Breaking News: Clarie Clairmont Memoir Recently Discovered--Disses Shelley and Byron!

The following article, from the Daily Mail (UK) discusses a forgotten memoir recently discovered by Claire Clairmont, written in her 70's.  In the work she blasts both Byron and Shelley as "monsters," and sheds new light on the relationship between the group in the fateful year of 1818.  Read more! 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261350/Lord-Byron-described-free-love-worshipper-monster-ex-lover-newly-discovered-memoir.html

Close Reading Questions for Le Fanu's "The Familiar"

(at right: Arnold Bocklin's painting, "The Sacred Wood" (1882), a once famous painter of the fantastic, mythical, and supernatural).

1. According to the OED, the word “familiar” has several possible denotations, including:

• 1. a. Of or pertaining to one's family or household. (Now rare, and with mixture of other senses.) Of an enemy: That is ‘of one's own household’: lit. and fig. Of habits: Pertaining to one's family life, private, domestic

• 1. d. familiar angel: a guardian angel. familiar devil, spirit: a demon supposed to be in association with or under the power of a man.

• 8. Free, as among persons intimately acquainted, unceremonious; occas. Too free, taking liberties with; also in to make familiar with.

• B. b. An officer of the Inquisition, chiefly employed in arresting and imprisoning the accused.

How might all of one of these definitions help us read or interpret the story? What is ultimately so “familiar” about Barton’s condition?

2. Unlike Mr. Jennings, Barton is a hardened heretic, and even after numerous visitations, he insists, “I can’t pray…there is something within me that will not pray…The idea of an eternal Creator is to me intolerable—my mind cannot support it” (61-62). What role do you feel Barton’s skepticism plays in the story? Does he ultimately undergo a transformation?

3. Is “The Familiar” a story of the uncanny—or simply a ghost story? Do the events and visitations have elements of the uncanny, or does the fact that other people see it—or think they see it—remove this from the realm of psychoanalysis (or metaphysical medicine)?

4. Why do you feel the “frame” of Dr. Hesselius has been almost entirely removed from this story, existing only at the very beginning and end of the story? Is there a reason we hear this story almost completely second-hand, instead of from the doctor’s personal observations?

Paper 2.2: "Sublime Philosophy"

Note: the questions for "Green Tea" are below this post...

In his work, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Johnathan Culler defines theory as something that is “reflexive, thinking about thinking, an enquiry into the categories we use in making sense of things, in literature and other discursive practices” (15). With this definition in mind, it is important to remember that any reading is naturally a “theory” that can help us relate to or contextualize a literary work. The Gothic is particularly receptive to literary theory, as it is a fundamentally subversive genre which delights in mirrors, mazes, and masks. Using a theoretical lens, such as feminism, helps us ask specific questions about a book’s genesis, purpose, expression and audience—reminding us that literary works only remain vital as we re-read them and re-interpret them for future generations.

Using your close reading in Paper 2.1 as a basis, choose one of the following theoretical approaches. Also consider which one best informs your reading, so you can seamlessly incorporate your “thesis” into this paper. All of the prompts below are borrowed from Chapter 4 of Stevens’ The Gothic Tradition, which discusses theory and the Gothic novel.

A Feminist Reading: discuss “the relative silence, or, at the very least, passivity, of female characters” in these 19th century Gothic texts. What role does this play either in reinforcing female stereotypes or criticizing a patriarchal (male) power structure? Consider the Creature’s “femininity,” or the roles of the largely mute Elizabeth and Justine…or the much more powerful Carmilla in Le Fanu’s story.

A Psychoanalytic Reading: discuss how these texts deal with “the psychologically divided self, especially when the “id” (the appetite driven emotional basis of life) is in conflict with the “ego” (the conscious sense of self) or the “super-ego” (the sense of morality, sometimes construed as the conscience).” For example, you might consider how consciously these stories reveal man’s “forgotten phase,” which has been suppressed by civilization and English society (ex: Le Fanu’s The Familiar: “So little a matter, after all, is sufficient to upset the pride of skepticism and vindicate the old simple laws of nature within us” (47).

