Frankenstein- or The Modern Prometheus (Oxford World's Classics)

by Mary Shelley

  This cluster of references, including the very phrase ‘modern PROMETHEUS’S’, is highly suggestive of Frankenstein; yet the reading lists which Mary kept from 1814 onwards do not mention Shaftesbury, and she is not on record as having read him until 1825. In any case, it conveniently illustrates a pattern of ideas associated with Prometheus, which might have reached her, directly or indirectly, through various channels.

  APPENDIX C

  CHAMONIX, JULY 1816

  THE Shelleys travelled up the valley of the Arve from Geneva to Chamonix in late July 1816. There are two accounts of the journey, one in Mary’s journal, the other in Shelley’s diary-letter to Peacock dated 22 July 1816.

  For the account of Frankenstein’s approach to Chamonix at the end of Chapter IX (pp. 94–5), compare the following entries in Mary’s journal under 22 July:

  From Cerveaux [sc. Servoz] we continued on a mountainous and rocky path, and passed an Alpine bridge over the Arve. This is one of the loveliest scenes in the world. The white and foamy river broke proudly through the rocks that opposed its progress; immense pines covered the bases of the mountains that closed around it; and a rock covered with woods, and seemingly detached from the rest, stood at the end and closed the ravine.

  As we mounted still higher, this appeared the most beautiful part of our journey. The river foamed far below, and the rocks and glaciers towered above; the mighty pines filled the vale, and sometimes obstructed our view. We then entered the Valley of Chamounix, which was much wider than that we had just left, and gave room for cultivated fields and cottages. The mountains assumed a more formidable appearance, and the glaciers approach nearer to the road. Le Glace de Boisson has the appearance at a distance of a foaming cataract; and on a near approach the ice seems to have taken the forms of pyramids and stalagmites… .

  As we went along we heard a sound like the rolling of distant thunder, and beheld an avalanche rush down a ravine of the rocks; it stopped midway, but, in its course, forced a torrent from its bed, which now fell to the base of the mountain.

  On 23 July the party visited the source of the Arveiron, as Frankenstein does at the beginning of Chapter X (p. 96):

  In the morning, after breakfast, we mount our mules, to see the source of the Arveiron. When we had gone about three parts of the way, we descended and continued our route on foot, over loose stones, many of which were of an enormous size. We came to the source, which lies like a [stage?] surrounded on the three sides by mountains and glaciers. We sat on a rock, which formed the fourth, gazing on the scene before us. An immense glacier was on our left, which continually rolled stones to its foot. It is very dangerous to go directly under this. … We see several avalanches, some very small, others of great magnitude, which roared and smoked, overwhelming everything as it passed along, and precipitating great pieces of ice into the valley below. This glacier is increasing every day a foot, closing up the valley.

  On 24 July, when they set out for Montenvers and the Mer de Glace, they were turned back by rain—as Mary describes it:

  Shelley and I begin our journey to Montanvert. Nothing can be more desolate than the ascent of this mountain; the trees in many places have been torn away by avalanches, and some, half leaning over others, intermingled with stones, present the appearance of vast and dreadful desolation. It began to rain almost as soon as we left our inn. When we had mounted considerably, we turned to look on the scene. A dense white mist covered the vale, and tops of scattered pines peeping above were the only objects that presented themselves. The rain continued in torrents. We were wetted to the skin; so that, when [we] had ascended halfway, we resolved to turn back.

  The journey was successfully accomplished on the following day. The account of Frankenstein’s journey (pp. 97–8) amalgamates the two. Mary’s journal gives only a brief description; Shelley’s is much more picturesque and closer in spirit to the account in the novel:

  We have returned from visiting this glacier: a scene in truth of dizzying wonder. The path that winds to it along the side of a mountain now clothed with pines, now intersected with snowy hollows is wide & steep.—The cabin of Montanvert is 3 leagues from Chamounix… . On all sides precipitous mountains the abodes of unrelenting frost surround this vale; Their sides are banked up with ice & snow broken & heaped up & exhibiting terrific chasms. The summits are sharp & naked pinnacles whose overhanging steepness will not even permit snow to rest there. They pierce the clouds like things not belonging to this earth. The vale itself is filled with a mass of undulating ice, & has an ascent sufficiently gradual even to the remotest abysses of these horrible deserts. It is only half a league (about 2 miles) in breadth, & seems much less.—It exhibits an appearance as if frost had suddenly bound up the waves & whir[1]pools of a mighty torrent. We walked to some distance upon its surface,—the waves are elevated about 12 or 15 feet from the surface of the mass which is intersected with long gaps of unfathomable depth, the ice of whose sides is more beautifully azure than the sky. In these regions every thing changes & is in motion. This vast mass of ice has one general progress which ceases neither day nor night. It breaks & rises forever; its undulations sink whilst others rise. From the precipices which surround it the echo of rocks which fall from their aerial summits, or of the ice & snow scarcely ceases for one moment. One would think that Mont Blanc was a living being & that the frozen blood forever circulated slowly thro’ his stony veins.

