More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment:
Simile from PL
finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.
The monster within
a luxury of sensation
the sick impotence of despair.
I ought to have familiarized the old De Lacey to me, and by degrees have discovered myself to the rest of his family, when they should have been prepared for my approach.
Well duh
protectors.
Violent and uncontrollable swings of emotion
young girl
a rustic,
“This was then the reward of my benevolence!
hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind.
The monster within
a beautiful child,
My papa is a Syndic—he is M. Frankenstein—he
Here, I thought, is one of those whose smiles are bestowed on all but me; she shall not escape:
Haha - he could be a gypsy pick-pocket!
To wreak havoc elsewhere? Irresponsible.
tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?
I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear;
you do not reflect that you are the cause of its excess.
If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an hundred fold; for that one creature’s sake, I would make peace with the whole kind!
Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless, and free from the misery I now feel.
I felt that there was some justice in his argument.
Haha
a creature of fine sensations;
guilt
First,
Second,
guilt can be at work even when a person does not consciously attribute his or her actions to its effects.
Freud’s arguments about the inextricable link between guilt and civilization make for a fascinating parallel to Frankenstein.
he continues to fail to recognize and concede that his treatment and desertion of the creature, not the initial creation, have brought about the destruction.
Victor does sense the potential impact of his desertion on his family and others but remains blind to his earlier desertion of his own creation.
Scientists’ responsibility must be engaged before their creations are unleashed; otherwise, the consequences cannot be retracted.
This Volume 2, loc. 3123
The other, as critics from Franz Fanon to Gayatri Spivak have argued, has a split within himself, a wound at the heart of his selfhood. He knows who he is, and yet in the eyes of his fellow humans he sees only the monster they imagine him to be. In
Cf. The Souls of Black Folk (1903), where W.E.B. Du Bois describes the Negro’s “double consciousness” as *other* as follows:
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife – this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn't bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.”
The truth of the other’s experience is barred from us because we have access to it only through representations created by a society that has rejected that other.
True enough, but I think Mary Shelley is honestly portraying the creature accurately even from Victor’s point of view, and portraying Victor accurately, even mediated through Walton’s narrative. She just die at give off the vibe of an “unreliable narrator.”
Nancy liked this
Annalee Newitz.
He also suggests, plausibly, that othering occurs where the target is not simply different from the audience but also not understood,
his self-knowledge is informed by others—that is, he sees, knows, and understands himself as society sees, knows, and understands him.
We come to know ourselves—and even to fear ourselves—through our encounters with others,
There are many instances throughout the novel where the creature witnesses others expressing love and kindness toward one another, and so he desires to be treated the same.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Emile
Whether governments and laws can maintain order or are part of the social ill remains an unanswered question.
Haha
Ongoing scientific debates about life extension sometimes echo the quest for the philosopher’s stone
Humanity’s technological obsession with overcoming our biological limits has a natural parallel in science fiction.
what would a perfected human form really be like?
What consequences would result from a world in which humans and superhumans coexist?
In future narratives, writers directly confront what Mary here only touches upon lightly with allusions to slavery, ownership, and property:
