Microsoft Word - Thesis Template CW- REV2 A.docxA Thesis
In Partial Fulfillment
Master of Arts
All Rights Reserved
To my family and friends, who believed in me when I doubted
myself.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Dr. Debra Best for her constant support
throughout
my undergraduate and graduate degree. Thank you for letting me
struggle through
what I needed to, and for recognizing when I needed a push.
I would like to thank my husband, Brent Walker, who supported
the
decision for me to go back to school and earn a degree and continue
the
educational path to a Masters Degree.
I would like to thank my father, E. David Radford, who helped keep
stress
in perspective while encouraging me to do more.
I would like to thank three amazing women, Livia Bongiovanni,
Brenda
Bran, and Jennifer Henriquez, who forced me to become involved
outside of the
classroom. I would not have made it through this process without
them.
I would like to thank all of my friends who kept asking if I was
alive, and
who waited patiently for me to finish writing yet another
paper.
iv
vi
ABSTRACT
This thesis addresses three physical spaces in Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein, the
polar ice, the summit of Montanvert, and the Alsace region. In
these locations, physical
and political boundaries are fluid, and these locations connect the
natural spaces with the
physical spaces’ collective knowledge. Their physical presence,
natural boundaries and
man-made turmoil affect the characters while critical plot points
occur. The polar ice lays
bare the results of pushing nature’s boundaries. In the mountains
of Montanvert, the
sublime controls and distorts negotiations between creator and
created. Alsace’s idealized
farmland mimics a failed Edenic origin story. The French
Revolution’s idealized
philosophy, which was supported by Shelley’s parents, spawned the
Reign of Terror’s
numerous violations. The Napoleonic Wars exposed the danger of
boundary violations
without moral or ethical oversight. Frankenstein, in responding to
these events, leaves a
pointed legacy that reflects on the dangers of ignoring the
influence of political and
cultural boundaries.
INTRODUCTION
In the beginning of Chapter one of Mary Shelley’s novel,
Frankenstein; or the
Modern Prometheus, the narrator, Dr. Victor Frankenstein declares:
“I am by birth a
Genovese” (Shelley 64), immediately placing the readers in a
location, even though the
importance of that location is not yet known. Shelley’s novel
explores Victor
Frankenstein’s blind ambition to create life; forgoing the moral
and ethical questions his
ambition creates. As a result, his abandoned creature vows revenge
on the Frankenstein
family, creating a bloody chain of events that culminates with
Victor being led across the
continent to his doom. Victor’s final moments are witnessed by the
ship captain Robert
Walton, who rescues Victor from the frozen ice flow. In the
critiques of Frankenstein,
very few submissions discuss location’s importance to the
characters, the effects of
locations on the development of the characters, and how various
understandings of
location affect the novel’s reader. Nevertheless, Fred Randel’s
quotation from Franco
Moretti’s Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900 seems relevant: “In
modern European
novels, what happens depends a lot on where it happens”
(“Political” 465). In
Frankenstein, the physical spaces enhance the novel’s frame
narrative and add a
collective cultural significance to the stories centered in each
frame. Three specific
locations, the polar ice, the summit of Montanvert, and the Alsace
region, reveal the
2
effects of natural influences and collective knowledge on the
storytellers situated in these
places.
Contemporary Eco-Criticism affords multiple entry points into
Frankenstein that
identify location as a defining textural element. Locations carry
the greatest importance
when the characters in the location are making decisions. By
examining the location’s
physical aspects, the effect of the location, and the cultural
history of the location, we can
arrive at a stronger understanding of the novel’s characters.
Locations and the historical
background, political background, and mythology or folklore
surrounding a specific
location impact not only the characters, but also the reader.
Ecocriticism analyzes more than the role of the collective history
of the physical
setting. It also analyzes the roles and the influences of location.
Cheryll Glotfelty
expounds: "ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between
literature and the
physical environment… ecocriticism takes an earth centered approach
to literary studies”
(Glotfelty xviii). She continues, “all possible relations between
literature and the
physical world.…[Ecocritism] studies relationships between things,
in this case,
including human culture and the physical world” (Glotfelty xx).
Ecocritism asks
questions such as “what role the physical settings play in the
plot?” and more
importantly, asserts that “human culture is connected to the
physical world, affecting it
and affected by it” (Glotflety xix). Mary Shelley selected specific
locations for critical
plot points to underscore the actions of the characters. The
interpretation of Frankenstein
advances with a focus on the human connection to location and vice
versa.
3
Location in a novel enhances the characters, how they act, and what
struggles
they are facing, and thus provide the reader an immediate clue to
the characters’
behavior. Specific locations portray inherent characteristics as
Scott Russell Sanders
suggests:
Nature supplies an occasional metaphor to illustrate a
character’s
dilemma….no matter how much the land has been neglected or abuse,
no
matter how ignorant of their environment people may have become,
nature
is the medium in which life transpires, a prime source of values
and
meaning and purpose. (Sanders 191)
Locations serve an immediate purpose of providing layers of
communal understanding
for the reader. A reader would assume a character lost in the
desert to be hot and thirsty,
however, which desert the character is lost in is just as
important. The Sahara Desert
would influences characters differently than the deserts separating
Los Angeles and Las
Vegas.
The locations of the critical frames, the polar ice, Montanvert and
Alsace, in Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein play a major role in suggesting sources of
values, meaning, and
purpose not only to her characters, but also to the reader’s own
experience of the novel.
The reader is supposed to feel the cold desolation of the polar
ice. The stark, frozen
nothing emphasizes the literal life or death choice Walton is faced
with. The sublime
influence of the mountaintop permeates the quest for peace for
Victor, and the quest for
understanding for the creature. The seemingly peaceful farm region
of Alsace, Shelly’s
Eden revised, hides the cross loyalties of centuries of national
division.
In these three settings, the polar ice, Montanvert and Alsace,
physical, cultural
and political boundaries are fluid, and the characters have
lingered long enough in each
setting to feel the overlapping influences. The physical presence,
natural boundaries, and
man-made political or cultural turmoil associated with each
location effects the characters
during critical plot points and reflect these states. Each of these
locations is firmly
situated within a distinctive narrative frame and location for
storytelling. The polar ice is
a physical location stripped of any embellishment from nature,
where the ambition of
man emerges starkly. In this void, life-changing decisions are
stripped bare for
examination. The polar ice begins and ends the narration of Victor
and is where Walton
applies the knowledge he gains from Victor. Montanvert exists in
the liminal boundary
between the spiritual and physical realms allowing accepted
hierarchical roles to change.
In the mountains of Montanvert, the creature relates his life story
to Victor and bargains
for his future. Alsace externalizes the political collisions
between nations and people
while being offered as a substitute Eden. It is the very center of
the novel, the center
frame, and appropriately, the beginning of the creature’s
understanding of self.
Each of these locations, the polar ice, the summit of Montanvert,
and the Alsace
region, have specific boundaries that have been or are in the
process of being violated due
to the boundaries’ fluidity. Located in the center of the frame,
Alsace has been politically
disputed for centuries as being either part of Germany or part of
France. The political
turmoil of the Alsace region exemplifies the nomadic existence of
the exiled De Laceys,
whom the creature yearns to join. Montanvert ties the geographical
feature of an enduring
mountain to a divine space where Victor and the creature forge a
political agreement that
5
Victor eventually breaks. Finally, the polar ice boundaries were in
dispute between
England and Russia in the 1800’s. The frozen water traps Walton’s
ship in place while
the moving water still flows underneath, pulling the vessel into
the boundary of the ice
sheet. The characters in Frankenstein either directly cross or are
directly affected by the
violation of natural and man-made boundaries which are exposed in
each of these
locations and which invoke the novel’s most recognized theme of
man’s violation of
nature.
The epistolary form that Shelley uses encourages analysis through
the frames set
in different locales. Mrs. Margaret Saville, the sister of Walton,
receives the letters
written by Walton about this eerie encounter on the polar ice and
the story told by the
man he encountered, Victor Frankenstein. Through the epistolary
frame, the story
emerges from each of the storytellers, Walton reconstructs Victor’s
tale, Victor
reconstructs the creature’s tale, and the creature reconstructs the
De Laceys’ tale. The
frame guides the reader to attend to how the story is told, who
tells it, and from where it
is told. Each of the frames nestles inside the next, comparable to
a Russian nesting doll.
As each doll opens, a smaller one rests inside. Each frame in
Frankenstein opens to
reveal more of the story and exposes a new location. Connecting the
frame to the location
creates a different way of examining frames and the frame’s
influences on the narrative.
