Frankenstein and Philosophy

by Michaud, Nicolas

  Victor was taught “to love the aspect of nature,” whereas his earlier scientific non-relation to nature “had cramped and narrowed me” from “a selfish pursuit.” Victor recognizes his approach to nature, related to his approach to science, was the cause of his troubles and dysfunction, and it took a true relation to nature to recover.

  Victor does not hire someone whose work he benefits from (indeed, there is no “Igor” in Frankenstein—his first “assistant” comes with the 1931 film Frankenstein, but in that film the name is Fritz, and is not Igor until two films later, in the Son of Frankenstein, 1939)—so the instrumental use of workers is not so present. While Frankenstein does treat nature as a mere “thing,” as “raw material” in the same way capitalists do—nature is merely the means to Frankenstein’s ends, and as a consequence, Frankenstein studies natural elements “in their death, not in their life,” and his resulting scientific and technological creation literally surpasses in power his ability to control it.

  A key insight of Marx and Engels in regards to the development of science and technology is that while the development of scientific knowledge and technology to a degree is necessary for a maximally emancipated, well-off, egalitarian life, we need not treat technology as an end in itself. Marx and Engels advocate a science that treats nonhuman nature and people as more than objects to be controlled, and which can meaningfully contribute to human life.

  Towards his own end, Victor claims “in a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature and was bound towards him to assure . . . his happiness and well-being,” but denies the creature a companion because “my duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to my attention.” Victor shows both defensiveness—he recognizes his creation was ‘madness’ and admits responsibility, but argues that he ought not to repeat the experiment for the protection of humanity.

  Victor’s pursuit of science results in the opposite of a contribution towards human life—it resulted in its detriment. Among Victor’s final cautions to Captain Walton were to “seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition, even if it be only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.” Victor is so ashamed of the products of his science for humanity at the end of his days that he cautions others to avoid science itself to avoid those negative consequences.

  The other side of this is the recognition that the treatment of nonhuman nature as having merely instrumental value, subjugated by the pursuit of other values such as power or profit, is doomed to have harmful and out of control consequences in the long term—as we have seen with Frankenstein and his monster. What we can hypothesize is an indirect, nearly parallel relation between the actions of Victor Frankenstein and the laws of capitalism. Both relate to nonhuman nature as an instrumental thing to be dominated in the pursuit of an external standard—power for Frankenstein (for despite his claims to humanistic goals, he consistently highlights the desire for knowledge and power over nature as his true motivation), and profit for capitalists.

  The necessary consequence is the destruction of or harm to those affected—in Dr. Frankenstein’s case, anyone he’s ever loved, and in the case of capitalism, most non-capitalists of all species within its territories (including, for example, many workers, their dependents, nonhuman nature, those who can’t work).

  A Marxist-Ecofeminism Without Supernatural Horrors?

  Victor Frankenstein’s approach to science involves the instrumental use of nature—its degradation to the status of a passive “object” with instrumental value, to be “penetrated” by the literal man of science in the pursuit of knowledge and power. Ecofeminist theorists criticize both this orientation to nonhuman nature (an orientation frequently extending to dominant relations to women, nonwhite, and indigenous peoples) and this approach to science and technology. Marx and Engels also criticize the impact of class society—particularly capitalism—on science and technology.

  The impact of capitalism on the development of science and technology has resulted in advances, but advances biased towards profitability, which affects science’s orientation, development, and purpose. This misdirection of science promotes the instrumental use of nonhuman nature (just as under capitalism nonhuman nature, nonwhite and indigenous peoples, workers of all genders, and women outside formal economic production are all treated as without value excepting their profitable uses).

  Both Marxian theory and ecofeminist thought, then, criticize when science and technology are oriented towards profit and power. Frankenstein creates a perfect metaphor for the consequences of such biases—the products so easily spiral out of control, destroying themselves and everything they touch.

  Science and technology need to be freed from the imperatives of power and profit in order to prevent the accidental creation of innumerable kinds of Frankenstein’s monsters, wildly spiraling out of control. Marxist and ecofeminist thinkers would further agree that the only way to have scientific and technological developments that are independent of power and profit would be through a radical change!

  They agree that we need to replace the social relations and structures that treat workers, women, indigenous and nonwhite peoples, and nonhuman nature as having merely instrumental value—as objects that can be used and abused, exploited as resources rather than as valuable beings with agency of their own. We can only avoid the scientific and technological creation of so many Frankenstein’s monsters when we overcome systems of oppression where some classes, genders, races, sexualities, nations, and species are privileged over others.

  _________________

  1Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva, Ecofeminism (Fernwood, 1993), p. 5.

  2Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (Harper and Row, 1980), p. 216.

