Special Topics in English: Frankenstein

• Module 3B
• Lecture: Devil's Party: Milton and Mary Shelley
• William Blake (1757-1827)
• The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
• The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is an innovative and highly personal publication. ... The content develops Blake's view of the spiritual cosmos. Through the voice of the Devil, he comments on the ideas of the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), who wrote a book with a Latin title meaning Heaven and Hell. Blake takes issue with Swedenborg for conversing more with the angels than with devils.
• Blake was deeply critical of traditional religion but greatly admired John Milton. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake refers to Paradise Lost (1667), but inverts the power relations between God and Satan. Jesus, the Messiah, becomes the voice of restraint, while Satan is the revolutionary voice of liberty and desire. Blake develops the idea that the sensual world can lead to the spiritual, and that the repression of desire destroys the spirit. He says, 'Man has no Body distinct from his Soul ... Energery is the only life, and is from the Body' ... The book ends with 'A Song of Liberty', which calls for revolt against the tyrannies of church and state.
• Was John Milton 'of the Devil's party'?
• On page 6, Blake adds a provocative note suggesting that:
• "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when he wrote of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it."
• This is often quoted to express the magnetic appeal of John Milton's Satan. Blake inspired other Romantic and Gothic writers to view Satan as a hero.
• What does this have to do with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
• appears on the title page
• Who is the "I"? Adam, The Creature, Victor, Mary Shelley
• or Satan?
• Sympathy: Adam // The Creature // Victor // Mary Shelley // Satan
• Admiration? Adam // The Creature // Victor // Mary Shelley // Satan
• Audacity of Insubordination
• Revolutionary Ambition
• how do we distinguish between good and bad revolutionary ambition?
• Victor // Mary Shelley
• "hideous progenies"
• sublime
• revolutionary ambition + audacity of insubordination
• What about sensibility?
• Patriarchal Sublime
• Sublime requires a sense of safety and "distance."
• Sensibility requires closeness and intimacy; consequently, it is counterproductive to the sublime.
• In what ways are Victor's masculinity and sublimity bound up with his success at maintain a distance between himself and The Creature?
• Victor preserves his masculinity and subliminity by remaining insensible.
• Victor would have been "less of a man" (and less sublime) had he become close to The Creature.
• (lack of nurturing or care)
• How does Mary Shelley invite readers to respond to Victor's insensibility (and the patriarchal sublime with which it is associated)?
• insensibility vs. sensibility (Victor vs. Shelley)
• Mary Shelley: Feminine (or Feminist) Sublime
• Sublime does not require a sense of safety and "distance." (It can even happen close-up!)
• Sensibility is favorable rather than counterproductive to the sublime.
• Victor refuses to maintain closenss and to nurture.
• Mary Shelley loves and nurtures her hideous monster.
• Perhaps Mary Shelley invites us to critique:
• Victor's insensibility
• the patriarchal sublime
• Perhaps Mary Shelley invites us to cultivate:
• our sensibility
• a more inclusive sublime
• => An ethic of care
• Love <-> Education
• Read "Horror's Twin: Mary Shelley's Monstrous Eve," Sandra Gilbert
• Discussion
• For this discussion, consider how Mary Shelley's Frankenstein engages with ideas about rebellion, creation, sympathy, the sublime, and responsibility that emerge from John Milton's Paradise Lost and the Romantic responses to Milton that you have encountered in this module. As you read the novel, think especially about the complicated relationship between audacity and responsibility, isolation and sympathy, and power and care.
• You may also take inspiration from Sandra Gilbert’s essay, "Horror's Twin: Mary Shelley's Monstrous Eve," particularly its attention to the ways Frankenstein engages with ideas about gender, creation, monstrosity, and the relationship between Shelley's novel and Milton's Paradise Lost.
• Develop a 250-400 word post that presents a close reading of Frankenstein. Choose one of the following questions as the starting point for your discussion:
• The Devil's Party: How does Shelley’s presentation of Victor or the Creature complicate the idea of the "Devil's party" associated with Milton’s Satan? What kinds of audacity, defiance, or revolutionary ambition does the character display, and how does Shelley encourage us to respond to that ambition?
