INTRODUCTION

by Dr Anne DeLong

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is unique in the history of literature, for several reasons.

It has a celebrated origin story, involving two other literary greats, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. It has an innovative and complicated literary structure that takes it far beyond a traditional ghost or horror story. And perhaps most importantly, it created two enduring anti-hero archetypes: the mad scientist and the sympathetic monster.

Recognised by many literary critics as the first science fiction novel, Frankenstein combines an investigation of the limits and ethics of scientific progress with unforgettable characters. Yet Shelley’s novel transcends its time and place, gaining new relevance in an age of artificial intelligence and robotics. It remains a cautionary tale of the dangers of human ambition.

In this Introduction I will look at the novel’s origins and structure, Shelley’s influences including her famous parents, and some of the historical, literary, and political contexts in which Frankenstein can be appreciated and understood.

FRANKENSTEIN : ORIGIN STORY

One of the most notable and famous aspects of Frankenstein is how it came to be written.

In her Introduction to the 1831 edition, Shelley alludes to the “wet, ungenial summer” of 1816 and the visits to Byron at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva. It was on one of these gloomy days that Byron made his now-famous suggestion to the party, which included Mary Shelley’s poet husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and Byron’s physician John Polidori, that “We will each write a ghost story”.

In response, Polidori produced a story fragment called “The Vampyr”, which was ostensibly modelled on his overbearing client Byron. It would provide Bram Stoker with inspiration for his novel Dracula. The short story that Mary produced for the contest would later form the fifth chapter of her novel, the horrific moment when Victor Frankenstein “beh[o]ld[s] the accomplishment of his toils”. In a liminal state between dreaming and waking, Mary imagined the first encounter between creator and creature as a horrific confrontation with the unintended consequences of Victor’s excessive ambition.

Shelley’s Introduction also references the “many and long conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which [she] was a devout but nearly silent listener”, including talk of the galvanic experiments of Erasmus Darwin. Shelley herself was well acquainted with the latest scientific innovations of the day, having attended lectures by chemist Humphrey Davy on the feasibility of animating matter by means of electricity. Shelley’s self-deprecating tone in her Introduction appears to be an appeasement to her male companions and the patriarchal values of the day, but her scientific knowledge was no less than theirs.

Although the product of a ghost story contest, Frankenstein does not seem at first glance to fit neatly into the ghost story genre. As a reanimation of death, Victor Frankenstein’s creature functions as a revenant returned from the grave — he is both a haunting reminder of the consequences of hubris and a haunted fugitive. Like the best ghost stories, Frankenstein’s themes include revenge, justice, and guilt. Shelley’s novel also honours the ghost story genre in giving voice to the voiceless, allowing her monster ghost the opportunity to tell his own story.

FRANKENSTEIN : STRUCTURE AND FRAME

Frankenstein deploys an intricate framing structure to contain and develop the storyline. The novel begins and ends with a series of letters from explorer Robert Walton to his sister Margaret Saville. In these, Walton relates his encounter with the stranded refugee Victor Frankenstein, who slowly reveals his story of misguided ambition and divine retribution. Like Frankenstein, Walton is a revolutionary dreamer, a seeker of fame through discovery, and an ambitious quester who is willing to risk the safety of others to pursue his impossible dreams.

Victor Frankenstein presents his story as a cautionary tale, a warning to Walton and others like him to curb their subversive attempts to test the limits of human ability. Beginning with a description of his idyllic childhood, Victor recounts his studies at university and their culmination in his project to reanimate dead matter. He tells of the unfortunate reaction to his success and his abandonment of the being he created. Victor’s parental negligence leads to his creature’s destructive rampage, as he wreaks havoc upon Victor’s life and loved ones.

Victor Frankenstein’s story frames the novel’s innermost narrative, the tale of his monster’s creation and development, related in the creature’s own words in Chapters XI-XVI. The creature learns of his origins by reading Victor’s journal and develops his own philosophy, partially through reading the works of Milton, Plutarch and Goethe. Craving human companionship, the creature’s efforts at connection are continuously spurned, a rejection that motivates his murderous campaign of revenge against the creator who deserted him, Victor Frankenstein. While the reader cannot help but sympathise with the monster’s lonely plight, we recoil at his confession of crimes, including not only the murder of innocents but also the framing of the guiltless Justine.

Shelley thus created an anti-hero who is simultaneously sympathetic and horrific, allowing readers a glimpse into the horror of trauma that manifests further devastation on others. In doing so, she produces a psychological portrait that is surprisingly modern.

MARY SHELLEY: BIOGRAPHICAL AND LITERARY INFLUENCES

In her Introduction to the revised 1831 edition, Shelley attempts to answer a question that she was often asked: “How I, then a young girl, came to think of, and to dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?” Shelley’s attempts to answer this question include references to her own literary legacy, her childhood influences, her adult circumstances and, most extensively, to the origin story of the novel at the Villa Diodati in the summer of 1816.

Born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on 30 August, 1797, the woman who would write Frankenstein believed herself from a young age to be destined for literary greatness. Both parents were famous for their intellectual genius, literary output and radical philosophies. Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was both celebrated and vilified as a proto-feminist and supporter of revolutionary politics. In addition to her political treatises, Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Wollstonecraft also authored numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including two novels and a travelogue, Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796).

Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin, was also an intellectual radical, whose best-known works include the nonfiction polemic Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) and the novel Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794). In keeping with their subversive philosophies, Godwin and Wollstonecraft maintained separate households throughout their unconventional marriage. The birth of their child Mary ultimately resulted in the death of Wollstonecraft, who expired eleven days after her daughter’s birth from septicaemia, the result of a postpartum infection. Thus young Mary inherited the trauma of her mother’s death along with a powerful and somewhat daunting literary legacy.

In 1798 William Godwin made the misguided decision to publish his late wife’s autobiography, Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Hoping to reinforce her posthumous literary reputation, the work instead tarnished it, depicting a woman whose behaviours scandalised the society of the time. While this decision added to young Mary’s troublesome legacy, it was Godwin’s remarriage in 1801 to Mary Jane Clairmont that fundamentally altered Mary’s familial dynamics and upbringing. Clairmont brought her own two children, Charles and Claire, into the Godwin household. Young Mary’s blended family also included a half-sister, Fanny Imlay, the illegitimate daughter of her mother’s affair with the American ambassador to France and businessman Gilbert Imlay.

In addition to the literary legacy bequeathed by her parents, young Mary Godwin benefitted from the intellectual and artistic influence of her father’s social circle, which included Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. At age seven, Mary defied her stepmother’s authority to stay up past her bedtime during one of Coleridge’s visits. She hid behind the couch as the great poet recited his new poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Coleridge was a superb performer, and the poem made a huge impression on Mary. References to the Ancient Mariner abound in Frankenstein, including the power of mesmeric storytellers, the atmospheric awe of sublime nature, and the channelling of traumatic experiences into cautionary tales.

Mary’s tumultuous relationship with her difficult stepmother heavily impacted her early years, as Clairmont tended to favor her own children over her stepdaughter. This tension resulted in Godwin sending his daughter away for a time. During her teenage...