A Marxist Reading: discuss “how, in terms of the class struggle, various characters may become “outsider” figures, feeling alienated from their social context—their fellow human beings.” For example, is the Creature a symbol for the “ugly, inhuman lower classes,” that is naturally repugnant to the aristocratic lover of beauty, Frankenstein? Or is the Creature’s transformation (and murderous rage) symbolic of the danger of educating the lower classes?

Ideas and Sources to Consider:

• Consider the Contextual Documents at the back of Frankenstein as well as Freud’s “The Uncanny”

• Consider the intro essays on each theory at the back of Frankenstein, as well as the critical essays that accompany them

• Use Stevens’ The Gothic Tradition, esp. Chapter 4, which discusses theory and its application to Gothic fiction

• Use the blog entries on cultural context as possible sources

• Check the library—we have Shelley’s Journals and other documents related to her life and works

REQUIREMENTS: 4-6 pages…use of other primary and secondary sources (not counting the class texts)…proper MLA citation throughout…due Friday, April 16th by 5pm

Close Reading Questions for Le Fanu's "Green Tea"

(to left: Eli Grasso's drawing of a Gothic castle (2010), which has nothing to do with Green Tea specifically, but I wanted to show off my 5 year-old's artistic prowess!)

1. “Green Tea” seems contradictory in its obsession both with quasi-scientific detail and more arcane spirituality, such as Swedenbourg’s Arcana Caelestia. How does the work reconcile these two points of view, and does one ultimately “cancel out” the other?

2. At the end of the story, Dr. Hesselius writes that “I have not, I repeat, the slightest doubt that I should have first dimmed and ultimately sealed that inner eye which Mr. Jennings had inadvertently opened…I have never yet failed” (39). Why do we get this extended disclaimer? How does this affect how we read Hesselius as a narrator?

3. How do Freud’s theories in “The Uncanny” play into this work? What passages or ideas from it can help us interpret Le Fanu's intentions? Note that Freud wrote quite a bit after “Green Tea” was written, so Le Fanu could not have read it…though the two may have been thinking along the same wavelength.

4. Consider the title, “Green Tea” itself: why does Le Fanu call our attention to it, when it plays a relatively minor role in the story? What does this say about the story or the characters who inhabit it? Is this all merely a case of bad tea?

Gothic Soundtrack: Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique (1830)

(at left: Eugene Delacroix's portrait of Berlioz)

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869) is a truly Romantic composer, with a liberal pinch of the Gothic as well.  Inspired by the grandiose vision of Beethoven, he wrote music chiefly for orchestra, and often for gigantic forces; on one occassion, he asked for as many as 400 instruments to play one of his works (at the time, a typical orchestra had about 30).  Berlioz read voraciously--including many Gothic works--and found his greatest inspiration in stories of ghosts, curses, old legends, and of course, tormented love.  He wrote a vocal symphony based on Romeo and Juliet, and opera on Much Ado About Nothing, and another symphony/concerto (a symphony with a large role for solo viola) loosely based on Byron's Harold in Italy.  However, his most celebrated work was autobiographical, based on the drama (largely imagined) of his own tortured love life.  In 1827, Berlioz attended a performance of Hamlet by a touring English theatre company; he didn't understand more than a few words of English, but this didn't prevent him from becoming instantly smitten by the actress playing Ophelia, Henrietta Smithson.  Berlioz was a man of extreme sensibility, and he immediately imagined a torrid love affair between the two, and attempted to woo her through intermediaries (and his own music).  She left Paris along with the company soon afterwards, but upon her return a few years later, he had written his magnum opus, the Symphonie Fantastique (Fantastic Symphony--not that it was "great," but that it was "fantastic"--sublime, unusual, uncanny!).  The symphony, in five movements, was preceeded by the following synopsis by Berlioz:

"A young musician of morbid sensibility and ardent imagination in a paroxysm of love-sick despair has poisoned himself with opium.  The drug, too weak to kill, plunges him into a heavy sleep accompanied by strange visions.  His sensations, feelings, and memories are translated in his sick brain into musical ideas and images.  The beloved one herself becomes for him a melody, a recurrent theme that haunts him everywhere."

