Frankenstein is Mary Shelley’s first novel. Though as the wife of famous Romantic poet Percy Shelley, Mary had never actively participated in political movements or polemics. Similarly, there is not even the least direct mention of political stance. However, this novel of hers has been remembered during subsequent periods of social crisis again and again. If we consider the time Mary Shelly lived and place her novel Frankenstein in that historical setting, we may identify a connection of political ideology with her literary work. This means, that Frankenstein could be a political allegory instead of a philosophical one.
This essay will try to explore the political critiques in Frankenstein as a political allegory. The approaches adopted in this essay will mainly be historical. First, I’ll try to make a summary of the connotations of monster images in literary and political fields throughout history to the point Mary composed her novel, roughly draw their connection to the characters in Frankenstein, and then deal with Mary Shelley’s encounters with this heritage with a biographical perspective. Second, I’ll render a detailed analysis of the text with a focus on its central characters, namely the monster and its creator, discussing their relations to the Enlightenment thoughts, their cultural and social implications, and most importantly, the unfolding of the characters’ tragedies and their causes. This essay will be a more direct paralleling of the cultural and historical contexts with the novel’s plot to further research topics dealt with in previous chapters, an exploration of the author’s political critique concealing in the novel discussing her pntanglement with some of the brilliant thinkers and advocators of radical politics at the time. After everything is done, I’ll attempt to decide what Mary Shelley’s political attitude is in Frankenstein. It concludes that Mary Shelley, though still a young girl then and perhaps remaining to share much of the Romantic ideals and principles with her parents and husband at that period, had already perceived the defects of their ideology, especially the disillusionment of politics to benefit all mankind. She found the dangers of this ideology in political practices and metaphorically warned its consequences to people by this novel. This is my explanation of what kind of political allegory Frankenstein is.
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This novel obyMary Shelley stands aside from the direct ideological polemics on politics that accompanied and after the French Revolution. But detachment is not the quality that strikes general readers even in her contemporary age. Written at a time of ‘severe distress’, when Regency England was facing ‘the most widespread, persistent, and dangerous disturbances, short of an actual revolution and civil war, that England has known in modern time’ (Darvall, 1934, 306). The beginning of Frankenstein’s text cited a few lines from Milton’s work, Paradise Lost: ‘Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mold Me, man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?—’(Shelley, epigraph) It sounds like a child’s (creation) charge of his parent’s (creator) birth of him, which easily leads our association with the complaint that Frankenstein’s monster made to his creator Victor Frankenstein. An irresponsible and inept parent made him a fiend. Milton’s other work extended ‘monstrous’ crime from blood relations to cover contractual obligations. Long before the monster of Frankenstein, in image of monsters already implied rebellion or an unexpected turning against one’s parent or benefactor. Thus, though the monster in Frankenstein seemed a victim of his creator’s miscreation, he finally turned into a real ‘monster’ that takes revenge against his creator, a returning to the old connotations of monster. However, how can we prove that Mary Shelley has a resourceful heritage of monsters throughout history with a focus on its political connotations, especially till the French Revolutionary age during the creation of her monster in this sparkling myth of Frankenstein?
It is not difficult to back this presupposition from the biographical perspective of the author. Mary Shelley is the very daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, two brilliant radical scholars in the Revolution debate. In this sense, she was born in the center of the Enlightenment. Though her mother died of a puerperal infection ten days after Mary’s Birth in 1797, Mary was raised by her father with rich immerging in Enlightenment knowledge and thought. Though Godwin himself felt he was a busy father and was apt to command his children ‘in a way somewhat sententious and authoritative’ (Mellor, 2012), being Mary’s only left-alive parent to rely on, his works and thoughts inevitably familiarized themselves with Mary during the efforts of a daughter who felt ‘excessive & romantic attachment (Shelley, 1980-1988) towards her father to attract his attention and to acquire his admiration and affection. (Mellor, 1988) When her father remarried Mary Jane Clairmont, Mary Shelley felt increasingly detached from domestic affection and gradually began to spend an amazingly long time with Wollstonecraft’s books at her grave according to her accounts. So it is quite clear that Mary Shelley was very familiar with the radical arguments of the Revolution Age even in her childhood.
“… by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open;…” (Shelley,1818)
This is the first account of the creature’s image after he was infused with life by Victor Frankenstein. Before that , we already know that his figure is huge. In the aesthetic sense, the creature’s image complies with the classic characteristics of a monster: though not combined with different creatures, it did multiply to excess like Argus; his limbs were in proportion but its surface had those abnormal features that would be sensuously defined as ugly. However, the monster’s physical appearance proved to be ugly according to Victor’s description above. Yet this seemingly objective description of the monster tends to be inadequate: for a reader of the text, these words could inform them that the monster’s appearance is unusual and thus ugly rather than inevitably extremely frightening. If we review the ensuring accounts of the creature’s behavior, my point here would be even more evident:
“… by the dim and yellow light of the moon…I beheld the wretch……., seemingly to detain me.” (Shelley,1818)
Then the creature had just come to life, as a new life, he hadn’t done anything wrong in this world yet. He is as innocent as a blank paper and analogous to a newborn baby. He stretched out his hand to make the first touch with another life in this world. His inarticulate sounds, his grinning, and his stretching hands can be interpreted as friendly inquiry into this world.
