"FRANKENSTEIN."
That a work by a girl of nineteen should have held its place in
romantic literature so long is no small tribute to its merit; this
work, wrought under the influence of Byron and Shelley, and conceived
after drinking in their enthralling conversation, is not unworthy of
its origin. A more fantastically horrible story could scarcely be
conceived; in fact, the vivid imagination, piling impossible horror
upon horror, seems to claim for the book a place in the company of a
Poe or a Hoffmann. Its weakness appears to be that of placing such an
idea in the annals of modern life; such a process invariably weakens
these powerful imaginative ideas, and takes away from, instead of
adding to, the apparent truth, and cannot fail to give an affectation
to the work. True, it might add to the difficulty to imagine a
different state of society, past or future, but this seems a _sine
quâ non_. The story of _Frankenstein_ begins with a series of
letters of a young man, Robert Walton, writing to his sister, Mrs.
Saville in England, from St. Petersburg, where he is about to embark
on a voyage in search of the North Pole. He is bent on discovering the
secret of the magnet, and is deluded with the hope of a _never_
absent sun. When advanced some distance towards his longed-for goal,
Walton writes of a most strange adventure which befalls them in the
midst of the ice regions--a gigantic being, of human shape, being
drawn over the ice in a sledge by dogs. Not many hours after this
strange sight a fresh discovery was made of another man in another
sledge, with only one living dog to it: this time the man was seen to
be a European, whom the sailors tried to persuade to enter their ship.
On seeing Walton the stranger, speaking English, asked whither they
were bound before he would consent to enter the ship. This naturally
caused intense excitement, as the man, reduced to a skeleton, seemed
to have but a short time to live. However, on hearing that the vessel
was bound northwards, he consented to enter, and with great care he
was restored for the time. In answer to an inquiry as to his object in
thus exposing himself, he replied, "To seek one who fled from me." An
affection springs up and increases between Walton and the stranger,
till the latter promises to tell his sad and strange story, which he
had hitherto intended should die with him.
This commencement leads to the story being told in the form (which
might with advantage have been avoided) of a long narrative by the
dying man. The stranger describes himself as of a Genevese family of
high distinction, and gives an interesting account of his father and
juvenile surroundings, including a playfellow, Elizabeth Lavenga, whom
we encounter much later in his history. All his studies are pursued
with zest, till coming upon the works of Cornelius Agrippa he is led
with enthusiasm into the ideas of experimental philosophy; a passing
remark of "trash" from his father, who does not explain the difference
between past and modern science, is not enough to deter him and
prevent the fatal consequence of the study he persists in, and thus a
pupil of Albertus Magnus appears in the eighteenth century. The
effects of a thunderstorm, described from those Mary had recently
witnessed, decided him in his resolution, for electricity now was the
aim of his research. After having passed his youth in his happy Swiss
home with his parents and dear friends, on the death of his loved
mother he starts for the University of Ingolstadt. Here he is much
reprehended by the professors for his useless studies, until one, a
Mr. Waldeman, sympathises with him, and explains how Cornelius Agrippa
and others, although their studies did not bring the immediate fruit
they expected, nevertheless helped on science in other directions, and
he advises Frankenstein to pursue his studies in natural philosophy,
including mathematics. The upshot of this advice is that two years are
spent in intense study and thought, till he becomes thin and haggard
in appearance. He is contemplating a visit to his home, when, making
some fresh experiment, he finds that he has discovered the principle
of life; this so overcomes him for a time that, oblivious of all else,
he is bent on making use of his discovery. After much perplexing
thought he determines to create a being superior to man, so that
future generations shall bless him. In the first place, by the help of
chemistry, he has to construct the form which is to be animated. The
grave has to be ransacked in the attempt, and Frankenstein describes
with loathing some of the details of his work, and shows the danger of
overstraining the mind in any one direction--how the virtuous become
vicious, and how virtue itself, carried to excess, lapses into vice.
The form is created in nervous fear and fever. Frankenstein being the
ideal scientist, devoid of all feeling for art (whose ideas of it,
indeed, might be limited to the elevation and section of a pot),
without any ideal of proportion or beauty, reaches the point where he
considers nothing but the infusion of life necessary. All is ready,
and in the first hour of the morning he applies his fatal discovery.
Breath is given, the limbs move, the eyes open, and the colossal being
or monster, as he is henceforth called, becomes animated; though
copied from statues, its fearful size, its terrible complexion and
drawn skin, scarcely concealing arteries and muscles beneath, add to
the horror of the expression. And this is the end of two years work to
the horrified Frankenstein. Overwhelmed by disgust, he can only rush
from the room, and finally falls exhausted on his bed, only to wake to
find his monster grinning at him. He runs forth into the street, and
here, in Mary's first work, we have a reminiscence of her own infant
days, when she and Claire hid themselves under the sofa to hear
Coleridge read his poem, for the following stanza from the _Ancient
Mariner_ might seem almost the key-note of _Frankenstein_:--
Like one who on a lonely road,
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round, walks on,
And turns no more his head,
Because he knows a fearful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Frankenstein hurries on, but coming across his old friend Henri
Clerval at the stage coach, he recalls to mind his father, Elizabeth,
his former life and friends. He returns to his rooms with his friend.