• Creation and responsibility: What does Frankenstein suggest about the responsibilities that accompany the power to create? Choose a specific moment in which Victor responds to the Creature—or refuses to respond to him—and consider what that moment reveals about creation, responsibility, and care.
• Sympathy and sensibility: Choose a passage in which Shelley encourages the reader to feel sympathy, intimacy, or emotional closeness with a character. How does that moment challenge Victor's tendency toward insensibility and distance? What does Shelley suggest about the relationship between sympathy and human behavior?
• The sublime: How does a particular scene in Frankenstein use the sublime? Consider not only what makes the scene powerful or overwhelming, but also the relationship between distance, safety, closeness, and vulnerability. How might this scene complicate the model of the sublime associated with Victor?
• Gender and creation: Drawing inspiration from Gilbert’s discussion of Shelley’s relationship to Milton, how does Frankenstein represent the relationship between creation, gender, and power? Consider a specific moment involving Victor, the Creature, or one of the novel's female characters. What does the passage reveal about who is allowed to create, who is denied the power to create, and what happens when creation is separated from care?
• Isolation and belonging: Choose a passage that reveals the effects of isolation on Victor or the Creature. How does Shelley connect isolation to the character's choices, emotions, or treatment of others? What does the passage suggest about the importance of belonging and human connection?
• Love and education: The lecture concludes by connecting love and education. Choose a passage that shows a character learning from another person—or failing to learn because of the absence of care, sympathy, or meaningful human connection. What does this moment suggest about the relationship among education, love, and responsibility?
• As you develop your response, refer to at least one specific passage or moment from Frankenstein and quote or closely describe the language that you find most significant. You may also bring in Paradise Lost, Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, or Gilbert’s essay to help develop your interpretation.
• Discussion Post
• See p81, p161
• There are two moments that, taken together, encapsulate and bookend the effects of isolation and belonging on Victor. In Volume I, Victor's father writes to him expecting that he "shall hear regularly from [him]" and "regard[s] any interruption in [his] correspondence as a proof that [his] other duties are equally neglected" (82). In this moment, Victor has isolated himself from the world, only concerned with his dark scientific studies. Victor's father warns Victor, and the reader, that if he secludes himself from the world, he will know that Victor is in trouble.
• To bookend this warning about isolation, Victor's father strikes the opposite end of this condition in Volume III, showing the positive effects of belonging. After agreeing to The Creature's demands, Victor is able to rejoin his family, and Victor's father notes that he has "resumed his former pleasures, and seem[s] to be returning to himself" (161). In fact, Victor himself acknowledges he "met the salutations of [his] friends with a readier smile and a more cheerful heart."
• From a father's perspective, Victor's isolation or belonging is an indication of his overall well-being. From an omniscient reader's perspective, however, we can instead look at his isolation or belonging as the cause of his troubles or salvation. If Victor does not lock himself away in his laboratory, away from his family and friends, he does not begin to enter into this disturbed mental state, where he finds the completion of his work a "wretch" (83). We see Victor's mental state when he is appropriately engaged with his family and friends. When he rejoins the world, he finds peace and happiness. Unfortunately for Victor, he decides to once again leave society and work, while completely isolated, on The Creature's companion. As Victor isolates himself again, he arrives at the exact same mental place as before, where he sees in The Creature "malice and treachery" (174) and enters a state of "madness," where he destroys his work in front of The Creature.
• Discussion Response
• Andres - I, too, enjoyed Gilbert's connection between Victor and Eve. In fact, I enjoyed the thesis, that "Eve is all the parts." Aside from Gilbert's article, though, I also enjoyed our lecture, which compared Victor to Mary Shelley herself, both with their "hideous progenies." While they make these amazing creations, both at a very young age, it is Victor's patriarchal sublime that causes his downfall but it is Shelley's sensibility that has allowed her progeny to flourish to its place today.
• Are we allowed to post memes in our discussion posts? The end of the novel Frankenstein if Victor was cast as a non-patriarchal character with some sensibility: