Anticipating Postmodernism: Criticism and Blame in Frankenstein

Transcription

1 1 Anticipating Postmodernism: Criticism and Blame in Frankenstein Victor Frankenstein ignites a tale of madness, isolation, and struggle when he reanimates a human body and gifts this Creature with consciousness. At the same time, Frankenstein commits a fatal mistake in his very attitude toward this Being ascribing the word Creature to its subjectivity ends up dooming it to a life of exclusion and Other. As I will explore in this paper, Mary Shelley makes claims about a broad range of societal constructions through the character of the Creature itself as well as how other characters develop in response to the Creature s actions. Though the Creature is frequently referred to as a monster, I will demonstrate how Shelley uses other characters, intertextual dialogue, and critiques of society to reconfigure the role of monster and diffuse the blame for the horrific events of the novel across a faction of subjects. I will conclude that Shelley, through her construction of the Creature as a placeholder for society s margins, exacts a postmodern reflection on what society and humans can drive each other to do. In doing so, we begin to see the Creature as a product of his circumstance and question our own understanding of what it means to be human. In a book with no central female characters, and with the knowledge that Shelley must have been cognizant of gender difference due to her mother s (Mary Wollstonecraft) pioneering of feminist philosophy, we can understand the Creature to be a feminized subject because of Victor s infantilization and otherization of him. The Creature s childlike countenance becomes an allegory for a variety of society s most vulnerable members. Despite possessing all the constitutive parts of humans, the Creature consistently occupies a subhuman space, much like women, the underclass, children, and as I will discuss shortly, colonial subjects. Thus, the Creature can be interpreted as a placeholder for these marginalized identities.

2 2 The most evident point of critique in Frankenstein comes in its explicit engagement with colonial attitudes. That Shelley adds an imperial dimension to the character Henry Clerval in a later edition of the novel reveals her positive project to hold the expansion of Great Britain at the height of its power to rigorous scrutiny. By describing Henry as both a boy of singular talent and fancy, a lover of enterprise, hardship, danger, and reading as well as someone with deeply problematic aspirations of materially assisting the progress of European colonization and trade in India, Shelley positions Clerval as neither a hero nor a villain (Shelley 193). When Clerval dies at the hands of the Creature, Victor implicates himself in his question, Have my murderous machinations deprived you also, my dearest Henry, of life? (Shelley 217). We are left to feel conflicted about how deserving Clerval is of his fate and how responsible the Creature is after considering Clerval s loyalty to Victor and exemplary qualities of friendship, his troubling colonial attitudes, and Victor s own implication in his death. Shelley ponders these issues in the absence of the Creature, further demonstrating that our moral judgments about these events are mediated through other characters. A well-loved friend, Clerval represents the archetype of a person that, though chivalrous and educated, falls prey to the traps of his station and the greed of the colonial enterprise. Shelley implicates all those with sympathies for European colonialism through Clerval s character not just government officials and military leaders. As such, while the question of blame is complicated in the realm of the imperial age, Shelley allows us to retroactively consider this question by juxtaposing imperial attitudes with the tragic events of the novel. That is, when tragedy strikes, we are quick to blame those at the helm of decisions, and Shelley asks us to entertain the possibility that many people may deserve reproach for such actions and attitudes. It is worth noting that soon after Henry is introduced, the narrator describes in great detail what

3 3 they believe to be [a] human being in perfection (Shelley 56). Shelley explicitly calls upon the notion of absolution from blame: I am now convinced that [my father] was justified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from blame (Shelley 56). Then, the narrator goes on to caution humans from letting dogma (specifically imperialist ideology) overtake their calm and peaceful mind in light of passion or a transitory desire (Shelley 56). While this passage can be interpreted in different ways given Shelley s broad range of political influences, the reference to the discovery of the United States and Latin American countries makes a case for a colonial critique. On face, the Creature is a far cry from the rational white, man that was considered the paragon of humanity at the height of 19th century Europe. He is large, mismatched, hideous a monstrosity. He is nameless, friendless, and without guidance. He is the product of an ambitious science experiment gone wrong, not born to any family and without anyone to whom he belongs. Victor, therefore, comes to occupy the role of caretaker for the Creature, and thus his projected feelings onto the creature come to define him, for he does not have the means to define himself. In the early stages of the novel, Victor describes the Creature as having generally an expression of wildness, and even madness and reacting to an act of kindness with a beam of benevolence and sweetness (Shelley 16, 17). These descriptions with the visual of the Creature gnash[ing] his teeth resemble something much closer to a child than a grown man (Shelley 17). Indeed, in terms of countenance and temperament, the Creature is essentially an oversized infant, governed by his emotions, reactionary and deeply affected by Victor s treatment of him in a similar manner to how a child would react to neglect and abuse from a parent. Even Victor consistently acknowledges the fact that he ultimately is responsible for giving the Creature life. He refers to it as the miserable monster whom I had created and the

