# Question about Shelley's Frankenstein **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 13, 2004, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015 "2004-05-13T21:42:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mal\_Adroit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df788c/32.png) [@Mal\_Adroit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mal_Adroit)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/21 "2004-05-14T14:16:32Z")
Whoa, I _love_ **Miller’s** interpretation! Frankly, it’s a perfectly valid one for him/her to have. Maybe you have to be a fan of doppleganger-of-the-mind type stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/22 "2004-05-14T17:21:41Z")
Yep, it was Brannaugh (who, I must say, was extremely yummy in this movie!). So yeah, it kinda bugged me that in the movie, he has to chop her all up, when all he had to do was give her a new heart. Well, he WAS, at this point, crazier than a shithouse rat, so I suppose he wouldn’t just do what was logical. 😉 (And how the HELL did all his equipment get to his home? I thought he left it in Ingolstadt?) I’m at the library, so I suppose I’ll check the book out and compare. ---
**Author:** ![dotchan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@dotchan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dotchan)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/23 "2004-05-14T17:57:18Z")
Well, as a hobby writer, I don’t mind alternate interpretations of my work. Heck, “Meaning and Layers of Meaning” is one of my favorite themes to expound on. Everybody brings a different set of knowledge and experience to the table, so it’s only natural that they’d walk away with a different understanding of things. (This is also why I tend to take Biblical commentaries with a large grain of salt, but I digress.) Anyway, back to Frankenstein. Shelly wasn’t trying to write a scientific treatise, but a social commentary. However the monster came to life, it did, and ultimately destroyed its creator. But reading that interpretation does put the whole “Frankenstein confusion” in a whole new ironic light, dunnit? ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/24 "2004-05-14T19:17:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Yep, it was Brannaugh (who, I must say, was extremely yummy in this movie!). > > So yeah, it kinda bugged me that in the movie, he has to chop her all up, when all he had to do was give her a new heart. Well, he WAS, at this point, crazier than a shithouse rat, so I suppose he wouldn’t just do what was logical. As I recall, wasn’t Elizabeth’s mid-section so badly damaged when her heart was ripped out of her that Victor had to instead use part of the body of the woman who had been lynched? (I could be wrong since details of the movie are a bit fuzzy to me.) ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/25 "2004-05-14T19:20:45Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > An important aspect of understanding the novel _Frankenstein_ [ul] > [li]The Author is a woman.[/li][li]Mary Shelley was pregnant, out of wedlock, when she wrote it.[/li][li]Doctor Frankenstein is creating life in an unnatural fashion.[/li][li]The major theme is the violation of the Natural Order by misusing Science.[/li][li]Thus, Frankenstein is usurping the right to create life, exclusive to women, who bear children.[/li][li]Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is also reflecting on her own ambivalence towards bearing her child.[/li][/ul] Plus, didn’t Mary Shelley’s mother die a grisly death while giving birth to her? ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/26 "2004-05-14T22:56:28Z")
> [@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor](#): > > [li]The major theme is the violation of the Natural Order by misusing Science.[/li] Actually, wasn’t the major theme of accepting responsibility for one’s own creations? After all, the creature wasn’t born evil or malevolent…the fact that he was shunned and rejected by his creator—and later, human society—_made_ him a “monster.” The circumstances of the creature’s creation really aren’t that important, it’s what happened to him afterwards that made all the difference. Not to say that that contradicts an “ambivalence towards bearing a child” theme. It could actually _reinforce_ such a theme or moral, in my view. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/27 "2004-05-14T23:06:40Z")
Mary Shelley, if I recall, suffered a miscarriage and was prone to have nightmares about the lost child. Decades of movies have made people forget that Shelley’s description of Victor’s work is entirely vague; he could just as easily be using black magic as anything that would seem scientific to us. It doesn’t matter; he creates a creature which is essentially a _tabula rasa_, then refuses to take responsibility for it and abandons it. The creature learns hatred and violence from its interactions with humanity, and does indeed begin to act like a dark doppelganger of Victor, carrying out what 20th century readers would call his unconscious desires. In Branagh’s hyperactive movie, as I recall, after the Monster rips out Elizabeth’s still-beating heart (have to admit that was a great scene), Victor, in a delirious frenzy, cuts off her head and puts it onto the body of the maid who earlier had hanged herself after being falsely accused of murdering William. A note about the various movies, I always thought it was funny that: Frankenstein is a genius so ahead of his time that he’s learned how to surgically put together a human body from spare parts, including joining the brain from one body to the central nervous system from another, bring the whole thing to life and make it work… yet, when it comes to sewing up the skin joining the various parts, he uses big ol’ stitches that look like black twine, instead of the microsurgery he must have done internally. ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/28 "2004-05-14T23:27:04Z")
