MsMojoNotes: Frankenstein
Let us be frank. Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re taking a deep dive into Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, “Frankenstein”, for our MsMojoNotes series!
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00:00 "He's just resting, waiting for a new life to come."
00:03 Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're taking a deep dive into Mary Shelley's masterpiece,
00:08 "Frankenstein," for our Ms. Mojo Notes series.
00:12 In this video, we'll be using APA citations to refer to the text,
00:16 and using the 2018 Penguin Classics edition of the 1818 text.
00:20 "Live! Live! Live! Live!"
00:26 Who is Mary Shelley?
00:28 Today, Mary Shelley is renowned and widely remembered for her contributions to Gothic
00:32 literature and science fiction. "Frankenstein" is regarded by many as the first true piece of sci-fi.
00:39 Less than two weeks after she was born in 1797, her mother, the influential proto-feminist Mary
00:45 Wollstonecraft, tragically died, an event that would affect Shelley for the rest of her life.
00:50 Born Mary Godwin, when she was 16, she met the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley,
00:55 five years her senior.
00:56 "At first I wasn't sure, but I knew I had to hide it from father."
00:59 Though he was married to someone else, the pair ran away together, touring Europe.
01:04 This led to a fateful stay in Villa Diodati in Switzerland, rented by Lord Byron in 1816.
01:10 This was also the famous "Year Without a Summer," when the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in
01:16 Indonesia led to a global cooling event. The weather was foul, and in a story that's now
01:21 well-known, Byron challenged his friends to write the scariest stories while they were trapped
01:25 inside together. One of these was John William Polidori's "The Vampire," one of the first vampire
01:31 novels ever written. But nothing could compare with what Mary Shelley produced, "The Beginnings
01:36 of Frankenstein."
01:37 "The moon's rising. We've no time to lose."
01:39 According to Shelley's notes, the first words she formed were, quote,
01:43 "It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld my man completed."
01:47 What's the plot? The plot of "Frankenstein," or "The Modern Prometheus," is very familiar
01:53 to most people. But though we all know the broad strokes, Victor Frankenstein tries to
01:57 create life and creates a monster, how does the story actually unfold?
02:02 "The brain of a dead man, waiting to live again in a body I made with my own hands."
02:08 It begins in the 18th century, not with Victor Frankenstein or his creature,
02:13 but with the Arctic explorer Robert Walton, who was set out on a journey to discover the North Pole.
02:18 "They knew the risk when they signed on, and we are gonna chop our way to the North Pole
02:23 if we have to."
02:24 "Then you run the risk of mutiny, Captain."
02:26 It's key to note here that nobody successfully went to the North Pole until roughly 90 years
02:31 after "Frankenstein" was first published, so it was still mysterious.
02:34 Walton is writing letters to his sister, Margaret Walton Seville. In his fourth letter,
02:39 Walton tells Margaret how his crew have seen, quote,
02:42 "a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature,
02:46 crossing the ice with a pack of dogs."
02:48 They then find Victor Frankenstein himself, sick with exhaustion.
02:52 Frankenstein reveals he is pursuing the giant, and Walton brings him aboard.
02:56 "There is a passage to the North Pole, and I will find it."
03:01 "The cost of your own life, the lives of your crew."
03:04 When Frankenstein hears of Walton's ambition to find the North Pole,
03:08 Frankenstein resolves to tell Walton why he is wrong, launching into the story.
03:12 At length, Frankenstein talks about his happy childhood with his parents and two brothers,
03:16 Ernest and William. He also grew up alongside Elizabeth Lavenza.
03:21 "You must have faith in me, Elizabeth. Wait. My work must come first, even before you."
03:26 It's widely understood from the beginning that Elizabeth and Victor will one day marry.
03:31 Frankenstein becomes obsessed with alchemy and other esoteric forms of science,
03:36 and is sent to the University of Ingolstadt to study.
03:39 "Herr Frankenstein is a most brilliant young man, yet so erratic. He troubles me."
03:45 While some mock him for his interests, others encourage him.
03:48 In the novel, Frankenstein leaves it purposefully vague how he builds the creature and animates it.
