UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE SO PAULO

Letras



Dnea Lima Matos





Guarulhos
2014
Life and Time
Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft marriage in March 1797 was a brilliant
conjunction of literary royalty. Through this union Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was
born on August 30, 1797, in London, England. Ten days after her birth Mary
Wollstonecraft died of puerperal fever.
As Mary Shelley, her parents were writers in the period of French Revolution. Her
father was a member of a circle of radical thinkers in England together Thomas Paine and
William Blake. Her mother was the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, a
feminist tract encouraging women to think and act for themselves. Also the union
between Mary and Percy was literary, he was a young poet. Lord Byron was friend and
neighbor both Percy and Mary, together, they started writing ghost stories. Percy Bysshe
Shelley was married Harriet Westbrook Shelley, when he and Mary Godwin fallen in
love. He was a student of her father. They run away, taking with them Marys step-sister,
leaving behind Shelleys wife, Harriet, pregnant with a second child.
Death was excessively present in Mary Shelleys life. Her mother had died in
childbirth. Fanny Imlay, her older half-sister, committed a suicide as Percy's wife, did a
short time later. Her father dies, very sad because she eloped with Percy Shelley. Godwin
had a son whit another woman that already had two children. But Shelley never got along
with them because they were sent to school. Her marriage whit Percy was full of adultery
and sorrow and sadness, two other children died. Three of her four children had died few
days after birth. Percy Florence, their son, was the only child to grow up. Her friend, Lord
Byron died, and to complete her suffering, her husband die drowned.

Frankenstein birth

In the June of 1816, Mary Shelley began to write Frankenstein, or the Modern
Prometheus, a tale that has achieved the status since its publication in 1818. One day
Lord Byron suggested writing horror stories. At this time that Mary Shelley began her
most famous novel, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. Mary Shelley returned to
England in 1823 and sustained her writing career. She concluded five more after
Frankenstein; she also wrote short stories and biographies.
The nineteenth-century literature brought the idea that the future will be monstrous
in terms of mediocrity nationalism, barbarian, and impotent. If we thought the monsters
as a metaphor, we can see that he represents the transformation and changes of society. In
Mary Shelleys novel, the monster lives, Frankensteins first moment of terror arises
precisely in the face of this fact. Once this has happened, he knows that he will never be
able to regain control of it. From now on, the metaphor of the monster will lead an
autonomous existence: it will no longer be a product, a consequence, but the very origin
of the literature of terror.

Gothic Genre
Gothic is a distinct modern development in which the characteristic theme is the
control of the past upon the present. Mary Shelley in Frankenstein evoked powerful
unease without employing medieval trappings. Although includes evocation of
psychological torment, guilt, self- division, and paranoid delusion.
Doctor Victor Frankenstein is a scientist, he rejecting unfashionable theories and
superstitions, to recreate a monstrous human being. This unblessed experiment goes
wrong. The scientist is negligent, he wants to be God. The novel discusses themes as the
upbringing of children and the quest for the secrets of "life" and debates as to whether
"life" could be isolated, were topical at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Frankenstein is a Man preempting God's work which marks it out as the first true work of
science fiction.

