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Mary Shelley
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Shelley: Frankenstein
In this course, Professor Nick Groom (University of Exeter) explores Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We begin by thinking about the life of Mary Shelley herself, focusing in particular on her fateful trip to the Villa Diodati with Percy Shelley in the summer of 1816, as well as the key differences between the 1818 first edition of the novel and the 1831 second edition. In the second module we think about the genre of the novel – to what extent is this a traditional gothic horror? – before moving on in the third module to consider the novel’s structure as a patchwork of different tales, accounts, and autobiographies, all contained within a series of letters. In the fourth module, we focus on the creature himself – or should we call him a monster? or something else? Finally, in the fifth module, we turn to the figure of Victor Frankenstein. To what extent do with sympathise with Frankenstein? Does he deserve what the creature does to him?
Mary Shelley
In this module we think about the life of Mary Shelley, focusing in particular on her illustrious parents, her relationship with the poet Percy Shelley, and her visit to Switzerland in the summer of 1816, where she first conceived of Frankenstein. We also consider some of the key differences between the first edition of the novel, published in 1818 and the (much more widely-read) second edition, published thirteen years later in 1831.
My name's Nick Groom, and I'm a professor in English
00:00:03at the University of Exeter.
00:00:05This is a series of short talks on Mary Shelley's novel
00:00:08Frankenstein.
00:00:11Mary Shelley was the daughter of two
00:00:13radical political firebrands.
00:00:17Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was
00:00:19author of "A Vindication of the Rights of Women."
00:00:22And her father was William Godwin, a political scientist
00:00:26and novelist himself.
00:00:30So she was very much brought up in a crucible
00:00:32of radical political thinking.
00:00:36However, her mother died within a few days of her birth
00:00:39so she only ever knew her mother through her writing.
00:00:42She was brought up in a mixed household of half brothers
00:00:47and sisters, and was educated-- in part--
00:00:54in Scotland.
00:00:59She met the poet Percy Shelley when she
00:01:01was only 15 or 16 years old.
00:01:05And she would go reading her mother's works
00:01:08at her mother's grave site in the churchyard of Old St.
00:01:11Pancras Church in London.
00:01:15It was there that Percy Shelley seduced her,
00:01:18and together they eloped with her half sister,
00:01:21Claire Claremont, to Europe.
00:01:24This was really the beginning of a lifetime of itinerant travel.
00:01:27She spent much of her life traveling around Europe--
00:01:32and this was a Europe that was war
00:01:36torn by the Napoleonic Wars.
00:01:38But she was quite a cosmopolitan, and highly
00:01:42cultured traveler through France, and Italy, and, indeed
00:01:45Switzerland.
00:01:52Now it was in Switzerland that Frankenstein was conceived.
00:01:54The Shelleys went there--
00:01:58and I will call Mary Shelley Shelley throughout these talks,
00:02:00although she wasn't actually married
00:02:04to Percy Shelley at this time--
00:02:05the Shelleys went to Switzerland in the summer of 1816
00:02:08to escape the dreadful weather in England.
00:02:13There'd been a volcanic explosion the year
00:02:16before on the Indonesian island of mount Sambawa.
00:02:18And this had thrown so much dust into the atmosphere,
00:02:22that it affected a climate of the entire planet.
00:02:25And that meant that it rained incessantly in England.
00:02:28It also meant that it rained incessantly in Switzerland.
00:02:32So they arrived in Switzerland, and stayed near to Lord Byron--
00:02:34who is there with his physician, John Polidori--
00:02:40and spends evenings at the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake
00:02:44Geneva watching the thunderstorms across the lake
00:02:49and telling each other ghost stories.
00:02:53Now this interest in bad weather is something that certainly
00:02:56characterizes Frankenstein.
00:03:00As is the Swiss setting.
00:03:03And just think about the sublime effects of the landscape.
00:03:07In other words, landscapes that give
00:03:10a sense of the incomprehensible, or of the infinite.
00:03:15The very first landscapes, or perhaps seascapes,
00:03:19that we find in the novel are the ice fields of the Arctic
00:03:23through which Captain Walton is plowing his ship.
00:03:27And these are clearly inspired by the glaciers in Switzerland.
00:03:32And so Mary Shelley introduces her own experiences of travel
00:03:35into the novel.
00:03:41In fact, subsequently in the book,
00:03:43Victor Frankenstein travels to Oxford--
00:03:46which was based on a trip that Shelley and her husband, Percy,
00:03:49made themselves.
00:03:54So, in that sense, it is a travel narrative that
00:03:57draws on her own experiences.
00:04:00But of course, it's also a very supernatural story.
00:04:03Following the evening's telling ghost stories at the Villa
00:04:07Diodati, Mary Shelley began pondering her own, what
00:04:10she called, ghost story.
00:04:15And she later claimed that this came to her in a dream.
00:04:17And it was a dream in which she sees a student
00:04:20of the unhallowed arts--
00:04:24as she describes it--
00:04:26animating a creature that he has constructed from dead parts.
00:04:29So this really begins the novel.
00:04:36She says that she started writing it--
00:04:39the passage beginning "On a dreary night in November." So
00:04:42she's introducing the weather into this
00:04:46and the culmination of Victor Frankenstein's toils as he--
00:04:48having pieced together whatever it is he's created.
00:04:54He then succeeds in animating it.
00:04:58So she writes this story throughout the remainder
00:05:02of 1816, and throughout 1817.
00:05:06And it's first published on New Year's Day in 1818.
00:05:10In fact, the version that the people may be reading today,
00:05:14is a later version--
00:05:18the 1831 edition.
00:05:19I've, in fact, just edited the other first edition,
00:05:22the 1818 edition.
00:05:24And, for me, it has a certain drive,
00:05:26it has a certain energy that is lacking from the later edition.
00:05:29That's partly because she extends the opening chapters
00:05:34and gives more detail about the science in the later version.
00:05:37She also changes, in fact, the relationship
00:05:41between Victor and Elizabeth so they're
00:05:43no longer blood relations.
00:05:46And she also introduces an element of the divine, of God,
00:05:49into the 1831 version.
00:05:531818, in contrast, that version is Godless.
00:05:56And you get a very strong sense that these characters
00:06:00are living in a world that is forsaken by God.
00:06:03It's a very sort of atheistical novel.
00:06:06
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Groom, N. (2018, August 15). Shelley: Frankenstein - Mary Shelley [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/shelley-frankenstein-groom/science-and-the-supernatural
MLA style
Groom, N. "Shelley: Frankenstein – Mary Shelley." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 15 Aug 2018, https://massolit.io/courses/shelley-frankenstein-groom/science-and-the-supernatural