Frankenstein (Part 2) #14

Hi, I’m John Green, this is Crash Course Literature, and today we continue
our discussion of “Frankenstein”. Oh, Me From the Past didn’t even come to
school today. Isn’t that fantastic? Well we’re going to learn something
without him. Last time we talked a little bit about the Romantics,
“Frankenstein” is often cited as the definitive Romantic novel, but ehh… let’s
get a little bit deeper into it. Capital “R” Romantics don’t have a lot to do
with lower case ‘r’ romantics, unless your idea of romance involves like
ecstatic descriptions of nature and a revolutionary spirit that often ends in
bloodshed. And if that’s your idea of romance, don’t put it in your OK Cupid
profile. However, pro tip, do say that you’re 6’3”. Knowing more about the
capital “R” Romantics will help you be better at lower case “r” romance so
stick with me here.
So Romanticism was a movement originating in the late 18th century and
it’s typically understood as a reaction against both the Industrial
Revolution’s devaluing of the individual human spirit and embracing of like
the soulless assembly line. And also the Enlightenment’s claims of scientific
certainty. Romanticism prizes intuition over rationalism, and nature and
wildness over classical harmony, and emotions—especially difficult
emotions like horror and awe and terror and passion—are preferred over
intellect. And there’s an emphasis on the unconscious and irrational part of
humans. There’s a lot of talk of dreams and stuff. So is “Frankenstein” a
Romantic novel? Well, if you take a course in Romantic lit in college then
you will almost definitely read it. So, yes. “Frankenstein” is interested in
difficult, uncomfortable emotions the wonder and awe and horror of
encountering the radically other. And it’s certainly in many ways also a
response to the Enlightenment’s emphasis on scientific rationality. I mean
people at the time really thought that we would eventually be able to
reanimate the dead and other people were rightly troubled by that. Then
again, you can also read the book as a critique -- and a pretty stern one -- of
the kind of thinking and acting that Romanticism encourages, right? I mean
Romanticism preaches a radical self-involvement that privileges the
individual’s pursuit of knowledge and glory but for all of Victor and Walton’s
encountering nature and going with their gut it’s pretty disastrous. Another
popular reading is to interpret “Frankenstein” autobiographically, a reading
that was encouraged via 1970s feminist criticism of the novel. Earlier
readings along these lines situates “Frankenstein” as a tale of monstrous
birth and look to Mary Shelley’s own experiences with birth, which were
pretty terrible.. I mean Mary Shelley’s mother died while giving birth to her
and Mary and Percy’s own first child, a daughter, died when she was just a
few weeks old. And in her journal, Mary recounted an incredibly sad dream
about this daughter: “Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it
had only been cold & that we rubbed it before the fire & it lived.” So, of
course, the idea of bringing the dead back to life had occurred to her even
before she listened in on Percy Shelley and Byron discussing new
developments in electricity. Mary Shelley even refers to the book itself as a
child. In her intro to the 1831 edition, she wrote, “I bid my hideous progeny
go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of
happy days.” That’s a very tempting reading, but it’s also really literal and
reductive. First off, and I’m saying this partly defensively as a novelist,
novelist don’t write exclusively from their own experience. More
importantly, I’m not at all convinced that making an author the central
character of a novel is a particularly helpful way to read it. So if you read
“Frankenstein” as merely as Mary Shelley working out her own personal
issues you miss the great and terrible questions at the center of the book.
The questions that really can change you. There’s in fact a term for trying to
do this kind of reading—“intentional fallacy”—in which we believe we can
know exactly what the author was thinking when they wrote a book. But
putting aside those biographical readings there are still some pretty
interesting feminist critiques of “Frankenstein.” For instance, the novel
clearly shows what harm comes to women (and families and relationships)
when men pursue single-minded goals. In fact, thanks to Victor’s lack of
work-life balance, pretty much all the women in this novel die. I mean
Victor’s creation of the monster leads to the hanging of the servant Justine,
the murder of Victor’s bride Elizabeth on their wedding night. And
occasionally in the novel Mary Shelley refers to nature itself as female,
suggesting that Victor is violating it, as when Victor discusses how with
“unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.”