The symphony opens with a "theme" which represents Henrietta, and undergoes several transformations throughout the work.  The first movement is a melancholy, haunted movement, which sets the scene for his love and his opium-induced trance.  The second movement is a ball scene, where frenzied dancing occurs as he searches for his beloved.  The third movement is a set in the countryside, where the composer is assuaged by the comforting powers of nature--until a distant storm intervenes (cue the sublime).  The fourth movement is stirring, martial music, as the hero is swept up into a frenzied "battle" with his imagination.  This is immediately followed by the trumpets signaling the "dies irae," a famous medieval melody that accompanied the Catholic mass--literally, the "day of wrath."  This theme conjures up a movement that Berlioz suggested was a "black mass," an orgy of witches and goblins led by his beloved, who has become grotesque and "uncanny."  Her theme appears in this movement transformed, no longer comforting but mocking him.  A new theme is taken up by the orchestra, which is the orgy proper; soon, the dies irae sounds at the same time and the two themes crash into one another, dashing toward the inevitable finale, where Berlioz writes the artist is brought to the scaffold by his beloved and decapitated!

In 1830, she attended the premier of this work, though was unaware of her role in inspiring it.  As Berlioz writes in his memoirs, "So astonished was she at the unprecedented murmur of conversation which she was plainly the object, that without being able to account to herself for it, she was filled with a kind of instictive terror, which moved her powerfully...When I came in panting and sat down beside her, she, who until then had doubted whether she were not mistaken in the name at the head of the program, saw and recognized me.  "It is the same," she said to herself.  "Poor young man.  No doubt he has forgotten me.  I hoped that he has."  The symphony began and created a tremendous impression.  The success and the passionate character of the work were bound to produce, and did in fact produce, an impression as profound as it was unlooked for upon her." 

This is only partially true; according to other sources, she was fairly horrified by her "role" in the symphony, and only came to speak with him by degrees.  Nevertheless, they did eventually marry (though he spoke little English and she little French), though it was not a happy marriage.  Perhaps the only true result of the relationship is the symphony itself, which is a high water mark of musical Romanticism, and a fitting companion to Frankenstein, Kubla Khan, and de Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater. 

A You Tube link to a performance by the NHK Symphony (Japan) of the 4th movement is below:

Close Reading Questions for Freud's "The Uncanny" (handouts are in my box if you missed class on Thursday)

(at right: Rene Magritte's painting, The Blank Check, 1965.  Uncanny, eh?).   

Freud published this influential essay in 1919, which is a hundred years after Frankenstein; nevertheless, it has profoundly transformed how we read earlier literature and the Gothic in particular. The essay is an imaginative tour de force, as it combines psychoanalysis, literary analysis, and elements of a short story—the feminist critic Helene Cixous called it “a strange theoretical novel.” Hopefully, reading this essay will remind you that the critical can be creative, and the speculative can be theoretical. You might want to look up several Freudian terms used without context in this essay, such as ego, superego, pleasure principle, etc.

NOTE: I left out Part I of the essay which is only 3-4 pages long and concerns various definitions of the word “uncanny” in German and other cultures. Note that in German, das Unheimliche is “uncanny,” whereas das Heimliche is “homely” or “familiar,” which is a “double” relationship that does not exist in English.

Answer TWO of the following…

1. In the opening pages of the essay, Freud offers a close reading of E.T.A Hoffmann’s story, “The Sandman.” What is the purpose of this close reading—what is he trying to prove or reveal about the uncanny from this reading?

2. According to Freud, why do people typically describe an experience or event as “uncanny,” and what psychological motive lies behind it? Why might he link this to “a primitive phase in our mental development”(143)?

3. Toward the end of Part II, Freud writes, “an uncanny effect often arises when the boundary between fantasy and reality is blurred, when we are faced with the reality of something that we have until now considered imaginary, when a symbol takes on the full function and significance of what it symbolizes” (150). How might this statement (and the argument he makes in this passage) relate directly to our studies of the Gothic?

