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Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
In the most famous gothic horror story ever told, Shelley confronts the limitations of science, the nature of human cruelty and the pathway to forgiveness.‘The rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open…’Victor Frankenstein’s monster is stitched together from the limbs of the dead, taken from ‘the dissecting room and the slaughter-house’. The result is a grotesque being who, rejected by his maker and starved of human companionship, sets out on a journey to seek his revenge. In the most famous gothic horror story ever told, Shelley confronts the limitations of science, the nature of human cruelty and the pathway to forgiveness.Begun when Mary Shelley was only eighteen years old and published two years later, this chilling tale of a young scientist’s desire to create life – and the consequences of that creation – still resonate today.
Collins Classics
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Life & Times (#ulink_007e54bf-b377-5f87-843b-7a0a8873aef4)
About the Author
In 1817 Mary Shelley published a travelogue, detailing a six-week tour of Europe with her husband Percy. Whilst on that tour they visited Castle Frankenstein, on the Rhine, and heard disturbing tales of an occupant who had lived at the castle 100 years before and experimented with human corpses, trying to bring them back to life with alchemy. English society was also familiar with experiments carried out by Italian scientist Giovanni Aldini in the first years of the 1800s, attempting to restore life to corpses with electricity. They resulted in horrifying animations as the muscles contracted over the bones. A year after her tour, Shelley published Frankenstein, her Gothic masterpiece. Shelley wrote a number of subsequent novels, but her husband’s fame as a poet rather overshadowed her achievements, so that her other works became forgotten. Nevertheless, she was a professional writer for the remainder of her life and her achievements have been reassessed in recent years. Frankenstein was such a powerful and thought provoking story that it set the benchmark for horror and it also encapsulated the mindset of the wealthy classes at that time – a class to which the Shelley’s belonged. They were comfortable enough to spend their time reading and writing, as opposed to doing ‘real work’, and they had the spare time to wonder and ponder the meaning of life.
Frankenstein
The novel owes a great deal to the scientific progress and discoveries about electricity at the time. In the late 18th century an Italian scientist, named Luigi Galvani, had shown that frogs legs could be ‘brought back to life’ by stimulating the muscles with electrical sparks. A fellow Italian scientist, named Alessandro Volta, subsequently built the first electric cell, so that further experimentation could be carried out.
By the turn of the 19th century, it was common knowledge among the educated classes that scientists were trying to fathom the essence of life – what it was that kept an organism alive. Perhaps unsurprisingly, those with more extravagant imaginations began to wonder about the consequences of such scientific investigations. Might it be possible to bring people back to life with a jolt of electricity? Might it be possible to assemble a person from component parts and bring them to life? At the time it seemed that anything might be possible because things weren’t understood well enough to know where to draw the line.
This was the environment and starting point for Mary Shelley’s fictional creation Frankenstein’s monster, whose life is described in her 1818 Gothic novel Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein himself is a scientist in the mould of Galvani and Volta. Through his abundant enthusiasm for science he creates a monster by using electricity to bring a cadaver back to life. The monster is evidently larger and stronger than a normal person. Although Frankenstein does not divulge the details, the implication is that he fabricated the monster by hand and made it oversized so that he could physically tailor it together. When he brings it to life he is immediately horrified by what he has created, but the deed is done so he flees the scene.
The story begins and ends in the Arctic as the majority of the novel is told aboard a ship by way of explanation for Frankenstein’s predicament. In essence the tale is a warning that meddling with nature is not a part of the natural order of things and that it will end in tragedy. Frankenstein is ultimately destroyed by his own creation and the monster then destroys itself because it has the sensibilities of a human and does not want humanity to know of its existence.
The genre of Gothic fiction to which Frankenstein belongs is a curious blend of romance and horror, which began in the late half of the 18th century. The Gothic writers played with the readers’ imaginations by introducing grotesque and disturbing elements to their stories. They were often set in Medieval castles, hence the term ‘Gothic’ and incorporated dungeons, torture devices, the supernatural and so on.
In the case of Mary Shelley, she wrote Frankenstein following a vivid and terrifying dream in which an embryonic idea filled out into a lifelike story. There is a Castle Frankenstein in Germany, where Johan Conrad Dippel practiced alchemy and experimented with bodies prior to the discoveries of Galvani and Volta. It is evident that Shelley visited, or had at least heard tale of the castle whilst on a European tour with her husband and the seed for her novel was planted. However, Shelley was mindful of her place as a female writer and never admitted the influence of the castle, despite it being glaringly obvious, for the sake of maintaining a reputation for originality.
