2019. FRANKENSTEIN; OR, THE MODERN PROMETHEUS. 

*  Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mayor, and Jones; London, 1818. 3 vols. Published anonymously. +Bobbs-Merrill; Indianapolis, 1974, edited by James Rieger. 

*  Third, revised edition: Colburn; London, 1831. Carey, Lea and Blanchard; Philadelphia, 1833, as by Mary W. Shelly [sic]. Almost all reprints are based on this third edition. \

*  A semi-allegory of responsibility, told in terms of crimes and a demonic presence. Also, the first science-fiction novel. An unattributed preface by Percy Shelley states the author's point of view: The topic, not considered impossible by Dr. Erasmus Darwin and German physiologists, has been selected partly for its novelty and partly because it enables the author to show stronger and more comprehensive human passions than would a realistic novel. The novelty, however, lies not so much in new matter as in unusual combinations. (This is a point in the physiological psychology of the day.) The story was written for amusement, as the aftermath of a session of ghost-story telling among friends, but the author has been greatly concerned with the delineation of "amiableness of domestic affection, and the excellence of universal virtue." The author, Percy Shelley concludes, does not necessarily hold with many of the ideas expressed. 

*  Frankenstein is set forth in a series of letters from a young man named Walton to his sister in England. Walton, who is a compulsive personality, is determined to find the northwest passage (a chimera of early exploration) and at the moment is operating out of Archangel. His letters are written in part on board ship, heading north, and in part in port. 

*  Date: Walton's letters are dated 17—. Mary Shelley may not have had a definite date in mind, but if we interpret the circumstances of travel and literary references as solid, the time must be between 1775 and the beginning of the French Revolution (1789). The settings are the Arctic wastes north of Archangel; Geneva; Ingolstadt, Bavaria; Germany in general; the British Isles, and the Orkneys. 

*  As the story begins to move, Walton, who has chartered a ship for his venture, finds his vessel trapped in ice, far from land. Just before the ice pack breaks, he sees, as if in a dream, the figure of a gigantic man and a dog team sweep over the ice. A short time later a floe drifts past on which lies an exhausted, dying man. The stranger, who has been pursuing the giant, hesitates to accept Walton's help until he is assured that Walton is moving north. On board the ship, Walton nurses the stranger, who tells his story. 

*  He is Victor Frankenstein, a young patrician from Geneva. He has been reared in circumstances of extreme sensibility in a closely knit family that included his father, a younger brother William, a cousin Elizabeth, and a friend, Henry Clerval. On reaching maturity Frankenstein enters the university at Ingolstadt, where he studies the sciences, including chemistry, with such ability and devotion to work that he outstrips his masters. One area fascinates him, the creation of life, and it is not long before he learns how to animate lifeless flesh. (Despite the various motion picture versions of the process, Mary Shelley does not say how Victor's process works, although in her preface to the 1831 edition she speaks of galvanism [i.e. electricity]). 

*  Victor then decides to create an artificial man. Gathering organs and limbs, he builds an eight-foot tall being. As described, it is a mixture of nobility and vileness— well-proportioned limbs and beautiful features, but horrible eyes and mummy-like skin, a dualism later reflected in the creature's nature. 

*  Victor begins to animate his "filthy creation," but when he sees it come to life, he is so overcome with horror at its appearance that he rushes away, abandoning it. It presumably makes its way off by itself. Victor feels no obligation toward it and is greatly relieved when it has apparently disappeared. 

*  In the meanwhile, Henry Clerval, Victor's lifelong friend, has come to the university both to study and to convey the family anxiety at Victor's failure to write to them. After some passage of time, Victor receives a letter from his family in Geneva, informing him that his little brother William has been strangled. The suspect is Justine, a member of the household. Horrified, Frankenstein returns home, and, as he draws near, sees scampering around the almost unclimbable mountains his creation— whom he usually refers to as the demon. He immediately knows, intuitively, that the demon must have killed William. (This is another way of saying that he, personally, bears the guilt for William's death, since he created the demon. ) 

*  The trial of Justine takes place. She is found guilty and executed, despite the efforts of the Frankenstein family to save her. Victor, however, did little or nothing to help her, and he now has two deaths on his conscience. He cannot speak of them, however, and is tortured by remorse and guilt. 

*  As he wanders high in the mountains, the monster accosts him, insisting on talking with him. 

*  The demon now tells his side of the "quarrel." When Frankenstein abandoned him, he stumbled away, surviving by eating nuts and berries, until he came to a small cottage in Germany. There he took refuge in an attached woodshed. Through a crack in the wall he could see the humans who lived in the cottage— de Lacy (or de Lacey), a blind old Frenchman; his son; his daughter, and later the son's wife, Safie, a Turkish woman. By watching and listening, the monster gradually learned language, eventually even teaching himself to read such books as Goethe's Sorrows of Werther, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Plutarch's Lives. (This is a significant choice of books for the monster. From Werther he could pick up sickly sentiment culminating in violence if frustrated; from Paradise Lost, arrogance, ruthlessness, and the role of an injured but basically evil being; and from Plutarch, ambition.) 

*  All this time, the demon tells Victor, it was benevolent, eager for human compassion and friendship, and filled with love for the humans who, ignorant of its presence, lived on the other side of the wall. The monster secretly provided them with firewood each evening. The de Lacys accepted it, though with trepidation, as perhaps the contribution of an invisible spirit of a sort— or did not think of the matter at all. 