The horror at seeing the monster is almost totally rendered by Victor’s subjective narrative of his feelings. Yet it is unreliable to identify Victor’s individual fearful feelings which went to the extreme at a mere look with general human reaction. No matter what caused Victor to run away from the creature, the cause lay in his side instead of the creature’s. The ‘birth’ moment of the creature, ugly and terrible it might be at sight, tends to make sympathetic feeling in readers ungrateful and ingratitude towards its parent. Yet Innocent and helpless as the creature was at that moment, he did not even deserve the label of ‘monster’ yet. He was just an aesthetically defective baby, indeed deserted by his ‘parent’ at the very beginning of his life in this earthly world.
Slightly after, the creature left Victor’s laboratory, found fire left by some wandering beggars, and then learned to produce fire to warm himself through reflection and experiments on his own. Till this point, the development of the creature was molded completely by nature. Nature acted as a harsh master, she exercised the creature’s expanding mind while punishing his newly formed body. His development is exactly by Enlightenment philosophy; He is essentially good. Uncorrupted by the influence of civilization, he can be worthier, and more authentically noble than a contemporary product of civilized training.
However, this poor creature’s second encounter with humans is not as fortunate as the first. Though he had a great admiration for the neat houses and gardens, the tempting foods on the windows ledges of cottages, and his inquiring nature induced him to enter ‘one of the best’ of the houses, what happened next would be obvious…
It was when he took refuge in the hovel near De Lacey’s home that the creature’s education took place. He learned to speak their language, to read, and to understand something of the values and abuses of society. Books shaped the creature’s conception of reality, giving him the ideological conceptions by which to explain the social behavior he observed. His mind began to be influenced by human civilization. Good or bad, he would never return to his former innocent state. He began to be aware of the social injustice in human society, offered models for ideal feeling, and had his rational judgments of good and evil originating from Milton’s Paradise Lost.
His initial talk with the old De Lacey was positive. His words wareelegant and eloquent while Father De Lacey is blind and therefore the monster’s appearance cannot lead to any prejudiced ideas. However, before the creature could accomplish his appeal, the other family members returned unexpectedly, and the creature was beaten out of the house. He still refused to think evil of them and blames himself for being discovered until he found the whole family had permanently left the cottage. That’s when he began to let negative emotions like hatred and revenge rrulehis mind.
From the above-detailed analysis of the creature, we may find that there is a rich heritage of monster images and connotations in history. The aesthetic features are typical monster features; the monster’s finalviolencet revenge towards his creator's attitude behavior towards one’s parent—ma oral connotation inherent in the word ‘monster’; his rise from death and grave and perish in flame also resembles monster images in conservative writings during the Revolution age. However, though the novel draws on monster traditions in the literary and political fields, especially the revolutionary and antirevolutionary political metaphors, it greatly complicates them.
To a significant extent, we sympathize with the monster, though he possesses considerable physical power, he is a rejected wretch, a victim of a system. If taken as a political metaphor, his initial deserting by Victor could be viewed as pa political leader’s irresponsible behavior towards his people, a political leader’s priority of his good to his people’s wellbeing. Then it is the parents, the irresponsible political leaders that are to blame rather than the innocent people. At this point, the text seems prominently radical.
European states began their expansion in the world roughly in the 15th century. They colonized lands in Africa, later in Asia, and the Americas, seeking mineral resources, farmland, and labor. Colonizers often brutally killed the indigenous people or made these people slaves and servants, incorporated into the expanding states to function as laborers.
In the novel, the creature also ‘wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants’. (Shelley,1818) Yet thinking about his harsh treatment by the De Lacey family and by all humans he encountered vitally because of his deformed figure, he analogizes these ingenious people symbolically: naturally good and virtuous but have to bear unfair treatment by civilized and thus seemly ‘superior’ Europeans. If we understand the text like this, the political critique is even more accurate here. Though there is noopeny support for the notion in the novel, the detailed description of the creature’s development closely follows the Enlightenment philosophy, especially Rousseau’s education theory as we specified above like the description of the creature’s intuitive good tendency and self-education in nature, we cannot help view the creature with awe, and at least sympathize with this ideology thus feel the text’s implicit stance against colonialism.
Now that we have minutely analyzed Mary Shelley’s political critique in Frankenstein, at has been demonstrated that Mary Shelley, still a young girl during her composition of the novel and perhaps remaining to share much of the Romantic ideals and principles with her parents and husband at that period though, had already perceived the defects of their ideology, especially the disillusionment of pPrometheanpolitics(remember the subtitle of the novel: Modern Prometheus) to benefit all mankind. She found the dangers of ideology in political practices and metaphorically warned its consequences in her debut novel which is regarded as a fusing of Romanticism and Gothicism.
Yet as a political allegory, Mary Shelley did more than that in her novel. She molds both the radical and conservative political ideologies into a unique third and moves inside the mind of the monster as well as its creator.
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