03:54 He does this on purpose, telling Walton that he doesn't want anybody else to repeat his mistakes.
03:59 He says, quote,
04:00 "Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example,
04:04 how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes
04:09 his native town to be the world than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow."
04:14 In most adaptations, however, we see Frankenstein constructing his man from body parts,
04:19 and then reanimating him with lightning.
04:21 "The bodies we use in our dissecting room for lecture purposes
04:25 were not perfect enough for his experiments," he said.
04:27 This is largely thanks to the hugely influential 1931 movie,
04:31 which, while iconic, takes many liberties with the story.
04:35 "It's alive! It's alive! It's alive!"
04:41 However, animation is accomplished, the creature is brought to life,
04:45 and Frankenstein is horrified by the 8-foot-tall monster he has built.
04:49 "You have created a monster and it will destroy you!"
04:52 Frankenstein says that this is a, quote, "catastrophe,"
04:56 and that he had intended his creation to be beautiful, but it hasn't worked.
05:00 He says, quote,
05:01 "His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath.
05:05 His hair was of illustrious black and flowing, his teeth of a pearly whiteness,
05:10 but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes."
05:15 He flees and abandons the creature, hiding in his apartment,
05:18 and when he returns, the creature has disappeared.
05:21 "This creature of yours should be kept under guard."
05:24 Much later, Frankenstein's brother William is tragically killed.
05:28 The nanny, Justine, is assumed to be guilty and executed for it.
05:32 "This is unlawful!"
05:39 But Frankenstein ultimately reunites with the creature, who has now learned to speak,
05:43 and tells him what had happened in his absence,
05:46 including that the creature was responsible for William's death, as Frankenstein had assumed.
05:51 "The Sea of Ice. I will meet you there."
05:55 The creature lived for a time in the woods, eating only berries and nuts he could forage,
06:01 until he found the DeLacy family living in a cabin.
06:03 "French."
06:09 By listening to them, he learns to read and to speak French,
06:13 discovering that they were a noble family in Paris until they were exiled.
06:17 "Yes, I speak and read and think."
06:25 The father of the family is blind, so the creature decides he'll introduce himself to him first.
06:30 However, this doesn't work, and he is chased away.
06:33 "Father!"
06:35 "Get out of here! Get out of here!"
06:39 He then sets his sights on Frankenstein, whom he blames for abandoning him,
06:43 and tracks him down in Geneva. He comes across William and murders him,
06:47 then frames Justine, feeling little remorse. He demands that Frankenstein makes him a woman.
06:53 "A female. Someone like me, so she won't hate me."
07:01 He says, quote, "You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those
07:07 sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do, and I demand it of you as a right which
07:13 you must not refuse." Frankenstein agrees at first, but then decides that he cannot bring another
07:19 monster into the world and goes back on his word.
07:22 "You will honor your promise to me!"
07:24 "I will not."
07:25 This enrages the creature, who claims a third victim, Frankenstein's friend Henry Clairvall,
07:31 and tries to frame Frankenstein for it. He ominously tells Frankenstein, quote,
07:36 "I will be with you on your wedding night."
07:39 Frankenstein believes the creature is going to kill him when he marries Elizabeth, but he's wrong.
07:44 "Something is going to happen. I feel it. I can't get it out of my mind."
07:49 He does marry Elizabeth, and then discovers that she is the creature's fourth and final victim.
07:54 Following this grief, Frankenstein decides to track the creature around the world,
08:02 chasing him all the way to the Arctic, where he meets Walton.
08:05 "I followed the trail he left for me."
08:08 Walton is persuaded by his men to turn back, leaving Glory in the North Pole behind.
08:14 Frankenstein decides to leave the crew and continue chasing the creature,
08:18 but he's too weak and dies hours later.
08:20 "He's dead. He died raving."
08:26 In the final moments, the creature reappears and laments the loss of his creator,
08:31 confessing that the murders and revenge didn't make him happy.
08:34 "Who are you?"
08:36 "He never gave me a name."
08:46 He tells Walton that he's going to destroy himself. The novel ends as the creature is,
08:51 quote, "born away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance."
