ENG 500: Research Methods
Introduction
The gothic horror novel, Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley has been a notable icon for the horror genre for decades. Shelley was a proud abolitionist and activist, both her and her husband. Frankenstein entails a narrative of a mad scientist, Victor Frankentsin, who puts the power of life into his own hands in attempting to resurrect the dead. This gothic tale turns grim when the creation is not what Frankensteon expected and casts it aside leaving the creature all alone. The dual-perspective novel shares a point-of-view from Frankenstein and the creature learning empathy for the reader’s discretion. Shelley was remarked for her influence on the novel came from her fascination with life and death after experiencing multiple deaths of her children. This led to the main character, Victor Frankenstein, fascinated with reanimating the dead as a way to work through her grief. With this being known as Shelley writing her personal experiences into the novel, we can draw that she worked in her personal beliefs as well. As a strong abolitionist and activist, Shelley maneuvered a novel that projects the struggles former slaves faced during a time where their stories were ignored. As the creature is villainized in Frankenstein’s perspective, the creature is seen as humane through his. As infamous as this tale is, Shelley reigns just as infamous. It is possible to assume her efforts to comment on the treatment of slaves or former slaves in society through the vilification of the creature in her novel. The question being, was it intentional of Shelley to depict the life of the creature similar to that of a former slave as her own radical form or purely based on her surroundings.
Methods
In examining Shelley’s familial circle, we can see where her personal ideology manifested and the literature that closely resembles that of the second half of the novel. The novel I will be close examining in comparison to Frankenstein will be the well-known Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass written in 1845 by Frederick Douglass. The novel recounts the brutality of Douglass’s early life on the plantation and his efforts to educate himself. This closely reflects that creature in his progression to connect with Frankenstein.
Mary Shelley’s parents were two famous radicals, Mary Wollstronecraft and William Godwin, known for their critiques on the social systems of the 19th century. Wollenstronecraft was known for her novel, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, where she draws the comparison between the oppression of women and slaves. Wollenstroncraft writes, “Woman in particular, whose virtue* is built on mutable prejudices, seldom attains to this greatness of mind; so that, becoming the slave of her own feelings, she is easily subjugated by those of others (Wollenstroncraft, Sect. IV, pg. 113). During the late 18th century, Godwin made plenty of efforts to end slavery by writing for debates in the New Annual Register (NAR). The NAR was a major annual publication that covered mass events in the intersection of politics and literature. Mary later married Percy Shelley, who was a radical as well, in 1816. The couple shared strong abolitionist views and participated in a number of protest against the slave trade. Before the trip to Switzerland that would be known as the birth of the novel, Percry had published various essays of religion and social inequality. Mary surrounded herself with family and friends who shared similar ideology of social issues, one of which was the issue of slavery. Shelley and her husband both decided to stop eating sugar because of it being produced by slave labor.
Literature Review
In the years after its initial publication, scholars have connected the findings from Shelley and the historical setting. Since Shelley wrote her novel during the peak of the abolition era, there is no denying she had opinions on abolition. Marie Mulvey-Roberts wrote Dangerous Bodies: Historicising the Gothic Corporeal where she draws the connection to Shelley’s creature to that of the “living dead”. As slavery was regarded as a form of civil death, similar to that of a living corpse, Mulvey-Roberts believed Shelley personified this into the main character. This supports my argument as a way to understand Shelley’s reasoning for making the creature villainous, or even toying with the idea of reanimating a figure that is considered dead in society. Shelley created an exaggerated form of what they described slaves to be monsters by illustrating how preposterous it was to them to easily adapt to society. Allan Lloyd Smith wrote ‘This Things of Darkness’ Racial Discourse in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where he argued the novels signifying the racial anxieties displayed as the creature portrayed the marginalized “Other”(Smith). Smith used the monster as a metaphor for the dehumanization faced by minorities in British Colonialism. This is heavily emphasized by the rhetoric used in the novel as the creature is consistently perceived as a “monster”. P. J. Brendese supports these claims in his work, A Race of Devils: Race-Making, Frankenstein, and The Modern Prometheus, as he writes Frankenstein is the master who fears creating “a race of devils” (Brendese). This is especially prevalent when the creature asks Frankenstein to create him a wife and dismisses the request out of creating more “abominations”. Brendese, Smith, and Mulvey-Roberts support the assumption that Shelley portrays a master control over another through her novel, yet fail to explain Shelley’s familial influence or explain their findings as classified the novel under the slave narrative genre. They manage to identify the racial issues prevalent in the creature’s story and the historical context it reigns upon, but they do not connect the familiar influence of her parents and her husband she shared similar ideologies with. If she went as far to influence the novel by her own fascination with life and death, from the death of her children, then it is plausible to assume she would influence the novel with her radical beliefs of the emancipation of slaves during this impactful time.
