Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus (1818; 1831) and its Literary Intertexts

[All page references, below, are taken from the 1831 edition, edited by Maurice Hindle (Penguin Books, 2003)]

Note: in this seminar, I am going to focus only on some of the most important literary intertexts in Mary Shelley’s novel, and not the philosophical and scientific theories with which her novel also engages. During your revision, you should focus on all three types of intertexts in the novel, that is, the literary (see below, but also fictions by Shelley’s parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin); the scientific (Humphry Davy; Erasmus Darwin); and the philosophical (Jean-Jacques Rousseau; John Locke; William Godwin)

1)Carefully read the following extract from the Author’s Introduction to the Standard Novels Edition of the text (1831):

Every thing must have a beginning, to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hidoos give the world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject: and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it. (8)

  • In what ways does Mary Shelley in this extract posit the notion of ‘intertextuality’ as the necessary condition for any act of creation?
  • What are the implications of this for notions of ‘originality’, a value embraced by both first- and second-generation Romantics? How does the notion of intertextuality challenge and rewrite notions of originality?
  • How do Mary Shelley’s comments, above, relate to, or differ from, the theoretical account of intertextuality offered by the French critical theorist, Roland Barthes, in his essay, ‘From Work to Text’?

Every text, being itself the intertext of another text, belongs to the intertextual, which must not be confused with a text's origins: to search for the "sources of" and "influence upon" a work is to satisfy the myth of filiation. The quotations from which a text is constructed are anonymous, irrecoverable, and yetalready read:they are quotations without quotation marks. The work does not upset monistic philosophies, for which plurality is evil. Thus, when it is compared with the work, the text might well take as its motto the words of the man possessed by devils: "My name is legion, for we are many" (Mark 5:9).

2)The notion of Frankenstein as a deliberately and self-consciously intertextual novel prompts us to make a number of connections between the ‘body’ of the text and the ‘body’ of Frankenstein’s creature. Can you explain this? Can you think of any other moments in which we are prompted to read Shelley’s fiction as a ‘monstrous assemblage’ of parts?

3)Much of the novel’s intertextuality resides in its curious, experimental form. How, and in what ways, does the novel borrow formally from the following three traditions?

1)The sentimental tradition in literature

2)The epistolary novel

3)The Gothic? (See, in particular, references to the Gothic tradition in storytelling in both the 1818 and 1831 introductions to the text)

Literary Intertexts in Frankenstein

1)The title-page of the first edition of the novel contained the following lines from Milton’s Paradise Lost: ‘Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me man? Did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me?—‘. On the next page, Mary Shelley dedicates her novel to her father, William Godwin: ‘To WILLIAM GODWIN, Author of Political Justice, Caleb Williams &c. These Volumes are respectfully inscribed by the Author’.

Placing these two paratextual comments side-by-side reveals a number of intriguing insights into Mary Shelley’s literary and biographical relationship with her father, the esteemed author and radical political philosopher. What are they?

2)Beyond the title-page and dedication, Milton’s epic retelling of the story of the creation of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from Eden in Paradise Lost plays a central role, since it occupies a position of centrality in the creature’s process of self-education. Consider, in the following quotations, the way in which the creature ‘reads’ and articulates his experience through Milton’s epic:

  • ‘Remember, that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, and from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good’ misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.’ (pg. 103; Volume II, chapter i)

3)However, if this is a retelling of Paradise Lost, it is by no means a simple and straightforward one. Consider the following quotation, for instance:

  • ‘But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe, that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting. I often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me, to my own. 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.’ (pg. 132; Volume II, chapter vii)

In what ways is the creature’s act of identification with the characters of Paradise Lost rendered problematic in this passage?

  • ‘“Hateful day when I received life!” I exclaimed in agony. “Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.”’ (pg. 133; Volume II, chapter vii)

What does this outburst from the creature reveal about his engagement with Milton’s epic?

4)Who is the main character that is missing from Shelley’s complex engagement with Paradise Lost in Frankenstein?

  • ‘But it was all a dream; no Eve soothed my sorrows nor shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam’s supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him.’ (pg. 134; Volume II, chapter vii)

5)In what ways does the creature / monster come to occupy the place of Eve in the text? (See, in particular, the monster’s looking at himself in the reflection in the water:

‘I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers – their grace, beauty, and delicate complexions; but how was I terrified, when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas! I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity. (pg. 116-17; Volume II, chapter iv).

How does this passage replay, with crucial differences, the following passage from Book IV of Milton’s Paradise Lost?

That day I oft remember, when from sleep
I first awaked, and found myself reposed, / 450
Under a shade, on flowers, much wondering where
And what I was, whence thither brought, and how.
Not distant far from thence a murmuring sound
Of waters issued from a cave, and spread
Into a liquid plain; then stood unmoved, / 455
Pure as the expanse of Heaven. I thither went
With unexperienced thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake, that to me seemed another sky.
As I bent down to look, just opposite / 460
A Shape within the watery gleam appeared,
Bending to look on me. I started back,
It started back; but pleased I soon returned
Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love. There I had fixed / 465
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warned me: ‘What thou seest,
What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself;
With thee it came and goes: but follow me,
And I will bring thee where no shadow stays / 470
Thy coming, and thy soft imbraces—he
Whose image thou art; him thou shalt enjoy
Inseparably thine; to him shalt bear
Multitudes like thyself, and thence be called
Mother of human race.’ What could I do, / 475
But follow straight, invisibly thus led?
6)Consider the subtitle of Shelley’s novel. Who was Prometheus? How does the novel intertextually rework the Promethean myth? How does this relate to the myth of Faustus, another important intertext in this fiction? Who are the Faustian overreachers in the novel?
7)Mary Shelley’s novel makes frequent reference to some of the major poems of such other canonical Romantic authors as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, P. B. Shelley and William Wordsworth. In the light of this, consider the following:

Who is the ancient-mariner figure in the novel? Why?

What are the effects of citing Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley in this novel?