Special Topics in English: Frankenstein

• Module 4A
• Reading Prompts:
1. What does education allow a person to become?
   Wollstonecraft argues that education is essential to the development of reason, judgment, independence, and virtue. As you read Mary, A Fiction, consider how Mary's education—or lack of conventional education—shapes her development. As you read Frankenstein, consider how the Creature's self-education similarly shapes his understanding of himself and the world.
2. How does gender shape education and identity?
   What kinds of education are considered appropriate for women in Wollstonecraft's writing and in Mary, A Fiction? How does Wollstonecraft distinguish between superficial accomplishments and genuine intellectual development? As you think about the Creature in Frankenstein, consider how educational exclusion might provide a useful framework for thinking about gender, dependence, and intellectual potential.
3. What does Wollstonecraft mean by sensibility?
   Pay attention to Wollstonecraft's complicated treatment of feeling, sympathy, reason, and imagination. What kinds of sensibility does she criticize, and what kinds does she value? As you read Mary, A Fiction and Frankenstein, consider how intense feeling can contribute both to moral development and suffering.
4. How does nature contribute to education?
   In Mary, A Fiction, notice the relationship between nature, solitude, imagination, and reflection. How does Mary's experience of the natural world contribute to her intellectual and emotional development? As you read Frankenstein, consider how the sublime landscapes encountered by Victor and the Creature similarly become spaces for thought, feeling, and self-discovery.
5. What happens when education is denied?
   Consider Wollstonecraft's arguments about the consequences of educating women for dependence rather than independence. How might these ideas help us think about the Creature's development in Frankenstein? What similarities and differences emerge between the forms of exclusion experienced by Wollstonecraft's female subjects and Shelley's Creature?
6. What responsibilities accompany human development?
   Wollstonecraft connects education to the development of moral responsibility and self-government. Frankenstein raises a related question through Victor's relationship with the Creature. What responsibilities might accompany creating, educating, or caring for another human being? How does Victor's failure to provide education, companionship, and care shape the Creature's development?
7. How might Wollstonecraft help us read Mary Shelley differently?
   As you move between A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary, A Fiction, and Frankenstein, consider what becomes newly visible when you read Mary Shelley alongside her mother. What connections do you see among education, gender, sensibility, the sublime, isolation, and human development?
• "The Eerie Gravestone Where Frankenstein's Story Began," link
• The graveyard became Mary's private place, where she would often retreat.
• Scholars like Gordon speculate that the graveyard was also where the couple first consummated their relationship.
• Lecture: M Wollstonecraft, M Shelley, and Frankenstein
• What obligation does a creator have to their creation-- Care? Education?
• Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
• Writer, philosopher, educator, and advocate for women's education
• Author of Mary, A Fiction (1788)
• Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
• Died from complications following childbirth after giving birth to Mary Godwin on August 30, 1797.
• Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
• Born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
• Daughter of Wollstonecraft and William Godwin
• Inherited her mother's writings and reputation without having known her personally
• Published Frankenstein in 1818, when she was twenty.
• Mary Godwin is born. Woolstonecraft gives birth to her second child.
• Wollstonecraft dies. She dies from complications following childbirth.
• These biographical details provide important contexts for themes within the novel:
• motherhood
• creation
• loss
• abandonment
• How might the experience of inheriting a dead mother's intellectual and emotional legacy shape the questions Shelley asks about creation, care, and human development?
• Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
• Education
• Cultivates understand
• Strengthens judgment
• Develops habits of self-command
• Makes intellectual work possible
• ==> public good
• Gender
• According to convention, women are trained toward appearance, dependence, and social approval
• Those habits can look natural because they have been repeatedly taught
• ==> Wollstonecraft criticizes this
• Moral Agency
• Virtue requires more than obedience
• A person must exercise their own reason and become capable of directing her own conduct
• ==> Wollstonecraft argues to extend this as a right to women
• Key idea for Frankenstein
• Character is not simply something a being possesses at birth
• It is something formed through education, circumstance, and relationships.
• Women should have power over themselves
• "I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves."
• Power: Not domination over others, but capacity for self-direction.
• Education: A means of developing judgment rather than merely learning to please.
• Virtue: A person must be able to act from principles as her own.
• Frankenstein: What kinds of education allow a person to become a self? to contribute to the public good?
• Education is more than instruction
• "By individual education, I mean ... such an attention to a child as will slowly sharpen the senses, form the temper, regulate the passions ... and set the understanding to work."
• "This makes the creature's education central to Frankenstein: Shelley gives us a narrative experiment in what happens when a newly created being must educate himself.
• Sensibility focuses on feeling versus reason/ Instead: feeling and reason
• She criticizes:
• Fashionable emotional performance
• Feelings taught as a substitute for judgment
• Delicacy and refinement that encourage dependence
• Emotion without sufficient reflection
• She values:
• Sympathy
• Tenderness
• Compassion
• Imagination
• Emotional responsiveness to suffering
• Her ideal:
• Feeling clarified by reflection
• Imagination joined to judgment
• Passion brought into relation with reason
• Emotion translated into moral action
• Wollstonecraft seeks feeling (or "sensibility") that contributes to moral understanding.
• False sensibility (sensibility without reason)
• "These pretty nothings, these caricatures of the real beauty of sensibility ... create a kind of sickly delicacy that turns away from the simple unadorned truth.
• What makes feeling false? It is performed as a social role rather than grounded in judgment or experience.
• Why does this matter? It can intensify emotion while weakening independence and practical judgment.
• What makes feeling valuable? Genuine sympathy for suffering can be a part of moral life if it is combine with reason.
• Frankenstein: What happens when intense feeling develops without reciprocal human connection (i.e. sociality)?
• Mary, A Fiction -- an earlier experiment in female self-formation
• Education: Mary learns to read, reflect, and think for herself.
• Gender: Her development challenges the conventional model of feminine accomplishment.
• Sensibility: Intense feeling becomes a resource for sympathy, but also a source of vulnerability.
• Nature and sublime: Natural scenes become occasions for imagination, reflection, and devotional thought.
• Compare with Frankenstein: How do reading, isolation, nature, and feeling contribute to the development of a self?
• A heroine with thinking powers
• "In an artless tale ... the mind of a woman, who has thinking powers is displayed."
• Conventional Literary Model: beauty -> pleasing -> approval
• Wollstonecraft's Mary: reading -> reflection -> feeling -> moral action
• The key question is not simply what Mary feels, but what kind of person her education is helping her become.
• The problem of education (Eliza)
• "She was educated with the expectation of a large fortune, of course became a mere machine: ... the years of youth spent in acquiring a few superficial accomplishments, without having any taste for them."
• Surface: Accomplishments are superficial because they do not cultivate judgment.
• Dependence: Social approval replaces the exercise of independent faculties.
• Formation: Her limitations are represented as products of circumstance, not simply innate defects.
• Frankenstein: Victor receives an elite education--but fails to educate the being he creates. The Creature's education is lacking. Is Victor's?
• Both texts shift attention from natural character toward the environments in which character is formed.
• Self-education, feeling, and the sublime
• "Neglected in every respect, and left to the operations of her own mind, she considered every thing that came under her inspection, and learned to think."
• "Sublime ideas filled her young mind--always connected with devotional sentiments."
• Nature becomes a classroom: observation -> imagination -> speculation -> self-formation
• Compare this with Frankenstein's use of mountains, glaciers, storms, and other sublime landscapes as spaces for intense thought.
• Parallel - and an important difference
• Mary
• Neglected and emotionally isolated
• Self-educated through reading and observation
• Deeply responsive to nature
• Strong capacity for sympathy
• Seeks meaningful human connection
• The Creature
• Abandoned immediately after creation
• Self-educated through reading and observation
• Finds refuge in sublime landscapes
• Initially benevolent and sympathetic
• Repeated rejection alters his response to suffering
• Difference: Mary's sensibility is directed toward benevolence; the creature's sensibility is repeatedly wounded by exclusion
• formation to responsibility
• Wollstonecraft
• Parents and educators help form moral character.
• The conditions surrounding education shape the capacities that later appear natural.
• Mary
• A neglected child becomes an autodidact.
• Her environment shapes the development of her sensibility and moral agency.
• Frankenstein
• Victor creates a being, then abandons the work of education, companionship, and responsibility.
• Frankenstein: How do creation, education, care, and responsibility relate to one another?
• Mary, A Fiction and Frankenstein into conversation
1. How do Mary and the Creature become selves through reading, reflection, and observation?
2. How do Wollstonecraft's ideas about female education change the way you understand education in Frankenstein?
3. What kind of sensibility does Wollstonecraft criticize, and what kinds does she value? How'd does that distinction illuminate the Creature?
