More sound and fury, signifying something

The Signet Classic's short bio of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley tells us that Mary wrote Frankenstein as a result of a story-writing competition among the Shelleys and Lord Byron. In the Author's Introduction to a re-issue of Frankenstein in 1831, Mary Shelley more than confirms this.

First of all, Mary puts herself in a community of Romantic poets amid the majesty of Nature that first shines, and then rains, upon them, thus confining them to the house--and ghost stories. (Shelley, viii) Then, after they read these ghost stories, Byron proposes that each of them write a ghost story (ix); then, after she listens to a conversation between Byron and Shelley related to galvanism in which "the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endued with vital warmth," Mary announces that she has thought of a story (x); then, after she writes a "few pages, of a short tale...Shelley urged me to develop the idea at greater length...." (xi) Two things stand out here. One--at every point, before and during the genesis of Frankenstein, relationship to another person, or persons, was crucial to the development of Mary Shelley's work. Two--Nature plays a pivotal role in the course of events. Not coincidentally, I suspect, both the importance of relationships and the centrality of Nature make a recurring significant appearance in Mary Shelley's novel.

At the very start of Victor Frankenstein's narrative, the focus is on family, marriage, and friends. Frankenstein says of his parents that "they seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of live to bestow them on me." (33) When he is about five, his parents adopt a peasant girl, Elizabeth, who becomes "my more than sister--the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and all my pleasures." (35) After his parents settle in Switzerland, he unites himself in the "bonds of the closest friendship to one among [my schoolfellows, Henry Clerval]." (37) Loving relationship with another is clearly the goal of existence, perhaps even the pinnacle of emotional health.

After Frankenstein leaves behind family and friends for the university at Ingolstadt, he develops a habit of solitary scientific pursuit. From asking himself, "Whence...did the principle of life proceed?" (50), Frankenstein then examines and analyzes "all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me." (51) At first, this "sudden light" waxes into "the first enthusiasm of success" (52), but soon it wanes into "my person...emaciated with confinement" as he pursues his goal of animating lifeless matter "in a solitary chamber...separated from all the other apartments by a gallery and a staircase...." (53) The result of all this isolated activity is a monster whose life is, in turn, utterly confined and defined by isolation.

The monster tells his creator that, in his wanderings, he soon discovered that people either fled from him or attacked him. Consequently, he creates for himself a "hovel" (102), from which he then observes a girl, a young man, and an old man. Especially, he observes that "they enjoyed one another's company and speech, interchanging looks of affection and kindness." (106) In addition, he hears the story of the beautiful woman from Turkey; he learns that she, Safie, and the young man, Felix, are in love--a love that was nearly thwarted by Safie's autocratic father. Far from being thwarted, their love is augmented by the study of language (presumably, French). Study does not, however, improve the monster's condition. On the contrary--"Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was." (125) More and more, the monster longs for what 20th century psychologist Abraham Maslow called belongingness. High stakes. And, of course, the monster loses. Once again, people (the girl/Safie) either flee him or people (the old man/Felix) attack him. So, now unquestionably isolated, the monster commands his creator: "My companion must be of the same species and have the same defects. This being you must create." (137)

Meantime, throughout, relationship to Nature is as important as relationship to another. Initially--although he has created the monster--Frankenstein can still take pleasure in "happy, inanimate nature.... A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstasy." (68) The monster also initially takes pleasure in Nature, particularly in the moonlight and in birdsong. (99) But soon, utterly alienated and enraged, the monster kills Frankenstein's much younger brother William and then implicates the devoted family servant, Justine, in the murder. Upon the deaths of William and Justine, Frankenstein cannot take pleasure in Nature, but rather considers drowning himself in a "beautiful and heavenly" lake. (87) There are a few times, later, when Nature can still please, divert, or console Frankenstein, but predominantly he feels like "a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul...." (153) Frankenstein's friend Clerval, who does not feel like "a blasted tree," feels invigorated by the country around the Rhine:

...I have seen the mountains of Le Valais, and the Pays de Vaud; but this country, Victor, pleases me more than all those wonders. The mountains of Switzerland are more majestic and strange, but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river that I never before saw equalled. (148)

And so on. The literary critic, Howard Bloom, in his Afterword to Frankenstein, suggests that Mary Shelley based Clerval on the Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and I suspect that he is right. Nature is absolutely no footnote to Henry Clerval...

...and neither is it a footnote to Elizabeth (Lavenza), who says to Frankenstein on their honeymoon:

Observe how fast we move along and how the clouds...render this scene of beauty still more interesting. Look also at the innumerable fish that are swimming in the clear waters.... What a divine day! (183)

Very apparently, unity with another and harmony with Nature are inextricably intertwined, in a novel, in the early 19th century. And they still are, for the non-fictional rest of us, in the early 21st century.