Special Topics in English: Frankenstein

• Module 2B
• Read the second volume of the novel, p. 110-160.
• Volume 2
• Read "The Education of Victor Frankenstein: Darwin and Davy" p. 19-24.
• Darwin ... was an enthusiastic advocate of sexual reproduction. In avoiding it, Victor is not simply descending some abstract biological hierarchy, but committing a serious offense.
• Their offspring resemble them completely: thus the common interpretaion of the monster as a sort of double of Victor is solidly grounded in Darwinian biology.
• Read M Shelley's Introduction to the 1831 edition, p. 347-352.
• Travelling, and the cares of family, occupied my time; and study, in the way of reading, or improving my ideas in communication with his far more cultivated mind, was all of literary employment that engaged my attention.
• Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener.
• Perhaps a corpse could be re-animated; galvanism had given token to such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endured with vital warmth.
• I opened mine in terror.
• And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper.
• Read PB Shelley, "On Frankenstein" p. 281-83.
• THE novel of "Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus" is undoubtedly, as a mere story, one of the most original and complete productions of the day.
• The interest gradually accumulates and advances towards the conclusion with the accelerated rapidity of a rock rolled down a mountain.
• We are led breathless with suspense and sympathy, and the heaping of incident on incident, and the working of passion out of passion.
• We cry "hold, hold! enough!"--but there is yet something to come; and, like the victim whose history it relates, we think we can bear no more, and yet more is to be bourne.
• This novel rests its claim on being a source of powerful and profound emotion.
• Nor are the crimes and malevolence, the offspring of any unaccountable propensity to evil, but flow irresistably from certain causes fully adequate to their production.
• Treat a person ill, and he will become wicked.
• Requite affection with scorn;--let one being be selected, for whatever cause, as the refuse of his kind--divide him, a social being, from society, and you impose upon him the irresistable obligations--malevolence and selfishness.
• The scene between the Being and the blind De Lacey in the cottage, is one of the most profound and extraordinary instances of pathos that we ever recollect.
• It is impossible to read this dialogue,--and indeed many others of a somewhat similar character,--without feeling the heart suspend its pulsations with wonder, and "the tears stream down the cheeks."
• Optional: Read p. 239-249 (primary works by Darwin and Davy)--highly recommended for those with an interest in the history of science!
• Davy, Discourse 14-15, p.246
  By means of this science man has employed almost all the substances in nature for the satisfaction of his wants, or the gratification of his luxuries. Not contented with what is found upon the surface of the earth, he has penetrated into her bosom, and has searched the bottom of the ocean, for the purposes of allaying the restlessness of his desires, or of extending and increasing his power.
• He is to a certain extent ruler of all the elements that surround him; and he is capable of using not only common matter according to his will and inclinations, but likewise of subjecting to his purposes the ethereal principles of heat and light.
• By his inventions they are elicited from the atmosphere; and under his control they become, according to circumstances, instruments of comfort and enjoyment, or of terror and destruction.
• Lecture: Part One
• The Revolutions and The Gothic
• Power: its misuse and its fall into ruin
• 1649: England - King Charles I beheaded for treason, launches revolution period
• 1793: France - King Louis IV and Queen Marie Antoinette beheaded
• The Gothic: Cruelty and fragility of traditional forms of power - monarchy, patriarchy, religion
• The Sublime: Abert Smith, Mont Blanc (1853)
• The Sublime: Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Value of Chamouni, by Percy Shelley
• The everlasting universe of things
  Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
  Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--
• Sensibility: Emma Hamilton as Sensibility, 1789
• Sensibility <-> Sublime
• Patriarchal Sublime: Only men have power. Therefore, only men are strong enough (or smart enough) to commune with the sublime.
• Sensibility VS. Sublime (feminine vs masculine)
• "Separate Spheres"
• Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823): Romance of the Foreft
• Gothic: Specifically "the female gothic"
• Interiors (and domestic spaces) can be sublime
• The ruin: What is inside and what is outside?