4. How does nature function as a space of education and self-discovery in Mary and Frankenstein?
5. What does the comparison of Eliza, Mary, Victor, and the Creature suggest about the relationship between creation and responsibility?
6. How might the story of Wollstonecraft's death in childbirth matter to our reading of birth, motherhood, absence, and abandonment in Frankenstein--without reducing the novel to autobiography?
7. BONUS: How might we use education as an interpretive framework to analyze the Creature as a figure for the position of women in the early nineteenth century? (How does the Creature's experience of education, exclusion, dependence, and self-development compare with Wollstonecraft's portrayal of women's education?)
• Read Mary, A Fiction, p.73-103, (recommended: 11-50)
• Advertisement, p75
• IN delineating the Heroine of this Fiction, the Author attempts to develop a character different from those generally portrayed.
• In an artless tale, without episodes, the mind of a woman, who has thinking powers is displayed.
• Chapter 1
• Mary's mother Eliza,
  MARY, the heroine of this fiction, was the daughter of Edward, who married Eliza, a gentle, fashionable girl, with a kind of indolence in her temper, which might be termed negative good-nature: her virtues, indeed, were all of that stamp.
• Mary's father Edward,
  He hunted in the morning, and after eating an immoderate dinner, generally fell asleep: this seasonable rest enabled him to digest the cumbrous load; he would then visit some of his pretty tenants; and when he compared their ruddy glow of health with his wife's countenance, which even rouge could not enliven, it is not necessary say which a gourmand would give preference to.
• Mary's mother Eliza,
  She wondered her husband did not stay at home. She was jealous -- why did he not love her, sit by her side, squeeze her hand, and look unutterable things?
• Chapter 2
• IN due time she brought forth a son, a feeble babe; and the following year a daughter.
• Her children were left in the nursery; and when Mary, the little blushing girl, appeared, she would send the awkward thing away.
• An old house-keeper told her stories, read to her, and, at last, taught her to read.
• Neglected in every respect, and left to the operations of her own mind, she considered every thing that came under her inspection, and learned to think.
• Sublime ideas filled her young mind -- always connected with devotional sentiments; extemporary effusions of gratitude, and rhapsodies of praise would burst often from her, when she listened to the birds, or pursued the deer.
• Her sensibility prompted her to search for an object to love; on earth it was not to be found: her mother had often disappointed her, and the apparent partiality she shewed to her brother gave her exquisite pain -- produced a kind of habitual melancholy, led her into a fondness for reading tales of woe, and made her almost realize the fictitious distress.
• Other causes also contributed to disturb her repose: her mother's luke-warm manner of performing her religious duties, filled her with anguish; and when she observed her father's vices, the unbidden tears would flow.
• In this manner was she left to reflect on her own feelings; and so strengthened were they by being meditated on, that her character early became singular and permanent.
• Chapter 3
• Mary's friend Ann,
  This disappointment spread a sadness over her countenance, and made it interesting. She grew fond of solitude, and her character appeared similar to Mary's, though her natural disposition was much different.
• Mary was often hurt by the involuntary indifference which these consequences produced.
• Chapter 4
• In this retreat she read Thomson's Seasons, Young's Night-Thoughts, and Paradise Lost.
• In these little huts she rested, and denied herself every childish gratification, in order to relieve the necessities of the inhabitants. Her heart yearned for them, and would dance with joy when she had relieved their wants, or afforded them pleasure.
• Often did she taste unmixed delight; her joys, her ecstasies arose from genius.
• This habit of thinking, this kind of absorption, gave strength to the passions.
• Chapter 5, p92
• per footnote, Wollstonecraft's revenge fantasy,
  A FEW months after Mary was turned of seventeen, her brother was attacked by a violent fever, and died before his father could reach the school. She was now an heiress, and her mother began to think her of consequence, and did not call her the child.
• Engrossed by the scene of misery that she had been witness to, she walked silently by his side, when he roused her out of her reverie by telling her that in all likelihood had not many hours to live; and before she could return him any answer, informed her that they had both determined to marry her to Charles, his friend's son; he added, the ceremony was to be performed directly, that her mother might be witness of it; for such a desire she had expressed with childish eagerness.
• As she drew near the house, her wonted presence of mind returned: after this suspension of thought, a thousand darted into her mind, -- her dying mother, -- her friend's miserable situation, -- and an extreme horror at taking -- at being forced to take, such a hasty step; but she did not feel the disgust, the reluctance, which arises from prior attachment.