4. Why does the uncanny function differently in literature than in real life? What rules or principles affect a sense of the uncanny in literature, and how might fairy tales (using his example) be somehow exempt from the uncanny, whereas works like The Vampyre and Frankenstein are not?

Frankenstein: Contextual Documents (pp.190-223)

(at left: Henry Fuseli's painting of Ariel from Shakespeare's The Tempest)

Readings: Godwin, Caleb Williams; Wollstonecraft, Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman; Paracelsus, On Creation; Rousseau, Emile, or Education; Davy, A Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry; Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Easy question this time: Choose TWO of the above readings and explain how they provide useful context for reading/interpreting some aspect of Frankenstein.  Be specific--show how individual passages and ideas from the excerpts relate to the novel, and influence what we read either in small passages or the entire work.  Remember, Shelley read all of these works prior to writing Frankenstein, which means that even subsconsiously (though more likely, quite consciously) these works were eager co-collaborators. 

As a bonus, here are some works that she recorded as reading in her Diary from the years 1815-1816, just prior to and during the composition of Frankenstein.  These are only a FEW of the many works she consumed in this relatively short period of time--she was a voracious reader, and probably slightly in compeition with her husband; she kept a strict record of all the books both read, and if we trust her accounting, she always came out ahead!  You might consider visiting some of these works as primary sources for your Paper #2, especially if you've already read them.  Note how many Gothic works occur in these formative years!  Also, some of these works she was merely re-reading, such as works by her parents. 

SELECTED READINGS OF MARY SHELLEY (from her Journals):
1815: Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther; Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Ovid's Metamorphoses; The Arabian Nights; Wordsworth's Poems; Spenser's The Fairy Queen; Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland (an American Gothic novel); Rousseau's Confessions; Beckford's Vathek; Milton's Paradise Lost; Sir Walter Scott's Waverley; Swift's A Tale of a Tub; Lives of Abelard and Heloise; The New Testament; Coleridge's Christabel and Other Poems; Shakespeare's Plays (doesn't say which ones); Alexander Pope's translation of The Iliad; Voltaire's Micromegas; Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; Plutarch's Lives; George Ansons's Voyages Around the World; Lewis's Tales of Wonder (Matthew "Monk" Lewis--author of The Monk); Radcliffe's The Castle of Udolpho...

1816: Livy's History of Rome; Euripides' Plays (doesn't say which ones); James Machperson's Ossian poems (he was a poet who claimed he had discovered the "lost" Celtic epics, which he claimed were written by a Homeric bard named Ossian--later discovered to be a fraud); Mungo Park's Journal of a Journey in Africa; Byron's Seige of Corinth; Godwin's Caleb Williams; Montesquieu's Persian Letters; Rousseau's Emile, or Education; Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent; Cervantes' Don Quixote; Richardson's Pamela and Sir Charles Grandison; Swift's Gulliver's Travels; Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding; Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman...

Creative Paper: Gothic Storytelling

(at right: image by William Blake (the poet), "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed With the Sun" (1810))

For this “paper,” I want you to write a creative response to the gothic stories, themes, or elements covered in class. However, this is not an “anything goes” assignment, since I want you to write a story informed by our class readings, writings, and discussions. In other words, if you could have written this class without reading a single book in class, without writing a single paper in class, or attending a single class, I will grade accordingly. Otherwise, it should be an exciting, challenging opportunity to write a bona fide Gothic creation.

THE FRAMEWORK…

 The Sublime: a story where the sublime plays a crucial role in the story. Make sure you understand what the sublime is, and re-read passages (esp. Frankenstein) where the sublime almost becomes a character in its own right. The plot (or our understanding of it) should hinge on some aspect of the sublime.

