Frankenstein - Background Information/Resources

[Deborah, Moderator]

Further reading

Mary Shelley
The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein
Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality
The Nature of Monsters
Mary Shelley: Collected Tales and Stories with original engravings

There is a lot of books published about her. These are some found on my own bookshelf in my tbr piles

[Gem , Moderator]

Availability: Project Gutenberg various formats


General Overview
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is an early product of the modern Western world. Written during the Romantic movement of the early 19th century, the book provides insight into issues that are pertinent today. Shelley's Frankenstein expresses concerns about individuals' aspirations and what results when those aspirations are attained irresponsibly. "As a cautionary tale warning of the dangers that cast into society by a presuming experiment science, Frankenstein is without equal."

Major Themes
Shelley has various themes woven together to complete a narrative which warns of possible consequences of abusing science. Some of the overarching themes of the novel are:

Creation - The theme of creation is at the center of the novel. The story shows how Victor creates a creature and instills life in it after gaining scientific knowledge. With this act, Victor plays God. Victor’s secret toil was an unnatural and irreligious act which costs him dearly.

Alienation/Isolation - It might be possible that Victor creates life to end his (self-imposed) isolation. However, in the process of doing an unnatural thing, he creates a creature, who becomes his enemy. The creature, who is (initially) innocent, also feels alienated.

Crossing Boundaries - Shelley has very beautifully woven the idea of the crossing limits in this novel. Through Victor Frankenstein, she explains that humans have certain limits despite grand ambitions and when these limits are crossed, the natural order is destroyed. Victor’s obsession with the idea of creating a new life is equated to the crossing of boundaries set by nature, for which he pays a hefty price.

Ambition - Under the overarching theme of creation, the theme of ambition runs parallel in the novel. Victor’s actions prove that ambition is not good when it comes to unnatural directions. The creation of a new life defying the natural order of life and death is clearly an incorrect ambition.

Responsibility - The novel highlights the theme of individual responsibility when Victor’s ambitious project of the creation of a new life reflects the lack of realization of such. He does not show any fear in creating a new life and playing with the laws of nature until it is too late.

Parental Responsibility - When Victor creates the creature, he does not give it the moral or social education about how to live and behave in society.

Note: Several major themes were not listed above as to avoid spoilers.

Biographical Context
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (nee Goodwin) was the daughter of the radical philosopher William Godwin, who described her as "singularly bold, somewhat imperious, and active of mind". Her mother, who died days after her birth, was the famous defender of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary grew up with five step-siblings in Godwin’s unconventional but intellectually eclectic household.

At the age of 16, Mary eloped to Italy with the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, who praised "the irresistible wildness & sublimity of her feelings". Each encouraged the other’s writing, and they married in 1816 after the suicide of Shelley’s wife. They had several children, of whom only one survived.

Historical Background
In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their son traveled to Geneva with Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont. They planned to spend the summer with the poet Lord Byron, whose recent affair with Claire had left her pregnant. The party arrived at Geneva on May 14, 1816, where Mary called herself "Mrs. Shelley". Byron joined them on May 25, with his young physician, John William Polidori. They spent their time writing, boating on the lake, and talking late into the night.

"It proved a wet, ungenial summer", Mary Shelley remembered in 1831, "and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company amused themselves with German ghost stories, which prompted Byron to propose that they "each write a ghost story". Unable to think of a story, young Mary Godwin became anxious: "Have you thought of a story? I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative." During one mid-June evening, the discussions turned to the nature of the principle of life. "Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated", Mary noted, "galvanism (the contraction of a muscle that is stimulated by an electric current) had given token of such things". It was after midnight before they retired, and unable to sleep, she became possessed by her imagination as she beheld the grim terrors of her "waking dream", her ghost story: "I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world."

She began writing what she assumed would be a short story. With Percy Shelley's encouragement, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. She later described that summer in Switzerland as the moment "when I first stepped out from childhood into life".

Shelley completed her writing in April/May 1817 and it was published on January 1, 1818, by the small London publishing house Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones. It was issued anonymously, with a preface written for Mary by Percy Bysshe Shelley and with a dedication to philosopher William Godwin, her father. It was published in an edition of just 500 copies in three volumes, the standard "triple-decker" format for 19th-century first editions.

On October 31, 1831, the first "popular" edition in one-volume appeared, published by Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley. This edition was heavily revised by Mary Shelley, partially to make the story less radical. It included a lengthy new preface by the author, presenting a somewhat embellished version of the genesis of the story. This edition is the one most widely published and read now, although a few editions follow the 1818 text. Some scholars prefer the original version, arguing that it preserves the spirit of Mary Shelley's vision.

Social Background
Mary Shelley was very conscious of the political issues of her time. Visitors to her father's house, when Mary was young, included many leading radical thinkers. She was also a keen reader of books written by her parents. There are passages in Frankenstein that contain echoes of Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and of William Godwin's An Enquiry into Political Justice. She also knew her father's novel The Adventures of Caleb Williams, which addresses issues about social justice and the abuse of power, and her mother's unfinished fiction The Wrongs of Woman. More generally, she was widely read in history and philosophy and discussed contemporary political and social issues with Shelley and the members of his circle.