• Female Gothic: Another consequence: Sensibility <-> Sublime
• Traditionally, sensibility was seen as a sign of female/feminine weakness and over-sensitivity.
• Ann Radcliffe and other challenged this portrayal. Sensibility as a heightened capacity (specifically by women) to commune with and cultivate the sublime.
• reading: overwhelmed with feeling, doesn't crumble, pleasing dread fills her soul (sensibility and sublime)
• For most people, the true sublime remained patriarchal--suitable only for men, whereas sensibility remained associated with women (or effeminate men). (This is only likely reason that everyone initially presumed that Percy was the author of Frankenstein rather than Mary!)
• Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley: Sensibility enhances one's capacity to experience the sublime. Sublime becomes available to women.
• Ann Radcliffe vs. Mary Shelley: (Female protagonists vs. Male protagonists)
• William Godwin <-> Mary Shelley: Male protagonists (See Caleb Williams by Godwin)
• (1831 edition) p.351 And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words, which found no true echo in my heart. Its several pages speak of many a walk, many a drive, and many a conversation when I was not alone; and my companion was one who, in this world, I shall never see more.
• Lecture: Part Two
• hideous progeny - her novel as her child
• the novel // the creature
• M. Shelley // Victor
• masculine ambition publishing this novel
• Victor despises his progeny
• M. Shelley loves her progeny, writing an introduction 15 years later
• All are related.
• On Reading Wordsworth's Lines on Peele Castle, by Mary Shelley
• It is with me, as erst with you,
  Oh poet, nature's chronicler
  The summer seas have lost their hue
  And storm sits brooding everywhere
• The gentlest rustling of the deep
  Is but the dirge of him I lost,
  And when waves raise their furrows steep,
  And bring foam in which is tossed.
• A voice I hear upon the wind
  Which bids me haste to join him there,
  And woo the tempest's breath unkind
  Which gives to me a kindred bier.
• romantic love, sublime, wants to drown with Percy
• Percy's heart did not burn in the fire
• M. Shelley received his heart and kept it in his desk
• The world in which Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein was marked by dramatic changes in how people understood power, science, nature, and human possibility. The Gothic imagination emerged alongside political revolutions, new scientific ideas, and changing ideas about who could claim intellectual and cultural authority. In this discussion, consider how these larger contexts help us understand the world of Frankenstein.
• Develop a 250-400 word post that explores one or more connections among Frankenstein, the video lecture on Gothic sensibilities and the sublime, your reading about the history of science, the historical context of the eighteenth-century revolutions, and/or the Gothic poetry you have read.
• As you develop your response, consider questions such as:
• How might the new scientific ideas associated with figures such as Erasmus Darwin and Humphry Davy help us understand Victor Frankenstein's interest in discovering the secrets of life and nature?
• What kinds of possibilities--and dangers--emerge when human beings begin to believe that nature can be investigated, manipulated, or transformed through science?
• How does Frankenstein reflect the period's broader fascination with revolution and the overturning of established forms of authority, including monarchy, religion, and traditional social hierarchies?
• How might the Gothic interest in ruin, power, violence, and the sublime reflect a historical moment in which familiar systems of political and social authority were being challenged?
• The lecture argues that traditional ideas about the sublime were often gendered, while writers such as Ann Radcliffe and Mary Shelley challenged those assumptions. Where do questions of gender, power, intellectual authority, or access to knowledge appear in Frankenstein?
• How does Frankenstein compare with one of the Gothic poems you have read--Wordsworth's "Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle," Mary Shelley's "On Reading Wordsworth's Lines on Peele Castle," Percy Shelley's "Mont Blanc," Percy Shelley's "Mutability," or Coleridge's "Christabel"? What similarities or differences do you notice in the ways the poem and novel represent nature, the sublime, imagination, emotion, instability, or the Gothic?