**Miller’s** interp of Frankenstein is so close to my professor’s that it made me do a triple take. But I’m sure **Miller** wasn’t in my Horror Novel class so it’s a coincidence. FWIW, I agree with my prof…The only thing that doesn’t work for me is why Victor allows Justine to die. But that’s not actually why I’m posting now. I’m actually shocked and a little appalled that people can just come in and dismiss literary theory as though it’s nothing. Yeah, there _is_ a school of literary theory that **Miller** was referring to and it’s called _Post-Modernism_, or more specifically, _Deconstruction_ and _New Theory_. I’m not saying you have to be an English major to agree or disagree with these theories, but good god, I’m devoting a lot of time and money to learning about, discussing, reading, and working with these theories, and it’s more than a little annoying when people make comments like this > [@](#): > > I’ve heard this argument before. I’ve also seen that in more or less every case, ever, it leads inevitably to people pulling crap out of their arse and defending it on the slimmest of arguments, and then saying that there’s some damned line that supports it so its a valid interpretation. The “real world” equivelent is if I went and busted into a thread about Newtonian physics and made dismissive comments about an entire academic area and everybody who participates in that area. The fact of the matter is, nearly _all_ literary interp for the past 50 years has fallen under _Post-Modernism_. Like it or hate it on its merits (and quite frankly it has problems and all my profs predict its on its way out), but don’t act like **Miller** is a fool for reading the book the way nearly all scholars would read it today. Oh, and Freud didn’t invent his ideas anymore than Darwin invented evolution. He observed human nature and built a theory around what it was and how it worked. You’ll see Freudian elements throughout literature starting before Shakespeare (but especially in Shakespeare). Are you going to dismiss that too because it’s before Freud? How about Oedipus? ---
**Author:** ![Hamish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a5b964/32.png) [@Hamish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamish)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/29 "2004-05-14T23:42:10Z")
> [@pepperlandgirl](#): > > The fact of the matter is, nearly _all_ literary interp for the past 50 years has fallen under _Post-Modernism_. Like it or hate it on its merits (and quite frankly it has problems and all my profs predict its on its way out), but don’t act like **Miller** is a fool for reading the book the way nearly all scholars would read it today. Count me as one who’s glad it’s on its way out, if indeed it is. Deconstruction is an occasionally useful tool for interpretation, but some of professors have raised Post-Modernism to the status of quasi-religion, and I felt I got very little out of those courses where it was rigidly adhered to. > [@](#): > > Oh, and Freud didn’t invent his ideas anymore than Darwin invented evolution. He observed human nature and built a theory around what it was and how it worked. You’ll see Freudian elements throughout literature starting before Shakespeare (but especially in Shakespeare). Are you going to dismiss that too because it’s before Freud? How about Oedipus? Well, this is a bit messy. Even in the hard sciences, things frequently aren’t cut-and-dried. Darwin’s undergone a fair number of minor adjustments as biologists have studied everything from genes to fossil records. And when we’re talking about something as nebulous as human psychology – well, suffice to say I think the jury’s still out on most of Freud’s discoveries. I also think there’s a tendency, post-Freud, to interpret nearly everything through the Freudian lense, just because that’s the thing nowadays. Is Oedipus a story about the Oedipal complex? Or is it a cautionary tale of the cruelty of the gods? Maybe Sophocles – or whatever ancient storyteller developed the first version of that tale – had no other intent but to entertain his readers. But now we’re getting a little too close to Post-Modernism for my taste, so I think I’ll just step back. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Hamish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a5b964/32.png) [@Hamish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamish)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/30 "2004-05-14T23:43:30Z")