 A Missing Chapter: write a missing chapter to one of the works in class—either a missing ending, beginning, or something in the middle. This chapter should deal with characters and themes in the book, but should add its own “twist” that helps interpret the work from a modern perspective. For example, what might Elizabeth have said to the Creature? (besides AAGHGAHHGH!). Or, what did they do with the giant helmet in Otranto (and Conrad’s remains)? Etc…

 A Modern Adaptation: a short story (or first chapter of an unfinished work) that “translates” one of the stories into a modern setting. Consider what elements could jump from one century to the next without losing anything essential, and revamp the story in an original yet faithful way. Make sure your readers would still recognize the work’s origin.

 Gothic Letters/Diary: a set of “discovered” letters that either start in the middle or break off before the end. Experiment with the epistolary form and the voice of a single narrator, and consider what we see and what falls between the letters (or letters that the writer responds to but that we don’t get to see). Be sure that crucial information/elements are missing, and don’t create a complete narrative—have it seem incomplete and mysterious (and thus Gothic!).

REQUIREMENTS/CONSIDERATIONS:

 A short story (or poem) of no more than 6-7 pages. You can do more, but I can’t guarantee I can read it all given the sheer amount of students in class.

 A response to the assignment and the works in class. Nothing composed before this class will be accepted unless it works really well within the boundaries of the assignment. You can modify a previously composed work.

 We will read a few selected works during the last week of class. I will choose the works that I feel best address the assignment and lend themselves to class discussion. I will distribute these selected works in class.

 DUE BY TUESDAY, APRIL 27th

Context for Frankenstein: Percy Shelley, "Mont Blanc" (1817)

Percy Shelley’s famous poem, Mont Blanc, was written in 1816 alongside Mary’s work on Frankenstein. Together, they (with Claire Clairmont, of course) visited the Chamounix Valley and beheld Mont Blanc, its most scenic attraction, standing at around 16,000 feet. Writing about it in their co-authored work, A History of a Six Week’s Tour (1817), Shelley writes, “Mont Blanc was before us, but it was covered with cloud so deep that the very roaring of the untamable Avre, which rolled through it, could not be heard above…all was as much our own, as if we had been the creators of such impressions in the minds of others as now occupied our own.” Not surprisingly, Mont Blanc and its surroundings features prominently in Frankenstein (when he first encounters his creation), sharing much of its rhetoric with Shelley’s poem—one of his most characteristic Romantic outpourings. Writing about Mont Blanc, Stephen C. Behrendt notes, “With image piled upon image, complex rhetorical constructions, anagrammatic transformation of words, blank verse and rhyme, and numerous philosophical inconsistencies, Mont Blanc reproduces for the reader the sensations he felt in viewing [the mountain].”

I strongly encourage you to read the entire poem, which sheds light on Mary’s own thoughts while writing Frankenstein. In part, the poem concerns the power of the sublime to create images in the responsive brain, a response which questions the true nature of such visions. Do they come from Nature, the Mountain, or God Himself; or do they come from the poet’s imagination, simply waiting to be “sparked” by some divine incident? Is the sublime actually the mind of the poet magnified, or do we worship mutely at the oracles of divinity? Here are excerpts from Part I and III of the poem:

I (Complete)
The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters,--with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap forever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly burst and raves.

Part III (excerpt)
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,
Mont Blanc appears,--still, snowy, and serene—
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunters bone,
And the wolf tracks her there—how hideously
Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.—Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelop once this silent snow?
None can reply—all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that man may be,
But for such faith, with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

Final Questions for Shelley's Frankenstein (pp.121-end)

(at right: Caspar David Friedrich's "The Sea of Ice," depicting the sublime cathedrals of ice--the setting of the beginning and end of Shelley's Frankenstein).

1. Do you consider Frankenstein a “reliable narrator”? The largest frame story is his own, which he carefully puts into the hands of Walton (and indeed, even the Creature’s story is from the mouth of Frankenstein!). Are there any slips or cracks in his story which make us doubt his veracity? You might consider how this relates to the idea of the Creature as Frankenstein’s “double” as well…

2. Is Frankenstein’s act of destroying the female monster an act of heroism or cowardice? What reason does he give for destroying it, and do we accept this at face value? Likewise, do we believe the Creature’s vow to Frankenstein, that he will abandon society with his female companion?

