{"id":1588,"date":"2019-05-13T10:14:14","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T08:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=1588"},"modified":"2019-05-13T10:14:14","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T08:14:14","slug":"in-the-monsters-own-words-getting-to-know-frankensteins-new-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2019\/05\/13\/in-the-monsters-own-words-getting-to-know-frankensteins-new-man\/","title":{"rendered":"IN THE MONSTER\u2019S OWN WORDS: GETTING TO KNOW FRANKENSTEIN\u2019S NEW MAN<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was interviewed last week on a Catalan-language radio show on monsters (\u201cAutoCine: Els Monstres\u201d, Cerdanyola R\u00e0dio, https:\/\/www.ivoox.com\/autocine-els-monstres-audios-mp3_rf_35501071_1.html<\/a> ). The presenter\u2019s last question was \u2018which famous monster is most imperfectly known?\u2019 and I had to reply that this is Frankenstein\u2019s creature. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the movies have transmitted a very limited image of this monster, based on the theatrical line descended from Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein<\/em> (1823), the melodrama (with songs!) by Richard Brinsley Peake. This was the first adaptation of Mary Shelley\u2019s novel and, as happens with modern film adaptations, many audience members took for granted its fidelity. The famous 1931 film directed by James Whale is, in fact, based on the 1927 play by English author Peggy Webbling, who must have been familiar with Peake\u2019s play. She, like him, characterises the monster as an inarticulate being, incapable of uttering any coherent speech. Webbling, incidentally, is also responsible for the absurdity of calling the creature by his maker\u2019s name. The monster speaks in later films (for instance in Roger Corman\u2019s 1990 Frankenstein Unbound<\/em>, based on Brian Aldiss\u2019s novel) but only Kenneth Branagh\u2019s 1994 adaptation reflects Mary\u2019s original conception of the creature as an intelligent, perceptive individual. Even so, Branagh\u2019s cannot be said to give an accurate picture of the monster\u2019s acumen and singular process of self-education.<\/p>\n

Many critics have disputed Mary\u2019s authorial decisions about this self-education. The monster, if you recall, takes shelter secretly in a hovel attached to the humble home of the De Laceys, a French family down on their luck for political and personal reasons. The arrival of the son\u2019s Turkish fianc\u00e9e, Saffie, is used by Mary as the excuse to have the monster witness her education, which he mimics. Since the monster, as I explained in the previous post, is an enhanced (or augmented) Homo Sapiens, I\u2019m ready to accept that he can profit by this second-hand method of learning, though I grant that the whole process does test the reader\u2019s willing suspension of disbelief. This is further tested with the monster\u2019s casual discovery of three fundamental books (John Milton\u2019s epic biblical poem Paradise Lost<\/em>, a volume of Plutarch\u2019s Lives<\/em>, and Goethe\u2019s Sorrows of Young Werther<\/em>). He also happens to be in possession, very conveniently, of Frankenstein\u2019s journal. This volume covers the several months of the research leading to the creature\u2019s creation and the monster has it because Victor kept him in the cloak which the creature takes to cover his naked body.<\/p>\n

By the time creature and creator meet in the Alps, the monster can already use sophisticated speech, though he has never had the chance to interact with a fellow human being: all run away scared, or turn against him violently, as soon as they see him. If he tries to speak, this is to no avail\u2013his monstrous physiognomy causes such overreaction that communication is simply impossible. If Victor can overcome his revulsion and sit down to patiently listen to his \u2018son\u2019, this is only because he has no option. His parental duty, as we know, is of no consequence, for the moment his baby was born, Frankenstein turned his back on him, expecting the ugly thing to vanish, somehow. The monster, however, insists that Victor must play the role of parent like any other father.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to comment on two passages, often quoted but, anyway, worth considering in order to learn who this monster is. I find it quite peculiar that in his process of self-learning the creature chooses no name for himself, for this complicates our reading very much. Very obviously, he is a man, for Victor has made him as such, and calling this new man \u2018the monster\u2019 and \u2018the creature\u2019 is something I very much dislike, since it is demeaning. The obvious name for him is Adam (a name he knows from reading Milton\u2019s version of the Biblical fall in Genesis<\/em>) but, for whatever reason, Mary kept him nameless, a questionable decision that somehow shows her bias against her own creation. (And that, indeed, confused Peggy Webbling\u2026).<\/p>\n