I mean entertain his listeners/viewers, of course. I realize that most people probably wouldn’t have been studying Oedipus from a text. ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2004, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/31 "2004-05-14T23:52:03Z")
> [@Hamish](#): > > But now we’re getting a little too close to Post-Modernism for my taste, so I think I’ll just step back. 😛 _snort_ FTR, I don’t like Deconstruction that much. I prefer historical or new theory myself. And I do agree that people probably tend to see Freud in stories now because our culture is so saturated by his theories that would be impossible not to. Especially if you’re in the Freudian school of liteary theory…heh. However, I believe that Victor Frankenstein had issues that could be framed within the context of Freud to offer an understanding of his motivations. I mean, let’slook at his relationship with Elizabeth. She was raised as his sister, he regarded her as a possesion (he knew she was his…), but at the same time, his mother made Elizabeth effectively his surrogate mother when she died. She entrusted Elizabeth with the caretaking of the entire family and raising William. So Elizabeth was simultaneously a sister, a mother, and a possesion, as well as a fiance. In the the film the OP mentioned, the incestuous nature of the relationship is not so much subtext. “My sister. My Wife. _passionate kiss_”. I do believe that Victor wanted her dead because he didn’t view her as someone he wanted to marry, and yet, he couldn’t _not_ marry her. And the dream was extremely Freudian…I think it would make any reader sit up and take notice, and I doubt very much Shelley through the dream in by mistake… ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/32 "2004-05-15T03:05:48Z")
> [@pepperlandgirl](#): > > and I doubt very much Shelley through the dream in by mistake… That’s a pretty hefty typo there, **pepperlandgirl**. ---
**Author:** ![Loopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loopus/32/15343_2.png) [@Loopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopus)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/33 "2004-05-15T03:12:28Z")
> [@pepperlandgirl](#): > > FWIW, I agree with my prof…The only thing that doesn’t work for me is why Victor allows Justine to die. What about the fact that Victor was hundreds of miles away with a reliable witness when William was killed? And the fact that Walton saw the monster? > [@Miller](#): > > I belong to the school of thought that holds any interpretation is valid, regardless of authorial intent, so long as it can be supported by the text. Incidently, as a creative writing major, I agree with this. Writers, like everybody, have a subconcious, and we’re not always aware of the full import of everything we write. However, I don’t believe the interpretation of _Frankenstein_ in which the monster does not physically exist is at all supported by the text. Shelley clearly intended for the monster to actually exist, and she didn’t really leave it open to interpretation. My British lit II professor also thought that this reading was viable, but I never saw it. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/34 "2004-05-15T05:40:37Z")
> [@Baldwin](#): > > In Branagh’s hyperactive movie, as I recall, after the Monster rips out Elizabeth’s still-beating heart (have to admit that was a great scene), Victor, in a delirious frenzy, cuts off her head and puts it onto the body of the maid who earlier had hanged herself after being falsely accused of murdering William. That reminds me…what the heck did he do to her head? The hair was almost missing, which is reasonable enough, I suppose. It might have been singed off, or chemically burned off. Or Victor might have cut it off himself, for some reason. But…the rest of Elizabeth’s face looked like someone had taken a claw hammer to her. For that matter…why did Elizabeth retain her memory, but the first monster didn’t retain the memories of Frankenstein’s mentor? It was his brain that got used. Does all the bone and tissue of the skull determine if the “soul” remains in the brain? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/35 "2004-05-15T06:12:11Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > That’s a pretty hefty typo there, **pepperlandgirl**. My self-righteous English major act wouldn’t have been complete without it. :rolleyes: I guess next time I’ll preview before I post… > [@](#): > > Incidently, as a creative writing major, I agree with this. Writers, like everybody, have a subconcious, and we’re not always aware of the full import of everything we write. . You know what’s funny for me? I can accept the deconstructionism and post-modernism in my lit classes without a second thought. But in my creative writing courses? It drives me crazy. “No! No you fool! I meant this!” And then I get all conflicted, because does it really matter what I write? Most of the time I think “No, text and words are living things.” But still, it’s disconcerting when I have character X do act A for motivation B, and they say character X does act A because of motivation W. ---
