{"id":11398,"date":"2018-01-01T16:13:11","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T21:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lawrencecconnolly.com\/archive\/?p=11398"},"modified":"2023-07-07T22:43:30","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T02:43:30","slug":"two-hundred-years-ago-todayfirst-publication-of-a-misunderstood-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lawrencecconnolly.com\/archive\/2018\/01\/01\/two-hundred-years-ago-todayfirst-publication-of-a-misunderstood-classic\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Hundred Years Ago Today:<\/i>
First Publication of a Misunderstood Classic
"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"On New Years Day 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein<\/em> first appeared in a press run of 500 copies. Though published anonymously, readers at the time assumed it was written by her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.<\/p>\n

That incorrect assumption proved to be only the first of many associated with Shelley’s greatly misunderstood novel.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, the journal Dissections<\/em> published “The Grave Misunderstanding,” an essay in which I address one of those\u00a0 assumptions. Today, in honor of the novel’s bicentennial, I’m reposting that essay here. If it sparks your interest, you might want to check out the novel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You will be glad you did.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Grave Misconception:<\/span><\/h3>\n

The Textual Origins of Mary Shelley\u2019s Monster <\/em><\/span><\/h3>\n

First published in:<\/p>\n

Dissections: <\/strong><\/a>
\nA Journal of Contemporary Horror<\/strong><\/a>
\n<\/em>University of Brighton
\n31 March 2013<\/p>\n

A few months ago, a monster came to town. It started as a small disturbance south of Jamaica and grew as it headed north, picking up speeds and moisture, and finally developing into a hurricane as it ascended the eastern seaboard of the United States. Along the way, it earned the name Sandy, but that changed when it veered inward and merged with another storm blowing from the west. After that, the monster earned a new name: Frankenstorm<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"I spent some quality time with that storm while driving north to The World Fantasy Convention<\/a> in Toronto, plowing through its driving rain as I followed its path through Pennsylvania and on into Ontario \u2013 and all the way I heard people on the radio calling it Frankenstorm<\/em>. Why? Because it was no longer just\u00a0one<\/em>\u00a0storm. It was a collection of storms, woven together to form one raging entity \u2013 sort of like the Frankenstein monster, right?<\/p>\n

Actually, no.<\/p>\n

Not if we\u2019re talking about the creature as presented in Mary Shelley\u2019s novel. That creature, as a close investigation of the text will show, is not a combination of parts. It is an organic whole created through a mysterious process that is never fully explained in Victor Frankenstein\u2019s story. And yet, the misconception \u2013 that Victor robbed graves for parts that he stitched into a gigantic patchwork man \u2013 seems to have taken on a life of its own.<\/p>\n

\"\"Consider, for example, the back-cover synopsis of the Oxford World\u2019s Classics edition of\u00a0Frankenstein, or a Modern Prometheus<\/em>, which refers to the novel as \u201ca story about a student of natural philosophy who learns the secret of imparting life to a creature constructed from bones he has collected from charnel houses.\u201d Unfortunately, such misconceptions seem to be everywhere. Indeed, some esteemed readers and critics seem to be under a similar impression, which means that it might be time to return to the text and take note of the true nature of Shelley\u2019s monster.<\/p>\n

The roots of the grave misconception lie in Victor Frankenstein\u2019s early accounts of the monster\u2019s creation. Relating his story to Walton, he explains how he \u201cwas led to examine the cause and progress of [. . .] decay and forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses\u201d (pp. 51-52).<\/p>\n

Clearly, he does spend time among the dead, but his primary reason for being there is to examine the process of decomposition, the inevitable decay of living matter that he wants to reverse. To cure death, he must first understand it.<\/p>\n

Nowhere does he indicate that he hopes to assemble various pieces of decaying matter into a living creature. Even when he admits to taking some bone with him, it is so that he can continue his observations back at his workshop, not because he plans to assemble them into a creation. As he puts it: \u201cI collected bones from charnel-houses and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame\u201d (pp. 54-55). Note the actions. He is probing and examining, not assembling, and we should keep these actions in mind when he later claims that \u201cthe dissecting room and slaughter-house furnished many of my materials\u201d (p. 55). Materials for study, not assembly.<\/p>\n

\"\"The most compelling indication that Frankenstein is not assembling his creation from scavenged materials comes after he has spent some time studying his collected pieces. It is here that he reaches the conclusion that \u201cas the minuteness of the parts formed a great hindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make the being of gigantic stature, that is to say, about eight feet in height, and proportionably large\u201d (pp. 53-54). Thus, since human-size parts are too small to work with, he must \u201cmake\u201d something larger, and although the means of this making is never revealed, the text suggests that whatever he is doing, it is not creating a patchwork man.<\/p>\n

One must also wonder why Frankenstein would bother building his monster out of pieces in the first place. Why do all that stitching when he could simply animate an already intact corpse? Logic, as well as the text, suggests he is up to something else.<\/p>\n

\"\"It is also worth considering the novel\u2019s subtitle:\u00a0A Modern Prometheus<\/em>. The Prometheus here is not so much the\u00a0pyrphoros<\/em>\u00a0who stole fire from the heavens, although that would seem to be the case from watching the antics of Henry Frankenstein in James Whale\u2019s\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em>(1931) and\u00a0Bride of Frankenstein\u00a0<\/em>(1935) [right]. Henry might use kites to steal lightning, but Victor does no such thing. Despite an early scene in the novel where he learns about the power of nature by pondering a lightning-struck tree, it is arguably the case that Victor does not employ any electricity in his creation process. The single use of the word \u201cspark\u201d (p. 57) in the novel\u2019s creation scene is metaphorical, and his work on the mate later in the book includes no mention of electricity at all.<\/p>\n

Instead, Victor is more of a\u00a0plasticator<\/em>, a shaper of lifeless (as opposed to dead) materials, a natural philosopher who \u201ctortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay\u201d (p. 54).<\/p>\n

\"\"Finally, we should note that the first visual representations of Frankenstein\u2019s monster show an organically formed creature. Consider, for example, the monster as performed by T. P. Cooke in the 1823 stage play\u00a0Presumption, or the Fate of Frankenstein<\/em>\u00a0[pictured at left], or Theodor Von Holst\u2019s frontispiece illustration for the novel\u2019s 1831 edition [pictured below].<\/p>\n

In both representations, the monster appears much as described in Shelley\u2019s text: \u201cHis yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness\u201d (p. 57).<\/p>\n

\"\"Nowhere in any of these images do we detect signs of scarring or stitching. The creature is a single, organic entity, with an outsized physique and intellect far exceeding that of a natural man. As such, I think Victor Frankenstein\u2019s original creation poses a much more frightening adversary than the one most people think of when they hear the name Frankenstein. Moreover, I feel we do a disservice to the complexity of the source material when we accept the misinterpreted vision that is accepted as common knowledge today.<\/p>\n

As for Frankenstorm, its makeup also seems to be based on a misconception. It wasn\u2019t really a collection of isolated storms that stitched themselves together and became a monster, but a single entity, an organic whole spawned not by isolated weather patterns, but by the current state of global warming that some people still deny.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the topic of another essay.<\/p>\n

Source
\nShelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (1818)\u00a0Frankenstein, or, the Modern Prometheus<\/em>, ed. Joseph, M.K. (Oxford: Oxford UP), 1998.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On New Years Day 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein first appeared in a press run of 500 copies. Though published anonymously, readers at the time assumed it was written by her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley. That incorrect assumption proved to be only the first of many associated with Shelley’s greatly misunderstood novel. A few years ago, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-cat-21st-centuryscop","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-centuryscop"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t