In Chapter 15, the monster tells Victor about his having read the diary narrating his \u2018accursed origin\u2019 and the \u2018disgusting circumstances\u2019 of his unnatural birth. The diary also contains \u2018the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person (\u2026) in language which painted your own horrors and rendered mine indelible\u2019. No wonder he is \u2018sickened\u2019. Logically, he questions Victor\u2019s methods: \u2018God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred\u2019. From this passage one must deduce that the monster does not look radically non-human but horridly human, and that his physical appearance is scary for that very reason. His ugliness, in short, is our own ugliness, as if you could take an average human being and deprive him of any feature that makes him moderately attractive. I remain, in any case, perplexed by the reaction of those who come across Victor\u2019s new Adam, for they seem to lack the curiosity that led so many spectators to enjoy the strange frisson provided by freak shows in the 19th and the 20th centuries. The monster, let\u2019s stop to consider for a second, does look human: he has no claws, or big fangs, or any other feature we connect with aggression\u2013so why do people scream and run away at his sight? I do not quite understand why nobody stops, once the shivers are controlled, to ask him \u2018what are you?\u2019<\/p>\n

Faced with his general rejection, the monster assumes his abjection and starts behaving in a vicious manner which corresponds morally to the ugliness of his physical appearance. As we know, he kills Victor\u2019s youngest brother William and blames poor Justine, a mixture of servant and family member, for that crime. When he demands, in Chapter 17, from his creator that he manufactures a female companion to share his misfortune with, Frankenstein expresses serious doubts that this can be a solution to the problem of how to contain his evident \u2018malice\u2019. The monster is offended: \u2018My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor, and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being and become linked to the chain of existence and events from which I am now excluded\u2019. Famously, in The Bride of Frankenstein<\/em> (1935), also directed by James Whale, the female monster starts screaming the moment she sees her intended male companion; she shows, instead, a manifest interest in the rather handsome Frankenstein\u2026 The novel has no similar scene because Victor decides to abort the bride, but it is very easy to see that the monster\u2019s logic is very faulty, and sexist. He (that is, Mary) never thinks of the needs that the new Eve might have; in fact, she is to provide the same comforts as the later Victorian angel in the house: companionship but, above all, but, above all, unconditional love and even admiration which will supposedly curb down the monster\u2019s alleged inclination to do evil. \u2018Give me a nice woman and I\u2019ll be a nice man\u2019 is a recipe that, we know, does not work at all well.<\/p>\n

Victor\u2019s new Adam is, in the early stages of his life, a meek, well-behaved individual that gradually learns to respond with aggression to the abhorrence he is treated with. This is an obvious reading. I believe, however, that he is also naturally spiteful and resentful. I don\u2019t mean naturally malevolent but the type of individual that will bear a grudge down to the last consequences. Granted, the grudge he bears against Frankenstein is more than justified but the decision he makes to murder William and, later, Victor\u2019s bride Elizabeth is unfair to the victims and, ultimately, counterproductive. Naturally, we should not forget that Mary intended Frankenstein<\/em> to be a gothic story and she had to stress the moral monstrosity of the creature. In her argumentation, the monster is corrupted, so to speak, by the animosity people display against him and, so, the community if partly responsible for his crimes. However, you cannot be both innocent and guilty of the murders you choose to commit, and this is the unstable position in which Mary places her new Adam. Super-human as he is in many aspects of his anatomy, he is, nevertheless, very human in the worst aspects of his personality: his capacity for hatred and violence. Nothing will convince me that the creature would have been a good companion for the bride. Or a good father to their children.<\/p>\n

The very fact that I am discussing these moral issues shows how complex the characterisation of Mary\u2019s monster is. In the end, the main challenge she poses to her readers is forcing us to wonder how we would react if we ever came across Victor\u2019s man. Would we give him a chance to explain himself? Would we be part of the mob chasing the poor thing in so many films? Would we be disgusted, fascinated, or both? How much difference from our human standard, in short, are we willing to tolerate in our fellow human beings? These are all valid questions, and I marvel that an eighteen-year-old girl could manage to put them together in that strange child of her imagination that Frankenstein<\/em> is.<\/p>\n

I publish a post every Tuesday (follow @SaraMartinUAB). Comments are very welcome! Download the yearly volumes from: http:\/\/ddd.uab.cat\/record\/116328. My web: http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was interviewed last week on a Catalan-language radio show on monsters (\u201cAutoCine: Els Monstres\u201d, Cerdanyola R\u00e0dio, https:\/\/www.ivoox.com\/autocine-els-monstres-audios-mp3_rf_35501071_1.html ). The presenter\u2019s last question was \u2018which famous monster is most imperfectly known?\u2019 and I had to reply that this is Frankenstein\u2019s creature. Unfortunately, the movies have transmitted a very limited image of this monster, based on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,29,31],"tags":[204,207,318,334,448],"class_list":["post-1588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gothic","category-romanticism-regency-literature","category-science-fiction","tag-film-adaptation","tag-frankenstein","tag-mary-shelley","tag-monstrosity","tag-stage-adaptation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}