Human or nonhuman: an on-line lecture on Shelley's Frankenstein.
If the monster is a human…
| The monster’s interpretation of himself (from Volume 2 narrative): |
| 1: I am human just like you (except I was "born" full grown; I was abandoned); |
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2: I have been treated worse than Adam or even Satan: "Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy, and prosperous, guarded by, the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature, but I was wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me." (105) |
| 3: I want to belong (to the Delancy family): "Good God," exclaimed the old man, "who are you?" (110) |
| 4: Address to his creator: since I am spurned by all humans, make me
a mate and I’ll leave you alone: "You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do, and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede...What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself; the gratification is small, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless and free from the misery I now feel. Oh! My creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!" (118-120) |
| Frankenstein’s interpretation of the monster: |
| 1: he/it is a mistake, an abortion from which I will flee: it's ugliness is felt as a sign of depravity and error; |
| 2: he/it should just leave me alone to love others; |
| 3: he/ it is the evil destroyer of my life, he/it is the secret that eats away at my happiness; |
| 4: I can’t produce another monster: As I sat, a train of reflection occurred to me which led me to consider the effects of what I was now doing. Three years before, I was engaged in the same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart and filled it forever with the bitterest remorse. I was now about to form another being of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighbourhood of man and hide himself in deserts, but she had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female form? She also might turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species. Even if they were to leave Europe and inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the demon thirsted would be children, and 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. Had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? I had before been moved by the sophisms of the being I had created; I had been struck senseless by his fiendish threats; but now, for the first time, the wickedness of my promise burst upon me; I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race. I trembled and my heart failed within me, when, on looking up, I saw by the light of the moon the demon at the casement. A ghastly grin wrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task which he had allotted to me. Yes, he had followed me in my travels; he had loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide and desert heaths; and he now came to mark my progress and claim the fulfilment of my promise. As I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of malice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness, and with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew. (138-139) |
| 5: I must destroy the monster: the chase unto death... |
| Shelley’s interpretation of monster and Frankenstein: as antagonistic intra-psychic doubles | |
| Frankenstein learns and pursues secrets |
the monster learns through “protectors” and reading (history, PL, Sorrows,...) |
| object of study: Nature | object of study: Society |
| discipline: Natural Philosophy (Science) | discipline: Moral Philosophy |
| withdraws from the social | desires to enter the social |
| creates a monster | finds himself spurned as debased object |
| rejects monster in horror & flees |
feels injustice of his treatment & attacks his creator's family |
| Implication of this divided education: in some ways the monster receives, but cannot use, the education that Frankenstein never received; the primal sin of Frankenstein has been to cut himself off from the moral and social knowledge the monster grasps, and teaches him. Thus the explicit "moral" of Shelley's novel: need for a balance between natural and moral knowledge; danger of intellectual pride; etc. | |
| tries to return to the social world | creates negative bond to his creator by destroying what Frankenstein loves: William, Justine,... |
| feels tormenting guilt for his implication in the crimes of the monster | demands the creation of a mate |
| Frankenstein and the monster begin to function as intra-psychic doubles: for the last volume of the novel the basic structure is the chase, with the monster's uncanny knowledge of Frankenstein's movements, and each mirroring the passions and sufferings of the other | |
| travel and delay | following and impatient |
| destroys the monster's mate | "I shall be with you on your wedding night"(140) |
| chasing the monster to destroy him | helping Frankenstein follow him |
| Frankenstein's self-justification (185*) | monster's self-justification (189-90)* |
But, what if the monster is nonhuman…
| The monster as a hybrid of (nonhuman) nature and (human) culture: thus a cyborg |
| Then the monster/cyborg cannot be an intra-psychic double; it has a different and separate and nonhuman mind |
| The results from technology, but is more than a "tool": The monster is not just like fire, a technology that is useful to man, with Frankenstein understood as "the modern prometheus." Fire expands what man can do, and only modifies culture gradually. But the nonhuman monster, a cyborg, involves the creation of a new nonhuman species. Because the cyborg is not merely a "tool" for man… the cyborg disrupts the very definition of human; it may turn on its human creators, and call into question the what the human is. |
| As a failed duplicate of the human the monster is a horribly ugly; this ugliness is a sign of inner depravity; it produces repulsion and fear. But as a nonhuman, the monster is not ugly, but different. |
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Then the monster is not abused or spurned for any legitmiate reason;
his persecuation results from a difference that humans can’t comprehend.
How can one represent this difference in its fundmantal radicality?
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| Question for on-line discussion: if you were Frankenstein at the moment of your experiment's success, when the monster stares through the bed curtains at you, how would you behave so as to avoid the disaster that befalls Frankenstein? |
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