I mean you can say I’m reading sex into that if you want but “unrelaxed and
breathless eagerness.”? And there are also plenty of suggestions that Victor
might not like women very much. The creature says that he will leave Victor
and all mankind alone forever if Victor just creates a mate for him and Victor
begins work, but then he gets freaked out over what it will mean to create a
lady monster. Now admittedly that’s partly because it might mean monster
progeny but just look at the text, “She might become ten thousand times
more malignant than her mate,” thinks Victor, “and delight, for its own sake,
in murder and wretchedness.” He worries, “a race of devils would be
propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the
species of man a condition precarious and full of terror.” So Victor destroys
the female creature while the monster watches. He recalls, how “trembling
with passion, [I] tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged.” I don’t
think I’m being too weird to point out the sexy stuff there: “trembling with
passion.” Anyway, Victor claims to love his cousin, Elizabeth, but he deserts
her for years at a time and even though the creature says—really, really,
really clearly—“I will be with you on your wedding-night,” he leaves her
alone on his wedding night. Now we can all wonder why Mary Shelley didn’t
create any strong female characters here and instead a collection of
suffering, passive, doomed ones, but we can certainly read the novel as an
exploration of what happens when men fear, distrust, or devalue women so
much that they attempt to reproduce without them. I mean in some ways
Victor is trying to bypass the feminine altogether. He’s creating life without
recourse to egg or womb. Now you could counter this by saying that Mary
Shelley’s original Creator—God—did the same thing. But that’s precisely the
point. Victor is not God. And perhaps this is where “Frankenstein” is still
most relevant, in its discussion of “playing God,” of the single-minded
pursuit of science without an accompanying concern about you know,
morality. Now, obviously, the experiments that Victor undertakes are
extreme, but Mary Shelley was basing them on some of the scientific
debates and discoveries of her day. And even if the book is largely science
fiction, there’s a certain amount of scientific fact in it, and a lot of scientific
questioning. And part of why this book has survived is because the questions
she was asking were important in her day, but they’re also pretty important
now. I mean there was a recent book on genetic modifications in animals
called “Frankenstein’s Cat”, those who object to GMO foods often label
them Frankenfoods, which only makes them sound like Franken-berry cereal
– which is delicious! So Mary Shelley was influenced… oh… it must be time
for The Open Letter. Oh look, it’s Frankenstein’s monster. No, wait, it’s the
Hulk. It actually occurs to me that they’re quite similar. Both monsters
created by failed scientific experiments who only really become monstrous
when they’re rejected by society. Anyway, an Open Letter to scientists: Dear
Scientists, here’s a little rule of thumb. Anytime you’re doing any kind of
experiment, ask yourself the question, “Could this create a monster?” Even
if the chances are relatively low, I’m going to advise against that experiment,
because what I have seen from the movies and from books is that if it can
become a monster it will! But I will say scientists that I think you’ve been a
bit unfairly maligned by poor readings of “Frankenstein.” Frankenstein is not
like the Hulk because his story isn’t, at least not simply, about about science
run amok. It’s an oversimplification scientists. You are doing good work with
you lab coats and your chemicals and I thank you. Don’t turn anyone into a
monster. Best wishes, John Green. Right, but anyway, Mary Shelley was
influenced by several scientists, but chief among them Erasmus Darwin,
grandfather to Charles, and Luigi Galvani. Darwin published a long poem
called “The Temple of Nature,” because back then poetry was a totally
reasonable way to share scientificideas. He had an idea that life—at least on
the microscopic level—could be restored to seemingly dead matter or
created out of inert matter, a phenomenon he called “spontaneous
generation.” And Galvani, became famous for conducting experiments with
electricity, in which he showed that electrical impulses could animate the
muscles of dead creatures like the legs of a deceased frog. Did you get it? “..
conducting experiments in electricity”, anyone? Conducting electricity? No?
OK. Galvani’s followers did even more macabre experiments, like in 1803
test in which several scientists attached electrodes to the body of an
executed murderer in the hope of restoring it to life. Because they were like,
“Oh, man. Who should we bring back from the dead? I know, a murderer!”
Anyway, they,of course, didn’t succeed, but they did succeed in making a
few of the murder’s muscles convulse. These experiments clearly influence
Victor’s attempt to reanimate dead flesh and in fact Victor’s experiments
weren’t that much radical than ones that were actually happening at the
time. That said, the novel itself is clearly pretty skeptical about these
pursuits. I mean even before he animates the monster, it’s clear that his
studies are exacting a tremendous toll on Victor’s health, and his well being,
also that of his friends and family. Let’s go to the Thought Bubble. Victor
describes how “My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person had
become emaciated with confinement,” which is a pretty good passage to
show your parents when they’re pushing you to go pre-med. And things only
went downhill once he began to assemble the creature. Victor, “dabbled
among the unhallowed damps of the grave, ortortured the living animal…
collected bonesfrom charnel-houses; and disturbed, with profanefingers,
the tremendous secrets of the human frame,” But Victor thinks that this
digging around in slaughterhouses and graveyards will be worth it; he says “I
might in process of time…renew life where death had apparently devoted
the body to corruption.” And that’s an amazing and laudable goal (unless
you’ve ever seen any zombie movie ever, in which case you would know
that it’s a TERRIBLE idea). But in that same passage, Victor says that the
creatures he makes “would bless me as its creator and source…. No father
could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve
theirs.” So it’s clear that his desire is actually selfish and that he’s pursuing
this knowledge not for universal good, or so that the dead may live again,
but for his own gratification. And then of course there’s his reaction when
his experiment does succeed. I mean, even though he’s assembled every
facet of the creature and made him huge on purpose so that all these fiddly
bits like veins and eyelashes will be easier to work with, he responds to his
creature with utter horror. And what is Victor’s mature, responsible, heroic
reaction to this situation? He runs away, making all the dads on “Teen
Mom”look amazing by comparison. Thanks Thought Bubble So, the monster
blames this initial abandonment for all the murders that result, right? And
Percy Shelley agreed, writing that while the creature was initially
affectionate and moral “the circumstances of his existence were so
monstrous and uncommon, that… his original goodness was gradually
turned into the fuel of an inextinguishable misanthropy and revenge.” But is
the tragedy inherent in the creation of the monster or is there a way to
pursue knowledge without responding in horror? Frankenstein is more than
a little relevant today as we struggle to figure out where technologies like
stem cell therapy, or genetically modified foods, or cloning land on the
ethical and moral scales of the social order. The pursuit of knowledge is
good, right, because that’s how I’m even able to talk to you through like the
magic of the Internet. That’s why we aren’t hunger/gathers anymore. But
we don’t actually know the outcome yet. Sometimes we forget that we’re
still in the middle of history. I don’t think Mary Shelley condemned science
outright, or explicitly discourages learning the secrets of life and nature.
Now the experiment definitely fails. The question is why? Is it because
Victor’s aims are just unnatural and evil? Is it because he can’t love the
creature he’s created? Or is it because he let’s his ego run amok dictate his
motivations? That’s a non-rhetorical question by the way. I look forward to
reading your answers in comments. Thank you for watching. I’ll see you next
week.