**Author:** ![Loopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loopus/32/15343_2.png) [@Loopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopus)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/36 "2004-05-15T06:28:00Z")
> [@pepperlandgirl](#): > > I can accept the deconstructionism and post-modernism in my lit classes without a second thought. But in my creative writing courses? It drives me crazy. “No! No you fool! I meant this!” And then I get all conflicted, because does it really matter what I write? Most of the time I think “No, text and words are living things.” But still, it’s disconcerting when I have character X do act A for motivation B, and they say character X does act A because of motivation W. Heh… I admit, it also can miff me a bit when people attribute things to my stories that I didn’t intend. However, my arguement against such an alternate interpretation would never start with “No, I _meant_…”, it would start with “No, my text right here strongly suggests different.” The text is all the reader has, so it should make clear everything important. If the text is ambiguous (and if it is, it ought to be intentional ambiguity, else it is a mistake which should be made clear) then any interpretation by the reader is valid, as long as it goes along with what _is_ clear in the text. Just my personal writing philosophy… ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/37 "2004-05-15T09:33:45Z")
I have to admit, as an amateur writer, I’ve always felt a bit…ambivalent about the practice. It’s got great value as a thought exercise, but I just worry that the real—or at least, the _intended_—“message,” the _spirit_ of a story can be overlooked or forgotten, or even disregarded. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I disapprove of it, though. Or that I don’t like other people doing it, (Like you need my permission anyway.) or that I never do it myself. It just…worries me, a little bit. You know, there was an old Daniel Pinkwater book—I think it was _Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars_—that involves a couple of characters finding that an arcane Japanese-to-English Dictionary acts, when read backwards, as a manual for bringing out one’s latent psychic powers. And it seems to work. After a series of adventures, the heros run across the book’s author, who indeed confirms that the book works for psychic training…but he didn’t write it that way. He wasn’t even _trying_ to do anything strange with the text when he was writing, and nothing and no one had altered the book. It just happened, through a completely random fluke of chance, to work perfectly well as a psychic powers manual. Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is that even when an interpretation _can_ work, and even work really well, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has any real basis behind it. Or…y’know, whatever. I’m just a rambling old hack. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/38 "2004-05-15T15:32:15Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > That reminds me…what the heck did he do to her head? The hair was almost missing, which is reasonable enough, I suppose. It might have been singed off, or chemically burned off. Or Victor might have cut it off himself, for some reason. But…the rest of Elizabeth’s face looked like someone had taken a claw hammer to her. > > For that matter…why did Elizabeth retain her memory, but the first monster didn’t retain the memories of Frankenstein’s mentor? It was his brain that got used. Does all the bone and tissue of the skull determine if the “soul” remains in the brain? :dubious: When Elizabeth fell, her face smashed against the end table, knocking over the oil lamp, doing both cutting & burning damage. Justine the maid (who was lynched in the movie, judicially executed in the book, committed suicide in neither) was going to be raw materials for the Monster’s Bride. She’d been in the grave for a month plus, thus not all of her was usable. Finally, from Chapter Four of the 1831 edition- Victor clearly assembled human parts & perhaps also animal ones for the Monster… “… Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay? … I collected bones from charnel houses; and disturbed, with profane fingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. … The dissecting room and the slaughterhouse furnished many of my materials; and often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a conclusion.” ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2004, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/39 "2004-05-15T23:37:14Z")
Yeah, the creature’s head had to be shaved for brain surgery, but what was up with Elizabeth’s? The funniest scene is when he’s dancing around with her in her old wedding gown and she’s just flopping all over the place. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2004, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015/40 "2004-05-16T02:22:18Z")
Well Shal-om, I managed to find a [horror makeup webpage featuring Elizabeth, post-reanimation.](http://www.themakeupgallery.info/horror/bride/msf.htm) That’s an odd injury pattern on her face…did she run into a letter “K”? And her hair—which wasn’t _completely_ shaved—seems to have changed color, too. :dubious: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-shelleys-frankenstein/245015.md?page=3)