08:55 Who are the characters?
08:57 Frankenstein and the creature are the two characters with the most focus,
09:01 the hero and the villain, though Shelley leaves it up to the reader to decide which is which.
09:05 Victor is beloved by all in his life, but is unable to see that he already has
09:10 true happiness in his family. Instead, he pursues the occult and gives in to limitless ambition,
09:15 which is his downfall.
09:17 "The neck's broken. The brain is useless. We must find another brain."
09:23 The creature, on the other hand, is misunderstood by the world and by his creator,
09:28 but is also vindictive and dangerous.
09:30 "What of my soul? Do I have one? Or was that a part you left out?"
09:37 Though he attests many times that the cruelty of man has made him violent,
09:42 and that if he were happy, specifically by having a wife, he would stop,
09:46 he still commits multiple crimes. It's up to you to determine which of them is the most sympathetic.
09:52 "The very day we announced our engagement, he told me of his experiments.
09:55 He said he was on the verge of a discovery so terrific that he doubted his own sanity."
10:00 Other major characters include Elizabeth, whose death causes Frankenstein to finally
10:04 decide to destroy the creature, Clairvall, whom Frankenstein likens to himself when he was younger,
10:10 and Walton, who is similarly a mirror of Victor used to teach us about the dangers
10:14 of abandoning morality in search of knowledge.
10:17 "Listen to me. I have spent six years planning this. My entire fortune
10:22 I will not be stopped by you or some fiend."
10:25 Who do you think is the real hero of the story, Frankenstein or his monster?
10:30 Be sure to let us know.
10:31 What are the themes?
10:33 Though Frankenstein is a short novel, it's dense, and there are a lot of ways to read it,
10:38 which is part of what makes talking about it so fascinating even over 200 years later.
10:43 The first key theme we're going to talk about is man versus god.
10:47 "Now I know what it feels like to be god."
10:49 Through the secondary title, The Modern Prometheus, we're immediately introduced
10:56 to the story of Prometheus in Greek myth. Prometheus is a titan who creates humankind
11:01 from clay, and then defies the gods by bringing them fire from Olympus.
11:05 He is punished harshly for this by Zeus.
11:08 But while Prometheus cares for his creations and nurtures them,
11:12 Frankenstein does the opposite, running in horror from the man he has created.
11:16 "You gave me these emotions, but you didn't tell me how to use them."
11:21 This sets up Victor Frankenstein's fatal or tragic flaw, his arrogance and ambition.
11:27 As he tells Walton many times, his mistake is thinking he can and should be able to do
11:32 what god does, that is, creating life from nothing.
11:35 Where a benevolent god would have loved the creature no matter what,
11:39 Frankenstein is human and fails.
11:41 "You gave me life, and then you left me to die."
11:47 There's also something to be said for the perversion of religion here.
11:51 In the Bible, Genesis 1:27 says,
11:53 "So God created man in his own image."
11:57 By making the creature appear human, Frankenstein is also trying to create
12:01 a man in the image of God and doing so with disastrous consequences.
12:05 "Come with us!"
12:06 "I am done with man."
12:10 The creature, too, learns about Christianity.
12:13 He tells Frankenstein explicitly, quote,
12:16 "Remember that I am thy creature. I ought to be thy Adam,
12:19 but I am rather the fallen angel,"
12:21 comparing himself not to Adam, but to Lucifer or Satan.
12:25 In a similar vein, another major theme is the natural versus the unnatural.
12:30 The creature is, of course, deeply unnatural.
12:33 He even uses the word "unnatural" to describe himself.
12:36 "Did you ever consider the consequences of your actions?"
12:41 Created artificially in a laboratory in the early days of modern science and research,
12:46 he embodies the unnatural in such a way that Frankenstein abandons his science
12:51 as soon as the creature is brought to life.
12:53 "You were wrong. Here in this machinery, I have gone beyond that."
12:59 By contrast, the natural world is always portrayed positively.
13:03 Exploring and observing nature is something all the characters enjoy,
13:07 and it brings them all a sense of comfort, including the creature,
13:11 who at the end laments that he won't be able to enjoy the world anymore upon his death.