• Mary stood like a statute of Despair, and pronounced the awful vow without thinking of it; and then ran to support her mother, who expired the same night in her arms.
• Chapter 6
• MARY was allowed to pay the rent which gave her so much uneasiness, and she exerted every nerve to prevail on her father effectually to succour the family; but the utmost she could obtain was a small sum very inadequate to the purpose, to enable the poor woman to carry into execution a little scheme of industry near the metropolis.
• An extreme dislike took root in her mind; the sound of his name made her turn sick; but she forgot all, listening to Ann's cough, and supporting her languid frame.
• Chapter 7
• In a few days her father breathed his last. The horrid sensations his death occasioned were too poignant to be durable: and Ann's danger, and her own situation, made Mary deliberate what mode of conduct she would pursue. She feared this event might hasten the return of her husband, and prevent her putting into execution a plan she had determined on. It was to accompany Ann to a more salubrious climate.
• Chapter 8
• The society of men of genius delighted her, and improved her facilities. With beings of this class she did not often meet; it is a rare genus; her first favorites were men past the meridian of life, and of a philosophic turn.
• "This dear friend," she exclaimed, "I love for her agreeable qualities, and substantial virtues. Continual attention to her health, and the tender office of a nurse, have created an affection very like a maternal one -- I am her only support, she leans on me -- could I forsake the forsaken, and break the bruised reed -- No -- I would die first! I must -- I will go."
• She would have added, "you would very much oblige me by consenting;" but her heart revolted -- and irresolutely she wrote something about wishing him happy. -- "Do I not wish all the world well?" she cried, as she subscribed her name
• Chapter 9
• THERE was nothing now to retard their journey; and Mary chose Lisbon rather than France, on account of it being further removed from the only person she wished not to see.
• Three fashionable females, and two gentlemen; the one a brother of the eldest of the young ladies, and the other an invalid, who came, like themselves, for the benefit of the air. They entered into conversation immediately.
• The other, who had not said much, began to touch the violin, and played a little Scotch ballad; he brought such a thrilling sound out of the instrument, that Mary started, and looking at him with more attention than she had done before, and saw, in a face rather ugly, strong lines of genius. His manners were awkward, that kind of awkwardness which is often found in literary men: he seemed a thinker, and delivered his opinions in elegant expressions, and musical tones of voice.
• They chatted about their new acquaintance in their own apartment, and, with respect to the gentlemen, differed in opinion.
• Read Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, link
• a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore
• who considering females rather than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than rational wives
• I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness
• Discussion
• For this discussion, consider how Mary Shelley's Frankenstein engages with ideas about education, gender, sensibility, the sublime, and human development that emerge from the first half of Mary Wollstonecraft's Mary, A Fiction and from the excerpt of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman that you have read in this module.
• In these works, Wollstonecraft explores how education, social expectations, emotional development, reading, and encounters with nature shape a person's sense of self. Frankenstein raises related questions through the Creature's education and development, as well as through the novel's representations of gender, sympathy, and the sublime.
• Develop a 250–400 word post that presents a close reading of the first half of Mary, A Fiction and Frankenstein. Use Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman as an interpretive lens. Choose one of the following questions as the starting point for your discussion:
• Education and the self: How does the first half of Mary, A Fiction represent the relationship between education and the development of the self? Choose a passage from Mary and a passage or moment from Frankenstein. What do the two texts suggest about how education shapes a person's intellectual or moral development?
• Gender and education: How might Wollstonecraft's arguments about women's education in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman help us interpret the first half of Mary, A Fiction and the Creature's experience in Frankenstein? What do these texts suggest about the effects of educational opportunity, exclusion, dependence, or self-education?
• Sensibility and sympathy: How does the first half of Mary, A Fiction explore sensibility, sympathy, and emotional experience? Choose a passage from Mary and a passage or moment from Frankenstein. How do the texts distinguish between feeling that contributes to moral development and feeling that becomes destructive or unproductive?
• Reading and self-education: Mary's development is closely connected to reading, reflection, and independent thought. How does this compare with the Creature's education in Frankenstein? What do the two texts suggest about reading as a way of understanding oneself and the world?
• Nature and the sublime: How does the first half of Mary, A Fiction use nature and the sublime to shape Mary's emotional or intellectual development? Choose a passage from Mary and a passage or moment from Frankenstein. What does each character experience through encounters with the natural world?