Reaching his door, he trembles, but opening it, finds himself
delivered from his self-created fiend. His frenzy of delight being
attributed to madness from overwork, Clerval induces Frankenstein to
leave his studies, and, finally (after he had for months endured a
terrible illness), to accompany him to his native village. Various
delays occurring, they are detained too late in the year to pass the
dangerous roads on their way home.
Health and peace of mind returning to some degree, Frankenstein is
about to proceed on his journey homewards, when a letter arrives from
his father with the fatal news of the mysterious death of his young
brother. This event hastens still further his return, and gives a
renewed gloomy turn to his mind; not only is his loved little brother
dead, but the extraordinary event points to some unknown power. From
this time Frankenstein's life is one agony. One after another all whom
he loves fall victims to the demon he has created; he is never safe
from his presence; in a storm on the Alps he encounters him; in the
fearful murders which annihilate his family he always recognises his
hand. On one occasion his creation wished to have a truce and to come
to terms with his creator. This, after his most fearful treachery had
caused the innocent to be sentenced as the perpetrator of his fearful
deeds. On meeting Frankenstein he recounts the most pathetic story of
his falling away from sympathy with humanity: how, after saving the
life of a girl from drowning, he is shot by a young man who rushes up
and rescues her from him. He became the unknown benefactor of a family
for some period of time by doing the hard work of the household while
they slept. Having taking refuge in a hovel adjoining a corner of
their cottage, he hears their pathetic and romantic story, and also
learns the language and ways of men; but on his wishing to make their
acquaintance the family are so horrified at his appearance that the
women faint, the men drive him off with blows, and the whole family
leave a neigbourhood, the scene of such an apparition. After these
experiences he retaliates, till meeting Frankenstein he proposes these
terms: that Frankenstein shall create another being as repulsive as
himself to be his companion--in fact, he desires a wife as hideous as
he is. These were the conditions, and the lives of all those whom
Frankenstein held most dear were in the balance; he hesitated long,
but finally consented.
Everything now had to be put aside to carry out this fearful task--his
love of Elizabeth, his father's entreaties that he should marry her,
his hopes, his ambitions, go for nothing. To save those who remain, he
must devote himself to his work. To carry out his aim he expresses a
wish to visit England, and, with his friend Clerval, descends the
Rhine, which is described with the knowledge gained in Mary's own
journey, and the same route is pursued which she, Shelley, and Claire
had taken through Holland, embarking for England from Rotterdam, and
thence reaching the Thames. After passing London and Oxford and
various places of interest, he expresses a desire to be left for a
time in solitude, and selects a remote island of the Orkneys, where an
uninhabited hut answers the purpose of his laboratory. Here he works
unmolested till his fearful task is nearly accomplished, when a fear
and loathing possess his soul at the possible result of this second
achievement. Although the demon already created has sworn to abandon
the haunts of man and to live in a desert country with his mate, what
hold will there be over this second being with an individuality and
will of its own? What might be the future consequences to humanity of
the existence of such monsters? He forms a resolution to abandon his
dreaded work, and at that moment it is confirmed by the sight of his
monster grinning at him through the window of the hut in the
moonlight. Not a moment is lost. He tears his just completed work limb
from limb. The monster disappears in rage, only to return to threaten
eternal revenge on him and his; but the time of weakness is passed;
better encounter any evils that may be in store, even for those he
loves, than leave a curse to humanity. From that time there is no
truce. Clerval is murdered and Frankenstein is seized as the murderer,
but respited for worse fate; he is married to Elizabeth, and she is
strangled within a few hours. When goaded to the verge of madness by
all these events, and seeing his beloved father reduced to imbecility
through their misfortunes, he can make no one believe his
self-accusing story; and if they did, what would it avail to pursue a
being who could scale the Alps, live among glaciers, and pass
unfathomable seas? There is nothing left but a pursuit till
death, single-handed, when one might expire and the other be
appeased--onward, with a deluding sight from time to time of his
avenging demon. Only in sleep and dreams did Frankenstein find
forgetfulness of his self-imposed torture, for he lived again with
those he had loved; he endured life in his pursuit by imagining his
waking hours to be a horrible dream and longing for the night, when
sleep should bring him life. When hopes of meeting his demon failed,
some fresh trace would appear to lead him on through habited and
uninhabited countries; he tracks him to the verge of the eternal ice,
and even there procures a sledge from the wretched and horrified
inhabitants of the last dwelling-place of men to pursue the monster,
who, on a similar vehicle, had departed, to their delight. Onwards,
onwards, over the eternal ice they pass, the pursued and the pursuer,
till consciousness is nearly lost, and Frankenstein is rescued by
those to whom he now narrates his history; all except his fatal
scientific secret, which is to die with him shortly, for the end
cannot be far off.
