessed with conquering death), and on the creature as a figure for the repressed -- the part of the self that the conscious mind refuses to acknowledge. These readings can be illuminating, but they risk reducing a complex literary and philosophical work to a single psychological schema.

Feminist criticism. Feminist criticism has produced some of the most influential readings of Frankenstein. Ellen Moers, in Literary Women (1976), argued that the novel is fundamentally about the experience of childbirth and postpartum anxiety -- Mary Shelley had recently lost a premature baby, and the novel's horror centers on a creator's revulsion from its creation. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, in The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), read the creature as a figure for the woman writer in a patriarchal culture -- created by a man, rejected by the social order, driven to rage and destruction by exclusion. Anne K. Mellor, in Mary Shelley (1988), argued that the novel critiques a specifically masculine mode of science that seeks to dominate nature rather than cooperate with it, and that Frankenstein's failure is a failure to exercise the maternal care that creation requires.

Marxist criticism. Marxist critics have read the creature as a figure for the working class -- created by a master, put to no useful purpose, alienated from the products of its labor, and driven to revolt by its oppression. Fred Botting, in Making Monstrous (1991), examined the novel's relationship to the industrial revolution and the social upheavals of the early nineteenth century. Franco Moretti, in Signs Taken for Wonders (1983), argued that the creature represents the proletariat in a moment before class consciousness -- powerful, dangerous, but ultimately directionless in its rage. These readings extend the novel's concerns beyond the personal to the structural.

Posthumanist and science fiction criticism. More recently, critics have read Frankenstein as a foundational text of science fiction and as a precursor to posthumanist thought. The novel asks questions about the boundaries of the human, the ethics of artificial life, and the relationship between creator and creation that have become increasingly urgent in an age of genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and biotechnology. Chris Baldick, in In Frankenstein's Shadow (1987), traced the novel's cultural afterlife, showing how the figure of Frankenstein and his creature has been adapted and transformed across two centuries of popular culture. The novel's refusal to explain the mechanism of creation has, paradoxically, made it endlessly adaptable: each era projects its own anxieties about technology onto the story.

Eco-critical readings. Some recent criticism has approached the novel through the lens of environmental thought. Frankenstein's violation of natural processes, the creature's homelessness in the natural world, and the novel's repeated invocations of sublime landscapes all speak to concerns about humanity's relationship with the non-human environment. The creature, who is made from dead matter and cannot find a place in the living world, has been read as a figure for the consequences of ecological destruction.

Biographical criticism. Because Mary Shelley's biography is so well-documented and so dramatic (daughter of famous radicals, lover and then wife of a famous poet, surrounded by famous contemporaries, repeatedly pregnant, repeatedly bereaved), there has always been a temptation to read the novel as autobiography. The death of Frankenstein's mother has been connected to the death of Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein's abandonment of his creature has been connected to Mary Shelley's feelings about her own children (she lost three). The novel's atmosphere of guilt and isolation has been connected to her complicated relationships with Percy Shelley, Byron, and her stepsister Claire Clairmont. Biographical readings can illuminate specific passages, but they risk reducing the novel to a coded diary entry.

About the work

Things to notice

Questions to ask

What critics have argued

Further reading