Discussion
Shelley makes a twist in the novel by changing the narration from Frankenstein to the creature halfway through. In switching to the perspective of the creature, we see his childlike innocence. The size of a giant but the mind of an child. With his caretaker unwilling to teach him basic social skills, such as reading and writing, he must fend for himself leading to drastic mishaps. A similarity is made between a young Fredrick Douglass and creature as they struggle to adapt to the world around them. There are similarities between the two, the first being that they are unnamed and knows nothing of their origin. “Unseen and unknown”(Shelley pg. 123) the creature expresses his acknowledgment of his existence. The same goes for Douglass as he “[has] no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it” (Douglass pg. 76). The two also yearned for bliss in their life and to be accepted in society. The creature dreamed, “I imagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanor and conciliating words, I should first win their favor and afterwards their love” (Shelley pg. 117). Both individuals also confronted their master’s where they each reign victorious, yet hit with the realization that they can never truly be accepted into society. Their master’s share resentment as they are forever marked as something different, meant to be exiled, and that civilized society would never tolerate their presence. Whether emancipated or escaped, they will forever be condemned. Douglass wrote in his novel how he first learned to read by trading with white boys for lessons. Realizing his passion for politics, he started reading literature to develop his sense of self as a form of coming into his activism. “The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers” (Douglass ch.7), Douglass wrote, which strikes a similarity to the creature’s progression. It is impossible for Shelley to know anything about Douglass, since he was born in 1818 the same year her novel was released, although they constrain striking similarities.
When the creature confronts Frankenstein, he states, “Hear my tale”, to begin the autobiography of an infant. The creature was born into the world having no language, unable to name or control his sensations, and alone. Learning the basic necessities of life on his own, “the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again” (Shelley pg. 110), wondering yet unable to speak. Stumbling upon a cottage in the woods where he observes language and begins to study the people it inhabits. Similar to Shelley and Douglass in personal life, the creature kept track of his readings and development of his knowledge. Throughout all of this, the creature’s account of his own education follows that of the genre of literature prevalent during this time: the slave narrative.
The abolitionist movement was making headway as protests were happening across the country. Britain and the United States were in the midst of enacting laws abolishing the importation of slaves in 1807, but there was still room to discuss the act of emancipation. A large debate was over slavery in Britain’s territories voting in favor of emancipation in 1833. Shelley closley followed this debate extensively reading several novels about the West Indies and the slave trade. Five years after the release of the novel, a theater production was made where the actor playing the creature was painted blue (Lepore). They felt that the blue paint was to make the creature appear more African. Once Shelley heard of this, she had not contested the comparison of the creature to that of a freed slave. Thus leading to believe that Shelley intended for the comparison to be made by the public as she believed in the politics of gradual emancipation. Shelley portrayed through her novel that the immediate emancipation would lead to chaos, but gradual would be the way to go as a sufficient way to ease them into society. Percy Often questioned it as, “Can he who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly become liberal-minded, forbearing, and independent? (P. Shelley)”.
Conclusion
The novel became a large segment of American culture based on his social implications in social inequality. With the Godwin and Shelley housewife passing before they saw the novel’s true success, it has led many scholars to question the intention of Shelley’s writing. The novel got its height of recognition when it was made into a film in 1931 of the same name. The film took a different approach in changing the course of the novel to fit their villainous agenda. Rewriting the narrative to portray the creature as the true monster as opposed to Frankenstein. The public got the uphand of vilifying the creature afterall, dismantling Shelley’s true intention. But what was her true intention? Shelley’s family has played a large role in the literary scholars, writing essays and challegending rhetoric that shifted the social climate. Shelley was not skilled in that field, but still wanted to embrace the cause. She took to literature, specifically fiction. Her gothic science fiction novel seemed like a grim read of monsters and mad scientist, but actually played a larger role of introducing the public to the dangers of immediate emancipation and the realities of being objectified by society.
Bibliography
Brendese, P. J. “A Race of Devils: Race-Making, Frankenstein, and The Modern Prometheus.” Political Theory, vol. 50, no. 1, 2022, pp. 86–113, https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591720988686.
Douglass, Frederick. “Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass, and American Slave.” 1845, Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003.
Lepore, Jill. “The Strange and Twisted Life of “Frankenstein.” The New Yorker, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/12/the-strange-and-twisted-life-of-frankenstein
Mulvey-Roberts, Marie. “Mary Shelley, Frankenstein and Slavery.” Dangerous Bodies, Manchester University Press, 2016, pp. 52-, https://doi.org/10.7228/manchester/9780719085413.003.0003.
Shelley, Mary Wollstronecraft. “Frankenstein, or, A Modern Prometheus.” 1818, Scholastic Book Services, 1969.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “The Revolt of Islam: A Poem in Twelve Cantos.” 1817,
https://knarf.english.upenn.edu/PShelley/islampre.html
Smith, Allan Lloyd. “‘This Thing of Darkness’: Racial Discourse in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Gothic Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 2004, pp. 208–22, https://doi.org/10.7227/GS.6.2.4.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. “A Vindication of the Rights of Women with Structures on Political and Moral Subjects.” 1792, The University of Oregon, 2000. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/36679668.pdf
Maya Young 