The polar ice becomes the first frame’s focus. The Russian polar
ice invites a
comparison of Victor Frankenstein to Napoleon, a self proclaimed
Modern Prometheus,
and his ill-fated campaign of 1812 that left frozen soldiers
retreating from Moscow and
the rumored destination of St. Petersburg. The frozen, sterile
landscape of the polar ice
6
highlights the exposed humanity left in Victor and the hauntingly
similar choice that
Walton has before him.
The second commonly accepted frame is the creature relating his
life story to
Victor Frankenstein on Montanvert. When Frankenstein was written,
Mary Shelley and
her husband, Percy Shelley, were staying in Lake Geneva within view
of Mont Blanc, the
glacial home of Montanvert. During their stay in Lake Geneva,1
Percy Shelley wrote his
famous poem, “Mont Blanc.” Many critics have pointed out that Percy
Shelley wrote the
introduction to Frankenstein, but debate on how much editing he
provided on the novel.
The critical canon on Percy Shelley’s influence is immense. Mont
Blanc is the very
mountain and glacier that her husband wrote about. Nevertheless,
the influence of the
mountain setting on the characters leaves much to be
explored.
The Frame’s center is located in the rural farmlands of Alsace.
Mary Shelley uses
Alsace to echo another location in Judeo-Christian culture, Eden.
In this replicated Eden,
the creature becomes aware and develops his self-cultivation
through observing the De
Laceys and reading select literary texts such as John Milton’s
Paradise Lost. Mary Shelly
purposefully leads the reader in the analogy to Eden: “This
coincides with the description
given in History of a Six Weeks Tour, “ [in which] memory, taking
all the dark shades
from the picture, presents this part of the Rhine to my remembrance
and the loveliest
paradise on Earth” (Phillips 65). While Mary Shelley toured the
Rhine River, the
physical representation of the border of Alsace between France and
Germany, she
pictured a paradise. She places the De Laceys and the creature in
her duplicated Eden.
1 The Shelley party stayed at Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake
Geneva during the month of June 1816 when she started to
Frankenstein.
7
While education of the creature, or lack thereof, takes place in
Alsace, other
influences of nationality and political structures swirl before the
creature ever learns
his first word.
The original 1818 text is a closer reflection of the cultural
forces that Mary
Shelley explores in her settings. 2 Although many scholars focus on
the influence from
the French Revolution on Mary Shelley, the Napoleonic Wars had just
as much influence,
if not more. Mary Shelley originally published her novel a mere six
years after the French
invasion of Russia in 1812 and three years after Napoleon’s
disaster at Waterloo in 1815.
Jeanne Moskal discusses this impact: “Frankenstein”, published soon
after The History
of a Six Week’s Tour, continues Mary Shelley’s reassessment of
Rousseau and Geneva,
creates an image of humanity that, like the Revolution, begins in
benevolence and ends in
murder” (Moskal 245). Victor, the Genovese, contains traits from
both Rousseau and
Napoleon. Rousseau, who was born in Geneva, was a key figure in the
philosophy of the
French Revolution. Rousseau believed in the ability to rule oneself
with only the rules the
self enacted without an authoritative figure of rule. Each person
is sovereign not to a
monarch but to himself or herself. However, his philosophy was also
the key influence
for the Reign of Terror. Napoleon ended the Reign of Terror by
seizing control from the
political factions in France, creating stability. He thought he
could rule all of Europe, and
the invasions of other countries led to Napoleon’s downfall. Mary
Shelley links the 2 keep the To original voice of the text, many
scholars choose to study the 1818 edition. The
original text was revised and reissued in 1831. Subtle and not so
subtle changes between editions color the reading of the novel. An
older and more mature woman revises the 1831 edition. The thirteen
years between editions included the loss of two children, Clara and
William, a miscarriage, and the deaths of her husband Percy and
close friend Lord Byron. The impact of these staggering life events
would not be conceivable in the writings of the eighteen-year-old
Shelley. Looking at the original 1818 text thus allows for the
analysis of the characters as Mary Shelley wrote them with all of
her original passions, ideas and influences.
8
overreaching ambition of Napoleon to her overreaching ambitious
scientist, Victor
Frankenstein. Victor wants to create life; the life he creates
leaves a trail of bodies
pointing to Victor’s shattered humanity. Mary Shelley labels Victor
as the modern day
Prometheus in the title, forever linking Victor to Napoleon’s
thirst for power and
Rousseau’s misused philosophies.
Mary Shelley cannot escape the influences of her European settings
anymore than
Victor can escape from his creature. Each of the locations where
Mary Shelley places a
storyteller embodies strong, specific influences that the reader
not only feels, but also
reacts to. She invites the reader to experience more than a horror
story and more than a
tale of science fiction. Mary Shelley exposes through the actions
of her characters the
location’s natural influences and collective cultural knowledge
through a fictionalized
travel novel.
THE POLAR ICE
Mary Shelley sets the opening frame of Frankenstein in the
unembellished space
of the polar ice. The polar ice at first glance seems quiet and
serene, yet the natural force
of frozen water and man clash in the sterile landscape. This
location of the polar ice not
only characterizes man pushing scientific boundaries, but also
evokes the political
boundaries of the early 1800s, specifically the failed political
and nationalistic boundaries
of Napoleon. In October of 1812, Napoleon and his army struggled
across the frozen ice
returning from the ill-fated invasion of Russia. The empirical
boundaries of Russia,
France and Great Britain are fiercely fought over even in this
frozen no man’s land. The
stark physical properties of nature thwart man’s political
boundaries even as man
struggles to create them. The ice shifts not only political
boundaries, but also the
boundaries of Walton’s quest to discover the Hyperborean
zone.
In Mary Shelley’s time, the polar ice captured the imagination of
scientists
following the Hollow Earth theory, a debunked theory suggested by
the brilliant
mathematician and astronomer Edmond Halley in 1692. According to
Nicholas
Kollerstrom, Halley, who discovered the eponymous Halley’s comet,
also theorized that
there was a temperate world encases within the earth, with access
at the poles
(Kollerstorm 1). While Walton pursues the fabled Hyperborean zone,
the natural
10
boundaries of water and ice encapsulate his ship, creating a
seemingly static location.
However, while the natural boundary of ice constricts movement in
the vast frozen
landscape, the current under the ice pulls the wooden ship into the
jagged edges. Walton
fails to see the danger of his obsession, just as Victor failed to
understand the
implications of his quest to create life.
Mary Shelley’s ship captain Walton believes in the Hollow Earth
theory and is
willing to cross the frozen boundary to discovery a new paradise.
He gathers an
expedition to approach the North Pole searching for the world
inside. He writes to his
dear sister, Margaret Saville, to assuage her fears:
I try in vain to be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost
and
desolation; it ever presents itself to my imagination as the region
of beauty
and delight. There, Margaret, the sun is for ever visible; its
broad disk just
skirting the horizon, and diffusing a perpetual splendor. ….There
snow
and frost are banished; and, sailing over a calm sea, we may be
wafted to a
land surpassing in wonder and in beauty….what may not be expected
in a
country of eternal light. (Shelley 51)
The theory of a Hyperborean zone retained some credibility in the
early 1800’s. The idea
of being able to travel past the frozen wasteland to find a
temperate paradise was still
viable and discussed in scientific and philosophical circles.
Walton dismisses the
boundary of frost and desolation as something to pass through, not
to experience. Much
like Victor, he focuses on the results, or achievement of his
discovery.
11
Walton’s journey of scientific discovery parallels Victor’s
scientific experiments
in creation. Both Walton and Victor are pushing the boundaries of
human knowledge
without thinking of the boundaries to cross or the consequences of
crossing them. Their
quests, one to find a new world and one to create life, consume
both men. Victor
succeeds in his quest, and his triumph condemns his family members.
Walton, on the
other hand, starts his journey blinded by the thought of finding
eternal light only to
become trapped along the way in the polar ice. Walton is firmly
placed inside of the
boundary, neither succeeding nor failing, when he discovers Victor
and the creature.
Walton is frozen on the brink between scientific discovery and a
fatal violation of
nature’s boundary.
The characters are completely affected by the overpowering
manifestation of their
location as well as their environment. The polar ice becomes more
than the surroundings
of Walton and his ship. It threatens to overcome his tiny vessel,
not just by crushing it,
but also by simply overwhelming it in the vast nothingness of the
frozen ice. This
situation can be read fruitfully through Mazel’s conception of
“environs”:
What remains of our sense of environment, by contrast, is not any
action
but a thing;…we no longer speak of what environs us, but of what
our
environment is. This is not a trivial distinction, for restoring
to
environment the sense of its originary actions allows us to inquire
into not
only what environs us, but how it came to do so, by means of what
agency,
and so on. (Mazel 138-139)
12
The definition of the noun form of environment, the label of what
is around us denies the
effect of the environment on us. The polar ice is the location, a
place the characters are
located in or try to move through. However, the Mazel’s Oxford
English Dictionary-
derived form of ‘environ’ carries the effect of the environment.