  (Passages cited from: Mary Shelley’s Journal, by Mary W. Shelley, edited by Frederick L. Jones, pp. 52–3, copyright 1947 by the University of Oklahoma Press; The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Frederick L. Jones, i. 500, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964.)

  EXPLANATORY NOTES

  Page 5. (1) The Publishers of the Standard Novels: Colburn and Bentley; Frankenstein (1831) was no. 9 in their Standard Novels series.

  (2) two persons of distinguished literary celebrity: William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft.

  Page 6. (1) my habitual residence: a reference to Mary’s stay with the Baxters in Dundee, 1812–14.

  (2) In the summer of 1816: (cf. p. 14): for composition of Frankenstein, see Appendix A.

  Page 7. (1) Some volumes of ghost stories: J. B. B. Eyriés, Fantasmagoriana, ou Recueil d’Histoires d’Apparitions de Spectres, Revenans, Fantômes, etc.; traduit de l’allemand, par un Amateur (Paris, 1812). The careful examination by James Rieger (see Bibliography) shows that Mary Shelley’s recollections of the stories are inaccurate.

  (2) Tom of Coventry: in the legend of Lady Godiva.

  Page 8. (1) in Sanchean phrase: e.g. Sancho Panza, in Cervantes, Don Quixote: II. xxxiii. ‘… in this matter of government everything depends upon the beginning …”

  (2) The Hindoos: a similar reference to this familiar belief occurs in Shaftesbury, Characteristicks (2nd rev. edn. 1715), ii. 202, in proximity to the Prometheus passages cited in Appendix B.

  (3) Columbus and his egg: the well-known story (retold by Washington Irving, Christopher Columbus (1828), v. vii) that Columbus, told by a courtier that others were also capable of discovering the Indies, challenged the company to stand an egg on one end. ‘Everyone attempted it, but in vain; whereupon he struck it upon the table so as to break the end, and left it standing on the broken part; illustrating in this simple manner, that when he had once shown the way to the New World, nothing was easier than to follow it.’

  (4) Dr. Darwin: (cf. p. 13): Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), physician, poet, and evolutionist. Although Mary Shelley is careful to disclaim any actual source for her story in Darwin’s works, there is a brief discussion of spontaneous generation in his Zoonomia (1794–6). Darwin could be the ‘English philosopher’ referred to at the beginning of ch. XVIII.

  Page 13 PREFACE: written by Shelley (cf. p. 10).

  Page 15. the sun is for ever visible: corrected in the copy given to Mrs. Thomas, to read ‘the sun is constantly visible for more than half the year’, but allowed to stand in 1831 (Nitchie (see Bibliography), p. 197). The belief in a warm
-water Polar Sea, where ‘snow and frost are banished’, is as old as the classical legends of the Hyperboreans, who lived an idyllic existence ‘at the back of the North Wind’; despite the series of great Arctic journeys which began about the time that Frankenstein was published, the theory of an ice-free pole was still current much later in the century, and traces of it are to be found in Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies (1863) and Jules Verne’s Les Aventures du Capitaine Hatteras (1868). See Addendum, p. 239.

  Page 19. keeping: ‘The maintenance of the proper relation between the representations of nearer and more distant objects in a picture; … the maintenance of harmony of composition’ (O.E.D.).

  Page 21. ‘the land of mist and snow’: an earlier reference to ‘The Ancient Mariner’ (1818) is expanded and made more specific in 1831. The poem has a perceptible influence on the novel; see also p. 59.

  Page 31. syndics: the four chief magistrates of Geneva.

  Page 32. the Reuss: river on which stands the city of Lucerne (Luzern).