From her reading and discussions, she developed an understanding of the cruelty and tyranny that may be inherent in human institutions and the social and political establishment, and this is echoed in the creature's many critical comments on human society and individual behavior during his conversation with Frankenstein. The creature can be seen as a type of the outsider who is regarded as inferior and for whom society has no place, just as slaves were denied any sense of individuality.

For all her passion for reform and her hatred of the despotic Tory elite in England, like many other middle-class writers, Mary Shelley was anxious about the possibility of revolutionary mob violence. It was argued that, once people began to act collectively in this way, individual differences and moral scruples disappeared and the crowd was likely to commit atrocities that few of its members would tolerate as an individual.

Scientific Background (if applicable)
In the mid-18th century, electricity had captured the imaginations of many of Europe's top scientists, and at that time very little was understood about the nature of electricity. Scientists could generate static electricity using spinning machines, but it was not until Benjamin Franklin's famous kite experiment in 1752 that they proved that lightning was of the same essence.

At the University of Bologna in Italy, noted surgeon Luigi Galvani was investigating the effects of electricity on animals. It was not an unusual line of inquiry. Researchers knew electrical shocks produced violent spasms and speculated that electricity might cause muscular contractions.

On January 26, 1781, while dissecting a frog near a static electricity machine, Galvani's assistant touched a scalpel to a nerve in its leg, and the frog's leg jumped. Galvani repeated this and several other experiments, observing the same violent muscle spasms. He also noticed that frog legs occasionally twitched when they were hung from a brass hook and allowed to touch an iron trellis, so Galvani joined a length of each metal together to form a brass and iron arc that made the leg muscles contract when touched.

But where did the electricity come from?

Galvani, who called it "animal electricity," believed it resided in the frog itself. He thought that the bimetallic arc merely conducted the electricity from one part of the frog to the nerve, causing the leg to jump. He published his findings in 1791 and, as the story goes, came to be known as the frog dancing master.

One of Galvin's earliest readers was Italian physicist Alessandro Volta. He replicated Galvani's experiments and helped popularize his work. Yet Volta reached very different conclusions. He believed the electricity came from the two metals used in the arc, and that the frog was acting as the conductor. Within the year, he replaced the frog's leg with brine-soaked paper, detected a current, and challenged Galvani. The scientific world divided into two camps, animal electricity versus dissimilar metals. The feud became bitter.

[Gem , Moderator]

Frankenstein Background Information con't


Critical Reception
When Frankenstein was first published anonymously in 1818, it was extensively reviewed by many of the important journals of the time. These reviews are notable for three main points. First, most critics simply assumed the author to be a man. The eventual discovery that it was Mary Shelley caused some consternation: the blasphemous ideas expressed were considered particularly unseemly for a woman. Secondly, the style of the novel was generally praised: most agreed with Blackwood's (March 1818) assessment of 'the author's original genius and happy power of expression'. Finally, while being impressed by the power and vigor of the work, many reviewers criticized the subject matter and the author's refusal to moralize about Frankenstein's blasphemous act. The Quarterly Review of January 1818 provides a typical complaint. After summarising the plot and declaring it to be a 'tissue of horrible and disgusting absurdity', the reviewer concludes: 'Our taste and our judgment alike revolt at this kind of writing, and the greater the ability with which it may be executed the worse it is – it inculcates no lesson of conduct, manners, or morality.'

Sources
Introduction of the Penguin Classics 1992 edition of Frankenstein, British Library, cliffnotes.com, crossfef-it.info, insidescience.org, literarydevices.net, revisionworld.com, sparknotes.com, Washington State University, yorknotes.com

[Robin P, Moderator]

An interesting dual biography of Mary Shelley and her mother Mary Wolstonecraft is Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley. It switches back and forth every other chapter between the two women and since they are both Mary, that doesn't work well. But otherwise it's good. I recommend just reading all the Wolstonecraft chapters in a row and/or the Shelley chapters in a row.

The first writing of Frankenstein was more a story than a novel. It was much more direct and started with the monster coming to life. Mary Shelley rewrote it with much editing by her husband Percy. You can see the difference because her original is preserved. He made the language more flowery and added a lot of the (boring) frame story.

[Ian]

The manuscripts, with print transcripts, are available at

http://shelleygodwinarchive.org/conte...

The interface is clunky, but usable, and it is a free resource for anyone interested in the history of the story, and who wrote what.

The novel definitely started off as a much shorter story, part of a contest to while away a wet summer, and grew in the writing.

The other complete work to come out of the project was also an immediate success: John Polidori's "The Vampyre," which was apparently the first literary use of the vampire idea.