There is now agency, so
the location can affect the characters or objects in the setting.
The polar ice environs the
ship. The polar ice is active, pressing against the ship.
The polar ice thus becomes more than a location; the polar ice
becomes the
boundary that Walton must navigate. Walton, an Englishman, writes
from his Russian-
based vessel that is trapped in ice:
Our situation was somewhat dangerous, especially as we were
compassed
round by a very thick fog….the mist cleared away…and we
beheld,
stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice,
which
seemed to have no end…..we heard the ground sea; and before night
the
ice broke and freed our ship. (Shelley 58).
A thick fog obscures the view, and figuratively obscures the
destiny that Walton will
have to choose. The frozen sea has trapped Walton and his men. The
water under the boat
is still able to move, yet any progress towards a destination is
completely stopped. Ice
will still flow, but at a much slower rate. The compressing ice
sheets threaten to crush the
vessel. The vast, irregular ice plains are void of life, void of
humanity, and void of any
life giving substance. Even after the ship is freed, there are
still pieces of ice that can
slam into the hull, so it can no longer safely travel between the
boundaries of land.
13
Walton, unlike Victor, has been physically stopped from completing
his quest. The
setting, the natural polar ice, halts Walton’s progress
forward.
The physical properties also reflect Walton’s mental state. Walton
can only
visualize this quest. Walton writes: “we were compassed round by a
very thick
fog….About two o’clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld,
stretched out in every
direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have
no end” (Shelley 58).
The fog and mist lift allowing Walton to see that he is in a harsh
sterile landscape. For the
first time, Walton recognizes the dangers represented by the
physical boundary. He now
has the clarity of mind necessary to hear Victor’s tale and to
recognize the boundaries
with which he is colliding.
Walton, with the help of Victor and Victor’s story, is able to
assess the futility of
his quest and his responsibilities to his ship and men. Victor
gives a deathbed decree to
Walton: “Seek Happiness in tranquility, and avoid ambition, even if
it be only the
apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and
discovers. Yet, why do
I say this? I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another
may succeed” (Shelley
216). Victor exposes Walton’s ambition. He acknowledges his own
failure of
recognizing boundaries, and he cautions Walton to not make the same
mistake of failing
to see the danger in ambition pushed too far into obsession.
Walton discovers Victor and chronicles Victor’s story when he
writes to his sister
from a setting of cold, dangerous uncertainty. Victor’s humanity,
or lack thereof, reveals
itself to Walton, so that he can clearly see the results of
Victor’s quest, and the
unintended results of boundaries colliding. Walton recognizes a
parallel between himself
14
and the person he has rescued. They have more in common than both
being out on the
polar ice. Joyce Carol Oates expands the frozen landscape to
include Victor: “ Frozen in a
posture of rigorous denial” (Oates 545) and fittingly located in a
country of “eternal light
that will prove, of course, only a place of endless ice, [the polar
ice is]the appropriate
landscape for Victor Frankenstein’s death and his demon’s self
immolation” (Oates 543).
She reads Victor being literally frozen in the Arctic ice as a
symbolic representation of
his frozen acceptance of responsibility for any of his actions. The
eternal light, in itself
death-defying, is the essence of what Victor has tried to create;
instead, this never fading
light mocks Victor’s life’s work. His humanity has been stripped
away leaving only the
frozen pieces of the narrative he provides Walton.
Even though the uninhabited polar ice’s vastness overwhelms Walton
and his
ship, and can be read symbolically, it does not escape national
political borders. Mary
Shelley writes Frankenstein during the rise of the second British
Empire. Walton, an
Englishman, writes to his sister. Walton has commissioned his
voyage while in the main
port of St. Petersburg, Russia, and he has recruited an
international crew to explore the
polar ice. There, he meets a Swiss man pursuing an enemy across the
polar ice, low on
provisions, and almost dead. Further, that nemesis was assembled in
Germany. Shelley
intentionally uses the starting point of St. Petersburg to suggest
the ambiguity of national
boundaries. Geographical and political boundaries are established
and reestablished with
every map drawn, war, or treaty.
The polar ice’s political dimension is complex. The political
boundary between
Britain and Russia was not established until the Treaty of Saint
Petersburg of 1825.
15
While the French Revolution would still be fresh in the minds of
Shelley and her readers
when Frankenstein was originally published in 1818, fresher still
would be the War of
1812, and Napoleon’s fateful invasion of Russia. Images from the
failed conquests of
Napoleon were still raw in the minds of Europeans six years after
the end of the war.
Mary Shelley intentionally leads the reader to connect her novel to
Napoleon by using
the shared analogy of Prometheus in her title, Frankenstein; or,
the Modern Prometheus.
Napoleon is associated with Prometheus by both Lord Byron in the
sixteenth stanza of
“Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte” and his own propaganda machine
(“Political” 467).
Napoleon marched on Moscow, identified as the Russian’s heart,
despite rumors of an
invasion of St. Petersburg, known as Russia’s head. As Napoleon
advanced, Russian
soldiers retreated, burning everything left behind. Napoleon
invaded Russia with 500,000
troops, yet only 100,000 survived the retreat across the ice (Staff
1). Napoleon failed to
create a new empire out of the Russian body parts, much like Victor
failed to create a
beautiful new being out of parts from the charnel houses.
Napoleon and his army were caught by the severe Russian winter
storms with no
provisions and no shelter. Readers would easily relate Victor’s
pursuit of the creature
over the polar ice to Napoleon’s failed campaign:
The French army was never trapped amidst ice floes in the Arctic
like
Victor, his creature, and the men on Walton’s ship. But the
atmosphere of
baffled movement, wintery disorientation, and despair which
envelops the
novel’s characters is a figurative counterpart to the plight of
Napoleon’s
retreating forces…The Count De Segur, Napoleon’s
Quartermaster-
16
General on the Russian campaign of 1812, invokes the metaphor of a
ship
on a sea of ice….In this shipwreck, the army, like a great vessel
tossed by
the most violent storm, was throwing overboard on a sea of ice and
snow
everything that might encumber it or delay its progress.
(Randel,
“Political” 468)
The image of disoriented baffled movement enveloping Victor,
Walton, and his ship
revels the political dimension of Victor’s quest and accentuates
the confusion of the polar
ice. The polar ice is palpable with menace. The Russian winter
punishes men who have
invaded the icy wasteland. The frozen Russian ice has claimed many
a victory in battle.
Having wisely surrendered his own conquest, Walton is in place to
witness the final
battle between Victor and the creature, not on the figurative ship
of Count De Segur, but
on a literal ship frozen in place.
The vast bareness of the polar ice positions both Walton and Victor
to scrutinize
their quests and the choices made, or the choices yet to be made.
Walton and Victor have
pursued obsessively their scientific objectives. The allusion to
Napoleon’s defeat on the
Russian ice emphasizes the failure of political and scientific
obsessions along with the
reality of the frozen environment. The ship and her crew are a
microcosm of
multinational interests firmly stuck in the ice and at the mercy of
the undercurrent. The
shifting boundaries surrounding the ship accentuate the actions and
decisions that these
characters make on the ship. Inside of this sterile environment,
the actions of the
characters become amplified. Napoleon’s and Victor’s defeat are
complete. Victor has
succeeded in creating life, but at the cost of his family members’
lives as well as a his
17
own. Walton receives a rare chance to assess his quest. The frozen
wasteland lays bare
the results of Victor’s failed attempt, while it holds Walton,
along with his ship, long
enough to reevaluate.
The novel ends on the polar ice upon which it started. Victor has
died, exhausted
from his self-imposed atonement to end the creature. After one last
declaration of
farewell, the creature leaps to his ice raft and paddles off into
the frozen landscape, “lost
in darkness and distance” (Shelley 221). Victor and the creature
remain in the polar ice.
They are as frozen in their mindset as Walton’s ship had been. The
ice that has threatened
Walton’s ship and men gives way to the tidal pull of the water
underneath. Walton, the
chronicler of the tale, surrenders his ambition and turns his
expedition around. Walton
follows the fluid boundary back to port, choosing the safety of his
men and understanding
the responsibilities of his quest that Victor failed to recognize.
Much like Napoleon’s
dreams of conquest, his dream of finding the Northwest Passage lies
abandoned, lodged
fast in the frozen polar ice.
