Frankenstein (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (33 page)

Author’s Introduction

1
(p. 5) two persons of distinguished literary celebrity: Shelley’s mother was Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797), an early feminist and the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792); her father, William Godwin ( 17 5 6- 1836), was a well-known radical political philosopher whose works include the treatise An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) and The Adventures of Caleb
Williams
(1794), a novel that criticizes the tyranny of the privileged classes.

2
(p. 6) Childe Harold: The reference is to Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (completed in 1818), a long narrative poem in four cantos by the Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824).

3
(p. 6) volumes ... fell into our hands: The first two of the six volumes of Ges pensterbuch (181 1-1815), edited by Friedrich Schulze and Johann Apel, were translated by Jean-Baptiste-Benoit Eyries as Fantasmagoriana, ou recucil d‘histories d’apparitions de spectres, revenans, fantomes, etc. (1812).

4
(p. 7) end of his poem of Mazeppa: Byron’s fragment can be found at the end of Mazeppa (1819), lines 860-869. See Lord Byron: The Major Works, edited by Jerome J. McGann, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, pp. 367-368.

5
(p. 7) Poor Polidori: John William Polidori (1795-1821) claimed that he had begun a novel entitled Emestus Berchtold; or, The Modem Oedipus (completed 1819) at the same time Frankenstein was planned. Polidori also developed the fragment of Byron’s abandoned ghost story and published it as The Vampyre in 1819.

6
(p. 8) in Sanchean phrase: In Don Quixote (1616) by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616), Sancho Panza, the protagonist’s squire, attempts to convince the duchess that he will be a fit governor of his own island by proclaiming “in this matter of a governorship the beginning’s everything, and that, maybe, when I have been a governor a fortnight I shall take to it like a duck to water” (The Adventures of Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, translated by J. M. Cohen, London: Penguin, 1950, p. 688). Shelley read the book in 1816.

7
(p. 8) Columbus and his egg: The story is recounted in book 5, chapter 8, of The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828), by Washington Irving (1783-1859). Columbus, provoked by the suggestion that someone else might have discovered the Americas, issues a challenge: Stand an egg up on end. After everyone tried, Columbus cracked it and left the egg standing on the broken part, “illustrating in this simple manner, that when he had once shown the way to the New World, nothing was easier than to follow it.” See The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, by Washington Irving, edited by John Harmon McElroy, Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1981, p. 322.

8
(p. 8) Dr. Darwin: Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), grandfather of Charles, was a doctor and poet who wrote about his own theory of evolution in The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of Society: A Poem. With Philosophical Notes, London: J. Johnson, 1803: “The wrecks of Death are but a change of forms; / Emerging matter from the grave returns, / Feels new desires, with new sensations burns” (stanza 6, lines 398-400).

9
(p. 8) galvanism: Galvanism-the idea that an “electric fluid” ran through the veins and animated anixnals-was developed by the experimenter Luigi Galvani (1737-1798).

Preface

1
(p. 12)
two other friends...
and myself: The two friends that Percy Shelley (in the voice of Mary) has in mind are Byron and himself; one wonders if Percy meant to claim authorship of the work, which “would be far more acceptable to the public than anything I [meaning Mary] can ever hope to produce.” Polidori was also present but remains unmentioned here.

2
(p. 12) St. Petersburgh: St. Petersburg, capital of Russia from 1712 to 1918; a major seaport, its harbor is frozen for three to four months annually. (The city was called Leningrad from 1924 to 1991.)

3
(p. 13) country of eternal light: Robert Walton expects to find a warm and eternally light North Pole, and other works written during and after Shelley‘s time, including her husband’s 18 I 8 poem The Revolt of Islam (stanza 1, lines xlvii-liv) , indicate that this was a common belief.

4
(p. 14) I perused ... lifted it to heaven: The “I” of these passages about early literary influences refers as much to Walton as to Shelley herself, a voracious reader who was introduced to her parents’ radical intellectual circles at a young age. Based on the content of Walton’s letters, the poets who most influenced him seem to have been John Milton (1608-1674) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). Both Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) tell the tales of beings who, like Walton, are driven by ego and ambition to the point of self-destruction.

5
(p. 15) St. Petersburgh and Archangel: Archangel, the city from which Walton rents his vessel and crew, is another major Russian seaport and the base for explorations of the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route.

6
(p. 18) production of the most imaginative of modem poets: Walton is alluding to Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, line 408. The long poem tells the story of an ambitious mariner whose ship has been driven to the South Pole by a storm. After the mariner thoughtlessly shoots an albatross, things gradually begin to go wrong (though it is not clear that this turn of events was actually a consequence of killing the bird). Water runs out; a frightening ghost ship passes; the mariner’s crew begins to die off. While the despondent mariner looks down at the water and sees the water snakes, he unconsciously blesses them. Once he is able to pray, the mariner seems to be on the way to redemption. He survives the incident and confesses to and receives absolution from a hermit, but his penance is to live with his guilt and retell his tale to all who will listen. The poem can be read as a version of the myth of Prometheus: One who flies too high and “plays God” is destined to suffer grave consequences.

7
(p. 24) cannot begin life anew: These words might well have been Satan’s as he watched Adam and Eve leave Eden: “The world was all before them, where to choose / Their place of rest, and Providence their guide” (book 12, lines 646-647). This quote and all others from Paradise Lost in these notes are from John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose, edited by Merritt Y. Hughes, New York: Odyssey Press, 1957; for this quote, see line 903.

