See also: Frankenstein, Prométhée (homonymy)

Frankenstein or the modern Prométhée is a Roman Gothic and considered a posteriori as the precursor of the Science-fiction, published in 1818 by the British young person Mary Shelley, mistress and future wife of the poet Shelley.

The novel is the account of a polar attempt at exploration by Robert Walton . The major part of this account is consisted the history of the life of Victor Frankenstein that Walton collected on the ice-barrier. This account turns him even around the narration to Frankenstein , by the monster to which it gave life, of the torments of this one, which justify hatred that it carries to him.

History

Mary was flees of in his/her father, the anarchistic philosopher William Godwin, in 1814, at the 16 years age, with a friend of this one, the poet and Libertin Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The idea of the novel goes back to 1816. John William Polidori and Lord Byron resided at the Diodati Villa with Cologny close to Geneva on the edge of the Lac Léman and accepted the visit of Shelley, Mary and its half-sister Claire Clairmont. Being retained inside by the ceaseless rain of the year without summer (which it described in the poem Darkness ), Byron proposed with its hosts to write each one a history of phantom . Each one more or less discharged its task, Byron wrote a fragmentary scenario which Polidori took as a starting point to write in two or three mornings The Vampyre , the novel which is at the origin of the kind and which will inspire Dracula. Shelley wrote a historiette which it ignored quickly and who was not preserved.

Mary, as for it, was unable to invent one of them. But a few days later, between the 10 and on June 16th, 1816, under the influence of the reading of the (in their French version), of the Vathek of William Beckford and a good amount of Opium, it made a nightmare where it had the vision of the pale student leaning on the thing which it had animated .

December 10th, 1816, Harriet, the wife of Shelley, enclosure, committed suicide after that Ci proposed to him to live in Eternal triangle. December 30th Shelley and Mary married, and Godwin agreed to re-examine his/her daughter. Mary, under this new name of Shelley, finished Frankenstein in spring 1817. She made it publish the following year anonymously.

Context and sources

One already quoted above William Beckford whose whole sentences are included in Frankenstein . the Paradise lost of John Milton was also obviously an important source of inspiration for the desperate search of the monster.

The alchemist Johann Conrad Dippel could provide the character of the insane scientist. Lazzaro Spallanzani provided certainly the character of impassioned natural Philosophie.

The beginning of XIXe corresponds to the beginnings of the scientific Révolution which saw science leaving the bosom of philosophy to marry with the technique.

The beginning of XIXe also corresponds to the beginnings of the Industrial revolution. The revolt of the Luddites began a few years before the escape of Mary and was crushed in blood at the time when it put the last hand at Frankenstein . It would be amazing that she did not hear, of the many radical thinkers who attended his father or her husband, no analysis of the philosophical implications of this rebellion against progress.

The feminism of his/her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, with whom it is sometimes confused, shows through in the sturdy characters of the female characters who contrast with almost ballottés male characters without resistance by the events. The short mentions on the education of the women also point out the work of his/her mother and her own childhood.

Topics approached

Very generally, we can say that in this work, Mary Shelley approaches various topics like the shade & the light - orphans - loneliness - love and friendship - the eloquence - education - the injustice - innocence - the monstrosity - science and conscience - appearance and the prejudices - the condition of the woman - the landscapes and moods - the risks and progress. (work studied in complementary English into Final for the large variety of its topics precisely)

A Greek tragedy

Subtitle 2 evokes in itself a Greek tragedy, but it is especially the inescapable character of misfortunes that cause Frankenstein and the monster, despite everything their attempts to make the happiness of those which they like and admire, and actually through these same attempts they, which makes novel a tragedy.

Science like Hybris

Science while becoming operative place the man out of his natural function in the order of the world, the exhibitor thus with the revenge on Némésis. All that it makes to improve the world supposes by there that Ci is not perfect, blaming the infallibility of the gods and causing a kickback which cancels, even opposite, the supposed benefits of its work.