The foundation for Frankenstein was a frightening marriage of baleful tales of experiments with corpses in a Gothic castle and fascinating advances in the science of electricity. Frankenstein fashions a creation from body parts, he uses electricity to bring it to life, the creature is both human and monster, it sets out to destroy its creator.
Shelley described Frankenstein, the man, as the ‘modern Prometheus’ because the eponymous Greek god is the creator of mankind, and he is associated with light and fire, alluding to the electricity. She clearly wanted to express the idea that playing God results in Frankenstein’s own demise.
At the time that Shelley wrote her novel, people were very interested in the occult and other belief systems that countered Christianity. They saw that science was beginning to reveal how and why the world worked, so the logical conclusion was that science might open doors that should remain closed for fear of the consequences.
There is an age-old recognition that science can be put to good or evil use, depending on the motives of scientists. Frankenstein, through his own burning curiosity, cannot resist the temptation of seeing whether he can find the secret to life. His intentions are good in his own mind, but the results are manifestly evil and Shelley’s tale is a cautionary one.
In a pre-Darwinian world, people tied science and religion together, rather than seeing science as a way of constructing the world in the absence of religion. The consequence was that using science to delve too deep could only have the effect of unleashing elements from the dark side. That is Frankenstein’s big mistake, he unleashes the forces of evil on his family and ultimately on himself.
In this way, Shelley’s story reaches a climax with both Frankenstein and his creation dying. Frankenstein can no longer interfere with the natural order of things with his crazy scientific experiments and the personification of evil removes itself from causing more terror by allowing the good side of its own personality to prevail.
Of course, the underpinning theme of good versus evil has always been a successful and popular formula for story telling. It satisfies a tendency in the human mind to compartmentalize things, elements, components, phenomena in life into two boxes. We enjoy the experience of being mentally assaulted by evil events, but we derive the most pleasure from seeing good restored in the end.
The influence of Frankenstein continues to filter down the two centuries since it was written, not least because it is a perfect example of its genre. Even though we now know that corpses cannot be sewn together and sparked to life, it doesn’t stop our imaginations from suspending their disbelief and becoming fully immersed into this dark tale.
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Table of Contents
Cover Page (#ub1f1c7d4-a5fd-5d95-9208-d7fd0d983dbf)
Title Page (#u45767c45-73d0-5fbd-a50e-373a4c47a36b)
History of Collins (#ueeb873c3-7164-5df1-9261-03fb166987ca)
Life & Times (#u3da61be0-c370-5d9b-b613-1eec90f6e0d0)
VOLUME ONE (#u3203bf98-938b-5a3a-82d5-9d6669419b66)
LETTER 1 (#u52206284-7d30-5fb1-b0e1-f7cc20ff5792)
LETTER 2 (#u1c466b52-ef38-5624-8967-747809d16886)
LETTER 3 (#u163cdf09-068c-5d0d-b00c-729e0a900a17)
LETTER 4 (#ua19f0a00-246e-5838-b8c3-8bfa2206afc0)
CHAPTER 1 (#u5e36e6dd-35ca-555e-b583-c7414a650c2f)
CHAPTER 2 (#u7fa3ea2c-81ef-5d60-b7b6-1aa524e5a78f)
CHAPTER 3 (#uabc4c68d-2fc7-5464-a9b6-ad6805ce90b6)
CHAPTER 4 (#u669dcc95-bb05-5849-b76f-6e82942ece8a)
CHAPTER 5 (#u6ad89c06-e887-53fd-9e1a-fdd08c8161aa)
CHAPTER 6 (#ufabe4c35-bca0-5420-815e-40650e7b7400)
CHAPTER 7 (#u85f42a60-e9fa-5972-8a16-ea9592ce3020)
CHAPTER 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
VOLUME TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 1 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 2 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 3 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
VOLUME THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 1 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 2 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 3 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 4 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
CLASSIC LITERATURE: WORDS AND PHRASES adapted from the Collins English Dictionary (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
VOLUME ONE (#ulink_2d6e555e-81f5-56c0-8fc7-1efe3e47a159)
LETTER 1 (#ulink_35cbb19e-4e66-55ae-9704-5ef636b38b41)
To Mrs Saville, England.
