Doc Yoder's Notes
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1st ed. 1818; 3rd ed. 1831)

These notes are to the 3rd edition. Because of the diversity of published texts, I have not included page numbers for the quotations.

Letters 1-4: sets in place the frame; ambitious, not quite Satanic Robert Walton trying to find the Edenic North pole; almost explicitly a commentary on the Ancient Mariner and the Wedding Guest

Chap. 1: Victor's youth; intro Elizabeth w/ foreshadowed death

Chap. 2: intro Clerval; Victor's studies in Natural Philosophy (Cornelius Aggrippa, Paracelsus, Albertus Magnus), interest in elixir of life and in raising ghosts; the first image of the "blasted stump"

Chap. 3: Victor's mother dies; Victor goes to school at Ingolstadt, meets M. Krempe and M. Waldman; Waldman talks of "penetrat[ing] into the recesses of nature and show[ing] how she works in her hiding places"

Chap. 4: 2 yrs. pass; Victor discovers the secret of animation; plans for the creature (make it big to make the work easy); Victor's Satanic ambitions to Godhood; Victor claims to have no supernatural horrors -- perhaps he has no religion?

Chap. 5: it lives! Victor's dream of Elizabeth becoming his dead mother -- killing and bedding the mother; Victor flees the creature, runs into newly-arrived Clerval, has a hallucination of the creature, faints for 6 months

Chap. 6: letter from Elizabeth introduces Justine Moritz to the reader; Victor's revulsion at scientific instruments or discussion; Victor recovers; foreshadowing of Clerval's death

Chap. 7: murder of William; Victor sees the creature in Geneva; Justine is accused; 2 yrs. since the creature was animated; 6 yrs. since Victor went to Ingolstadt

Chap. 8: Justine's trial, "confession," and execution; the Frankensteinian rhetorical sublime

Chap. 9: a pause after Justine's execution; Victor goes to Chamounix, Switzerland and Mount Blanc

Chap. 10: Victor and the creature meet; the Creature claims rights to Victor's duty as creator

Chap. 11: Creature's Tale 1: awakening; fire; hostility in the village; the hovel at the De Lacey's; the creature mixes imagery of Pandemonium (the shepherd's hut) with imagery of Paradise (the hovel) -- is he Adam or Satan? he can't decide; the creature's dawning sensibility at the life of the De Lacey family

Chap. 12: Creature's Tale 2: 1st winter with the De Laceys; discovers language/writing; the mystery of the family's melancholy; Creature sees himself reflected in a pool; he starts doing odd-jobs for the family

Chap. 13: Creature's Tale 3: the arrival of the Arabian, Safie, provides an opportunity to learn language; he also learns history from Volney's Ruins of Empires; recognizes his lack of parents or mate

Chap. 14: Creature's Tale 4: The DeLacey family story, including the ingratitude of Safie's father (the Turk), and the ruin of the DeLacey family fortune

Chap. 15: Creature's Tale 5: his books (Paradise Lost, Sorrows of Young Werther, Plutarch's Lives, and Victor's journal); creature reveals himself to the DeLacey family; -- good contrast between PL's story of creation of Adam and Victor's journal record of creation of creature; begin shift from focus on father/son relationship to desire for a mate

Chap. 16: Creature's Tale 6: the De Laceys flee; creature gets shot rescuing a girl; the murder of William and framing of Justine; creature asks for a mate; creature also assumes sometime of Victor's role, attempting to "reanimate" the little girl, "creating" desolation by killing William

Chap. 17: after some negotiation, Victor agrees to create a female; cf. PL 8:355ff.; creature's vision of his Paradise

Chap. 18: Victor delays marrying Elizabeth; goes to England w/ Clerval; foreshadows death of Clerval

Chap. 19: tour of Oxford, the Lakes, and Edinburgh, until Victor separates from Clerval in Scotland, goes to the Orkney Islands, and finally the work proceeds; Victor is increasingly isolated as a result of his knowledge; Victor:Clerval::WW:Dorothy

Chap. 20: Victor destroys the half-formed woman, dumps the body, drifts to Ireland and is charged w/ murder; lots on the traffic in women

Chap. 21: Victor's hearing for the murder; the corpse is Clerval (of course); more delirium; Victor's father arrives; Victor is acquitted; heading home

Chap. 22: Victor returns to Geneva and marries Elizabeth; foreshadowing death of Elizabeth

Chap. 23: Murder of Elizabeth; father wastes away; more delirium; Victor tells his tale the first time (very mariner-like); police won't help (surprise!); hatching a plan to hunt the creature

Chap. 24: the last chapter, slips back into Walton's journal; Victor's "marriage vow" with the creature; Victor asks Walton to take up his quest

Back to Walton's journal / letter to his sister

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Topics for Consideration

The following groupings suggest a structure for the novel. The first section of the book is concerned with Parenting; Victor had good parents who set a good example for him, but also spoiled him. The Creature's Tale shows the results of Victor's bad parenting. In the final section, the focus shifts from parenting to (at least partly) the "Homosocial Traffic in Women" (see, for example, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire, 1985), in which Victor and the Creature negotiate for possession of a female mate. Shelley uses Adam's speech from Paradise Lost, Bk. VIII to set up the tension: When Adam asked God to make him a mate, what if God had said, "No"?

Parenting:

Bridge Passage -- The Creature's Tale:
Homosocial Traffic in Women: Gendered Language of ambition/nature: "They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding places."

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