Frankenstein, like Prométhée (or the snake of the Genesis), creates a being provided with the crowned fire, which with the " knowledge of the good and the mal". And it is this gift to him even, conceived a priori like a blessing, which is a posteriori the cause of its " chute".

In all the novel the fear quasi-nun which inspires the beauty and the power of virgin nature, character with whole share of the novel, in opposition to the horror that the monster-artefact inspires underlines where this demarcation between the good and the evil passes, or more exactly between the correct vision of the world and the error consisted the operational use of science.

The psychology of the researcher

The analysis of the behavior of Frankenstein goes well beyond its particular case. All the researchers are subjected to this attitude which makes them fight without slackening against the last obstacle before absolute knowledge, without taking time and the retreat to realize that this last obstacle is only one moreover and leads only to problems each time more complex and more, nor to realize that the reversed obstacles open the door with consequences each time more harmful without still making it possible to solve human miseries which justify research.

Never, by manufacturing the monster, Frankenstein does not have a clear vision nor even total of what it is making. It is justified by the horror which the death of his/her mother inspired to him, horror which it wants to avoid living again or to see living again by discovering the secrecy of the life. But it is only when it is well too late and that its work destroys all that had importance for him that it confusedly starts to carry out its responsibility in the generation for the fact that he sought to abolish.

The relation Creator creature

The fact that the monster is vegetarian like Mary and Percy Shelley gives an index on the fact that the author projects himself not in Frankenstein but in his creature. The monster is thus a symbol of the human being and Frankenstein that of the Creator, which is confirmed by the subtitle.

Mary Shelley says to us that the man became bad because it was driven out garden of Eden and not the opposite. She also says to us that the destiny of the Creator and his creature are indissolubly dependant. Frankenstein cannot give up the monster whatever the desire and the need that it tests some, and the monster does not have any more reason to live when Frankenstein dies, while at the same time all its life tended only to destroy it.

One could evoke Freud or Nietzsche if they had evoked the death of the father or the death of God only of the decades later.

Political pessimism

Frankenstein is a deeply pessimistic work. The worst seems inevitable while at the same time clearly is seen than it would be necessary to make to avoid it.

After Frankenstein Mary Shelley wrote to the last man , a work where it describes the end of humanity which it locates in 2073, adding that Nature does not cease sending signs to us. In this Mary novel and all the thinkers whom she liked are put in scene in a transparent way and are unable to avoid this end.

First novel of science fiction

It is often considered that it is about the first novel of Science-fiction. The time was that of the beginnings of the control of the electricity which seemed magic and touching with the divine power. In residence close to Geneva, between the the Jura and the Valley of Arve, Mary Shelley, certainly knowledge of the efforts of control of electrical energy had had, the hydro-electric power which was going to ensure the richness of the the Alps of North.

Summary

Walton writes letters with his sister in connection with his forwarding towards the North pole, on board a boat. He sees passing a toboggan, and meets a man wedged on a block of ice with a similar toboggan: Frankenstein. This one, despaired and having lost any taste for the life, tells in Walton the cause of his misfortunes.

He is resulting from a family comparatively numerous which fixes itself at Geneva. He expresses an interest for science, and leaves to study. During its fast progress, it realizes that it is able to create an living being. He then devotes body and heart to this task which occupies it during months, and gives rise to a superhuman but hideous being of appearance. Whereas it takes life, Frankenstein, horrified, flees. It meets the following day his friend of childhood, Clerval, and fall seriously sick, then cures a few months later. Clerval studies, him too. Whereas their return to Geneva east about to be envisaged, Frankenstein learns that his/her brother was assassinated by a robber. He goes to the site and sees his monster, close to the place of the crime. The bona fide of that which is marked does not leave any doubt about the identity of the culprit for Frankenstein, but she however is condemned to died and is carried out. Despaired, Frankenstein leaves to Chamonix where it meets the monster, towards which it tests a burning hatred. This one tells its history to him.