The plot
Robert Walton is the first narrator. He is a captain of a ship, he writes some letters to
his sister Margaret telling about his mission. Walton interrupted the narrative when
encounters Victor Frankenstein in the ice, weakened by the cold. Walton helps him back
to health and hears all tale of the monster that Frankenstein created. This time, Victor is
the narrator, first he talks about his childhood in Geneva in the company of Elizabeth an
orphan cousin, younger than him and friend Henry Clerval, Victors boyhood friend.
Victor enters at the University of Ingolstadt to study natural philosophy and chemistry.
But his desire was discover the secret of life and after several years of research becomes
convinced that he has found it.
Victor spends two years working with body parts. One night, in the secrecy of his
apartment, he brings his creation to life. He felt scared when he looks at the horror that he
had created and runs away to Henry, that was also study at the university, he takes Victor
back to his apartment. Although the monster was gone, Victor felt illness. Henry nurses
him back to health.
Yet sickened, Victor intent to go to Geneva, but in this time, he receives a letter from
his father informing him that his youngest and darling brother, William, was died. The
monster strangles William in the woods outside Geneva in order to hurt Victor for
abandoning him. Williams death deeply saddens Victor and burdens him with
tremendous guilt about having created the monster. Victor back immediately home. His
father consoles him of his pain and encourages him to remember the importance
of family. There he convinced himself that the monster was his brothers murderer,
William was strangled.
In Geneva, Victor finds Justine Moritz, a young girl adopted into the Frankenstein
household while Victor growing up, she was condemned and executed despite her
innocence. Victor felt guilty for the death of two innocent people, and only he knew
about the monster. One day alone, crossing an enormous glacier, Victor encounters the
monster, that confesses to the murder of William but begs for understanding. He says that
he killed William in a desperate attempt to injure Victor.
The monster narrates how he learns to speak and interact by observing a family of
peasants and what happened when he reveals himself to them, hoping for friendship, they
beat him and chase him away. He begs Victor to create a mate for him, a monsteras
deformed and horrible as him to stay together. Victor refuses at first, but after
promised to do. He returned to Geneva to create a female monster. He isolates himself on
a desolate island in the Orkneys and did other creature. One night, full of doubts about
the morality of his actions, Victor looks out at the window and saw the monster with a
terrifying grin. Horrified by the possible consequences of his work, Victor destroys his
new creation. The monster angrily promised revenge on Victors wedding night. Few
days after monster vows, Victor saw his friend Henry Clerval death with the mark of the
monsters fingers on his neck. Victor fallen ill, and kept isolated until his recovery.
Returning to Geneva, Victor marries Elizabeth, who was waits patiently for Victors
attention. He suspects that the monster will appear in the wedding night. Sudden
Elizabeth screamed and he realized that the monster killed her. Victor returns home to his
father, who dies of anguish a short time later. Victor vows to devote the rest of his life to
finding the monster to his revenge. Victor almost catches the monster, but the sea beneath
them breaks the ice and left a gap between them. There Walton encounters Victor that
dies after tells the story. Back to the narrative, Walton returns some days later, to the
room in which the Victors body lies, and saw the monster crying over Victor.
The monster narrates the story of his immense solitude, suffering, and remorse. He
declares that now that his creator was died, he also can end his suffering and committed a
suicide. Walton survives, and this confers on him a dominant function in the narrative
structure. Walton both begins the story and ends it. The narrative structure of
Frankenstein and the monster seems to be similar to a fable. As in a fable, the story
proceeds in oral form: Frankenstein tells Walton the whole story and Walton writes. He
records the tale in a series of letters addressed to his sister, Margaret Saville, in England.

Doppelgangers
A doppelganger theme intensifies the novel. In the course of the narrative appear two
extremes of Frankenstein. The monster represents poverty, poorness, devils, death, and
oppressed people. Doctor Victor represents health, wealth and beauty and oppressor. Man
is beautiful, the monster ugly; man is good, the monster evil. Frankenstein's monster can
be associated to the proletariat; both do not have name nether individuality. The monster
is the excluded man and never will be free or have a good future.

