Re-read Volume 1 Chapter 4 from 'It was a dreary night of November,…' to the end of the quotation from the Ancient Mariner. 'Examine the creation of the monster in detail, considering its significance in the novel as a whole.'

Re-read Volume 1 Chapter 4 from ‘It was a dreary night of November,…’ to the end of the quotation from the Ancient Mariner. ‘Examine the creation of the monster in detail, considering its significance in the novel as a whole.’

Language, structure and imagery
Other relevant episodes in the novel

Mary Shelley did not merely write a story based on concrete objects. She created a gothic classic, with Victor Frankenstein epitomising her own ideas on life. She certainly didn’t lack opinions, which is unsurprising considering her background: her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was one of the first feminists; her father William Godwin was a leading English theorist. The passage in which Frankenstein creates his monster questions human emotion and morality, and signifies Victor’s ill treatment of a being that is, effectively, his own child.

Although the language within the passage captures the panic of Frankenstein, it seems weighed down with depressing words at the beginning. Shelley produces a disturbing air by using the semantic field of dankness. The pathetic fallacy of the opening states that the event takes place “on a dreary night of November”, as opposed to during a climactic thunderstorm or other passionate weather force. The effect is a kind of sadness surrounding the monster’s birth, which is well reflected in the remainder of his life – it is one full of rejection and despair, paralleled with his creator’s own life. Despair is emphasised throughout, and is foreshadowed in the opening paragraph, through the language chosen. Reinforcing the idea of the “dreary night”, Shelley writes that the “rain pattered dismally”. There is hopelessness in the statement, and the weather mirrors the gothic setting. The “candle was nearly burnt out”, which suits the gloomy image well, and signifies Frankenstein’s long hard work on the creation; he had worked until “one in the morning”, a time of loneliness and reflection. The “dim yellow” of the candlelight is repeated in Victor’s dream, yet becomes the colour of the moonlight, which in turn allows Victor to see the monster (like the candlelight). Shelley uses this for the monster also: “the dull yellow eye of the creature”. In Christianity, God is linked with light –- in this novel, it is the creation rather than the creator.

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The monster is described using gory description however, and certainly not as a deity. I think that this should be used more of an interpretation of Frankenstein though, as it is his narration of events, and a particularly biased view. It is likely that Victor is getting the reader to sympathise with himself through his narrative technique of addressing them, or rather Walton, directly: “How can I describe my emotions...?” As the monster’s eyes open to the world, Frankenstein’s eyes open to harsh reality, and the readers’ eyes should open to Frankenstein’s prejudice and refusal of accepting his own ‘son’. This addresses Shelley’s idea that knowledge is dangerous, contrasting to the generally believed, “knowledge is power”. Frankenstein has previously informed Walton that the man “who believes his native town to be the world” is “much happier”; this shows his deep regret of his earlier thirst for knowledge.

He acts neither as a father nor as a creator ought, and indeed insults his own creator with blasphemy (“Great God!”). Shelley created this negative image of Frankenstein in our minds, possibly, because she is intimating that excessive emotion is wrong. It is shown through his exclamations (“Oh!) and talk of “breathless horror and disgust”. Her father Godwin believed it inappropriate too – perhaps she was coming into agreement with him as opposed to the philosopher Rousseau, who stated that humans should be ruled by emotion rather than reason. She did elope with Percy Shelley to her father’s antipathy however, which suggests an alteration of her views during this time. Certainly, Victor is not portrayed as a hero. He clearly perceives the human characteristics within the monster the better, and finds the unusually “shrivelled complexion” and “black lips” repulsive. He is discriminating against difference.

The dream deals with the idea of death. It appears that this was an important concept for Shelley, as the paragraph is considerably longer than the others in the passage. It runs into the monster’s watching over Frankenstein, which suggests that the nightmare had morphed into reality. The dream itself features the two most important women in Victor’s life: his mother and Elizabeth. Women are natural life givers, and yet Victor attempted to change nature itself. In the nightmare, he becomes a death giver, as he inadvertently became as a result of the monster’s creation. Because of his marriage to Elizabeth, her lips indeed “became livid with the hue of death”, as she had therefore become a victim of the creation. Due to her death, his mother’s wish of their union never truly ensued.

By escaping from the monster repeatedly, Frankenstein demonstrates that he does not live up to gender stereotypes. He does not attempt to attack the monster, as Felix does, but escapes like Safie. Even through escape, he could not seek comfort though. Shelley shows his suffering through her words: “horror…hell…black and comfortless”. The verse from Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner sums up this terrible inability to escape. It implies that he has lost his family, as the road is “lonely” – because of his experiment he shut out the people he loves, and now that he needs them most, they cannot help him. He is panicking and stricken with paranoia, as he “turn’d round”, only to find that the monster is actually “close behind him”. It is a possibility that guilt and regret are also following him, as well as the creature, as he must carry a dread of people’s reactions to him. He has this same dread later in the novel, when he assumes that if he creates the monster a partner, “future ages might curse [him] as their pest”. The verse allows Frankenstein to stand as the victim.

The passage is geared towards Frankenstein’s standpoint and so it is possible that the reader will not realise his cruelty against the defenceless monster until he gives his interpretation of events. This is possibly for Shelley to allow the reader to understand both motivations without bias. There is a great contrast in opinion of Frankenstein with hindsight of the monster’s narrative; through the subsequent reading we see the immorality of the creator’s use of derogatory terms for his ‘child’.

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