by Kevin Patrick Mahoney
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See also… Feminism and Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein |
There certainly can be no doubt as to the success of Mary
Shelley’s novel. The image of the monster seems to appear in an infinite
number of places, in a whole variety of contexts. In America, he has even
become the motif for a chain of restaurants. He is part of our cultural
heritage. The story has mutated quite drastically, and did not even mean the same
things to Mary during her lifetime. I shall be examining the story’s roots, and
conveying how it has changed by being presented in different media.
Paul O’Flinn of Oxford Polytechnic, saw Frankenstein as a good example
of how a myth is altered; through criticism, as a consequence of a shift from
one medium to another, and as a result of the unfolding of history. The decade
in which Mary wrote the novel was especially notable for domestic unrest; in
the Luddite troubles of 1811-17 and the 1817 Pentridge rising. Mary Shelley
associated with two men, Shelley and Byron, who had publicly objected to the
executions of such rebels. She shared their views and very much feared an
insurrection of the working class against the bourgeoisie, the class that
had created them and then frustrated them with their uncaring attitude. Tory
pamphlets depicted the working class as a huge, ugly monster, an image which
Mary stole and subverted. She created a “hideous wretch”, “a thing such as even
Dante could not have conceived” (page 58), but gave it the voice of the middle
class, so that it could arouse sympathy.
The events of that troublesome decade clearly have an effect upon the
text. Just as factories were fired in
Yorkshire, so the monster burns down the De Lacey cottage when he feels cheated
by his “protectors”. The monster even says “I knew that I possessed no money,
no friends, no kind of property” (page 120), and this was thirty years before
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the Communist Manifesto was published. Yet some critics
have regarded Mary’s work as very conservative (in the sense that any progress
is a change for the worse); for example, Jane Dunn. There is a perception
amongst these critics that Mary Shelley did become conservative in her later
life, but as Kim Landers points out, the publication of her complete letters
shows that she still had a liberal and reformist zeal late on in life.
By 1828, the original myth had already begun to change, for Richard
Brinsley Peake adapted it into a play called Presumption, or the Fate of
Frankenstein. The playbills stated that “the striking moral exhibited in this
story is the fatal consequence of that presumption which attempts to penetrate
into the mysteries of nature”. When Mary revised the novel in 1831, she made it
less controversial, and echoed Peake’s interpretation: ”supremely frightful
would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of
the Creator of the world”. So any hint of incest between Victor and Elizabeth
was removed. Even the author changed her views on the story during her
lifetime.
In practically every adaptation, one element of the novel has been left
out (although it is there in Francis Ford Coppola's very poor production of
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein). Walton’s narration plays an important part in the
novel. He is compared to Frankenstein; both are men of science and prepared to
die for the acquirement of knowledge. As Walton says on page 22,”there is a
love for the marvelous, a belief in the marvelous, intertwined in all my
projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men”. Yet there
is one main difference: Walton has a crew, whereas Frankenstein works alone.
Despite this protestation — “I shall do nothing rashly... whenever the safety
of others is committed to my care”(page 21) - Walton only turns back
reluctantly because of the threat of mutiny. This is made plain to him by a
group of democratically elected members of the crew. Scientific progress is not
in itself dangerous, as long as it is bound to some kind of democratic control.
Victor works alone and is responsible to no-one. Others could have pointed out
the
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risks to him. Mary wrote a scene referring to the ship’s
master’s “kindliness of heart” in Letter II, to prove that they were nothing
like proletarian monsters. It changes the story if Walton’s narration is left
out, for then Frankenstein can be presented as a universal example of the
dangers of any scientific advancement. Walton's narration is the one part
of the myth that seems to be barely breathing it has been amputated so often,
but it is a vital counter to the myth of the mad scientist working alone,
unchecked by the wider community.
O’Flinn argued that the story is always brought back in times of great
crisis. When the 1931 Universal film came out, many millions around the world
were unemployed, as a result of the 1929 Wall Street Crash. There were renewed
fears of mass proletarian revolution, especially in America, as John Steinbeck
illustrated in The Grapes of Wrath. Universal Studios were quite anxious about
this, and this concern is reflected in James Whale’s film. After Boris
Karloff’s monster has drowned a girl (accidentally), the village gathers as a
community and hunts the alien threat down. This is clearly reactionary,
conservative violence, against the deviant element. The monster is trapped in a
mill which is then burned down. O’Flinn noted that the windmill’s blades form a
blazing cross, which has connotations of the Devil, but also the Ku Klux Klan.
