FRANKENSTEIN  - MARY SHELLEY

The most popular Gothic novel was written by Mary Shelley, the daughter of William Godwin and M. Wollstonecraft, and second wife of the poet Shelley. In the summer of 1816, while she was on holiday in Switzerland with her husband she wrote "Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus", claiming she had been inspired by a dream.

The work was published in 1818 and immediately became a best seller.

THREE NARRATORS: From the point of view of its structure Frankenstein is quite a complex work. It is told in the first person by three different narrators.

-The first part is the epistolary form an English explorer in the Arctic regions, Robert Walton, writes to his sister in England about how he has saved a Swiss scientist, Dr Frankenstein, a man who seems to be physically and morally borne down by an unspeakable grief;

-There fallow Frankenstein's own story, an autobiographical account of the dreadful experience;

-Within Frankenstein's narration is inserted a written report by the monster himself, in which he explains the reasons for his "monstrous" behaviour;

-Finally in the last pages, the narration is resumed and concluded by William again, always in the epistolary form. None of the three narrators is omniscient and so they are all needed to have a complete version of the story.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE NOVEL: structurally, Frankenstein is an important link (the epistolary form and the laug written or spoken confession)-questo è opera della Fede (Fied); yet the three narrator's between the old and the new novel: it still relies heavily on eighteen century forms such as the epistolary form and the long written or spoken confession; interplay provides a very interesting and modern shifting of the point of view. This allows for some psychological analysis if not of the characters as single individuals at least as typical of certain aspects of human nature.

BETWEEN GOTHIC AND SCIENCE FICTION: We can define "Frankenstein" a Gothic novel because of the Gothic elements we can trace in it. In particular: a) the description of the parts of the corpse which make up the monster; b) the dreadful setting and c) the creation of an emotional atmosphere. But:

It is not set in a Gothic castle and it does not deal with supernatural events anyway;

It deals with a scientific experiment and with the horror derived from the unexpected outcome;

It also deals with social themes, such as social injustice as exemplified in the treatment of the monster.

THE MONSTER: The "creature" can be seen as a representative of suffering mankind rejected by an at least indifferent creator.

This makes him a symbol of all outcasts and wanderers.

What he really asks for is human solidarity and communion, but like the typical Romantic hero he experiences only disappointment and alienation. His tragic outcome too can be read in two ways:

1-as an implicit criticism of Romantic tendencies to real God

2-but also as a warning against the dangers implicit in breaking natural laws.

THE THEME OF THE DOUBLE: In Shelley's Frankenstein the scientist and the monster are popularly known by the same name Frankenstein and come to resemble two aspects of the same being.

We meet again this in Stevenson's "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hide".

In both authors man is no longer a stable unified being, regulated by rationality but a divided soul, victim of this rational self and in permanent struggle with the hostile forces of the universe.