18
MONTANVERT
Montanvert, the northern glacier of Mont Blanc, presides over the
long-delayed
discussion between Victor Frankenstein and his abandoned creation.
Mary Shelley uses
the contradictory emotional pull of the sublime to influence a key
point of the novel, the
telling of the creature’s story in his glacial home on Montanvert.
Montanvert’s mountain,
Mont Blanc, is the geographical boundary between the countries of
Italy, Switzerland and
France, and symbolizes a physical boundary between earth and the
heavens. The
mountain setting creates overlapping boundaries between the
physical and spiritual, earth
and the heaven, created and creator. The sublime, an aesthetic
effect produced by the
intertwining of opposites, occupies the shared boundaries and
impacts both Victor and his
creature. In this liminal space, Victor and his creation shift the
roles they have embodied;
the assumed boundaries of authority reverse. The combined emotions,
which thrill and
horrify simultaneously, reflect the sublime experience of location,
and the actions of the
characters that unfold in this setting. The meeting on Montanvert
creates the shift in
relationship between Victor and his creature because of the
boundary blurring influence
of the sublime.
The sublime, defined as the intertwining of opposites, such as awe
and terror, that
transcends the human condition is illustrated in the mountain
setting of Montanvert.
Edmund Burke published A Philosophical Enquiry Into The Origin Of
Our Ideas Of The
19
Sublime And Beautiful in 1757, and the Romantic poets fully
embraced the sublime and
the archetypal locus of the European sublime, the Alps. Greg
Garrard points out that not
only did Mary Shelley’s husband, Percy Shelley, write the
quintessential poem on Mont
Blanc, but her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, also wrote about the
sublime effects of the
Alps in A Short Residence is Sweden (Garrard 72). Burke goes on to
define the sublime in
terms of breaking down the passions: “The passion caused by the
great and sublime in
nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment;
and astonishment is
that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended,
with some degree of horror”
(Burke 53). Nature stirs the passions and therefore embodies
aspects of the sublime. The
Alps embody both the cause and source of the sublime according to
Burke: “Greatness of
dimension, is a powerful cause of the sublime” and also
“Magnificence is likewise a
source of the sublime” (Burke 66, 71). Mary Shelley places the
meeting between Victor
and his creature in an area that epitomizes the sublime. Even
before the first sighting, or
the first word is spoken, the reader is already in a state of
tantalizing, anticipated horror.
While the reader is experiencing the effects of the sublime, Mary
Shelley uses the
overlapping boundaries of the physical and spiritual to accentuate
the in-between status
of Victor. The physical setting elevates the characters above the
earth but not as high as
the heavens. Victor is compelled to seek the boundary between earth
and heavens
because he does not fully belong to one plane or the other and he
can identify with both
physical and spiritual qualities. Victor has successfully created
life, yet he is human and
not a god. The uncertain space he and the creature, human yet not
human, both cohabit is
augmented by the collision of these boundaries. The crossover of
these boundaries
20
creates a liminal space where the sublime flourishes as seen thus
in Fig1:
Fig 1 Venn diagram of the sublime created by the author; (11 June
2016).
The sublime is firmly anchored in the union of these boundaries.
Characters in the
location feel the effects of the overlapping boundaries and the
sublime. Inside of this
sublime liminal space, what was conventional before the climb to
Montanvert is now
suspended, allowing for change even if the change is only temporary
while inside the
blended boundary. This space influences Victor to listen both
sympathetically and
emphatically to his creature and to be swayed by the creature’s
argument.
The valley of Chamounix, where Victor and his family go to recover
from the
murder of the youngest sibling, William, is located in the northern
approach to Mont
Blanc. The view of the mountain landscape affects Victor and
portends the mountaintop
meeting. Shelley describes the vista view during Victor’s travels
to Chamounix:
It was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose
white
and shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging
to
21
another earth, the habitations of another race of beings…the
supreme and
magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding
aiguilles, and
its tremendous dome overlooked the valley. (Shelley 114-115)
She foreshadows the meeting to come with the phrase “habitations of
another race of
beings,” specifically referencing the creature. Chamounix removes
the Frankenstein
family retreat from the realm of earth, yet it is still part of
earth. The sublime saturates the
landscape and creates a space where affinities of the sublime not
only belong, but they
can also thrive.
The sublimity of the Alps is in relation to the civilized village,
the picturesque
Chamounix. The Frankenstein family travels to Chamounix to
experience the “wonder
and sublime” (Shelley 114) while forgetting their grief for Justine
and William’s deaths.
The creature, however, is still lurking, waiting to confront his
creator just as the
picturesque mountain village conceals the wilderness of the Alps.
By defining wilderness
as a space untouched by man, Alison Byerly aligns wilderness with
the sublime and
contrasts that effect with that of the picturesque:
The feeling of awe that is inspired by a ‘sublime’ scene depends on
the
spectator’s sense of its dominant power and its ability to call
forth a
visionary grasp of infinity. …wilderness, however, has been
gradually
reduced and circumscribed until it no longer seems to stretch into
infinity,
but is contained and controlled within established boundaries.
(Byerly 52)
Mont Blanc and its glaciers are defiantly not contained. The
dominant power of Mont
Blanc has inspired not only Percy Shelley, but also millions of
travelers who have visited
22
Montanvert and Chamounix. In this space, the true wilderness
becomes clear. The
creature is at home in this untamed glacial setting. As Victor
climbs from the safety of
the picturesque Chamounix to view Mont Blanc and feel the effects
of the sublime, the
wilderness overpowers the picturesque. Man, or Victor, is overcome
by the wilderness of
Montanvert or the creature that then emerges.
Percy Shelley’s ode “Mont Blanc” describes the greatness and
magnificence of
the mountain attributing the sublime to it. Readers in 1818 would
be very familiar with
the qualities of the sublime conjured by the poem and would easily
transfer the sublime
of Mont Blanc to Frankenstein. The final stanza begins, “Mont Blanc
yet gleams on
high:—the power is there, / The still and solemn power of many
sights, /And many
sounds, and much of life and death” (P. Shelley 1). Mont Blanc
fills the scenery,
powerful and still. The mountain has overseen eons of sound and
existence. Mankind’s
lifespan is one small slice of time compared to the permanence of
the Alps. Mont Blanc
allows alignment with the spiritual, yet stops just short of the
heavens. The awe, terror
and compulsion that Mont Blanc delivers is echoed in Frankenstein,
as it not only affects
the individual, but also manifests itself in the characters
inhabiting the glacier. Victor
climbs the summit of Montanvert to experience the sublime, leaving
the picturesque town
behind and venturing into the wilderness alone. He remembers the
effect of the glacier:
It had then filled me with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the
soul,
and allowed it to soar form the obscure world to light and joy. The
sight of
the awful and majesty in nature had indeed always the effect
of
23
solemnizing my mind, and causing me to forget the passing cares of
life.
(Shelley 116)
Victor wants the location to affect him when he climbs the summit.
His desire to forget
the passing cares of his life drives him further into the
wilderness. The scenery is
“terrifically desolate” reflecting his mental state of despair,
“add[ing] to the melancholy
impression I received from the objects around me” (Shelley 116).
Victor is running from
his responsibilities, yet he is seeking relief from a cold,
desolate, dangerous location. He
recognizes the danger of speaking when sound can “produce a
concussion of air
sufficient to draw destruction upon the head of the speaker”
(Shelley 116). Victor is
willing to walk through a path where avalanches occur to feel the
sublime effect of
Montanvert.
Montanvert dominates the characters, yet the characters assume a
hierarchy of
creator and created; however, these assumed boundaries become fluid
during the meeting
on Montanvert. Burke wrestles with the quandary of boundaries in a
mountain space:
“does it bring us down to earth, or link us with the divinity of
the skies?” (Burke xviii).
That quandary is particularly apt in relation to Frankenstein.
There is not a question of
the sublime: “The sublime object is beyond doubt or criticism; the
sublime experience is
one of domination….what ever acts in conformity to our will…can
never be sublime”
(Burke xxii). Mont Blanc dominates the scenery and in so doing,
creates a fluid boundary
where power in one location or in one person flows to another. In
this fluidity, the created
meets with the creator, and domination becomes a dance between
Victor and the creature.
24
Having reached the top of the ascent, Victor is firmly centered
inside of the
overlapping boundaries controlled by the sublime. His heart “now
swelled with
something like joy” (Shelley 117). The location has affected Victor
and gives him the
courage to tempt the gods: “Wandering spirits, …. Allow me this
faint happiness. Or take
me, as your companion, away from the joys of life” (Shelley 117).