  Page 35. schiavi ognor frementi: ‘slaves always fretting’; the context refers to Italian unrest under Austrian domination during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; cf. also p. 192.

  (2) Elizabeth Lavenza: originally (1818) E. L. is Victor Frankenstein’s cousin, the daughter of his father’s sister. For her new adoptive role (1831) a few consequential changes were made in the text, but in the main Frankenstein continues to refer to her affectionately as ‘cousin.’

  Page 36. campagne: small country house or cottage. Belrive: Bellerive, on the south-west shore of Lake Geneva, some 6 km. from the city.

  Page 37. temperature: temperament, disposition.

  Page 38. Thonon: on the south (French) shore of the Lake, some 25 km. from Geneva.

  Page 39. Cornelius Agrippa: (1486–1535), cabbalist and occultist.

  (2) Paracelsus: Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1493–1541); physician and alchemist.

  Albertus Magnus: (1193–1280), schoolman and Aristotelian.

  (3) Sir Isaac Newton is said: ‘I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me’ (Sir David Brewster, Life of Newton (1831), ch. 19).

  Page 41. Before this I was not unacquainted … astonishing to me: in 1818, The catastrophe of this tree excited my extreme astonishment; and I eagerly inquired of my father the nature and origin of thunder and lightning. He replied, “Electricity;” describing at the same time the various effects of that power. He constructed a small electrical machine, and exhibited a few experiments; he made also a kite, with a wire and string, which drew down that fluid from the clouds.’

  Page 42. the university of Ingolstadt: Ingolstadt on the Danube, in Upper Bavaria, formerly a ducal residence, university town and citadel, now an industrial centre. The University, which existed from 1472 to 1800, was transferred to Landshut and later to Munich; the building is now the Hohe Schule. Adam Weishaupt founded his society of Illuminati at Ingolstadt in 1776; Mary Shelley may have remembered it from Shelley’s reading of the account of Weishaupt in the Abbé Barruel’s History of Jacobinism, in October 1814 (Pollin (see Bibliography), p. 103).

  Page 44. chaise: open travelling carriage for one or two passengers.

  Page 45. ‘old familiar faces’: from Charles Lamb, ‘The Old Familiar Faces.’

  Page 53. the Arabian who had been buried with the dead: from the Fourth Voyage of Sinbad the Sailor, in The Thousand and One Nights.

  Page 60. the Dutch schoolmaster in the Vicar of Wakefield: ‘“You see me, young man, I never learned Greek, and I don’t find that I have ever missed it. I have had a doctor’s cap and gown without Greek; I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek; I eat heartily without Greek; and, in short,” continued he, “as I don’t know Greek, I do not believe there is any good in it.’” (Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. 20).

  Page 65. the same reason that Ariosto gives concerning the beauty of Angelica: princess of Cathay, heroine of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, which Shelley had been reading in 1815 (journal (see Bibliography), pp. 44–5).

  Page 71. Plainpalais: described in Mary Shelley’s letter dated 1 June [1816] printed in the History of a Six-Weeks’ Tour (1817) and ‘probably written specifically for the Six-Weeks’ Tour’—Letters (see Bibliography), i, p. 12: ‘But while I still dwell on the country around Geneva, you will expect me to say something of the town itself; there is nothing, however, in it that can repay you for the trouble of walking over its rough stones. The houses are high, the streets narrow, many of them on the ascent, and no public building of any beauty to attract your eye, or any architecture to gratify your taste. The town is surrounded by a wall, the three gates of which are shut exactly at ten o’clock, when no bribery (as in France) can open them. To the south of the town is the promenade of the Genevese, a grassy plain planted with a few trees, and called Plainpalais… . Another Sunday recreation for the citizens is an excursion to the top of Mont Salère [sc. Salève]. This hill is within a league of the town, and rises perpendicularly from the cultivated plain. It is ascended on the other side, and I should judge from its situation that your toil is rewarded by a delightful view of the course of the Rhone and Arne [sc. Arve], and of the shores of the lake.’ (From The Letters of Mary W. Shelley, volume i, by Mary W. Shelley, collected and edited by Frederick L. Jones. Copyright 1944 by the University of Oklahoma Press.)

  Page 74. cabriolet: light two-wheeled one-horse vehicle, with hood and apron to protect the passengers.