St Petersburgh, Dec. 11th, 17-.
You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday; and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare, and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking.
I am already far north of London; and as I walk in the streets of Petersburgh, I feel a cold northern breeze play upon my cheeks, which braces my nerves, and fills me with delight. Do you understand this feeling? This breeze, which has travelled from the regions towards which I am advancing, gives me a foretaste of those icy climes. Inspirited by this wind of promise, my day dreams become more fervent and vivid. I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region of beauty and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible, its broad disk just skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendour. There – for with your leave, my sister, I will put some trust in preceding navigators – there snow and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe. Its productions and features may be without example, as the phenomena of the heavenly bodies undoubtedly are in those undiscovered solitudes. What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.
These reflections have dispelled the agitation with which I began my letter, and I feel my heart glow with an enthusiasm which elevates me to heaven; for nothing contributes so much to tranquillize the mind as a steady purpose – a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. This expedition has been the favourite dream of my early years. I have read with ardour the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole. You may remember that a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good uncle Thomas’s library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night, and my familiarity with them increased that regret which I had felt, as a child, on learning that my father’s dying injunction had forbidden my uncle to allow me to embark in a seafaring life.
These visions faded when I perused, for the first time, those poets whose effusions, entranced my soul, and lifted it to heaven. I also became a poet, and for one year lived in a Paradise of my own creation; I imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated. You are well acquainted with my failure, and how heavily I bore the disappointment. But just at that time I inherited the fortune of my cousin, and my thoughts were turned into the channel of their earlier bent.
Six years have passed since I resolved on my present undertaking. I can, even now, remember the hour from which I dedicated myself to this great enterprise. I commenced by inuring my body to hardship. I accompanied the whale-fishers on several expeditions to the North Sea; I voluntarily endured cold, famine, thirst, and want of sleep; I often worked harder than the common sailors during the day, and devoted my nights to the study of mathematics, the theory of medicine, and those branches of physical science from which a naval adventure might derive the greatest practical advantage. Twice I actually hired myself as an under-mate in a Greenland whaler, and acquitted myself to admiration. I must own I felt a little proud, when my captain offered me the second dignity in the vessel and intreated me to remain with the greatest earnestness so valuable did he consider my services.
And now, dear Margaret, do I not deserve to accomplish some great purpose? My life might have been passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path. Oh, that some encouraging voice would answer in the affirmative! My courage and my resolution is firm; but my hopes fluctuate, and my spirits are often depressed. I am about to proceed on a long and difficult voyage, the emergencies of which will demand all my fortitude: I am required not only to raise the spirits of others, but sometimes to sustain my own, when theirs are failing.
This is the most favourable period for travelling in Russia. They fly quickly over the snow in their sledges; the motion is pleasant, and, in my opinion, far more agreeable than that of an English stage-coach. The cold is not excessive, if you are wrapped in furs – a dress which I have already adopted; for there is a great difference between walking the deck and remaining seated motionless for hours, when no exercise prevents the blood from actually freezing in your veins. I have no ambition to lose my life on the post-road between St Petersburgh and Archangel.
I shall depart for the latter town in a fortnight or three weeks; and my intention is to hire a ship there, which can easily be done by paying the insurance for the owner, and to engage as many sailors as I think necessary among those who are accustomed to the whale-fishing. I do not intend to sail until the month of June; and when shall I return? Ah, dear sister, how can I answer this question? If I succeed, many, many months, perhaps years, will pass before you and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never.
Farewell, my dear, excellent Margaret. Heaven shower down blessings on you, and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for all your love and kindness.
Your affectionate brother,
R. WALTON
LETTER 2 (#ulink_3937461c-3dfd-537f-b6a3-88fe33c81fa6)
To Mrs Saville, England.
Archangel, March 28th, 17-.
How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow! yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. I have hired a vessel, and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom I have already engaged, appear to be men on whom I can depend and are certainly possessed of dauntless courage.
But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution, and too impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common, and read nothing but our uncle Thomas’s books of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction, that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more, and that my day dreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.
Well, these are useless complaints; I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean, nor even here in Archangel, among merchants and seamen. Yet some feelings, unallied to the dross of human nature, beat even in these rugged bosoms. My lieutenant, for instance, is a man of wonderful courage and enterprise; he is madly desirous of glory: or rather, to word my phrase more characteristically, of advancement in his profession. He is an Englishman, and in the midst of national and professional prejudices, unsoftened by cultivation, retains some of the noblest endowments of humanity. I first became acquainted with him on board a whale vessel: finding that he was unemployed in this city, I easily engaged him to assist in my enterprise.