The story is told; and the friend--for he feels the utmost sympathy
with the tortures of Frankenstein--can only attempt to soothe his last
days or hours, for he, too, feels the end must be near; but at this
crisis in Frankenstein's existence the expedition cannot proceed
northward, for the crew mutiny to return. Frankenstein determines to
proceed alone; but his strength is ebbing, and Walton foresees his
early death. But this is not to pass quietly, for the demon is in no
mood that his creator should escape unmolested from his grasp. Now the
time is ripe, and, during a momentary absence, Walton is startled by
fearful sounds, and then, in the cabin of his dying friend, a sight to
appal the bravest; for the fiend is having the death struggle with
him--then all is over. Some last speeches of the demon to Walton are
explanatory of his deed, and of his present intention of
self-immolation, as he has now slaked his thirst to wreak vengeance
for his existence. Then he disappears over the ice to accomplish this
last task.
Surely there is enough weird imagination for the subject. Mary in this
work not merely intended to depict the horror of such a monster, but
she evidently wished also to show what a being, with no naturally bad
propensities, might sink to when under the influence of a false
position--the education of Rousseau's natural man not being here
possible.
Some weak points, some incongruities, it would be unreasonable not to
expect. Whether the _eternal_ light expected at the North Pole,
if of the sun, was a misapprehension of the author or a Shelleyan
application of the word eternal (as applied by him to certain
friendships, or duration of residence in houses) may be questioned.
The question as to the form used for the narrative has already been
referred to. The difficulty of such a method is strangely exemplified
in the long letters which are quoted by Frankenstein to his friend
while dying, and which he could not have carried with him on his
deadly pursuit. Mary's facility in writing was great, and having
visited some of the most interesting places in the world, with some of
the most interesting people, she is saved from the dreary dulness of
the dull. Her ideas, also, though sometimes affected, are genuine, not
the outcome of some fashionable foible to please a passing faith or
superstition, which ought never to be the _raison d'etre_ of a
romance, though it may be of a satire or a sermon.
The last passage in the book is perhaps the weakest. It is scarcely
the climax, but an anticlimax. The end of Frankenstein is well
conceived, but that of the Demon fails. It is ridiculous to conceive
anyone, demon or human, having ended his vengeance, fleeing over the
ice to burn himself on a funeral pyre where no fuel could be found.
Surely the tortures of the lowest pit of Dante's Inferno might have
sufficed for the occasion. The youth of the authoress of this
remarkable romance has raised comparison between it and the first work
of a still younger romancist, the author of _Gabriel Denver_,
written at seventeen, who died before he had completed his twentieth
year.
While this romance was being planned during the latter part of the
stay of the Shelley party in Switzerland, after their return from
Chamouni, the diary gives us a charming idea of their life in their
cottage of Montalègre. We have the books they read, as usual; and well
did Mary, no less than Shelley, make use of that happy reading-time of
life--youth. The Latin authors read by Shelley were also studied by
Mary. We find her reading "Quintus Curtius," ten and twelve pages at a
time; also on Shelley's birthday, August 4, she reads him the fourth
book of Virgil, while in a boat with him on the lake. Also the
fire-balloon is not forgotten, which Mary had made two or three days
in advance for the occasion. They used generally to visit Diodati in
the evening, after dinner, though occasionally Shelley dined with
Byron, and accompanied him in his boat. On one occasion Mary wrote:
"Shelley and Claire go up to Diodati; I do not, for Lord Byron did not
seem to wish it." Rousseau, Voltaire, and other authors cause the time
to fly, until their spirits are damped by a letter arriving from
Shelley's solicitor, requiring his return to England. While in
Switzerland Mary received some letters from Fanny, her half-sister;
these letters are interesting, showing a sweet, gentle disposition,
very affectionate to both Shelley and Mary. One letter asks Mary
questions about Lord Byron. There are also details as to the
unfortunate state of the finances of Godwin, who seemed in a perennial
state of needing three hundred pounds. Fanny also writes of herself,
on July 29, 1816, as not being well--being in a state of mind which
always keeps her body in a fever--her lonely life, after her sister's
departure, with all the money anxieties, and her own dependence,
evidently weighed upon her mind, and led to a state of despondency,
although her letters would scarcely give the idea of a tragedy being
imminent. She writes to Shelley and Mary that Mrs. Godwin--mamma she
calls her--tells her that she is the laughing-stock of Mary and
Shelley, and the constant "beacon of their satire." She shows much
affection for little William, as well as for his parents; but there is
certainly no word in these letters showing more than sisterly and
friendly feeling; no word showing jealousy or envy. Claire afterwards
alleged that Fanny had been in love with Shelley. Mr. Kegan Paul
states the reverse most strongly. It is not easy to conceive how
either should have been sure of the fact. Even Shelley's beautiful
verses to her memory do not indicate any special reason for her
sadness, as far as he was concerned.
Her voice did quiver as we parted,
Yet knew I not that heart was broken
From which it came, and I departed,
Heeding not the words then spoken.
Misery--oh Misery!
This world is all too wide for thee.
From these lines we see that Fanny was in a very depressed state of
mind when her sister left England for her second Continental tour in
1816. This being two years from the time when Mary had first left her
home, it does not seem probable that Shelley was to blame, or rather
was the indirect cause of Fanny's sadness. She felt herself generally
useless and unneeded in the world, and this idea weighed her down.