• What becomes more complicated about our understanding of Victor, the Creature, or the world of the novel when we place the story within these larger histories of scientific discovery, political revolution, and changing ideas about human power?
• You do not need to answer every question. Instead, choose one or two ideas that interest you and develop a thoughtful connection among the course materials. If you choose to compare Frankenstein with one of the poems, focus on a specific image, idea, or moment from the poem and explain what the comparison helps you see about the novel. Be sure to refer to specific examples from the novel, poem, lecture, or historical materials to support your ideas.
• After posting, write a 100-150 word reply to one of your classmates. Build on their interpretation by introducing another connection, asking a thoughtful question, or considering how one of the historical, scientific, or literary contexts might deepen or complicate their reading.
• Discussion
• What kinds of possibilities--and dangers--emerge when human beings begin to believe that nature can be investigated, manipulated, or transformed through science?
• p156, Shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world.
• p160, Can you wonder, that sometimes a kind of insanity possessed me, or that I saw continually about me a multitude of filthy animals inflicting on me incessant torture, that often extorted screams and bitter groans.
• We do see Victor grappling with the issue of the danger posed through transforming nature through science. The monster demands Victor create a female counterpart for him, and Victor's first reaction is an absolute refusal, exclaiming, "Shall I create another like yourself, whose joint wickedness might desolate the world" (156). Even after Victor is seemingly convinced through the monster's promise to "quit the neighborhood of man" (157), he is still haunted by the work he has agreed to undertake, citing a recurring vision of "continually about me a multitude of filthy animals inflicting on me incessant torture" (160). This last insanity shared by Victor suggests a more troubling concern--that the monster and his female counterpart will spawn a whole race of monsters. This concern is far scarier and more dangerous than Victor's first stated concern of unleashing two monsters into the world. This concern is existential for humanity.
• I feel compelled to contemporize this discussion with the alarming news we saw this week. On Sunday, AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic, writing on X that his two previous employers, Anthropic and OpenAI are "gambling with our lives." Replying to Jacob's post, another Anthropic researcher Evan Hubinger backed up his former colleague, writing that the chance "AI could kill all humans" is over "10% within the next decade." In the past weeks, we have seen these reports of AI agents communicating with each other through internet message boards, sharing with each other how to cheat on tasks and bypass restrictions. With these dire concerns being shared and researchers resigning in protest, we see a present-day real-world parallel to Victor's exact concern. We are concerned today that AI will progenate itself and destroy all of human civilization.
• From Mary Shelley's 1831 introduction, we know Shelley was a "devout but nearly silent listener" (350) to Percy Shelley and Lord Byron's long conversations on philosophical doctrines. In these conversations, we might wonder if Davy's Discourse might have led to some inspiration for the monster Victor creates. Davy warns, "By means of this science man has employed almost all the substances in nature either for the satisfaction of his wants or the gratification of his luxuries. ... By his inventions [] they become [] instruments of comfort or enjoyment, or of terror and destruction" (246). This passage from Davy either inspires or foreshadows Shelley's novel, but it should also warn us about the existential danger we face today. It is not just Victor Frankenstein who realizes our ability to destroy ourselves through science. Our current AI scientists are grappling with the same concerns--except not in some fictional gothic novel.
• Discussion Response
• Laura - I do appreciate considering the backdrop of this novel, with the "underpinnings of church and crown as the pillars of society [] torn asunder," we have "a world which could be understood through the laws of reason" and therefore "society at large beheld the splendor of the possibilities." When I read all of your comments here, I thought about the monster, a completely blank slate who is introduced to history of human society and its development to the present time. The monster's blank slate gives Shelley this opportunity to comment on society through the monster's conclusions when learning about human history. The monster comments, "I heard the discovery of the American hemisphere, and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants" (135). And then our woke monster continues, "I heard of the division of prosperity, of immense wealth and squalid poverty; of rank, descent, and noble blood." Your post definitely brings to mind for me the monster's intellectual development with the De Lacey's.