13:16 "Shut out the light!"
13:16 But again, this is about arrogance and Frankenstein's belief that he can go
13:28 against nature so thoroughly with no retribution.
13:31 Though it's not clear what kills Frankenstein specifically,
13:35 he does suffer greatly and ultimately die after journeying into the harshest,
13:39 natural environment of all, the Arctic.
13:42 "Captain, this is useless. The ice stretches for miles."
13:45 Finally, there's the theme of parental responsibility.
13:48 When you have a child, what do you owe to that child?
13:51 "Oh, isn't it convenient? Oh, doesn't it fit in with your plans?
13:54 Don't you ever think of anyone or anything but yourself?"
13:57 This is something else that Shelley is preoccupied with.
14:00 It's widely thought that Shelley was drawing upon her own experiences with her parents when
14:04 she wrote Frankenstein. Her mother was, of course, not absent by choice, but was absent nonetheless.
14:11 Her father, meanwhile, ended up abandoning and ostracizing
14:14 Shelley when she left England to begin her affair with Percy.
14:17 "Why do you weep?"
14:18 "He was my father."
14:24 It was to her father, William Godwin, that she dedicated Frankenstein.
14:28 This theme of responsibility is very clear, particularly where family is concerned.
14:33 "Now two people are dead because of us."
14:38 Even when it leads to tragedy, as it does when Victor's mother nurses Elizabeth
14:43 through scarlet fever and then succumbs to the disease herself,
14:46 parents taking responsibility for children is a crucial theme.
14:50 "Mother, how is the imminent arrival?"
14:53 "Oh, a little frisky today."
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15:12 What's the legacy of Frankenstein? 200 years later and we're still talking about this novel,
15:18 and still seeing it appear in pop culture. Victor Frankenstein and his creature are recognizable
15:23 around the world as horror icons, with even Disney making retellings of the story.
15:28 "There's nothing wrong with Victor. He's just in his own world."
15:32 For the first three years the book was published, it was anonymous,
15:35 with nobody other than Shelley's inner circle knowing that she was the author.
15:39 "Your hand?"
15:43 Thirteen years after the first edition, in 1831, she revised it, and also added a new introduction,
15:49 in which she explained how a young girl came up with such a hideous idea.
15:53 "Your daughter is a little psycho."
15:56 The sheer originality of Frankenstein has given it such a long lifespan,
16:00 as a cornerstone in both the gothic and science fiction genres,
16:04 as well as making Shelley a key figure in the influential romantic movement of the 19th century.
16:09 "You're alive!"
16:10 "You're alive!"
16:11 As early as 1823 it was being adapted successfully for the stage,
16:19 with Shelley even complimenting one version, Presumption,
16:22 for thinking of things she hadn't thought of when she wrote it.
16:26 Centuries on, and Frankenstein has no copyright, meaning it's free to adapt,
16:30 and to adapt as loosely as the filmmakers like. Which is to say, usually very loosely.
16:36 "Elizabeth."
16:37 "Yes?"
16:37 "Yes."
16:41 Even the lauded 1931 version changes key details, like Frankenstein's name being Henry,
16:48 and him inviting his friends to watch as he reanimates the dead in his laboratory.
16:53 "Henry, you're inhuman! You're crazy!"
16:55 "Crazy am I. We'll see whether I'm crazy or not."
17:02 Simply put, it's one of the greatest, most influential works of fiction ever produced.
17:07 Made even more impressive by the fact Shelley was only 18 when she started writing it,
17:12 and 20 when the first edition was published. How many people can say they invented a whole new
17:17 genre, which would go on to be one of the biggest things to happen in the entire canon
17:21 of Western literature before they turned 21? For our money, only Mary Shelley has that claim to
17:27 fame.
17:27 "You can talk to my lawyer."
17:29 "Really hope this goth fades in soon."
17:31 Let us know in the comments what your favorite adaptation of Frankenstein is.
17:35 Do you agree with our picks? Check out this other recent clip from Ms. Mojo,
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17:50 [Music]