Creature x creator
Victor discovers the secret of life and creates a grotesque monster. The creation of
Victor Frankenstein is intelligent and sensitive; he tries to integrate into human social
patterns, but not had success because Victor keeps his creation of the monster as a secret.
At the moment Frankenstein gives life and the monster opens its eyes, he draws back in
horror and fled. The monster felt abandoned; consequently, he looks for revenge against
his creator. Frankenstein invented and brought back to life a new type of human. He is
not found in nature, but built. However, between them there was an unequal relationship.
His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and
arteries [] his hair was of a lustrous black; his teeth of a
pearly whiteness; but this luxuriance only formed a more
horrid contrast with his watery eyes [] his shriveled
complexion and straight black lips [] the dull yellow eye of
the creature open [] How can I describe my emotions at this
catastrophe? (FRANKENSTEIN, p.141)
Doctor Victor felt terror and afraid of the creature and wants to kill it, because he
realizes he has given life to a being different and stronger than himself. The monster was
not dangerous, he wants to have someone like it.
I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be
ever mild and docile to my natural lord and king () I was benevolent and good; misery
made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous (creature, p.225).
When all friendly relations with humans have failed, the monster just accepts his
conditions. He only wants another creature that was as deformed and horrible as him
to stay together. But this possibility so terrifying for Frankenstein that, when he imagined
his create procreating and multiplying children he felt terror, because 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 (p. 331).
Equality x I nequality
According to Moretti in The Dialectic of Fear, the monster makes us comprehend
how the dominant classes to resign the idea that all human beings are equal. Also makes
us realize that in an unequal society they are not equal. Not because they belong to
different races but because inequality really does score itself into ones skin, ones eyes
and ones body. The monster is disfigured not only because Frankenstein wants him to be
like that, but also because this was how things actually were in the first decades of the
industrial revolution. The monster lives only as the other side of that coin which is
Frankenstein.

Ethics x Values
Doctor Victor becomes fascinated by the modern science, whit the secret of life
discover he brings an ugly monster to life. This creature brought a mood of death and
destruction in the Victors life. Although he felt s remorse, shame, and guilt, Victor
refuses to admit to anyone the horror of what he has created. In the nineteenth-century
society, the development process also demands victims. Frankensteins desire was
stronger than his values. Victor was a creator of a new race. Clerval, in comparison with
Victor, is traditionalist he kept his values alive in terms of family, moral and ethical.
Frankenstein himself, ends being converted to the values, but was too late:
[] how much happier that man is who believes his native
town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater
than his nature will allow [] Farewell, Walton! Seek
happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only
the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in
science and discoveries (Walton, 11)
The morals of the characters will make people think about morals and beliefs. The
story makes the reader think about ethics and values. Even, if life or death were a price to
pay for the acquirement of the knowledge. Walton points out us, the importance of the
family and his values. For him, doctor Victor and the monster are accidents, they die
without successors.

Science x family
Mary Shelleys Frankenstein makes us reflect about the development of science,
principles and values. The Victorian age and the Enlightenment brought individuality.
Frankenstein is divided between science and family. He created a monster, and the
attempt failed, the monster helps to condemn the desire of personal fulfillment to the
detriment of the community. Mary Shelley tries to teach and change people's thinking.
When the monster was excluded from the humane society, she makes the individual
reflect about the collective identity.

God and Devil

I doubted at first whether I should attempt the creation of a
being like myself [] my imagination was too much exalted
by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give
life to an animal as complex and wonderful as man [] but I
doubted not that I should ultimately succeed. (p. 135).
During the Victorian ages to be abnormal was something wrong to according to the
laws of God. To be monstrous or abnormal suggests idleness, infertility and
unproductivity. In the beginning he gave the impression that he wants to be God. The
monster was brought to life by a mysterious stimulus. He was abandoned by his creator
and rejected by society because of his ugly look. Looking in the mirror, he realizes his
physical grotesque appearance. His feature blinds society to his intelligence, sensibility,
gentle, kind and nature.

Pride x Prejudice
Victor Frankenstein is guilty. The creature was rejected by its creator. Victor and his
creation, entered in an atmosphere of pity and the privation When Doctor Victor dies, the
monster does not know what to do with his own life and commits suicide. When Doctor
Victor realizes that the creature is ugly and scary he runs away. He nor assumed what he
did neither solved the problem, just left the monster without protection or shelter. He felt
guilty and ashamed for it. His attempt was not succeed as he expected, so his first reaction
was to abandon and deny the creature and because of this behavior, innocent people
suffered and died. He desired to be an important man, to make a new discovery. He
wished an immortal and respectable name.




References
http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/frankenstein/context.html
MORETII, Franco. The Dialectic of Fear New Left Review (Nov.-Dec. 1982), 67-85.
SHELLEY, Mary. Frankenstein. London: Penguin, 1994.
Oxford. Gothic fiction. In the oxford companion to English literature. 6
th
edition.