Victor is issuing a
challenge, a challenge that we know will be accepted. He enjoys a
temporary mood shift
heightened by Montanvert. This allows Victor access to a space to
address the wandering
spirits and attempt to make his own bargain, to either feel joy
again or be taken away
from the joys of life. Immediately after issuing the challenge,
Victor sees the creature:
As I said this, I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some
distance,
advancing towards me with superhuman speed. …I was troubled: a
mist
came over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me; but I was
quickly
restored by the cold gale of the mountains. I perceived, as the
shape came
nearer, sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom
I had
created. (Shelley 117)
The wandering spirits answer Victor’s challenge, not in the way he
expects, but with a
paradox. They issue Victor the same challenge with Victor being the
authoritative
position to grant happiness or take away the joy of life from his
creature. His creature
approaches him the same way that Victor approached the wandering
spirits. Victor is
momentarily blinded and overcome, but the cold gale from
Montanvert, the very breath
of the sublime, clears his vision. Victor occupies the position of
both supplicant and
provider.
25
The sublime creates a liminal space for Victor and the creature to
negotiate.
Boundaries in the mountain setting are blurred and they two are
brought more closely
together physically and emotionally than at any other point. This
emotional linking is
also a product of the sublime. According to Randel: “The privacy of
rapture before the
sublime landscape overwhelms other considerations but then wakens
thoughts about the
preferability of participation in society” (“Mountains” 522).
Through the overwhelming
experience of the sublime, the urge to connect to people emerges.
In this sublime setting,
Victor is willing to listen and connect to his creature. Randel
describes mountains as
being “either other worldly or divided against itself” (“Mountains”
516). The location
where Victor and his creature finally speak includes both of these
elements. The creature
is otherworldly, and there is a strong division between Victor and
the creature. However,
the meeting on the mountain allows Victor to change his
perspective: “his words had a
strange effect upon me. I compassionated him, and sometimes felt a
wish to console him”
(Shelley 158) He no longer withdraws from the creature. Rather, he
sees the creature on
the glacier, and he actively pursues and then agrees to not only
hear his creature’s plea,
but also to enter into an agreement with him.
The plot hinges upon the agreement between the creator and created.
The creature
holds power over Victor; he is no longer a shadow but in the direct
line of Victor’s sight.
Victor accepts some responsibility for being a creator when he
agrees to the creature’s
demands. According to Colene Bently: “The agreement achieved at
Montanvert
ultimately produces a reality effect in the novel, for it is the
moment in which characters’
conflicting opinions and interests converge on a common political
world” (Bently 12).
26
Bently recognizes that the agreement between Victor and the
creature is more than a
creator/creation discussion, but also a treaty between two
politicalized entities. Both want
something from the other. The conflicting boundaries between the
two are separated, just
like the physical setting, until only their commonality is left.
The creature wants the
chance to live and populate the earth away from man. Victor wants
the creature to be
gone. The physical location of Montanvert between two countries and
between earth and
the heavens embodies the differences between Victor and the
creature, while it allows for
the commonalities, to be exposed to view, just like Mont Blanc
overlooking the setting.
The mountain top meeting of creator and creation is an archetype
that symbolizes
a spiritual journey. Victor is seen as both the god listening to
his creation, a creation that
has been abandoned up to this point, and as the student; Randel
identifies the meeting as
“A mountaintop experience that holds a potential for enabling
Frankenstein to grow up”
(Randel, “Mountains” 526). Victor listens to the creature, and for
the first time hears his
responsibility as a creator being defined. Victor acknowledges some
responsibility: “For
the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards
his creature were, and that I
ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness”
(Shelley 120). Until
this moment, Victor has physically run from all responsibilities as
a creator. In the liminal
space between earth and the heavens, fueled by the sublime, the
creature not only justifies
his right to life, but also gains the promise of a mate from his
creator, Victor. Victor
continues to be the life-giving god figure, but a god figure
working at the direction of his
creature.
27
Creators meeting with their creations on mountains are a common
motif.
Mountains and divinity have been aligned through pictures, stories
and songs familiar to
Judeo-Christian cultures and pagan cultures alike. A mountain
setting implies a physical
closeness to the creator. Randel points out that Shelley turns this
common motif around:
“As usual, a creature has access to his creator on a mountain, but
now man is the creator”
(“Mountains” 526-527). The parallel in Judeo-Christian culture to
Moses climbing the
mountain to speak with God, and bringing back the commandments is
immediately
understood. While the mountain reaches into the realm of
spirituality and heavenly
aspirations, the attachment to earthly matters still exists. The
power dynamic shifts fueled
by the encounter with the sublime affecting matters of reason and
domination inside of
the mountain heights’ fluid boundaries. Mary Shelley flips the
convention of the
god/creation paradigm with Victor being the god. Victor must climb
the mountain to
meet his creation. The reader would expect the creation to bargain
or plead; however, the
creature demands and even threatens his creator. Rather than God
telling Moses how to
behave, the creature tells his creator what to do.
The agreement between Victor and the creature has been made in a
liminal space
where boundaries overlap. By using the location of Montanvert, Mary
Shelley shrewdly
allows the characters to be altered in the presence of the sublime.
Burke warns against
reasoning in the presence of the sublime, “The Sublime in nature is
a form of paralysis, a
literally stunning invasion…. The Sublime makes reasoning
impossible and is the
antithesis of philosophical enquiry” (Burke xxi - xxii). The
creature pleads his argument
in a location that impedes reasoning. Yet the creature is able to
clearly construct his
28
argument based on his dominance and alliance to the sublime
presence. Victor gives his
final reason for agreement: “his power and threats were not omitted
in my calculations: a
creature who could exist in the ice caves of the glaciers, and hide
himself from pursuit
among the ridges of inaccessible precipices, was a being possessing
faculties it would be
vain to cope with” (Shelley 158). Victor is not able to deliberate
clearly; his final reason
for agreeing lies partially in the fact that he is in the presence
of the sublime and being
dominated.
The creature and Montanvert draws the same emotional response.
David Ketterer
aligns the sublime with the creature’s description:
The qualities of Burke’s sublime—terror, fear, horror, wonder, and
power-
are most obviously manifested in Mary Shelley’s descriptions
of
mountains, ice, and raging seas; and it is from the Alpine
environment
especially that Mary Shelley’s Monster gains the same qualities.
(Ketterer
548)
Ketterer ties the physical space of Montanvert to Burke’s qualities
of the sublime and
applies the definition of sublime to the creature, tying the
physical space to human
interaction with the sublime. As the sublime Montanvert overpowers
Victor’s emotions,
the creature overpowers his reason.
The blurring of the boundaries creates a commonality where first a
meeting, and
then an agreement can be made. The physical location, between
nations and between the
Earth and heavens, allows for the differences between Victor and
his creature to be put
aside. The overlapping boundaries of Montanvert allow the sublime
to flourish. In the
29
liminal space of the sublime, the characters shift roles and become
open to the suit that
each presents; Victor challenges the wandering spirits, and the
creator bargains with him.
The wandering spirits do not engage Victor directly. Instead,
Victor is immediately
placed into a parallel role where his creature presents his
petition to Victor. The creator
and the created bargain as equals, or at least they are two parties
with an equal amount to
gain. The union between Victor and the creature is fruitful, if
only for the time they
inhabit the liminal space controlled by the sublime. The effects
diminish as they leave the
sublime controlled Montanvert, allowing the differences between
Victor and the creature
to regain prominence. The collisions between the physical and
spiritual boundaries
affecting Victor recover dominance outside of the mountain union.
Without the buffer of
the sublime influencing his emotions and reason, Victor no longer
focuses on the
commonality and he begins to work against his creation, resulting
in the pursuit of the
creature across continents.
ALSACE
Mary Shelley puts Alsace in the center in Frankenstein’s frame as
means to
explore the creature’s origin story. By prominently placing John
Milton’s Paradise Lost
as one text from which the creature gains knowledge, she encourages
the analogy
between Alsace and a mythical Eden. However, Shelley’s Alsace is
not the mythical
Eden central to Christian belief, but a location that has been
culturally and politically
disputed for centuries. This innermost frame narrows in on the
political exile of the De
Lacey family from a post-revolution Paris yet still experiencing
violations of political
boundaries. The seeming peacefulness of this farm region, where the
creature develops,
hides the cultural cross-loyalties produced by centuries of
national division. The
deceptively serene setting of Alsace in fact epitomizes the turmoil
of clashing political
and cultural issues.