• Gender and the Creature: Wollstonecraft argues that women's apparent weaknesses are shaped by the ways they are educated and socially formed. How might this idea help us interpret the Creature as a figure for the position of women in the early nineteenth century? Compare a passage from Wollstonecraft or the first half of Mary, A Fiction with a passage or moment from Frankenstein.
• Creation, education, and care: What connections emerge between Wollstonecraft's ideas about education and human development and Victor's relationship with the Creature? How might the first half of Mary, A Fiction help us think about the consequences of creating or raising a person without providing adequate education, companionship, or care?
• A question of your own: Develop your own comparison between the first half of Mary, A Fiction and Frankenstein around one of the lecture's central ideas: education, gender, sensibility, the sublime, creation, or responsibility.
• As you develop your response, refer to at least one specific passage from the first half of Mary, A Fiction and one specific passage or moment from Frankenstein. Quote or closely describe the language that you find most significant.
• You may also bring in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman to help develop your interpretation.
• The goal is not simply to identify a similarity between the texts. Instead, use Wollstonecraft's writing as an interpretive lens that helps you see something new or unexpected in Frankenstein. Pay particular attention to specific words, images, contrasts, or narrative choices in the passages you select.
• Discussion Prompt Choice:
• Reading and self-education: Mary's development is closely connected to reading, reflection, and independent thought. How does this compare with the Creature's education in Frankenstein? What do the two texts suggest about reading as a way of understanding oneself and the world?
• Mary, p.82, As she had learned to read, she perused with avidity every book that came in her way. Neglected in every respect, and left to the operations of her own mind, she considered every thing that came under her inspection, and learned to think.
• Frankenstein, p.136, "I cannot describe to you the agony of those reflections inflicted upon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with knowledge. Oh, that I had for ever remained in my native wood, nor known or felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!
  "Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on a rock.
• Discussion Post
• Self-education has contrasting effects on Mary and the Creature. For Mary, it starts her down the path of becoming "the Heroine" of the "artless tale ... who has thinking powers" (76). Once she is taught how to read, she becomes empowered to begin her heroine's journey entirely on her own. "Neglected in every respect, and left to the operations of her own mind, she considered every thing that came under her inspection, and learned to think" (82). One might have been able to overlook this passage, if not for the advertisement explicitly telling the reader the special power of the novel's heroine.
• Mary is reading every book that she comes across, but in particular, Wollstonecraft is explaining that Mary is not simply learning some pool of knowledge that comes explicitly from the texts. Instead, Mary is learning a skill as she reads these books: Mary is learning this ability to think.
• I can imagine a film adaptation of this scene, where at this point in the story, the audience is treated to a montage sequence of Mary reading alone. The audience would not see some specific knowledge being gained. Instead the audience would see the character development taking place, where Mary is transforming into this heroine with the ability to think.
• The Creature, however, experiences something quite different as he comes across books and educates himself. Despite acquiring the knowledge of these books by eavesdropping from the DeLacey's, the Creature is just as isolated as Mary. But as the Creature reflects on the books he encounters, he does not gain some self-empowering ability like Mary. Instead, the Creature reflects inward with everything he is learning and becomes tortured by the implications of what he is learning. The Creature explains, "I cannot describe to you the agony of those reflections inflicted upon me" (136). He questions his very nature, a monster disowned by all men.
• While there are two different outcomes to self-education in these works, maybe the important thing to take away is that in both cases, education is impactful. And it is especially impactful when the student begins to process and reflect with their own conclusions about what they are reading and what it means for them personally.
• Discussion Reply
• Laura - I note in your post that you are calling out, appropriately, Mary's mother Eliza for neglecting Mary. And you make the comparison between Eliza and Victor, both negligent as creators to their creations. One thing I wanted to add to this discussion, however, is this point that I don't think anyone has noted in the discussion. Separate from Mary and the Creature, we have a third important character who grows up without a mother: Mary Shelley. It starts to get quite complicated when you put it all together. Mary Shelley grows up without a mother. She reads her mother's works, which happen to tell the story of a heroine who grows up "without a mother." And then, Mary Shelley writes a novel where the Creature is created with no mother entirely. The prompt specifically asks us to "think about the consequences of creating or raising a person without providing adequate education, companionship, or care." Maybe we could say both Wollstonecraft and Shelley believe it has a lot to do with having a mother. (Admittedly, not my hottest take of the semester, but something I wanted to add.)