*  Finally, the monster, although it knows that its appearance horrifies and frightens humans, decides to win the friendship of the de Lacys, trusting that the old man's blindness will act as a protection. But the monster's plans miscarry, and it is driven away. The de Lacys, in turn, flee from the area in terror. 

*  By now, the monster says, it has realized that despite its yearning for love, it can meet only with hate— and this is solely the fault of Victor Frankenstein. It has sworn revenge. It went to Geneva, and chancing to meet William, strangled him and planted evidence on Justine. 

*  Now, continues the demon, Frankenstein has an obligation that he has hitherto shirked. He must make a mate for the monster. In exchange, the monster swears to leave the haunts of man with his bride and go, perhaps, to Patagonia, never to see man again. If Victor does not agree, Elizabeth will die on her wedding night. Victor, too, can be without a mate. 

*  Victor is at first reluctant to meet the monster's demands, but finally decides that they contain some justice. He agrees to make a female. 

*  Since Victor's knowledge of the female form is inadequate, he sets out for the British Isles with Henry Clerval. The monster secretly follows. In England Victor apparently obtains what he needs, leaves Clerval, and sets up a workshop on an isolated island in the Orkneys. He is in the final stage of preparing the artificial woman when a flash of intuition strikes him: The male monster is glib and persuasive, but his promises mean little. The monster is not authorized to speak for its mate, nor can it guarantee emigration to Patagonia. And, worst of all, Victor may be letting loose on the world a horde of monstrous progeny resulting from the union of the two. He thereupon destroys what he has assembled, at which the monster, who has been watching from outside, once again declares its enmity and repeats its threat against Elizabeth. 

*  When Victor leaves the island, after throwing his anatomical material into the sea, he drifts to Ireland, where he is arrested for the murder of Clerval, whom the monster has strangled. Breaking down mentally, Victor languishes in prison for several months. Released at the assizes for insufficient evidence, he returns to Geneva a broken man. 

*  Time passes, during which Victor seems to recover. His wedding to Elizabeth is scheduled, but the monster keeps its promise by strangling her. 

*  This murder awakens Victor at last to his responsibilities. He was reckless and irresponsible when he created the monster; he shirked the responsibility of familial ties when he abandoned the monster; he disregarded social obligations and betrayed justice when he abandoned Justine; he bargained with evil, rather than fighting it, when he agreed to make a female monster; and he evaded his duty to Elizabeth. Now recognizing that his highest duty is not to himself, not to the monster, but to society, he determines to track the demon down and kill it. 

*  The monster recognizes the situation and with typical ambiguous tactics leads Victor a chase across Europe into the Arctic, where Walton entered the narrative. 

*  His tale finished, Frankenstein dies, urging Walton to carry on the vendetta against the monster. 

*  As Walton mourns Frankenstein, the demon appears and makes a powerful statement of its ambivalent love for Victor, despite all. It concludes by saying that it will proceed to the north pole, make a fire of driftwood, and immolate itself. It then leaves. 

*  Walton is now also faced with a problem involving responsibility. His crew is in near mutiny at the danger from the ice. Should he continue northward, endangering others, or should he return to Archangel? He returns. 

*  In recent years Frankenstein has been the subject of many studies and interpretations, some valid, some extraordinarily far-fetched. On the reasonable side, the story has been examined as a figurative statement of Mary's marriage with the irresponsible Percy, as a projection of her succession of unsuccessful childbirths, and as a continuation of the literary topics and techniques of her father. The psychology of the monster has also been studied, since this is ultimately the most interesting part of the story. The monster has been interpreted in polar opposites as a great injured, noble being, or as a vile, treacherous, murderous monstrosity gifted with immense powers of self-justification. Actually, paralleling William Godwin's Caleb Williams, Mary Shelley has deliberately set up contradictory elements, which ultimately reach back to Caliban. Yet while Victor was perpetually remiss, and the monster was conditioned (according to the tabula rasa psychology of the day) to evil, the facts remain that Victor does ultimately develop a sense of responsibility and that the monster, as hinted in the motto of the novel, does have a strong evil component. 

*  To state the question in its most obvious form: Does the monster's rejection by Victor Frankenstein and the de Lacys justify its succession of murders? Mary's final answer seems to be, No. 

*  Frankenstein offers us a very unusual situation. A young woman twenty years old develops a theme that is still enormously powerful in Western culture and in so doing creates a novel that is still vital and important. She also, incidentally, writes the first science-fiction novel. But she continues to write for another thirty years without producing anything else really worth reading. .4 note on editions: The third edition, which is the version almost always reprinted, differs considerably from the first. Mary Shelley added a new preface indicating that Victor Frankenstein used galvanism to vivify the monster and describes the soiree that suggested the novel to her. She also revised the text extensively, adding new material, which, however, does not usually alter matters but adds more detail. 

*  The first edition text, which has long been slighted, has been reprinted in a very useful text edited by James Rieger. In addition to offering a wealth of editorial material, Rieger adds an exact collation of both editions, indicating differences. He also includes hitherto unpublished changes that Mary Shelley made in a friend's copy of the novel. Rieger also demonstrates that Percy Shelley's share in the novel was greater than is usually recognized, though the novel is still Mary's.