It was attributed to Lord Byron, then at the height of his fame/notoriety, and despite the protests of both this was widely believed well into the nineteenth-century. These days it is mostly treated as a curiousity: even given the limited length, it does not stand up well when compared to Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" -- let alone the much more ambitious "Dracula."

[Lori, Moderator]

Ian wrote: "John Polidori's "The Vampyre,""

I'll have to look that up, maybe around Halloween.

[Ian]

As I've pointed out, with references, in a couple of other discussions of the book, going back to late last year -- none of which I seem able to locate at the moment -- there are two versions of "Frankenstein," the 1818 first edition, and the 1831 revision.

There can be confusion when people unaware of the problem try to discuss the book are unintentionally using editions that do not match.

The second edition has a number of differences in, among other things, characterizations and themes. The 1831 text prevailed in the rest of the nineteenth-century and most of the twentieth, and probably is still the most likely to come to hand. But in recent decades the 1818 version has received considerable interest (in terms of both editions and scholarship).

There is a handy Kindle edition with both versions, which I have not been able to call up on Goodreads. See Frankenstein: The Complete Collection (Both 1818 and 1831 Versions) (Annotated) Kindle Edition,
https://www.amazon.com/Frankenstein-C...

[Robin P, Moderator]

There was a movie just a couple years ago about Mary and the book. It isn't totally accurate but I thought the overall tone and feel of it were appropriate. I'm sorry, I don't remember if the title was "Mary Shelley" or something else.

[Ian]

I located my October 2018 list of suggested articles on the two texts of "Frankenstein" -- it was part of a re-used non-spoilers discussion thread dating back to 2013, and I had failed to check the whole thing. For the whole, which contains useful information, see https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

(Just remember to check the dates of posts that mention something as currently/recently available.)

For those who don't want to bother following the link, I provide my main contribution. (Please note that actually reading the articles in question involves spoilers:)

I prefer the 1818 version (the one I have most recently read, and still have a copy), but explaining why involves a whole bunch of spoilers. I may take this up on the Spoilers thread, but I'll probably wait for the issue to arise there.

There is by now a fairly substantial literature on the subject.

For those who *have* read one of the editions, and are curious about the differences, or who know both, and want help sorting things out, I can suggest some on-line studies. Novices may want to wait before checking them.

A discussion of how the 1831 edition changes the themes of the book, and even the personalities of some of the characters, is "Revising Frankenstein," chapter nine of "Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters" (1988) by Anne K. Mellor. It can be found at http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Articl...

(The Norton Critical Edition of "Frankenstein" contains a separate article by Mellors, on which text to assign for class reading: she suggests the 1818 version, but notes that (at the time) the only edition using it was considerably more expensive than adequate editions of the 1831 text.)

A review of Leonard Wolf's "The Annotated Frankenstein" (1977) is also available: David Ketterer's "Frankenstein in Sheep's Clothing," from "Science Fiction Studies" #18 (1979).
https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/review_ess...
Ketterer discusses, among other things, the immediate critical reception of the idea that the 1818 edition should be preferred.

Less easily available is James O'Rourke's "The 1831 Introduction and Revisions to Frankenstein: Mary Shelley Dictates Her Legacy," from the journal "Studies in Romanticism" (1999). To read it, one has to create a JSTOR account (free): the article can be read on-line, which is a good thing, because JSTOR prices for downloads are pretty steep. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25601400...

If my memory serves, there were also some changes in chapter divisions and numbers between the two editions: if so, this could lead to some confusion in discussions, unless the text is specified.

Continuation, 2019: the 1996 Norton Critical Edition edited by J. Paul Hunter, mentioned above, is available in a 2012 expanded second edition: see https://www.amazon.com/Frankenstein-S...

[Deborah, Moderator]

Using different versions of the book can also lead to interesting discussions regarding the differences

[Ian]

Deborah wrote: "Using different versions of the book can also lead to interesting discussions regarding the differences"

Agreed. So long as everyone in the discussion knows what the issue is.

I once sat through an argument in which it turned out the two sides were referencing different editions of a textbook, the older still being sold secondhand in the student union. Fortunately for some of those involved, they realized what the problem was before the final in the class.

In reference to fiction, Arthur C. Clarke reported hearing from a couple of readers, a psychiatrist and a patient, who'd been discussing "one" of his books, without realizing that "The City and the Stars" (1956) was an extensive revision of "Against the Fall of Night" (1948), not just a variant title.

Some people prefer the older version: Gregory Benford wrote a sequel to it, included in "Beyond the Fall of Night" (1990).

(The situation is in fact a little more complicated, as "Against the Fall of Night" itself was a sort of companion to important stories by John W. Campbell -- writing as "Don A. Stuart" -- "Twilight" [1934] and "Night" [1935]. Campbell, as an editor, rejected Clarke's story -- it is not clear whether he recognized the relationship.)

[Gem , Moderator]

I won't be reading along since I read this book recently... I hope I recall enough to participate in the discussion. I loved this book.