  22

  The Human and the Monstrous

  CYNTHIA D. COE

  Most movie and TV versions of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein make a monstrous misrepresentation of the Creature: they portray him as incapable of normal human speech or thought, driven by primitive and irrational desires, and almost robotic in his movement. The Creature is depicted as clearly inhuman.

  These portrayals directly contradict how he is described in the novel. In terms of physical appearance, the Creature is much bigger than normal human stature and hideously ugly, but in other ways he displays very human characteristics. He moves agilely, speaks eloquently, formulates arguments, reflects on his condition, makes moral judgments, experiences fear and joy and grief, and has complex and sometimes contradictory motivations.

  When we exaggerate the difference between the Creature and human beings, we miss a central emphasis of the novel: the way that the Creature challenges our understanding of human nature, and the line between the human and the non-human.

  A second common mistake in popular references to Frankenstein is also illuminating. In The Onion Book of Known Knowledge, the entry for Frankenstein reads: “You are probably looking for Frankenstein’s monster, you idiot.”1 “Frankenstein” was the last name of the Creature’s creator, not the name of the Creature. (But in correcting what I am here identifying as the second mistake, calling the Creature by Victor Frankenstein’s name, the editors commit the first mistake, representing the Creature as a monster.)

  In the novel, the Creature has no name, reflecting his abandonment by Victor and general alienation from human society, but in most popular renditions, he has been called Frankenstein, as if, at long last, he had been adopted. This second error, calling the Creature “Frankenstein,” works in the opposite direction from our first error of making the Creature seem totally inhuman. Which is it—is the Creature completely inhuman or confusable with Victor Frankenstein himself?

  The novel itself is more ambiguous about the relationship between the Creature and his Creator. Frankenstein is a meditation on the line between the human and the inhuman, and the ways in which that boundary seems clear, but really isn’t. The worry that preoccupies Victor is that
he has created a demon rather than a human being, but in fact his horrified reaction to the Creature stems from his suspicion that his creation blurs the boundary between the human and the inhuman. Victor is terrified of those creatures who stand on that line, and so are many of us. The Creature calls into question our own humanity, or our familiarity to ourselves.

  Creature Versus Monster

  Mary Shelley goes out of her way to make Frankenstein and his Creature resemble each other, to the point of putting the same words in their mouths. In response to the execution of an innocent servant convicted of killing the Creature’s first victim (William, Victor’s young brother), Victor says, “I bore a hell within me, which nothing could extinguish.”2 When the Creature finally reveals himself to the De Lacey family, and they run screaming from him, he cries out:

  I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me; and, finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin. (p. 111, my emphasis)

  Both of these statements refer back to John Milton’s representation of Satan’s despair in Paradise Lost (1667). Shelley plays with the idea that human beings resemble both gods and demons. We are creators and destroyers, but we’re also finite and fallible, in terms of our knowledge and moral judgments. Despite or because of this doubling between himself and the Creature, Victor refuses to acknowledge the Creature as a “fellow creature,” or as a being to whom he could ever have moral obligations.

  Immediately after the creation, when the Creature wakes Victor up in his bed, he reports: “I beheld the wretch—the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not hear” (p. 40). And he will continue not to hear.

  Victor immediately calls the Creature a “monster,” and for the remainder of his narrative consistently uses the terms “demon” and “fiend” to describe him. But the term “monster” is in itself interesting, deriving as it does from the Latin term for “showing,” as in “demonstration.” Initially, the word meant (neutrally) a sign, or (more negatively) an omen. Somewhere in the tangled history of the language, however, a slide was made by which the omen of something bad became the bad thing itself.

  The monster, the tangible sign of something evil, is assumed to be itself evil, without much attention paid to what the sign refers to, as if there were nothing except the monster to worry about. In Victor’s case, this functions psychologically as a way to protect himself from the complexity of his responsibility. If he can convince himself (and, eventually, others) that the Creature is entirely evil, he need not ask about the origins of that evil, or how he might be morally implicated in the Creature’s actions.

  He reduces the problem to the issue of eliminating the Creature from his life: first by literally running out of the room, then by attempting to kill him, then by agreeing to make a companion creature so that the Creature will go live in the wilderness, and finally by attempting to pursue and kill him again. Victor tries to fit the Creature into familiar narratives by representing him as an object, an animal, and a monster. In this way, he’s able to maintain his own self-understanding as a mostly innocent victim and a heroic, even divinely authorized, defender of humanity. He entirely avoids the idea that the Creature is a sign, although admittedly an ominous sign, of the possibilities of human nature in general and within himself in particular.

  The Uncanny

  When we think about reproduction, we tend to worry that what is reproduced will not be a living or faithful copy of the original. You might have this frustration with a worn-out copier, but this is also the anxiety that drives us to worry about what children are learning, who our heroes and models are, whether a piece of currency is a forgery, or whether someone actually knows what they’re talking about or just mouthing some idea they don’t understand.