Given up with itself, the monster learned how all alone to survive. It comes quickly into contact with the human ones which, frightened by its deformed aspect, drive out it. It comes from there to observe a family where the education of foreign a right arrival and the discovery of books make it possible the monster to learn how to speak and to read. After some time, it comes into contact with the father, blind, but is driven out by the remainder of the family, which flees, letting it mature of the plans of revenge against the human race which rejects it because of its appearance, and against its creator which left it only, without friend nor woman. In possession of the newspaper of Frankenstein, it leaves towards Geneva. It meets there the brother of Frankenstein, which it kills by learning the identity from his father, and arranges itself so that another is shown crime: Justine Moritz, an young girl whom the father of Frankenstein had accommodated at his place.

The monster requires of Frankenstein to design a woman to him, so that they can live both isolated and happy. Frankenstein accepts unwillingly, while being informed of the projects of the monster to follow it and to supervise it, and leaves for the England with Clerval. Whereas this one remains with friends, it is devoted to its work, but suddenly realizes that its work would make it possible the monster to have a descent which would be a serious danger for the mankind. It destroys its unfinished creation then, learns with the monster which then presents its will not to respect its promise. The monster then prevents it its project to transform its existence into hell, and flees. Frankenstein then will throw its instruments of chemistry to water, but is involved towards the shore Irish where he learns the murder from his best friend Clerval of which he is marked. It is seriously sick, but survives for it, and its innocence is proven. It returns at his place with his father, come to visit it, and prepares then with its marriage with his adoptive sister, Elizabeth. However, consolidating the warning, badly interpreted by Frankenstein, out of its presence the day of the marriage, the monster kills it then. Frankenstein, horrified, will learn the news with his/her father who dies about it. It then dedicates its life to the tracking of the monster which it created, so that only one of them survives. The monster, having fun of this play and conscious of its superiority, takes it along towards North because it is insensitive cold. Having lost the trace of the monster, although helped by the spirits of the victims of the monster, Frankenstein is mislaid.

Forced by the crew to turn back, Walton assists, impotent, with dead of his/her friend Frankenstein, who does not have enough any more of force to continue his tracking. He sees the monster which, having turned back him also, came to see the corpse of its creator. He is expressed on his dislike of itself by thinking of the murders that he made by desire for being avenged for an unconscious and irresponsible creator, but that he feels reluctant, under the terms of its initial aspiration with the good, destroyed by the spite of the human race. He announces his project of Suicide R with the north pole, and leaves.

Adaptations

Frankenstein was several times adapted to the Cinéma. The first film was carried out in 1931 by James Whale, with Boris Karloff in the role of the creature. The make-up had been created by Jack Pierce and remained famous. In 1935, the same James Whale carries out a continuation, been engaged of Frankenstein ( The Bride off Frankenstein ). Will follow a very great number of adaptations, of which most known are undoubtedly those of the British studio Hammer, in the Années 1950, and, more recently, the film of Kenneth Branagh, Mary Shelley' S Frankenstein , with Robert De Niro in the role of the monster.

Film adaptation

Frankenstein (Universal Monster)

Frankenstein (Hammer Films)

Adaptation - Dance

  • Frankenstein Choreography, dramaturgy: Guilherme Botelho, Large Theater of Geneva 2007

Adaptation - Cartoon

  • Frankenstein is an adaptation in signed Cartoon Marion Mousse and Marie Galopin.

See too

Related articles

External bond

  • www.frankensteinfilms.com - Frankenstein: films and novel and plays (in English)
  • To read in English Frankenstein, gold the Modern Prometheus on wikisource (in)
  • To read in French Frankenstein, editions free and free Diogène Ebooks (Fr)
  • Of the golden age in Prométhée: the mythical choice enters natural happiness and technological advance

Simple: Frankenstein

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