'Frankenstein' - A Classic Work Of Fiction

The Oxford English Dictionary cites the adjective ‘classic’ as denoting something that has been ‘judged over time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind.’ Indeed, to many people, a ‘classic’ book is one that has kept afloat in the waters of time, and succeeded in remaining relevant and pertinent in its message. Nevertheless, enduring over the years is not the only criterion that can be applied to this debate: when applied to novels, the term ‘classic’ is a more fluid, slippery beast than might appear. For a book truly to become a classic, it is necessary for it to possess other attributes besides resilience; the evaluation of books based solely on their age conjures up an unfortunate stereotype of musty volumes encased in dust and filled with obsolete, archaic language. Ultimately, it is the reader who passes opinion on the work:  a classic to one person may seem glorified and not worthy of praise to another. A ‘classic’ novel must communicate certain truths to its reader, and must achieve this by placing these messages within the vessel of carefully selected language. It must not be afraid to challenge, to provoke, or to alarm; however, it must open itself up to interpretation like a flower unfurling its petals to face the sun. It must comprise many textures, to be unpeeled like an onion by the avid reader, and, through these, it must be able to speak universally to anyone who cares to read it. Its characters must also prove to be immortal, and it must capture fundamental themes of human existence and distil them into words. To illustrate these points, it seems appropriate to introduce a book that, over the course of the last two centuries, has established itself firmly in the canon of ‘classical’ literature: ‘Frankenstein.’

Its very conception perhaps indicates that it was destined for success.  In the Year With Summer, 1816, Mount Tambora’s eruption the previous year had imprisoned the world in the icy grip of a volcanic winter. Although it was June, the bleak, cold weather forced a group of holiday markers into the villa of their host, thus abandoning their planned outdoor summer activities for indoor comfort. They were the host, Lord Byron, John Polidori, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and his eighteen year old lover, Mary Godwin, who was later to become his wife. As the light faded, the conversation moved to the topic of galvanism: the forcing of a muscle to contract with an electric current. It then turned to the experiments of Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, who was claimed to have animated dead matter. Clustered the roaring fire, the group pursued this macabre threat, and began to read ghost stories in French from ‘Fantasmagoriana.’ His vivid imagination ignited, Bryon challenged his companions to a competition: to write a story of comparable horror.

‘Frankenstein’ was first published two years later, after Mary’s dream of ‘the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together,’ and the novel crystallised around the image of a ‘hideous phantasm of a man stretched out’. It was the progenitor of the science-fiction genre, and was one of the most influential and pioneering works of its time: even Byron, not an admirer of intellect in young women, conceded that ‘it is a wonderful work for a girl of nineteen – not nineteen, indeed, at that time.’ It seems remarkable, considering that the emancipation of women was not to be realised for another century, that Mary achieved what she did. In her author’s introduction, she even muses upon the question of ‘how I, then a young girl, came to think of and to dilate upon so very hideous an idea?’ As Frankenstein fashioned a dreadful creature, so too was a monstrous plot created by the author. Was it perhaps a reflection of her being the daughter of two of the most prominent radicals of that time, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft? Or had the ideals of her Romantic lover, Shelley inspired her? Certainly there is speculation that some of Frankenstein’s character is based on her own husband: his pen name was Victor, and he dabbled with chemical reactions, electricity, magnetism, electricity and séances during his years at Eton and Oxford. Mary certainly embraced the implications of real technological innovations of the period.