Chapter I

1
(p. 28)
bonds
of devoted affection: The father-daughter relationship of Victor’s parents may have been inspired by Shelley’s strong feelings for her widowed father. Noted Mary, “Until I knew [Percy] Shelley I may justly say that [my father] was my God-and I remember many childish instances of the excess of attachment I bore for him,” in The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, 3 vols, edited by Betty T. Bennett, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980-1988, p. 295.

2
(p. 29) one train of enjoyment to me: This description of Victor’s upbringing is informed by one of the eighteenth-century’s most influential studies on pedagogy: Emile; or, On Education (1762), by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712- 1778). Shelley read the book in 1816; it also shaped her mother’s theories of female education in Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Chapter II

1
(p. 33) from the heroes of: Clerval’s reading shows off his taste for courtly romance, as opposed to Frankenstein’s more scientific interests. Roncesvalles, a mountain pass in the Pyrenees, is the alleged site of the death of the hero Ro land ; Arthur, the first king of Britain, and his knights, are the heroes of narratives by Geoffrey of Monmouth (1100-1154), Chrétien de Troyes (active 1170-1190), and Sir Thomas Malory (died 1471), among many others.

2
(p. 34) works of Cornelius Agrippa: Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), a German physician, wrote several books, including De occulta philosophia (A Defense of Magic; 1531). His mystical philosophies drew on Neoplatonic, cabalistic, and Christian traditions; he was persecuted during his lifetime for his occult beliefs.

3
(p. 35) Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus: Paracelsus, or Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493-1541), was a Swiss alchemist and physician who firmly claimed that it is possible to create human life-and gave instructions on how to do it. Albertus Magnus (c.1200-1280) was a German scholar, Dominican monk, and the teacher of Thomas Aquinas; he was made a saint by the Roman Catholic Church in 1931.

4
(p. 35) unexplored ocean of truth: Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), an English physicist and mathematician, invented calculus and developed theories of gravitation and mechanics. Despite his many accomplishments, he allegedly said at the end of his life: “To myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” See In the Presence of a Center: Isaac Newton and His Times, by Gale Christianson, New York: The Free Press, 1984, p. 579.

5
(p. 3 6)
obvious laws
of electricity: The tree blasted by lightning is the first of many images of the elemental force of fire in Frankenstein (ice, too, features prominently in the novel). Frankenstein, who is enlightened in this moment, will later describe himself as a “blasted tree” (p. 143) and “blasted and miserable” (p. 168); in other words, he will come to regret the consequences of his newfound knowledge.

Chapter III

1
(p. 38) university of Inglostadt: Ingolstadt, in Bavaria, was a university town from 1472 to 1800. Adam Weishaupt, a professor of canon law at Ingolstadt, founded the Order of the Illuminati there in 1776. This secret society favored free thinking and radical politics, and was alleged to have ties with the Jacobins. It was outlawed in 1785. The university moved to Landshut in 1800, then to Munich in 1826.

2
(p. 39)
a sorrow which all have felt
: Notably, Mary Shelley lived with such sorrow, coupled by guilt, her entire life; Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, died about ten days after giving birth to her. The cause was that part of the placenta had not been removed properly from the birth canal and became infected.

3
(p. 40) Angel of Destruction: This is Satan, the fallen archangel of Paradise Lost, who pledges himself to the destruction of “this new Favorite / of Heav‘n, this Man of Clay” (book 9, lines 175-176)-and heads for Eve as soon as she is separated form Adam (book 9, lines 421 and following).

Chapter IV

1
(p. 47) a passage to life: In the fourth voyage of Sinbad the Sailor in The Thousand and One Nights, the Arabian Sinbad is buried alive with the corpse of his wife. Perceiving a distant light, he follows it and finds his way to freedom.

2
(p. 50) my creation: This description of Victor’s “labours” sounds remarkably like a the human gestation process: Nine months pass (“winter, spring, and summer”), he becomes very anxious and even feverish, and he looks forward to exercise and amusement once the “creation is complete.” Shelley herself had been through the process twice before she began Frankenstein.

Chapter V

1
(p. 51 ) his features: Frankenstein’s reaction to his creature is not unlike the emotions experienced by new mothers suffering from postpartum depression. The discolored skin barely covering the network of veins, watery (perhaps tearing) eyes, and “shrivelled complexion” sound not unlike the characteristics of a newborn, especially from the eyes of a mother subject to hormonal fluctuations and many new responsibilities. It should be noted that in February 1815, Shelley gave birth to a premature child who died unnamed (like the monster) about two weeks later. Her letters and journals indicate that she suffered both emotionally and physically, before and after the birth: “Dream that my little baby came to life again-that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it by the fire & it lived—I... awake & find no baby-I think about the little thing all day-not in good spirits,” she wrote in her journal on March 19. See The Journals of Mary Shelley: 1814-1844, vol. 1, p. 70.

2
(p. 52) my dead mother: The immediate substitution of Elizabeth for Frankenstein’s mother has some interesting implications. Frankenstein is subconsciously connecting his mother with his sister/lover; just why remains a question. Perhaps he is demonstrating his uncommonly close affection for his mother; perhaps he holds Elizabeth responsible for his mother’s death; perhaps he is foreshadowing (or even bringing on) Elizabeth’s death. This intriguing issue is examined variously by Paul Sherwin, Mary Poovey, and Margaret Homans in their essays in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, edited by Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea House, 1987.

3
(p. 52) Dante could not have conceived: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) depicted horrible, doomed individuals and their terrible crimes and punishments in the Inferno, the first book of his trilogy The Divine Comedy (1310-1314).

4
(p. 53) “doth dose behind him tread”: On page 17 Robert Walton compares himself with Coleridge’s guilt-ridden mariner. Here, Frankenstein draws parallels between himself and the mariner, who has felt the passing of the curse but will never feel safe again (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, lines 446-451 ) .