Study sheet: Frankenstein Context and Analysis

📋 Course Outline

1. Shelley and the Novel’s Context
2. Doubleness and Narrative Structure
3. Walton’s Expedition and Ambition
4. Gothic Settings and Atmosphere
5. Creation, Prometheus, and Transgression
6. Victor’s Family and Moral Reversal
7. Shelley’s Creative Inspiration
8. Literary Devices and Meaning

📖 1. Shelley and the Novel’s Context

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Galvanism : the use of electricity to animate bodies

★ Must-know

• Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein when she was 16, and the first edition was published in 1818.

• The revised version of Frankenstein was published in 1831 and presents an adult narrator looking back on events that took place in 1816.

Further detail

• Mary Shelley was the daughter of a feminist mother and a philosopher father, and she was raised in an unusually intellectual and cultivated environment.

💡 Memory Hook

Scientific experiments and galvanism → the idea of animating bodies

📖 2. Doubleness and Narrative Structure

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Embedded narrative : a story contained within another narrative

★ Must-know

• Frankenstein uses three narrators and a circular pattern that begins and ends with Walton’s perspective.

📌 Victor Frankenstein and the creature form a double because they look alike in some respects and mirror one another as creator and created being.

Further detail

• The novel’s circular pattern suggests that its characters have no way out until Walton decides to turn back and save his crew.

💡 Memory Hook

Victor creates a creature, while Shelley creates a character

📖 3. Walton’s Expedition and Ambition

★ Must-know

• Walton travels from Saint Petersburg to find a vessel and crew and seeks a passage to the North Pole in order to gain knowledge and glory.

• 🔄 Walton prepares for the expedition by:

  1. enduring cold
  2. enduring famine
  3. enduring thirst
  4. enduring lack of sleep
  5. studying mathematics
  6. studying medicine and physical science

• Walton feels lonely and wants a friend with whom he can share his fears and hopes.

Further detail

• Walton admits that he is too ardent in execution, too impatient of difficulties, and overly enthusiastic.

💡 Memory Hook

Saint Petersburg → Archangel → Arctic ice

📖 4. Gothic Settings and Atmosphere

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Gothic : associated with gloom, confinement, death, isolation, supernatural elements, and bad weather

★ Must-know

📌 The novel contrasts breathtaking landscapes such as Switzerland with rainy, cold, isolated, and inhospitable surroundings.

• Walton’s ship becomes shut in by ice and snow and is unable to move when the first sledge is seen.

Further detail

• The floating sheets of ice indicate the danger of the Arctic region toward which Walton’s ship is advancing.

💡 Memory Hook

A ship trapped in Arctic ice beside an exhausted stranger

📖 5. Creation, Prometheus, and Transgression

★ Must-know

📌 The novel compares Victor to Prometheus because both transgress by taking a power associated with the gods and giving it to humans.

• 🔄 Victor attempts to reanimate a body by:

  1. assembling pieces
  2. stitching the pieces together
  3. using electricity

• Victor’s first reaction to the creature is horror, despite his earlier excitement about creating life.

Further detail

• Victor’s experiment begins in a laboratory at Ingolstadt, a place associated with knowledge, experimentation, and transgression.

💡 Memory Hook

Creator versus created; Prometheus versus divine authority

📖 6. Victor’s Family and Moral Reversal

★ Must-know

• Victor becomes obsessed with creating life, creates a monster, abandons it, and leaves it vulnerable to isolation and vengeance.

📌 The creature is sensitive and able to feel emotion, but exclusion by everyone contributes to his transformation into an evil figure.

Further detail

• Victor’s parents are Alphonse Frankenstein and Caroline Beaufort, and Elizabeth Lavenza is adopted after Caroline finds her in a poor area.

• Caroline dies of scarlet fever, and Victor leaves Geneva for Ingolstadt after his mother’s death.

💡 Memory Hook

Abandonment → isolation → vengeance

📖 7. Shelley’s Creative Inspiration

★ Must-know

• Lord Byron proposed a literary competition in which each member of the group would create a ghost story.

• Mary Shelley drew inspiration from:

  • ghost stories
  • conversations about science and galvanism
  • nightmares
  • gloomy surroundings

📌 Mary Shelley’s creative process parallels Victor’s because both use fragments or materials from different sources to create something new.

Further detail

• Mary Shelley stayed in Switzerland with Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, and another companion during a summer marked by endless rain and cool temperatures.

💡 Memory Hook

Rain → ghost stories → conversation → nightmare → novel

📖 8. Literary Devices and Meaning

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Personification : gives an inanimate object human traits or characteristics
• Objectification : dehumanizes a person by treating that person as an object
• Antithesis : places two opposite words, groups, ideas, or notions in contrast within a sentence or passage
• Chiasmus : a reversal of elements in an ABBA pattern
• Anaphora : repeats a word or group of words at the beginning of successive sentences or clauses

📝 Essential Points

• The repeated word “hideous” appears three times and emphasizes the creature’s horrifying appearance.

💡 Memory Hook

Form shows meaning: beautiful landscapes contrast with hostile weather

📊 Synthesis Tables

Victor and the Creature

Dimension	Victor Frankenstein	The Creature
Role	Creator	Created being
Initial response	Horrified by the result	Abandoned and isolated
Development	Loses interest in science	Turns toward vengeance
Narrative function	Represents ambition and transgression	Represents exclusion and its consequences