  (2) ‘the palaces of nature’: from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, in. lxii; the canto was completed but as yet unpublished; also cited by Shelley, letter to Byron (Chamonix, 22 July 1816; Letters, 1964, i. 495).

  Page 75. Secheron: Sécheron, a suburb to the north of Geneva.

  (2) Salêve: Mont Saléve, to the south and west of Geneva; see above, note to p. 71 on Plainpalais.

  Page 76. For description of a similar storm on 13 June 1816 (also mentioned in Polidori’s diary), see Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, in. xcii–xcvii and note; perhaps the same storm mentioned in History of a Six-Weeks’ Tour (Letters (see Bibliography), i. 12).

  Page 94. (1818) Frankenstein travels to Chamonix with his father, Ernest and Elizabeth, but visits the Mer de Glace alone; (1831) he makes the whole journey alone. Chamonix, later a celebrated winter resort, lies immediately to the north of Mont Blanc, in the French Alps, and close to the glacier of the Mer de Glace. For descriptions of the district from Mary’s journal and Shelley’s letters, see Appendix C.

  Page 98. We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep: from Shelley’s ‘Mutability’, published with Alastor (1816); several variants in punctuation.

  Page 106. as Pandæmonium appeared to the dæmons of hell: cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 670 ff.

  Page 115. the ass and the lap-dog: Lafontaine, Fables, iv. 5, ‘L’Ane et le petit Chien’: the ass, seeing the lap-dog petted for fawning on its master, tries to do the same and is beaten for it.

  Page 119. Volney’s “Ruins of Empires”: Constantin François Chassebœuf, comte de Volney (1757–1820), moderate revolutionary, Napoleonic senator and peer under Louis XVIII; his book, Les Ruines, ou Méditations sur les Révolutions des Empires (1791), was a widely read compendium of meditations on history, strongly coloured by the author’s radical and deist views.

  Page 127. The monster’s library consists of Milton’s Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Parallel Lives and Goethe’s Leiden des jungen Werthers; Mary Shelley had read all three in 1815, and Shelley was reading Paradise Lost aloud to her in Nov. 1816 (Journal (see Bibliography), pp. 47, 48, 49, 68–9).

  Page 128. “The path of my departure was free”: cf. ‘Mutability’ 1. 14, The path of its departure still is free’ (see also note to p. 98).

  Page 131. Adam’s supplication to his Creator: either P
aradise Lost, viii. 379–97, or x. 743–5 (cf. title-page quotation, 1818).

  Page 136. a hell within me: cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, ix. 467, ‘the hot hell that always in him burns.’

  Page 149. siroc: sirocco, a hot wind blowing from N. Africa across the Mediterranean and parts of S. Europe.

  Page 154. to descend the Rhine: the descent of the Rhine partly recalls the journey of Mary and Shelley in Aug.–Sept. 1814 (cf. History of a Six-Weeks’ Tour in Complete Works of Shelley, ed. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck (Julian edn., 1929), vi. 107–10).

  In the following paragraph, the references to Lucerne … Uri … La Valais … the Pays de Vaud are also based on recollections of Aug. 1814 (cf. Six-Weeks’ Tour, as above, 103–4).

  Page 156. the ‘very poetry of nature’: ascribed (1818) to Leigh Hunt, The Story of Rimini.

  Page 159. at the beginning of October: but cf. p. 157, in the latter days of December.

  (2) Falkland: Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland (1610–43), scholar and moderate royalist, Secretary of State to Charles I, deliberately went to his death at the battle of Newbury, 20 Sept. 1643.

  Goring: George, Baron Goring (1608–57), royalist general; able but ambitious and unscrupulous.

  Page 160. Hampden: John Hampden (1594–1643), parliamentarian, famous for his opposition to Charles I’s imposition of ship-money; mortally wounded at Chalgrove Field on 18 June 1643.

  Page 161. the wondrous cave, and the little cabinets of natural history: presumably refers to High Tor Grotto between Matlock and Matlock Bath. The ‘cabinet’ at Servoz is mentioned in Shelley’s letter to Peacock, 22 July 1816 (Letters, 1964, i. 496).

  Page 182. maladie du pays: homesickness.

  Page 183. Havre-de-Grace: the original name of the French port of Le Havre.

  Page 186. the sea of ice: i.e. the Mer de Glace at Chamonix.

  Page 192. Evian: watering-place in the centre of the south shore of Lake Geneva.