4 4 demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life (Shelley 59, 60). These admissions are always coupled with an obsessive contempt for the Creature Shelley is problematizing our assumption that we are the architect of our own lives. Rather, she posits that we are unfashioned creatures and in need of one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures (Shelley 20, 21). We are the products of each other; we start off partially created and become human through our relations. Victor, the only person the Creature has to perfectionate him, instead admonishes and treats him as subhuman. A close analysis of a scene where the Creature approaches Victor with a grin reveals how Victor misinterprets childlike qualities for madness and depravity (Shelley 59). When Victor beh[olds] the wretch, already projecting qualities of wretchedness on him, he interprets garbled speech as inarticulate sounds and a grin and outstretched hand as means to detain [him] (Shelley 59). Victor s insistence that the Creature is so hideous, ugly, a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived, colors his perception of the Creature, and this projection directly affects the Creature s subjectivity and eventual spiral into madness. As such, Shelley renders the Creature a subject with little agency, granting him only a certain degree of responsibility for his actions. As readers, we become trained to defer to other characters in our ethical judgments of the Creature. By uncritically accepting their projected attitudes about the Creature, we may be vulnerable to ignoring the societal and environmental factors that led to his madness, as we are aware he was certainly not born a murderous villain. Here, Shelley draws upon the perennial philosophical debate about the self. Ever since Rene Descartes conceived of a clear and distinct self and anticipated the doubt so characteristic of postmodernism, there has been ample written about whether everything I very clearly and distinctly perceive is true (Descartes 70). Philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Hannah

5 5 Arendt have engaged deeply with this question in conversation with and contestation of a Cartesian perspective, questioning the nature of self-assured existence endemic to modernist rationalism (it is worth noting that Hindu and Buddhist philosophers contemplation of the self pre-dates these Western luminaries by millennia). Heidegger posits that humans are cast into a world that was there before them, and their existence constitutes an assimilation of and negotiation with others being (Heidegger 117). We do not know why we exist or where existence leads, but being is being-in-the-world, which requires being in relation to others (Heidegger 117). However, in recognizing that our being is a compilation of others, we may be quick to shift accountability for our actions to them without also acknowledging that we as well mold others being-in-the-world. The question of who is to blame remains murky, and Heidegger s analysis can only aid the conclusion that blame is not cut and dry. In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt controversially, and perhaps incidentally, diffuses some of the blame for the orchestration of the Holocaust, which parallels with Shelley s project. Through her narration of Adolf Eichmann s trial, Arendt exposes the seedy nature of putting individual men on trial for anti-semitism and an inherently societal crime. For [Eichmann s] case was built on what the Jews had suffered, not on what Eichmann had done, and it was history that...stood in the center of the trial (Arendt 6, 19). In Shelley s case, Victor has created the Creature, and in Arendt s case, Hitler s Germany and anti-semitic society has produced the circumstances that led Eichmann to rise to the occasion. If the Creature were to be put on trial, would Victor have adopted the attitude of the German people in their contradictory stance of blinding themselves to the presence of murderers...in the country and at the same time demand[ing] that these people be punished (Arendt 16, 17)? Would he have agreed with

6 6 Eichmann s defense of his actions, that where all, or almost all, are guilty, nobody is (Arendt 278)? And, moreover, would he claim he would have acted differently in the Creature s place? Though Arendt makes claims about society s complicity, she nonetheless supports Eichmann s execution, since there is an abyss between the actuality of what [he] did and the potentiality of what others might have done (Arendt 278). What confounds people to this day is precisely that so many were like him terribly and terrifyingly normal (Arendt 276). It is here that Eichmann and the Creature diverge, where the Creature s madness is the very opposite of normal. But do we maintain the Creature s Otherness and hold him to a different standard than we would Eichmann? It may be that Eichmann was only completely himself on the precipice of death, and we may never know whether the Creature was ever truly acting as himself (Arendt 252). Perhaps, then, we are forced to reckon with the question of creation. That is, Victor must be the object of our disavowal, for though the Creature did commit horrific acts, his existence is only explainable through science intervening with divine forces, where Victor thought he had any right to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world (Arendt 279). Thus, Shelley has demonstrated the frustration of adjudicating blame by exposing that which exists within all of us the banality of evil (Arendt 252). Through our being-inthe-world, we all come to embody the Creature. It is this postmodern quandary that begins to explain the broad cultural significance and ambiguity surrounding which character is named Frankenstein. This confusion and misconception that the term Frankenstein is often incorrectly applied to the Creature rather than the doctor is particularly apt because it mirrors the blame that is diffused throughout the novel and functions as though modern critics are also struggling with the question of who is really the monster. Victor comes to blame himself for Justine admitting to the Creature s crimes,