The political and cultural collisions contained in the landscape
are not always
visible. Reading a landscape involves more than knowing the name of
physical
formations on a map. Here, eco-critical readings of landscape can
prove useful: “In
learning to read land, one can’t just name objects....one scholar
of place notes, the
landscape contains many names and stories, so that learning and
writing them becomes a
way of mapping cultural terrain” (Howarth 80). The cultural terrain
incorporates the
people and their stories into the land. Starting with the cultural
impact on the terrain,
31
Howarth adds: “A biogeographer works in similar ways, reading
regional life and land
forms, then using ecology to map their interactions ” (Howarth 80).
The cultural map of
Alsace exposes both the overlapping boundaries of national and
natural terrain, and the
people being affected by these overlapping boundaries.
Alsace’s shifting national boundary between Germany and France
creates a zone
of contact between cultures defined primarily by blurred
boundaries:
The Revolutionary Wars and the wars of liberation
(Befreiungskriege)
gave rise to nationalist sentiments which proved enduring. Thus,
German
travellers after 1815 increasingly thought of the French-German
border as
a linear national border, whereas they had perceived it as a zone
with
successive cultural transitions before….During the political
upheavals of
the French Revolution, the revolutionaries of 1789 adopted the idea
of
"natural borders", which in the case of France's eastern border
was
primarily defined as the Rhine River. During the French Revolution,
the
idea also emerged that the residents of a region should decide
themselves
which nation they belonged to. (Hopel 1)
The wars between Germany and France created an area between them
where the idea of a
precise division of nation was foreign. In fact, for many people,
nationality was based on
a cultural identity, not location.3 The natural geographical border
adopted in 1789 by the
3 Very little has changed in Alsace over the centuries. The
cultural overlap of Germany and France melds into the now peaceful
countryside. Alsace is known for the white wines produced from the
grapes grown on the eastern slops of the Vosges Mountains. The
steep slopes are still plowed by horse, and the acclaimed French
wines are made in the German tradition. A culinary specialty of the
region is choucroute, or sauerkraut, which most gourmets would
trace to German and not French cuisine. Standing on the
slopes,
32
French revolutionaries was overrun by Germany in WWI and again in
WWII. After
WWII, the Rhine River once again became the easily identifiable
physical boundary to
separate the two countries.4 Whereas previously one would travel
from one cultural area
to another, there is now a physical marker, the Rhine River,
creating a clear visual
boundary. The Rhine River bisects the geographical lands that
Germany and France
fought over for centuries. The ideas of personal liberty and
freedom that vivified the
French Revolution crossed into the cultural boundary lines of
Alsace, which is exhibited
by the people living in the area promoting their own rule and
culture as Alsace-
Lorrainers. The idea of letting people identify with the
nationality of their choice directly
relates to Mary Shelley’s placing the De Lacey’s hut amidst the
turmoil of Alsace’s
national identification, exposing the clashing political and
cultural boundaries.
Shelley capitalizes on Alsace’s confused historical nationality.
History parallels
the characters’ own confused national alignment, French, German, or
a cultural identity
that is neither. C. C. Eckhardt’s article “The Alsace-Lorraine
Question” published in
1918, he discusses the history of the Alsace. He points out, “It
was the French Revolution
that aroused in the Alsace-Lorrainers a French sentiment….Many
Alsace-Lorrainers
fought in the French wars in the armies of the Republic and
Napoleon” (Eckhardt 433).
the border of Germany is visible across the Rhine River. One can
visit the Frankstein winery in Dambach- la Ville, one of the
fifty-one designated Grand Cru wineries dating back to the Middle
Ages (Francis 1). 4 Conflicting allegiances appear again in 1898.
Emile Zola exposes these conflicts with his letter addressing the
President of France, Félix Faure. “J’Accuse” addresses the
treatment of Richard Dreyfus, an Alsace-born Jew in the French army
falsely accused of giving documents to the German government
(Zola). On a smaller scale, the political distrust still affects
the name of a globally popular dog breed. If you are French
Alsatian, you own beautiful Alsatian Shepherds to help with your
sheep. If you are an Alsatian with German alliances, or anti
French, you own German Shepherds. Even the label in A Field Guide
in Color to DOGS by Josef Novotny and Josef Najman shows the breed
as “Alsatian (German Shepherd)” (Novotny 50) and then gives a
single breed description.
33
Shelley published Frankenstein in 1818 when Alsace was under French
rule. However,
the creature tells Victor that he discovered the De Laceys and
their cottage in Germany
(Shelley 140). This mistaken boundary illustrates the confusion of
where or to whom
Alsace belongs. A century after Frankenstein was published, wars,
treaties, and
inheritances continued to change the ownership of Alsace and
ultimately combined
Alsace with the province of Lorraine. This confusion about
political and cultural
boundaries impacts both the characters and the landscape. By
placing the origin story into
a politically and culturally blurred area, Shelley leverages the
confusion of where does
the creature belong, if at all.
The frame’s center confirms the multinational influences the
creature experiences.
Shelley intentionally uses a location that culturally claims more
than one nationality
consequently highlighting the different nationalities of the De
Laceys, Saphie and the
creature:
Shelley’s efforts to contemplate community independent of
family…that
can bind together members in denaturalized groups. In the process
of
doing so, she troubles the very borders that enclose community
by
relocating them, theoretically speaking, somewhere beyond the
immediate
horizon of the familiar attachments and yet short of the global
reach of all
humanity. (Bently 9)
Bently distinguishes between community and nationality. A mixed
community, such as
the community in the cabin or in Alsace more broadly, is
troublesome to national
identity. The characters in Alsace are multinational, yet they
create a community out of
34
relocated refugees. The creature discovers the displaced nobility
in this rural farming
community, and they create a working family unit. With a guide’s
help, Saphie arrives
later. The De Laceys are French, and Saphie is an Arab Christian
from Turkey. A
German nationality can be assigned to the creature since he was
assembled in Ingolstadt
from German body parts. To forge this denaturalized group into a
family dynamic that
works, their known nationalism must be removed and not emphasized.
Alsace’s idealized
space provides a safe Edenic haven for the multinational and
multicultural inhabitants as
long as they remain in the safety of the non-aligned unknown.
Nevertheless, the analogy of Alsace to Eden fails. Eden, as a
concept, has no
overlapping boundaries and no conflicting cultural influences. The
representation of Eden
can be found in rural or farming locations in literature, yet those
locations stay mythical
and unnamed. Eden represents an origin story for mankind. In
comparison, in Shelley’s
Alsace, there is no origin story. All of the characters in this
region’s story come from
somewhere else, France, Germany, or Turkey. They were not created
in Alsace; they
have all fled from somewhere else to Alsace. While Eden had one
boundary – do not eat
of the tree of knowledge- Alsace is created out of contested
boundaries. Whereas Adam
and Eve were provided for in Eden, the De Laceys struggle to exist
in Alsace; political
refugees are ill equipped to be farmers. They have no guidance, no
manna from heaven
provided on the ground every morning. The strongest tie to an
idealized Eden is a
protected space where the creature becomes enlightened. However,
the creature is only
allowed to be an invisible part of the community learning in
secret. Once the idealized
Eden is destroyed, one cannot return to it.
35
Shelley captures the political and cultural conflicts of Alsace,
which historically
claims both French and German ownership, and aligns that heritage
with her characters’
backgrounds. The people living here promote their own rule and
culture as Alsace-
Lorrainers. The De Laceys, however, have no national ties. They are
political refugees
who have fled west from Paris. They create their own cultural
identity and parallel the
allegiance of Alsace- Lorrainers to their own cultural identity.
The creature runs east
from his creator in Ingolstadt into the rural farmland of Alsace.
Even in his education, the
creature exhibits the Germanic cultural experience of Bildung, the
process of personal
and cultural development unified with a sense of self. He takes
shelter in the covered
woodshed of the De Lacey family farm. Both parties meet in Alsace,
the contested anchor
of the framed narrative. The creature receives his education in a
location that consists of
as many different pieces as he is. The rural cabin becomes a single
forged culture for the
creature. The creature feels the most comfort and the strongest
connection in an area
without political stability or known boundaries.
The familial members share bonds with each other, yet they have no
shared bond
to the setting. All have arrived either by chance, through escape,
or because they have
nowhere else to run. They live in a forgotten cabin in the rural
farmland of Alsace, yet
sorely lack a farmer’s connection to the land. Garrard discusses:
“The possibility of
coming to dwell on the earth in a relation of duty and
responsibility. ‘Dwelling’ is not a
transient state; rather, it implies the long-term imbrication of
humans in a landscape of
memory, ancestry and death, of ritual, life and work” (Garrard
117). Dwelling is more
than the location of where you sleep. Dwelling is the very act of
being part of the area’s
36
cultural history on an ongoing basis. There is a duty and
responsibility to the land, and to
the culture, as well as to the people to whom one bonds. A farmer
cares for his land, the
livestock on the land, and the people in his community. As an
illustration, modern day
Amish farmers connect with the land for crop plantings and the well
being of livestock
and create a community of support as demonstrated in a barn
raising. Similarly, the
members of the cabin have created a closed community populated
solely by the members
inside.