What began as a seed in the mind of a teenage girl grew into a sprawling tree, casting out tendrils of ideas into the minds of its readers. This fiction encompasses many themes, from the danger of overbearing scientific aspirations and humanism to the values placed on aesthetic appearance, whilst challenging the Romantic myth of individualism. Frankenstein’s Creature is formed with the body of a fully formed man, but lacks language, conscience and memory, and progresses through the primitive stages of development. He appeals to his maker for compassion, exclaiming, ‘Oh! My creator, make me happy!’ and longs for human identity and happiness; after being denied this, he enters a destructive descent into devastating solitude, resulting in the deaths of many, including both his own and his inventor’s. Such an atavistic reversal of attitudes may be an allusion to human nature: resorting to violence when faced with seemingly impenetrable obstacles is too often observed in man’s actions. However, the Creature is not entirely robbed of his words and emotion: although he remains unremorseful for his past deeds when faced with death, he then laments the loss of a state of mind in which his ‘thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty of the world.’ In this way, Mary invites her reader not to despise either of the central characters: no clear protagonist and adversary are presented. Frankenstein is not a scheming, egotistically obsessive scientist; he is instead a romantic figure, dedicated to his art and resolute in benefiting humankind. His creation may kill and destroy, but this is incited by his own misery, and his tragic fate elicits great pity in the reader.

A classic book must lend itself to all manner of interpretations, and ‘Frankenstein’ is no exception. It is one of the most protean texts in the English language, and its resonance with the turbulent period against which it was written makes it a book of many layers. A Marxist approach would emphasise it as a manifestation of its historical background by highlighting the language with which Mary depicted the Creature as echoing with that used to describe the contemporary working class. The Italian literary scholar Franco Moretti argues that: ‘Between Frankenstein and the monster there is an ambivalent, dialectical relationship, the same as that which, according to Marx, connects capital with wage-labour.’ The disparity between the Creature and its maker echoes when read in its socio-economic context: as a result of the hierarchical nature of the social system, degradation and misery were well-known to those lower down the class-ladder. In this respect, the Creature is almost an emblem of the proletariat, with all the restrictions of power that this status entails. This analogy can be further developed: if the Creature symbolises the working class, then his creator represents the industrialists and bourgeoisie; by the end of the story, each has caused the other’s ruin. The book can thus be read as a critique of the oppressive authorities that hold sway over others, from capitalism to the slave trade; it rejects these, and serves to remind the reader that subjugation engenders opponents who can subdue in turn the original power. Paulo Freire distilled this perspective in the following phrase: ‘the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors. The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradiction of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped. Their ideal is to be men; but for them to be men is to be oppressors.’

The Creature, after those he admires ‘dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick,’ resolves to wreak revenge on those who treated him so unjustly, and embarks upon a murderous campaign. However, the theory that those who are the recipients of suffering can mutate into the ones who first inflicted their pain can again be shown not to be solely shackled to fiction: less than half a century prior to the book’s publication, the bloody French Revolution had taken place, and this may have lingered in the author’s consciousness. In fact, she described the moment of the French Revolution thus: ‘The giant now awoke. The mind, never torpid, but never roused to its full energies, received the spark which lit it into an inextinguishable flame.’ One observer would even remark that ‘Mary et Shelley étaient enfants de la Révolution.’ The monster’s shift in attitude from empathetic to vengeful mirrors in part this uprising: much of the working class did set out with benevolent intentions, but their actions degenerated into the Reign of Terror, accompanied by gruesome guillotine slaughters and merciless violence. The English professor Anne K. Mellor suggested that: ‘Mary Shelley conceived of Victor Frankenstein’s creature as an embodiment of the revolutionary French nation, a gigantic body politic originating in a desire to benefit all mankind but abandoned by its rightful guardians and so abused by its King, Church, and the corrupt leaders of the ancient regime that it is driven into an uncontrollable rage – manifested in the blood-thirsty leadership of the Montagnards – Marat, St Just, Rosepierre – and the Terror. Frankenstein’s creature invokes the already existing identification of the French Revolution with a gigantic monster troped in the writings of both Abbé Barruel and Edmund Burke.’

