Frankenstein

Subtitel: The Modern Prometheus. Novel written by Mary Shelley and first published in 1816.

Plot

Captain Walton is on an expedition to the North Pole. Having arrived there, something strange happens: After being trapped in ice with the ship, they find Victor Frankenstein on an ice floe. The captain wants to know the reason why Frankenstein has ventured to go this far north and so he reveals his story: When Victor was five years old, he and his mother visited a very poor family. There they met Elisabeth, who was an orphan and immediately taken into the family by the Frankensteins. Still a child, Victor already was interested in natural sciences and at the age of seventeen he then attended the university in Ingolstadt. He was especially interested in chemistry. However, one particular subject aroused his interest: The constitution of the human body. So he focused on working with corpses to find out how life is created. Suddenly in the middle of the night he had an epiphany and decides to create his own human being. After two years the creature finally moved. Afraid of the creature Frankenstein fled into his bedroom. The next morning the monster was gone and had taken Victor’s coat with him. Several months later Victor received a letter from his father informing him that Victor’s brother, William, had been murdered and that his cousin, Justine, was being accused of the murder. On his way home, Victor saw the monster disappear behind some bushes and he sensed that the monster was the true murderer. When Justine was sentenced to death, Victor went to the Chamonix valley to rally. However, he met the monster, who told him his story: In the beginning the monster scoured aimlessly until searching for food he came to a village, where people were scared of him and threw things at him. He fled into a little shed. Through a gap he was able to look into the next house. By observing the residents, the monster learned their language and by stolen books he also learned how to read and write. Therefore he was able to read the notes from his creator’s coat-pocket and found out Victor Frankenstein’s name. The indulgent monster visited the residents, but they screamed and hit him. The monster was now full of hatred of people and Frankenstein, so he started to look for his creator. When he met Victor’s brother the monster strangled him revengefully. After having finished his story he demanded that Frankenstein would create him a female companion. Frankenstein agreed and travelled to an English island to start his work. One night the monster suddenly appeared at the window. Frankenstein was so horrified by the idea of creating another blood-curdling creature that he tore his new (nearly finished) creature apart. Thereupon, the monster angrily swore Frankenstein to visit him on his wedding night and went away. When Victor tried to get rid of the second creature and sailed out onto sea, but got adrift. He stranded on an Irish island, where he was immediately arrested for murdering his friend Henry. After two months in jail, he was let go as he was proved innocent. In Geneva Frankenstein married Elisabeth and at the wedding night when Frankenstein was just searching for the monster, he suddenly heard a scream. The monster had killed Elisabeth. Victor chased the monster up to the North Pole. However, being in a mist Frankenstein lost track of the monster and was found by Captain Walton. A few days after Victor told his story he is being more and more in poor health and finally dies. Later that day the monster comes to take farewell of Frankenstein. The monster tells Walton that he himself does not want to live anymore and he jumps out of the window onto a raft and disappears into the dark.

Frankenstein’s monster

Frankenstein’s monster is able to live by himself – without help from human beings. He can think and feel. He is able to feel strong emotions like love – for example for the people he watched through the little gap. However, he is disappointed by them and develops hatred against human beings. As a result his originally kind character becomes vicious and he commits his first murder. Nevertheless, the monster is also able to have feelings like remorse, which can be seen in the scene of Frankenstein’s death. Further he is quite intelligent, as he learns how to speak, read and write.

The novel in its historical context

At the beginning of the 19th century horror stories were very popular. This motivated Mary Shelley to write her novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, when she was only 19 years old. Mary, Lord Byron, Dr. Polidori and Percy Bysshe Shelley wanted to write a horror story each. First Mary Shelley could not come up with anything, but when she heard of the supposed experiments by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) to breathe life into a corpse, Mary saw the main plot of her novel in a feverish dream (Priester 116f, Shelley 11ff). Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) might also have been inspirational for Shelley. He experimented with electricity and invoked dead bodies to disclose secrets. These experiments were very popular with her family and especially her father as well as Percy Bysshe Shelley were both very interested in them (Frankenstein). Her novel is not very typical for a Gothic story as it does not have the usual attributes like dungeons, ghosts etc. The fantastic events all take part in a world that could be real and which is even more believable because of the realistic and detailed description of nature. The description of nature is typical for the epoch of romanticism and it has a special effect: The more emphatically nature is described, the more terrifying does the extraordinary seem to be (Priester 120).

References

Shelley, M.. Frankenstein oder der moderne Prometheus. Zürich: Manesse Verlag,1983.

Priester, K.. Mary Shelley - Die Frau, die Frankenstein erfand. München: Langen Müller, 2001.

Frankenstein-Restaurant. http://www.frankenstein-restaurant.de/die-burg/der-mythos/