While the De Lacey family corresponds to the Alsace countryside,
the creature
represents the outside national force imposing itself on the
agrarian space. In his story,
the creature first crafts Alsace as an idealized Eden. However, the
creature’s allegory to
Eden breaks down in several areas. Whereas Eden had no imbricated
history and no
influence from previous generations, Alsace is rich in layered
memories. The De Lacey’s
community is compelled to fail, since it is a transient community
unable to honor the duty
and responsibilities of a long term resident. They are transients
not connected to the land,
and they struggle in the agrarian culture. Even though the creature
is not accepted into the
De Lacey home, the fruit of the creature’s labor is accepted as a
miracle, a gift from God,
a parallel to the manna that was left for Adam and Eve. The duty of
Adam and Eve was
to keep the garden, a job the De Laceys struggle with. They nearly
starve to death until
they receive the creature’s help. However, accepting the creature
would also mean
accepting an outside Germanic force into their agrarian
space.
Shelley uses the fluid boundaries of Alsace to heighten the bonds
of the people
within the cabin. Exiles, run-aways, political escapees, and
invisible creatures can all live
37
in peace; however, even within the cabin’s community, the creature
must stay invisible.
He laments his role as an unseen, unknown member: “I was shut out
from intercourse
with them, except through means which I obtained by stealth, when I
was unseen and
unknown, and which rather increased than satisfied the desire I had
of becoming one
among my fellows” (Shelley 136). The creature receives a
multicultural education while
secretly observing the De Laceys. The creature desires to become a
known member of the
De Lacey’s community, yet he is a complete outsider to any human
community. The
creature occupies the conflicted position of insider and outsider
simultaneously. The
creature’s invisible status protects him as an unknown and
non-aligned member. His
desire to become visible changes his status. Once the creature
makes himself visible, the
outside national boundaries once again encroach upon the cabin
members.
The De Lacey’s family dynamic does not escape Alsace’s political
influence.
Alsace has been politically unstable with different national
governments claiming and
governing it. Despite these conflicting allegiances, Alsace still
retains a local culture and
community that can parallel the family structure. The De Laceys
choose whom they want
to allow into their family, or culture:
The De Laceys take on the character of closed political
communities,
because, among other things, they undertake the political
activity—
perhaps the fundamental activity that politics perform—of
making
decisions about the allocation of memberships and the rights
and
protections that go with it. (Bently 8)
38
The family unit acts as a small political community. The family has
ultimate control over
who joins, who is allowed in, and how much the family gives and
protects a new
member. Both the creature and Saphie join the De Laceys after the
family establishes
their farmhouse community. The creature remains a hidden
contributor to the family unit
while Saphie is welcomed inside. While Saphie gains knowledge
through direct
education, the creature learns through his secret observations. The
creature educates
himself through his own reasoning with no outside influences. Once
the creature enacts
his plan to be known, the community reacts to his plea for
membership. After listening to
the creature’s tale of woe, the Father is willing to include the
creature in a broad
unspecified community. The Father is blind and unable to react to
the creature’s physical
presence, which can be aligned to his German body parts. Felix
rejects the creature on
sight without hearing any of the creature’s argument to become a
community member.
The creature is denied entry into the family structure, to sit at
the table or even socialize
with the other members. There is no protection offered, no shelter,
no food, and no
humanity. The French-aligned Felix De Lacey has barred the
German-aligned creature
from being part of the community.
The German-aligned creature symbolizes the placement of value from
the De
Lacey’s community. He is a valuable member of the community, if
only to reduce the
physical demands on Felix. A full woodshed, the benefit of the
value he provides, allows
other work to be done, namely, cultivating the garden. But once
visible, the creature
becomes a dangerous weed that must be removed. Greg Garrard expands
the analogy of a
weed: “ ‘Weed’ is not a botanical classification, it merely denotes
the wrong kind of plant
39
in the wrong place. Eliminating weeds is obviously a ‘problem in
gardening, but defining
weeds in the first place requires a cultural, not horticulture
analysis” (Garrard 6).
According to this definition, a rose in the middle of a wheat field
would be a very pretty
weed. Most people see weeds as the sickness in the ordered garden,
such as a dandelion,
something that needs to be removed before it damages the
aesthetics, reproduces, or
damages the productivity of the garden. The labeling of something
as a weed, and who
makes that declaration reflects a cultural bias against the out of
place plant. The creature
is accepted as part of the community as long as he is invisible and
not recognized for
being different, Germanic aligned, or the wrong kind of member.
Once the creature
becomes visible to Felix, Felix immediately begins to remove the
weed from the
community’s cultural garden.
The innermost frame examines the De Lacey’s political exile from
Paris and the
effects of the Alsace countryside on the family. Mary Shelley
subtly weaves the
collective knowledge of Alsace’s political and cultural turmoil
into the center of
Frankenstein. Political refugees flee to an idealized agrarian
space only to recreate the
political system of cultural oppression they escaped. The German
national is not welcome
in the French-aligned farmland. In contrast, Alsace represents an
Eden to the creature, an
idealized place where he matures. It is not a broken commandment
that exiles the
creature, but Felix’s reaction to the creature that removes him
from the garden. Felix
cannot see past the monstrous image, the Germanic features and
Germanic culture of the
creature. Felix only sees a weed that must be removed from the
garden. Alsace is far from
a perfect garden. The cross loyalties from centuries of national
and cultural divisions
40
cannot be removed from the actions of the characters who are
affected by their location.
Mary Shelley places her compromised Eden in a post revolution
Napoleonic France
where the characters epitomize the violations of political and
cultural boundaries.
41
CONCLUSION
Mary Shelley uses locations and landscapes in her novel to
highlight the political
and cultural discussions happening around her in the early 1800s.
Although there are
other locations mentioned and even experienced in Frankenstein, the
physical settings
that Shelley chose for storytelling, the polar ice, Montanvert, and
Alsace, are unique. She
places Walton, Victor and the creature in storytelling locations to
expose the political and
cultural conflicts and the monstrous effect of unchecked ambition.
Shelley uses her
storytellers to draw attention to physical boundary violations. The
locations offer
consistent though sometimes silent testimony to historical,
political, and cultural events
that have happened in and around the specific settings. While
Victor’s endeavor to create
life exposes the ethical boundaries crossed by science, the
blurring of boundaries reaches
beyond scientific ethics. The creature represents not only the
crossing of scientific
boundaries, but also the violation of physical and cultural
boundaries.
Examining Frankenstein though the lens of Eco-critism allows the
modern day
reader to fully understand the currents and influences of location.
Garrard recognizes the
importance of understanding the broad range of influences from
location and landscape:
As Eco-critics seek to offer a truly transformative discourse,
enabling us to
analyze and criticize the world in which we live, attention is
increasingly
given to the broad range of cultural processes and products in
which, and
through which, the complex negotiations of nature and culture take
place.
42
Indeed, the widest definition of the subject of ecocriticism is the
study of
the relationship of the human and non-human. (Garrard 5)
The relationship of the humans Walter, Victor, and the De Laceys
with each other and
with the non-human, the creature, has been studied in many forms
and through many
lenses. Applying an Eco-critical lens allows inclusion of the
landscape as a non-human
element. The Eco-Critical consideration of a specific location
weaves cultural, political,
and natural forces into a dynamic web. The collision of cultural
and political issues
exposes the artificiality of borders drawn on a map. Dividing
nations by maps or even by
physical landmarks, such as the Rhine River, does not change the
locations’ influence on
Shelley’s characters. They are carefully placed in specific
locations to highlight her
characters’ actions and the broader theme of crossing political and
cultural boundaries.
Shelley pushes the boundaries to include political identities
through the blurring
of national and cultural identity. What started as The French
Revolution’s idealized
philosophy, epitomized by Rousseau’s philosophy, which was
supported by Shelley’s
parents becomes the reality of the Reign of Terror’s numerous
violations, which spawned
the Napoleonic Wars and exposed the danger of boundary crossing
without moral or
ethical guidance. The Napoleonic Wars affected all of Europe
causing new national
boundaries to overlap cultural boundaries and creating the physical
space Shelley
explores.