Victor does not die, but instead is reunited with Elizabeth, happy to be free
of the monster he unwittingly created. Whale’s film is more serious than it at
first appears.
The monster did not have a voice in the film, which made him less human,
and so his narration is also absent. When the monster did speak in the 1935
sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein, Boris Karloff complained that it made him
seem “more human”, so he never spoke again... Another difference in the film is
that the monster has an abnormal brain, so touching on the other side of the
psychological ‘nature/nurture’ debate. In the novel, the monster only murders
after he has been abandoned, and shot for having saved a girl from drowning:
”misery made me a fiend”. All the monster’s crimes in the film can be explained
away because
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he has the brain of a criminal. Whereas society must take
some of the blame in the novel, in the film all its actions are justified.
An interesting contrast with Mary’s novel is Stephen Gallagher’s book
Chimera, which was recently televised on ITV. It concerns Chad, an ape and
human hybrid, which massacres its creators after it has overheard its ‘father’
(Doctor Jenner) give orders that it be dissected. Like the monster, it can talk,
but only through sign language. Chad then flees and only finds refuge with two
children in a country farm. Journalist Peter Carson arrives on the scene, and
discovers that the government is behind the experiments. He is also pursued by
the intelligence services. A supposedly democratic government is seen as
secretive and threatening; it is a government that has tabs on all its
citizens, and could have any one of them labeled as ‘deviant’, and 'Public
Enemy No. 1'.
Chimera was written in 1979, the year of the Winter of Discontent. The
post-war boom had ended, and Britain was in economic decline. With rising
unemployment, the country’s youths felt useless and disowned, and communally
grew garish mohicans. Then Margaret Thatcher became prime minister, promising
no more help for “lame ducks” and began dismantling the Welfare State. In the
early eighties, there were a series of riots and civil unrest, such as that at
Toxteth. Chimera implies that through the creation of human/animal hybrids, the
government would be able to get the cheapest manual labour. Hybrids would not
have to be paid and would have no rights. TV ZONE reported that “the idea for
Chimera came to him (Gallagher) after reading a report made by the Rand
Corporation in America which suggested that we’d have production-line
sub-humans as workers by the year 2025”. This would certainly be one way of
getting rid of low productivity and over-manning. Surely it is the monster
himself who can best explain Chad’s behaviour: ”finding myself unsympathised
with, wished
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to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around
me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin”(page 136). Carson captures Chad
with the help of its only surviving creator (who let him escape), and they
attempt to reveal him as the murderer at the local village. However, Chad is
shot by the security forces. Carson has been thwarted (unlike Walton’s crew)
and spends the rest of his life being watched. Hennessey, the civil servant
with responsibility for the programme, restarts it, and hundreds of Chads are
created. Typically, the whole incident will be lost under a mountain of ‘red
tape’.
Arguably the most bizarre version of the story is The Rocky Horror
Picture Show. This musical was written by Richard O’Brien in the seventies, and
has since become very successful. The film starred Tim Curry as
‘Dr.Frank-N-Furter, an alien from the planet Transsexual. He also creates a
monster who, far from being ugly, has the appearance of a Californian beach
boy. One of its influences was clearly the James Whale films, but it is
interesting in another way, especially if we are to consider Frankenstein as a
myth. Rocky Horror has become a cult with some very zealous followers, who
dress up as characters of the musical whenever they see the film; they
shout out responses to the dialogue; and they also perform rituals (such as
throwing rice at the screen during the marriage sequence).
If a definition of a myth is that it is something shared by a whole
culture, then all the evidence leads to the conclusion that Frankenstein has
indeed become one. The story may have mutated drastically during some of its
translations, but the bare bones always remain recognisable.
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Bibliography.
"Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley.
“Production and reproduction: the case of Frankenstein”
by Paul O’Flinn, Literature and History, vol.9:2 Autumn 1983.
“Myth” by Ruthven.
TV ZONE issue 22 August 1991.
|
See also… Feminism and Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein |
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