3. Why do you feel Shelley included the scene where Frankenstein is imprisoned in Ireland for Clerval’s murder? How might this scene reflect some of the major themes of the novel?

4. How does Shelley reconcile the “frame story” of Walton the explorer? What has he learned from Frankenstein and the Creature? Can we say of him, as the narrator says of the the Wedding Guest in Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “A sadder and wiser man/he rose the morrow morn”?

Paper #2.1: “Savage and Enduring Scenes”: Close Reading Frankenstein

To assist you in examining our next texts as Gothic creations, I want to slow down and break the assignment into two components: (a) a focused close reading and (b) a theoretical application. This part of the paper, which I call Paper 2.1, is simply a close reading of a single passage from Shelley’s Frankenstein. What is a single passage? It can be as long as an entire page, or as short as a single paragraph. Your essay should provide a critical “close reading” of this passage on the level of language, theme, characterization, symbol/metaphor, and historical/cultural context.

How to do this? Let’s say I chose the following passage on page 89 (Chapter IX), which begins, “Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me…” and ends with “as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings.” I would read and re-read this passage carefully, and then consider what this passage is saying, why it is important to the narrative, to Frankenstein’s character, and to the philosophies of the Gothic in general. I would particularly note:

• The setting: not only a Gothic setting, but one that evokes the sublime—particularly the Alps (the valley of Chamounix, the river Avre), which interested all the Romantics. Percy Shelly’s poem Mont Blanc takes place in exactly the same location. I would discuss how Shelley describes the setting (the words used, their connotations) and evokes the sublime.

• Characterization: how does Shelley reflect on Frankenstein’s character and sensibility in this passage? What does he see? How does he process this? Is he responding “romantically” to his surroundings? Do his responses illustrate an “innocent” character? Or has he been ruined by experience?

• Literary Context: other passages in Walpole, Austen, or other works that this seems akin to. Why place the main character out in nature and arrest the plot in the process? Why might this be a particularly Gothic convention? What “story” does this tell?

• Symbol/Theme: reading on, we know that Frankenstein encounters his Creation here for the first time. Why here? Is this significant? What in the passage might provide a clue for what happens in the following pages? How might his experiences/reflections here be symbolic of the work itself—and the precarious relationship between Master and Creation?

REQUIREMENTS:
• 2-3 pages, double spaced
• No outside sources (unless you want another primary source for context); just the text is required
• Integrate the quotation into your discussion: don’t quote it and then discuss it. Work on explicating what you read and how you read it. Make connections for the reader based on the actual words. Balance analysis and summary. And don’t assume that the quote speaks for you!
• Due NEXT FRIDAY, MARCH 12 by 5pm

Shelley's Frankenstein (pp.71-121)

(at right: the first illustration of Frankenstein, by the engravier, Chevalier, for the 1831 edition.  Much of the stereotypical "laboratory" details used in films comes from this illustration, since Shelley never describes it in the novel). 

Answer TWO of the following...

1. How might we use Polidori’s The Vampyre to read some of the events and characters of Frankenstein? Since both writers knew one another and were inspired by the same event (and books, ideas), do we see a connection between Aubrey and Frankenstein? Or Frankenstein and Lord Ruthven?

2. How does Shelley attempt to humanize the “creation” throughout the narrative? What account does the “creature” give of his own “birth,” and how might this contrast with Frankenstein’s creation narrative?

3. The Creature’s education is chiefly in the form of four books: Volney’s Ruins of Empires, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Milton’s Paradise Lost and Plutarch’s Lives. Why this strange collection of works? What do they collectively “teach” the Creature about human life?

4. What do you make of the lengthy interlude of Felix and his relationship with Safie and her father, the Turk? Why does the Creature (or Shelley) feel it necessary to include this tale? Does it echo any of the characters/events of the rest of the story?