7 7 the true murderer (Shelley 99). Innocence and remorse become central to this scene as it unfolds, where Elizabeth is unyieldingly convinced of Justine s innocence, and Victor consistently displaces the blame not on the Creature but on himself. Here, Justine (a clever eponym of justice ) represents pure innocence untainted by guilt. Victor says she is sustained by innocence, while the fangs of remorse [tear his] bosom and [do] not forgo their hold (Shelley 95). His speech and actions here mimic that of the Creature s in their utter despair and self-hate, particularly the image of fangs that we associate with monstrosity. Victor feels deep and bitter agony and gnashe[s his] teeth in eerie resemblance to the early, childlike incarnation of the Creature (Shelley 98). Shelley uses Justine, a character who admits guilt despite unequivocally being innocent, to help Victor come to terms with his own guilt. This scene demonstrates with poetic force how easily guilt and innocence become obfuscated in a sad and bitter world and how the fate of condemnation can just as easily be doled out to the innocent and the guilty (Shelley 98). Indeed, the Creature constitutes Victor just as much as Victor constitutes the Creature. Shelley brilliantly establishes this nuance without any explicit reference to the Creature or his actions and lets us comes to this conclusion entirely through our interpretation of the conversation among Victor, Justine, and Elizabeth. I will now discuss how this literary mechanism contributes to our own implication in the monstrosity. The frame narrative and various expository styles contribute to Shelley s project to diffuse the blame for the events in this novel. Shelley shifts between epistolary, prose, and spoken styles, with Frankenstein s story narrated in the first person through Walton. What Victor lacks in empathy during the experience of his ordeal with the Creature gets expressed narratively through Walton in the first person, the Creature s telling of Safie s story in the third person, and the intimacy of the letter form. The novel undergoes multiple shifts in perspective, not letting the

8 8 reader feel too comfortable with one narrator s particular transmutation of events for it must be so that each narrator has a slightly different take on events based on their own experiences, compounded by the fact that these events are being told retrospectively and in different literary forms. Shifts from first to third person that coincide with shifts from oral and written prose to the epistolary form serve to create levels of sympathy in conversation with each other, pulling the reader back and forth among characters who project their own sensibilities on the Creature. Considering that we as readers, after interpreting the narrators subjective imagining of who is to blame, come to our own conclusions about the guilt of the Creature and Victor by extension, demonstrates the complicated nature of blame, the assortment of lenses through which we could come to understand it, and the ways our subjectivity renders our judgments a product of a variety of sources of knowledge. The longevity of Frankenstein s cultural significance extends beyond the text of the book precisely because Shelley has implicated so many other sources in her rendering of Victor s guilt. The alternate title, The Modern Prometheus, makes an obvious reference to the rebellion against the laws of nature in Prometheus s creation of mankind and his gift of fire, for which he is punished just as Victor is (in a sense). In addition to her engagement with philosophical quandaries and mythological allegory, the novel explicitly contains excerpts from John Milton s Paradise Lost, another allusion to the tension between the scientific and the divine, Samuel Taylor Coleridge s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and her husband Percy Shelley s personal edits and contributions to the text. In doing so, Shelley has charged an ethical obligation to the reader to consume the novel with a critical eye and be mindful of its various predecessors, for there are times when references to others work are neither cited nor indicated as such in any way. The intertextual nature of this book, in anticipation of the postmodern literary tradition,

9 9 implicitly supports the constructivist mantra that the characters are the product of their time, locale, and culture. Furthermore, given Shelley wrote the novel in the wake of a miscarriage, of which the child remained unnamed (like the Creature), it is possible that Shelley identifies with Victor and thereby implicates herself in the tragedy. After all, if society is partially to blame, then Shelley and her literary inspirations must be as well. Taken altogether the colonial critique, textual evidence that displaces blame, multiple narrative forms and voices, intertextual references (both obvious and veiled), Shelley s interrogation of events in her life, the reader s interpretation via their subjective experience Shelley undertakes the question of who is the blame with finesse. By adroitly displacing the blame to Victor, yes, but also across time, culture, and experience, Shelley, the daughter of two literary celebrities, has a keen grasp of her place in the canon. As such, the novel itself comes to eerily resemble the Creature. Just as the Creature is an imperfect amalgamation of human parts Victor s monstrosity Shelley s novel is a compilation of literary and philosophical works and a story of humanity discovering its own limitations. In the 1831 Standard Novels Introduction to the book, Shelley bid[s her] hideous progeny go forth and prosper (19; sec. 3). That she uses the word hideous, which appears a dozen times in the novel to refer to the Creature, is certainly telling despite her affection for [the novel] (20; sec. 3). We begin to realize the personal sacrifice and conflict Shelley encountered while authoring this progeny and the contradictory nature of creating something out of dispersed parts, that which is only partially yours, partially theirs, and partially everyone else s. We must learn to love what we create, acknowledge our complicity in what that creation may compel itself or others to do, and eventually forgive ourselves.

10 10 Works Consulted Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem New York: Penguin Group (2006). Print. Britton, Jeanne M. Novelistic Sympathy in Mary Shelley s Frankenstein. Studies in Romanticism 48.1 (2009): Web. 15. Dec Bugg, John. Master of their language : Education and Exile in Mary Shelley s Frankenstein. Huntington Library Quarterly 68.4 (2005): Web. 12 Dec Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. 1637, Trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (1998). Print. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time Albany: State University of New York Press (1996). Web. 15 Dec Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein London: Penguin Group (2003). Print. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein Ithaca: Zorba Press (2002). Web. 15 Dec