Knowledge of the background of the book and its creator, does, therefore, provide a more profound insight into the mechanics of the story, for any work of literature is governed in part by its context. It would not be far-fetched to claim that many of the most fascinating works of literature have been penned by people as interesting as their oeuvre. The author’s mother, for example, contracted and died of puerperal poisoning ten days after giving birth, and Mary also lost three young children and her husband. This proximity to birth and loss is transposed on to her work, for the trials of life and death found in ‘Frankenstein’ could stem directly from a fascination with such occurrences. Her childhood is worthy of mention as well: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were regular visitors to Mary’s household in her childhood, and, aged nine, she heard Coleridge recite ‘The Rime of The Ancient Mariner.’ This event would undoubtedly have imprinted itself indelibly on her mind: indeed, Walton declares that he will ‘kill no albatross’ when he reaches ‘the land of mist and snow.’

Shelley’s influence also seeps into the book, as he encouraged her to write it. Notes at the back of the text inform the reader that Mary adopted a number of his suggested changes, including, in the form of ‘the path of my departure was free,’ an allusion to his poem ‘Mutability,’ which states that ‘the path of its departure still is free.’ He also wrote actual lines of the book: ‘the labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind’ in the third chapter indicates the gravity he placed upon scientific achievements; ‘the republican institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manner than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it’ in the fifth chapter demonstrates his commitment to the republican cause. The book itself can be seen as either revolutionary or retrogressive, which appears to chime with Mary’s own indecision: she fluctuated between supporting the radical cause, and fearing the devastating effects of war and uprising.

The novel can also be read as a realist one, for Frankenstein is not punished by metaphysical intervention, but instead by the consequences of his actions. Mary also seeks to explore and defend the emotions of those whom the world rejects and betrays. A feminist interpretation of the story would see Mary, the daughter of a fervent feminist, as having produced an ironic critique of the power-mongering patriarchy around her. The position of ‘father’ is questioned, and a feminist reading of the book would cite ‘Frankenstein’s failure to mother his child’ – the words of Anne K. Mellor – as his flaw. There is a notable absence of ‘God the Father’ and Frankenstein’s father is rather distant, hastily dismissing his son’s enthusiasm for the old alchemists that spark his imagination. De Lacey is a figure of impotence, for his blindness renders him incapable of caring for his children: a passive character, benevolent but dependent and feeble. Walton’s father’s ‘dying injunction’ is to ensure his son is denied a seafaring life, which leads to Walton’s determined effort to oppose this, and the ‘treacherous Turk,’ Safie’s father, is a figure of oriental despotism .Mary also seems sceptical of the male aim to conceive without the partnership of a woman, and conveys the consequences of such desires in her novel; these are depicted as being caused by the exceeding motivation of the male protagonists, who transgress boundaries between the human and the divine, for Frankenstein seeks to father a ‘new species’ who will ‘bless me as its creator.’ It must be noted, on the other hand, that although one might expect the daughter of a passionate feminist to portray resilient, forceful women, the reality is rather different. On the contrary, the novel is virtually devoid of such characters. Letters from Captain Walton’s sister, replying to his correspondence, are not included; Frankenstein’s mother dies caring for her adopted daughter before he reaches adulthood; Justine is hanged for confessing to a crime she did not commit; Elizabeth, though beautiful and gentle, waits dutifully for her lover before being murdered, and Frankenstein terminates his quest to creating a female companion for his Creature, vowing never to create a being ‘equal in deformity and wickedness.’

Another central theme of the book is the effect on human sympathies and relationships that obsessive questing to ‘conquer’ the unknown as. Frankenstein may satisfy his Promethean longing, but, as a result, he destroys all sympathies and relationships with his compulsive enterprise. This is what makes the book such a shocking warning: it seems so distant far away from normality, yet its themes lurk in the shadows of everyday lives even in the 21^st Century. The story demonstrates that life is precious and delicious, and should be properly nurtured for it to flourish: the Creature is almost a metaphor for life itself, a complex of forces that we tamper with at our peril. They may be refracted through the prism of fiction, but the book’s essential messages are not diminished. Its characters are strikingly original, and it has endured over a long period of time and will continue to do so. It seems fitting to end with Goethe’s immensely appropriate words, which are not only applicable to ‘Frankenstein’, but also to other ‘classic’ books: ‘Ancient works are classical not because they are old, but because they are powerful, fresh, and healthy.’