An 1818 Review of Frankenstein from The Morning Chronicle (London)

A facsimile of The Morning Chronicle, a London paper published on Saturday, August 15, 1818, announcing the first editon of Shelley's Frankenstein (seen at left).  Though small, the advertisement reads:

BOOKS PUBLISHED THIS DAY

In Three Volumes, price 16s. 6d. a Work of Imagination, entitled

FRANKENSTEIN; or, The MODERN PROMETHEUS

"Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
To mould me man? Did I solicit thee
From darkness to promote me?-- PARADISE LOST

"In Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for March 1818, may be seen, a very forcible commendation of this work, from the pen (it is presumed) of a highly celebrated northern writer and critic--the article concludes thus--: "Upon the whole, the work impresses us with a high idea of the author's original genius, and happy power of expression.  We shall be delighted to hear that he has aspired to the pallo majora; and in the mean time, congratulate our readers upon a novel which excites new reflections and untried sources of emotion.  If Gray's definition of Paradise, namely, to lie on a couch, and read new novels, come any thing near the truth, no small praise is due to him, who, like the author of Frankenstein, has enlarged the sphere of that fascinating enjoyment." 

Printed for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mayor, and Jones, Finsbury-square. 

Note that the work was sold in three volumes for 16 shillings, 6 pence (a typical book went for around 6 shillings, so getting 3 books for 16 shillings was a bargain).  After finding a publisher only with much difficulty, Shelley placed the work with Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mayor, and Hones, publishers of cheap sensational or "occult" novels, such as "The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer--a complete system of occult philosophy, being a summary of all the best Writers on the subjects of Magic, Alchemy, Magnetism, the Cabala, and etc. Cornelius, Agrippa, Paracelsus, Van Helmont, Hermes Trismegistus, & c., with an Account of their Lives and a great variety of new matter, and rare and curious experiments" (ironic, considering Victor's early reading interests!)  The book was cheaply bound and had no illustrations or any other distinguishing feature.  That it survived this very humble birth is a supreme testament to its literary power and ability to capture the popular imagination.

From Mary Shelley's Journal, Winter 1815 (note: ECU has multiple copies of the Journals)

(at right: a miniature portrait of Mary Shelley as a young woman, part of the collection of her relics at the Bodleian Library, at the University of Oxford)

From a biographical point of view, it is important to consider what Mary Shelley saw and experienced between 1814 (her elopement with Shelley) and 1818, the first publication of Frankenstein. In this relatively short period of time, she traveled throughout Europe, gave birth to and lost several children, met some of the great writers of the age, and read widely in many languages. Yet perhaps most significant to the novel is the experience of losing young children—devastating to any mother, much less a woman barely out of her teens. The following excerpts from her Journal, though fragmentary, suggest a uniquely feminine perspective on the origin of Frankenstein…

Thursday, February 23-24, 1815: [Percy Shelley writing] Mary quite well: the child, unexpectedly, alive, but still not expected to live…Dr. Clarke calls; confirms out hopes of the child. Shelley [himself, speaking in the third person] very unwell…The child very well; Marie very well also; drawing milk all day. Shelley is very unwell.

Monday, March 6: Find my baby dead. Send for Hogg. Talk. A miserable day. In the evening read “Fall of the Jesuits.” Hogg sleeps here.

Thursday, March 9. Read and talk. Still think about my little baby—‘tis hard, indeed, for a mother to lose a child. Hogg and Charles Clairmont come in the evening…

Monday, March 13: Shelley and Clara go to town. Stay at home; net, and think of my little dead baby. This is foolish, I suppose; yet, whenever I am left alone to my own thoughts, and do not read to divert then, they always come back to the same point—that I was a mother, and am so no longer.

Sunday, March 19. Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold, and that we rubbed it before the fire, and it lived. Awake and find no baby. I think about the little thing all day. Not in good spirits. Shelley is very unwell…

Monday, March 20. Dream again about my baby…

Compare to this to the following passage in Frankenstein, Chapter III, page 50:

“I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil; the void that presents itself to the soul; and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she, whom we saw every day, and whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have departed forever—that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished, and the sound of a voice so familiar, and dear to the ear, can be hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from who has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? and why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished. My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the rest, and learn to think ourselves fortunate, whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized.”