  The danger that Victor faces is the opposite of this problem. He doesn’t produce a dead copy of a human being, but instead produces something that doesn’t really look human and yet has the intellectual, emotional, and sensory capacities of human beings. The Creature breaks the boundary between the human and the inhuman, and shows us the weakness of that boundary, as he himself recognizes:

  Cursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God in pity made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid from its very resemblance. (p. 105, my emphasis)

  An alien who looks like an alien is not that worrisome; we just kill it. An alien who looks like or acts like a human being is a much more difficult problem for us to deal with. Somehow we’re implicated in the similarity, as if we too might not be fully human. In the same way, a foreigner who looks like a native citizen presents a threat that a readily identifiable foreigner does not. This may be part of why anti-Semitism has a particularly violent edge to it. Unlike someone of African or Asian origin, Jews in Europe were not recognizable as foreigners (although Nazi anthropologists tried to establish visual guidelines) but are rather understood as “parasites.”

  The genocide of the Jewish people in Europe was the attempt to kill off an internal enemy, understood not just as a threat living within a community, but a set of characteristics that were projected out onto one segment of a culture, which was thereby demonized. As Vincent Pecora puts it, anti-Semitism positions Jews as “the embodiment of the non-West within the West, the internal difference that the West simultaneously most wishes to disavow and can never manage to disavow fully.”3

  Victor’s quest deeply parallels hatred of, and attempts to eradicate, an internal divide. Converting the Creature into the monster, the fiend, or the demon is Victor’s attempt to repudiate what he doesn’t want to acknowledge about himself. Popular representations of the Creature have largely perpetuated this fantasy, without calling attention to its psychological significance—what it tells us about an all-too-human tendency to refuse to recognize how our anxieties express more about us than they do about the object of that anxiety, and the moral implications of that refusal. In various national histories (including in the United States), successive waves of racism and nativism have imaginatively created a pure, law-abiding, and virtuous “citizen” in opposition to a entirely external, and criminal enemy. But, in constructing that boundary, cultures fail to recognize how these characterizations cover over a messier reality, and its moral complexity.

  The horror of the Creature is that he is neither entirely human nor entirely inhuman, nor is he easily categorized as merely an animal or a demon or a thing. This ambiguity provokes what Sigmund Freud calls the “uncanny”—the unheimlich. Freud is fascinated by the fact that two German words that appear to be clear opposites in their grammatical structure, heimlich (homely) and unheimlich (unhomely), share the connotation of something concealed, obscure, and secret. Freud suggests that we often experience the uncanny when we are not sure whether something is alive or dead (as in Scooby Doo cartoons, when the eyes in a portrait suddenly move, or when we walk into a dimly lit room and see a clown doll in the corner), but the similarity between the Creature and us also provokes this sensation.

  Freud concludes that we experience the uncanny when we encounter something that has been repressed: some emotionally charged idea that cannot be consciously recognized. He puts a psychoanalytic spin on Friedrich Schelling’s definition of the uncanny as “something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light.”4 In other words, the uncanny is that which is both familiar and unfamiliar, that which belongs to us but which we attempt to repudiate.

  In Victor Frankenstein’s case, he grapples with his monster as the sign of his own possibilities and moral failures. The Creature is Victor’s own evil, projected out onto an external figure, in order to avoid acknowledging that responsibility. He ends up with an imagi
nary self-conception, one that is morally simpler than reality, and this self-deception helps to bring about very real brutality.

  Moral Failures

  Victor takes almost no responsibility for the Creature’s violence, despite the frequent descriptions of his mental anguish, and he refers to himself as “guiltless.” He first presents his scientific aspirations as attempts to overcome the power of death, but through the course of the novel we see him indirectly bringing about the death of most of his family, his closest friend, and his newly-wed wife. Instead of coming to terms with this disconnect between his intent and the consequences of his actions, Victor treats the Creature as a responsible being (a demon, a monster) who has committed murder, rather than random killing. He has created a being whom he treats as morally responsible, without recognizing the Creature as a person, in many ways like himself. After hearing of his brother William’s murder, he comes upon the Creature on the outskirts of Geneva and leaps to the conclusion (rightly, as we later find out) that the Creature is responsible for this murder.

  A being who can be held accountable for his or her actions is a being with freewill, and a being with freewill is normally treated as a being who is “morally considerable”—not a rock or a ballpoint pen or an insect, to be (as the situation demands) used or thrown away or squashed with a shoe. We tend to treat a free being as worthy of respect, in a way that mere things and even most animals are not, to us. But Victor both attributes freewill to the Creature and denies him personhood, even when the Creature very reasonably argues for the obligations that creators have to their creations: “I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me” (p. 77).