Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus
Summary
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Frankenstein;or, the modern Prometheus
Setting
Northern Europe, particularly Switzerland, and the North Pole, 1700s.
Main Characters
Victor Frankenstein: The doomed scientist and primary narrator.
The Creature: The eight-foot-tall being created by Victor. Intelligent, eloquent, and sensitive, he seeks to be part of society.
Robert Walton: An Arctic explorer whose letters to his sister open and close the novel.
Elizabeth Lavenza: Victor’s adoptive sister/cousin and fiancée.
Henry Clerval: Victor’s boyhood friend, who follows Victor’s footsteps as a scientist.
Summary
After being trapped by impassable ice near the North Pole, the explorer Walton rescues Victor Frankenstein, who was travelling by sled in pursuit of “one who fled from me”. Walton takes the stranger aboard his ship and listens to Victor’s fantastic tale of the monster he created.
Victor, obsessed with finding the secret of life, fashions a creature out of old body parts and brings it to life. When he looks at his creation, however, he is horrified. After awaking to the creature in his bedroom, Victor flees. Victor’s father writes to tell him his youngest brother, William, has been murdered. While travelling home, Victor sees the creature hiding in the trees and is sure that the creature murdered William.
The creature approaches Victor in the mountains and tells Victor of his life since he was shunned: looking for connection but facing fear and rejection from everyone he encounters. He admits to the murder of William but begs for understanding, saying that he struck out at William in an attempt to injure Victor. The monster convinces Victor to create a companion for him, and Victor heads for England with his friend Henry Clerval to gather information for the creation of a female creature. Leaving Henry in Scotland, Victor travels to an island in the Orkneys to create a second creature, but he reconsiders and destroys the new creation. The creature, watching, is enraged and vows revenge, swearing that he will be with Victor on his wedding night.
Victor leaves the island and is arrested for murder. Denying any knowledge, he is shocked to see the body is Henry, with the mark of the creature’s fingers around his neck. Victor is arrested but acquitted of the crime. Victor marries Elizabeth, and that night she is murdered by the creature. Victor returns home to his father, who dies of grief shortly after, and Victor vows to exact his revenge. Victor chases the creature north into the ice, where he meets Walton and the narrative catches up to the opening letters.
Walton tells the remainder of the story. Victor’s health worsens and he dies shortly thereafter. Walton discovers the creature weeping over Victor’s body, who tells Walton of his immense solitude, suffering, hatred, and remorse. He claims that now his creator is dead, he too can end his suffering, then departs for the farthest north to die.
Shelley first imagined the idea of Frankenstein while telling ghost stories with other writers. She was pregnant while writing the novel and had lost a baby the year before. After the death of her two-week-old daughter she writes of a recurring 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.” Shelley writes of creation of life without woman or pregnancy, the creature innocent and loving, only becoming monstrous when exposed to fear and rejection by society and by his own “father”.
This passage describes the creature seeking out his creator, Frankenstein’s horror at the sight of him, and how Frankenstein flees from the creature.
Electrostatic equipment made by Patrick Copland
Aberdeen, 1780-1810
“It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.”
Sensational demonstrations of electrical phenomena were popular in Mary Shelley’s time. Shelley leaves the exact method of Frankenstein’s experiment ambiguous, but the ‘spark of being’ is usually depicted as electricity. In 1783 some Aberdonians were allegedly alarmed by Marischal College professor Patrick’s Copland’s electrical experiments, or “Black Art” – similarly to how Frankenstein’s achievement is considered diabolical.
Amputation kit
Aberdeen, 1835-1886
“I kept my workshop of filthy creation…The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials…”
Victor Frankenstein secretly gathers body parts from the recently deceased and, using tools from the anatomical dissection rooms at his University, combines them to create his creature’s body. This amputation kit was used at the University of Aberdeen’s Medical school in the 19th century by Professor Dyce Davidson, Professor of Materia Medica 1878-1886.
Read yourself
You can read the book online here or listen on BBC sounds here.