The novel begins in the frozen polar ice with Victor and Walton,
and it ends in the
same location with Victor, Walton and the creature. The polar ice’s
vast emptiness allows
for contemplation of not just the landscape, but also the
conscience. The polar ice lays
43
bare the results of pushing boundaries, using the specter of the
failed Napoleon to add
heft. Victor and the creature are frozen in place while Walton has
the ability to break
away from the death-hold of the ice. Victor and Walton both push
scientific boundaries;
however, the political boundaries of the ice and the direct analogy
to Napoleon’s
devastating loss on the frozen Russian landscape highlight the cost
of violating political
boundaries. The loss of life Napoleon’s army suffered in the snowy
icy wasteland
foretells the possible result of Walter’s decision to carry on with
his quest. At the end of
the novel, Victor and the creature are lost in the inhumane
landscape; both succumb to
the boundaries they have violated. Only Walton, the framing
storyteller in the polar ice,
has the ability to recover his humanity, but only if he learns from
Victor’s tale of woe and
retreats from the harsh setting and certain destruction awaiting
him.
The divine space of Montanvert allows for the negotiations between
creator and
creation. The intersecting relationship of mountains and divinity
creates a liminal space, a
union of the relationships completely controlled by the sublime.
Victor, as the storyteller
in this location, has sought out the effect of the sublime in order
to elevate his soul.
Contrarily, the sublime space elevates the creature into a position
of power above the
human who had tried to play god. On the sublime-controlled
mountaintop, the confused
authoritative roles allow the created to demand action from the
creator. Victor succumbs
to the creature’s argument, and he ventures to create life again,
echoing the Promethean
role of life-giver. Victor reconciles with his creature inside of
the sublime-buffered
confessional space, the mountain top union of boundaries. However,
Victor has forgotten
the punishment Zeus dealt Prometheus for overreaching. Once outside
of the liminal
44
space and the control of the sublime, the collisions of spiritual
and physical boundaries
once again separate Victor from his creature.
Cultural and political boundaries intertwine in Alsace. The
creature relates the
story of his self-formation. The De Laceys, French political and
judicial exiles, create a
temporary safe space in the politically and culturally charged
Alsace farmland to rebuild
their community and reinforce who can belong. Forged through the
analogies to Eden,
such as calling his hovel “a paradise” (Shelley 125), the creature
experiences personal
and cultural maturation. The creature, however, is not Adam,
blessed with a kind and
loving creator, but an abandoned creature learning in secret by
spying into the De
Lacey’s home. Ultimately, it is not a violation of God’s boundary
that removes the
creature from his idealized Eden, but the ingrained cultural
reaction of Felix to the
aberration in the French-aligned family community, a weed to remove
from the garden.
The conflicting nationalities of the De Laceys and the creature
reflect the absorbed
heritage left behind from both German and French rule.
These complex negotiations of location and place enhance our
understanding of
the novel’s cultural effect. Many Romantic writers were highly
influenced by the French
Revolution. Shelley shared those influences; however, the Reign of
Terror that gave rise
to Napoleon illustrated the perversion of ideals without conscious
action. Shelley creates
a character, Walton, with an opportunity to see the exposed moral
and ethical dilemma of
Victor, and she gives Walter a choice to be different. Mary Shelley
forces the reader to
observe through Walton the need to change course if the goal comes
at the expense of
humanity, and the ability to understand and evaluate when the cost
is too high.
45
At the novel’s end, Shelley abruptly leaves the reader alone on the
ice. Victor is
dead. Walton witnesses the creature’s farewell speech, a promise of
suicide by funeral
pyre. The entire last paragraph reads: “He sprung from the
cabin-window, as he said this,
upon the ice-raft which lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne
away by the waves,
and lost in darkness and distance” (Shelley 221). The creature has
completed his
vengeance on his creator, so he disappears into the distance,
traveling in the opposite
direction of Walton and his ship. The final location of the polar
ice envelopes the
creature. It is not the ice that obscures vision, but darkness.
Darkness protects humanity
from the unknown, the funeral pyre of the creature and the unknown
destruction that
would be looming over Walton if he had continued pursuing his
quest. Walton abandons
his quest in order to save himself and his crew, and he returns to
port. Mary Shelley
leaves the future of Walton open to the reader. Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein is not a
simple horror story, but a warning to show the hazards incurred by
violating boundaries.
Frankenstein offers a pointed commentary on the dangers of ignoring
the influence of
political and cultural boundaries, a powerful legacy for our modern
day lives. Without
knowing the affecting influences, the violations of boundaries will
continue to happen
whether those boundaries are the ethical boundaries of science and
education, or the more
elusive boundaries of politics and culture.
WORKS CITED
47
Bently, Colene. “Family, Humanity, Polity: Theorizing The Basis And
Boundaries of
Political Community in Frankenstein.” Criticism: A Quarterly For
Literature and the
Arts 47.3 (2005): 325-351 MLA International Bibliography. Web. 17
Oct. 2014.
Brennan, Matthew C. "The Landscape Of Grief In Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein." Studies
In The Humanities 15.1 (1988): 33-44. MLA International
Bibliography. Web. 16
Mar. 2016.
Burke, Edmund, and Adam Phillips. A Philosophical Enquiry Into the
Origin Of Our
Ideas Of the Sublime And Beautiful. Oxford [England]: Oxford UP,
1990. eBook
Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 24 Feb. 2016.
Byerly, Alison. “Uses in Landscape.” Glotfelty and Fromm
69-91
Dopff, Francis. “Draft Horse in the Vineyard”. Wine Tasting,
Vineyards, in France. Wine
Terroirs, 2010. Web. 29, Feb. 2016.
<http://www.wineterroirs.com/2010/04/draft_horse.html>
Eckhardt, C. C. “The Alsace-Lorraine Question” The Scientific
Monthly 6.5 (1918): 431-
443. JSTOR. Web. 17 Oct. 2014.
Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012.
Print.
Glotfelty, Cheryll, and Harold Fromm. The Ecocriticism Reader:
Landmarks in Literary
Ecology. Athens: UP of Georgia, 1996. Print.
Hopel, Thomas. The French-German Borderlands: Borderlands and
Nation-Building in
the 19th and 20th Centuries. IEG- EGO. 2012. Web. 23 Mar.
2016.
Howarth, William. “Some Principles of Ecocriticism.” Glotfelty and
Fromm 69-91.
Ketterer, David. “Embodied Settings in Frankenstein.” Science
Fiction Studies 32.3
(2005): 548. JSTOR. Web. 17 Oct. 2014.
Kollerstrom, Nicholas. "The Hollow World of Edmond Halley." Journal
for History of
Astronomy (1992). 185-192 Web. 16 Mar. 2016.
Mazel, David. “American Literary Environmentalism.” Glotfelty and
Fromm 137-146.
Moskal, Jeanne. “Travel Writing." The Cambridge Companion to Mary
Shelley. Ed.
Esther H. Schor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
242-58.
Print.
"Napoleon Retreats from Moscow." History.com. A&E Television
Networks, n.d. Web.
16 Mar. 2016. <
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/napoleon-retreats-
from-moscow>
Novotny, Josef and Josef Najman. A Field Guide in Color to DOGS.
Czechoslovakia:
Octopus, 1977. Print.
Oates, Joyce Carol. “Frankenstein’s’ Fallen Angel.” Critical
Inquiry 10.3 1(984): 543-
554. JSTOR. Web 17 Oct. 2014.
Phillips, Bill. “Frankenstein and Mary Shelley's ‘Wet Ungenial
Summer’”. Atlantis 28.2
(2006): 59–68. Web. 16 Mar. 2016.
Randel, Fred V. “Feminism and the Intertextuality of Mountains”
Studies in Romanticism
23.4 (1984): 515-532. JSTOR. Web 17 Oct. 2014.
Randel, Fred V. “The Political Geography of Horror in Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein.”
English Literary History 70 (2003): 465-491. JSTOR. Web. 17 Oct.
2014.
Sanders, Scott Russell. “Speaking a Word for Nature.” Glotfelty and
Fromm 182-195.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Kathleen Dorothy Scherf, and David
Lorne Macdonald.
Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus. Peterborough, Ont.:
Broadview, 2012. Print.
Foundation. Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute. N.P. Web. 23 Feb
2016.
Total German Shepherd. Total German Shepherd. TGS 1015. Web 23 Feb,
2016.
<http://www.total-german-shepherd.com/Alsatian.html>
“N.D” Web. 29 Feb. 2016.
<http://www1.vinsalsace.com/en/alsace-
wines/appellations/aoc-alsace-grand-cru/aoc-alsace-grand-cru-art1210.html>
Zola, Emile. “J'accuse.” Marxist Literary Criticism. M.I.A.
Library. NP. Web 28 Feb.
2016.
<https://www.marxists.org/archive/zola/1898/jaccuse.htm