3.1.2.5The novel at a glance
The explorer Walton, trapped in Arctic ice, rescues Victor Frankenstein, who tells his story. Victor discovered how to create life and assembled a being from body parts, then fled in horror at the result. The abandoned creature, rejected everywhere, kills Victor's brother William and demands a female companion. Victor destroys her half-made; the creature kills Clerval and Elizabeth. Victor pursues him to the Arctic and dies; the creature vanishes to destroy himself.
Published in 1818. Galvanism, the use of electricity to make dead tissue move, was widely demonstrated. Romanticism valued the individual imagination and distrusted unchecked reason. Shelley's mother was Mary Wollstonecraft and her father William Godwin, both radical thinkers, and the subtitle 'The Modern Prometheus' invokes the Titan punished for bringing fire to humanity.
- galvanism
- the contemporary science of stimulating tissue with electricity
- the sublime
- the Romantic experience of awe before overwhelming nature
- frame narrative
- a story told inside another story; here Walton encloses Victor, who encloses the creature
3.1.2.5Characters
Victor's failure is as a creator, not as a scientist. He abandons his creation within a sentence of completing it, and his narration consistently presents him as the victim, which the creature's account then contradicts.
The creature is the novel's most eloquent voice, which is itself the argument: his command of Milton and Plutarch disproves Victor's account of him as a brute. He is benevolent until misery makes him a fiend, as he says himself.
Walton is being warned in time, which is why the frame exists. Elizabeth, Justine and Caroline are defined by service to men, and the female creature is destroyed out of fear of what she might choose.
3.1.2.5Themes
Ambition and the limits of knowledge frame the novel, and Victor's opening warning to Walton sets the terms.
Responsibility is the real subject: the creature's violence follows from abandonment, and the novel asks who is accountable for it.
Isolation is the condition of all three narrators, and the nested form isolates each speaker even as they tell their stories.
Common mistake
Calling the creature 'Frankenstein'. Frankenstein is the creator; the creature has no name, which is part of the point.
3.1.2.5The writer's methods
The three nested narratives mean the reader hears Victor's account before the creature's, and must then revise it. Landscape carries meaning throughout: the Alpine sublime consoles Victor, and the novel darkens from mountains to Orkney to ice. The creature's speeches borrow the language of Paradise Lost, which he has read.
Worked example
Answer:
- The nested form makes the reader revise Victor's account
- The creature's eloquence is itself his argument
- Victor's failure is of care, not of science
- Walton can still heed the warning, which is why the frame exists
AO1-AO4How this text is examined
This text is examined in Paper 1, Section B. The question is worth 30 marks and an extract from the novel is printed, and the question asks you to start with that extract and then write about the novel as a whole. Allow about 50 minutes.
The marks are divided as AO1 12 marks, AO2 12 marks, AO3 6 marks. AO1 rewards a clear argument supported by well-chosen references. AO2 rewards analysis of how the writer achieves an effect, which means writing about choices rather than about events. AO3 rewards context used to deepen a reading of the text.
Common mistake
Retelling the plot. Narrative summary earns nothing under any assessment objective, however accurate it is. Every paragraph should be making a point about how or why, not about what happens.