The master is a person of an excellent disposition, and is remarkable in the ship for his gentleness and the mildness of his discipline. This circumstance, added to his well-known integrity and dauntless courage, made me very desirous to engage him. A youth passed in solitude, my best years spent under your gentle and feminine fosterage, has so refined the groundwork of my character that I cannot overcome an intense distaste to the usual brutality exercised on board ship: I have never believed it to be necessary, and when I heard of a mariner equally noted for his kindliness of heart and the respect and obedience paid to him by his crew, I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in being able to secure his services. I heard of him first in rather a romantic manner, from a lady who owes to him the happiness of her life. This, briefly, is his story. Some years ago he loved a young Russian lady of moderate fortune; and having amassed a considerable sum in prize-money, the father of the girl consented to the match. He saw his mistress once before the destined ceremony; but she was bathed in tears, and, throwing herself at his feet, intreated him to spare her, confessing at the time that she loved another, but that he was poor, and that her father would never consent to the union. My generous friend reassured the suppliant, and on being informed of the name of her lover, instantly abandoned his pursuit. He had already bought a farm with his money, on which he had designed to pass the remainder of his life; but he bestowed the whole on his rival, together with the remains of his prize-money to purchase stock, and then himself solicited the young woman’s father to consent to her marriage with her lover. But the old man decidedly refused, thinking himself bound in honour to my friend; who, when he found the father inexorable, quitted his country, nor returned until he heard that his former mistress was married according to her inclinations. ‘What a noble fellow!’ you will exclaim. He is so; but then he is wholly uneducated: he is as silent as a Turk, and a kind of ignorant carelessness attends him, which, while it renders his conduct the more astonishing, detracts from the interest and sympathy which otherwise he would command.
Yet do not suppose, because I complain a little, or because I can conceive a consolation for my toils which I may never know, that I am wavering in my resolutions. Those are as fixed as fate, and my voyage is only now delayed until the weather shall permit my embarkation. The winter has been dreadfully severe, but the spring promises well, and it is considered as a remarkably early season; so that perhaps I may sail sooner than I expected. I shall do nothing rashly: you know me sufficiently to confide in my prudence and considerateness whenever the safety of others is committed to my care.
I cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect of my undertaking. It is impossible to communicate to you a conception of the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which I am preparing to depart. I am going to unexplored regions to ‘the land of mist and snow’; but I shall kill no albatross, therefore do not be alarmed for my safety, or if I should come back to you as worn and woeful as the ‘Ancient Mariner’. You will smile at my allusion; but I will disclose a secret. I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean, to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets. There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand. I am practically industrious – painstaking; a workman to execute with perseverance and labour: – but besides this, there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore.
But to return to dearer considerations. Shall I meet you again, after having traversed immense seas, and returned by the most southern cape of Africa or America? I dare not expect such success, yet I cannot bear to look on the reverse of the picture. Continue for the present to write to me by every opportunity: I may receive your letters on some occasions when I need them most to support my spirits. I love you very tenderly. Remember me with affection, should you never hear from me again.
Your affectionate brother,
ROBERT WALTON.
LETTER 3 (#ulink_172a223a-09dd-5274-b6c0-eb74f05d7728)
To Mrs Saville, England.
July 7th, 17-.
MY DEAR SISTER,
I write a few lines in haste to say that I am safe – and well advanced on my voyage. This letter will reach England by a merchantman now on its homeward voyage from Archangel; more fortunate than I, who may not see my native land, perhaps, for many years. I am, however, in good spirits: my men are bold, and apparently firm of purpose, nor do the floating sheets of ice that continually pass us, indicating the dangers of the region towards which we are advancing, appear to dismay them. We have already reached a very high latitude; but it is the height of summer, and although not so warm as in England, the southern gales, which blow us speedily towards those shores which I so ardently desire to attain, breathe a degree of renovating warmth which I had not expected.
No incidents have hitherto befallen us that would make a figure in a letter. One or two stiff gales, and the springing of a leak, are accidents which experienced navigators scarcely remember to record; and I shall be well content if nothing worse happen to us during our voyage.
