fifth plenary - eiurlbeebe/frankenstein.pdfyellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through...

English 2205

Fifth Plenary

11 Nov 20101Thursday, December 9, 2010

William Godwin (1756-1836)

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley (1797-1851)

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Claire Clairmont (1798-1879)Lord Byron (1792-1822)

2Thursday, December 9, 2010

Narrative Frames in FrankensteinWalton to Margaret Saville (sister)

Frame 1

Frame 2 Victor to Walton

Frame 3

Creature to Victor

Margaret Saville to ??


One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race.

As I spoke, a dark gloom spread over my listener's countenance. At first I perceived that he tried to suppress his emotion; he placed his hands before his eyes, and my voice quivered and failed me as I beheld tears trickle fast from between his fingers; a groan burst from his heaving breast. I paused; at length he spoke, in broken accents: "Unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!"

Is the moral of the story really so simple?


But it was in vain; I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms;corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the graveworms crawling in the folds of the flannel. I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the window shutters, I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created. (61)

Passage 1: Victor’s Dream ~


Six years had elapsed, passed in a dream but for one indelible trace, and I stood in the same place where I had last embraced my father before my departure for Ingolstadt. Beloved and venerable parent! He still remained to me. I gazed on the picture of my mother, which stood over the mantel-piece. It was an historical subject, painted at my father's desire, and represented Caroline Beaufort in an agony of despair, kneeling by the coffin of her dead father. Her garb was rustic, and her cheek pale; but there was an air of dignity and beauty, that hardly permitted the sentiment of pity. Below this picture was a miniature of William; and my tears flowed when I looked upon it. (76-77)

Passage 2: Victor returns home after William’s


. . . one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had I right, for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? (144)

Passage 3: Victor destroys female creature ~

I thought with a sensation of madness on my promise of creating another like to him, and trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. (145)


~ Conflating (overlaying): birth & death; motherhood & sexuality; marriage & kinship

~ Highly Emotional: shock & horror; despair & guilt; madness & violence

~ Text as Symptom: of what?

~ “Overdetermined” Scenes (Freud): many causes


The child was born at twenty minutes after eleven at night. Mary had requested that I would not come into the chamber till all was over, and signified her intention of then performing, the interesting office of presenting the new-born child to its father. I was sitting in a parlour; and it was not till after two o'clock on Thursday morning, that I received the alarming, intelligence, that the placenta was not yet removed, and that the midwife dared not proceed any further, and gave her opinion for calling in a male practitioner. I accordingly went for Dr. Poignand, physician and man-midwife to the same hospital, who arrived between three and four hours after the birth of the child. He immediately proceeded to the extraction of the placenta, which he brought away in pieces, till he was satisfied that the whole was removed. In that point however it afterwards appeared that he was mistaken.

The period from the birth of the child till about eight o'clock the next morning, was a period full of peril and alarm. The loss of blood was considerable, and produced an almost uninterrupted series of fainting fits. I went to the chamber soon after four in the morning, and found her in this state. She told me some time on Thursday, "that she should have died the preceding night, but that she was determined not to leave me." She added, with one of those smiles which so eminently illuminated her countenance, "that I should not be like Porson, "alluding to the circumstance of that great man having lost his wife, after being only a few months married. Speaking of what she had already passed through, she declared, "that she had never known what bodily pain was before."


“The progress of the disease was now uninterrupted. . . . On Monday, Dr. Fordyce forbad the child’s having the breast, and we therefore procured puppies to draw off the milk.”

—William Godwin, Memoirs of the Author of “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman”


(1) “Natural Man” - original condition is innocence, purity

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1776)

Emile, or On Education (1762)

- civilization corrupts and deforms

(2) Redefines Childhood - how best to educate to avoid corruption?

(3) Redefining Motherhood - nurture; breastfeed; no wet-nurses


“But when mothers deign to nurse their own children, then will be a reform in morals; natural feeling will revive in every heart; there will be no lack of citizens for the state; this first step by itself will restore mutual affection.”

-- Rousseau, Emile

“[the woman] who neither suckles nor educates her children, scarcely deserves the name of a wife, and has no right to that of a citizen.”

-- M. Wollstonecraft, Vindication (1792)


Increasing pressure on women to breastfeed

- natural- healthier (contamination from lower-class wet-nurses)- mother-child bond- character/personality transferred through milk

Breastfeeding Mother conflicts with Sexualized Female

Breastfeeding Mother conflicts with Sexualized Female


Cultural Battle or Anxiety over Woman’s Body

The Nightmare (1781), Henry Fuseli15Thursday, December 9, 2010

“Let not husbands be deceived: let them not expect attachment from wives, who, in neglecting to suckle their children, rend asunder the strongest ties in nature.” (William Buchan, Advice to Mothers, 1764)

“O! That I could prevail upon my fair countrywomen to become still more lovely in the sight of men! Believe it not, when it is insinuated, that your bosoms are less charming, for having a dear little cherub at your breasts.” (Hugh Smith, Letters to Married Women, 1767)

“Cold would be the heart of a husband, were he not rendered unnatural by early debauchery, who did not feel more delight at seeing his child suckled by its mother, than the most artful wanton tricks could ever raise; yet this natural way of cementing the matrimonial tie.” (Wollstonecraft, Vindication, 1792)


“Oftener he was seenPropping a pale and melancholy factUpon the mother’s bosom, resting thusHis head upon one breast, while from the otherThe babe was drawing in its quiet food.” (Wordsworth, Prelude 1805)

“I have heard many ladies give, as a reason for not suckling, that they never had any nipples at all; that is impossible . . . for nature is always formed perfect.”

“. . . for I will take on me to say, that not one woman in ten has perfect nipples, and it is that which occasions the violent pain in attempting to open the milk tubes.” (Sarah Brown, Letter to a Lady on the Best Means of Obtaining the Milk 1777)


“Can a woman carry containers of her own milk on an airplane? Before the summer of 2007, not more than three ounces, because the TSA classed human milk with shampoo, toothpaste, and Gatorade, until a Minneapolis woman heading home after a business trip was reduced to tears when a security guard at LaGuardia poured a two-day supply of her milk into a garbage bin.” (The New Yorker Jan. 2009)


Maternal vs. Sexual Body ~ Mutually Exclusive?

"at last, in his despair, and thinking that the passion in him would make a miracle, he pulled his shirt away and tried himself to suckle the child.”

Newman Ivey White, Percy Bysshe Shelley Biographer


Frontispiece to 1831 edition of Frankenstein by Theodor von Holst


Fribourg

Bern

Zürich

Idrija

Turin

Brenner Pass Idrija

Innsbruck

Matrei

TelfsSölden

Bressanone

Trento

San Leonardoin Passiria

La Valle

KitzbühelOberndorf

Interlaken

Altdorf

Riemenstalden St. Moritz

MendrisioZermatt

BardonecchiaModane

Les Deux Alpes

!Evian

Albertville

Chamonix

Mt. BlancTunnel

FréjusTunnel

Great St.Bernard Tunnel

Lötschberg Tunnel(base tunnel

under construction)

St. Gotthard Tunnel(base tunnel

under construction)

Simplon Tunnel

San BernardinoTunnel

Sauze d'OulxSestriere

Val-d'Isère

Cogne

Fribourg

Bern

MunichG E R M A N Y

Vienna

Venice

Ljubljana

I T A L Y

Turin

Milan

MONACO

Savona

Genoa

Zürich

LakeGeneva

Po

L i g u r i a nS e a

Mt. Blanc15,781 ft4,810 m

Jungfrau

Eiger

Matterhorn

Triglav

ENGADINE

Stubai Glacier

Pitztal Glacier

M A R I T I ME

AL

P

SA

L

P S

IsèreSAVOY

TIROL

ITALY

ITALYAUSTRIA

LIECHTENSTEIN

F R A N C E

FRANCE

S W I T Z E R L A N D

A U S T R I ASLOVENIA

SWITZ.ITALY

Scale varies in this perspective.Distance from Bardonecchiato Innsbruck is 270 miles(435 kilometers).

North

RELIEF BY TIBOR G. TOTHNGM MAPS

´

InternationalboundaryRailroad

Road

DIRECTIONOF VIEW

ATLANTICOCEAN

M e d i t e r r a n e a n S e a

E U R O P E

A F R I C A

SPAIN

PORTUGAL

ITALY

FRANCE

© 2006 National Geographic Society . A ll rights reserved .

Fribourg

!Evian

Albertville

Chamonix

Mt. BlancTunnel

Löt

un

Fribourg

LakeGeneva

Mt. Blanc15,781 ft4,810 m

IsèreSAVOY


fifth plenary - eiurlbeebe/frankenstein.pdfyellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through...

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