Name: Frankenstein Part II: Crash Course Literature 206
Uploaded: 2016-11-03T14:29:34.000Z
Duration: 12 min 38 s
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Hi, I'm John Green, this is Crash Course
Literature, and today we continue our discussion

of “Frankenstein”.
Oh, Me From the Past didn't even come to

school today. Isn't that fantastic? Well
we're going to learn something without him.

Last time we talked a little bit about the
Romantics, “Frankenstein” is often cited

as the definitive Romantic novel, but ehh…
let's get a little bit deeper into it.

Capital “R” Romantics don't have a lot
to do with lower case 'r' romantics, unless

your idea of romance involves like ecstatic
descriptions of nature and a revolutionary

spirit that often ends in bloodshed.
And if that's your idea of romance, don't

put it in your OK Cupid profile. However,
pro tip, do say that you're 6'3”.

Knowing more about the capital “R” Romantics will help you be better at lower case “r” romance so stick with me here.

So Romanticism was a movement originating
in the late 18th century and it's typically

understood as a reaction against both the
Industrial Revolution's devaluing of the

individual human spirit and embracing of like the soulless assembly line. And also the Enlightenment's

claims of scientific certainty.
Romanticism prizes intuition over rationalism,

and nature and wildness over classical harmony,
and emotions—especially difficult emotions

like horror and awe and terror and passion—are
preferred over intellect.

And there's an emphasis on the unconscious
and irrational part of humans. There's a

lot of talk of dreams and stuff.
So is “Frankenstein” a Romantic novel?

Well, if you take a course in Romantic lit
in college then you will almost definitely

read it. So, yes.
“Frankenstein” is interested in difficult,

uncomfortable emotions the wonder and awe
and horror of encountering the radically other.

And it's certainly in many ways also a response to the
Enlightenment's emphasis on scientific rationality.

I mean people at the time really thought
that we would eventually be able to

reanimate the dead and other people
were rightly troubled by that.

Then again, you can also read the book as
a critique -- and a pretty stern one --

of the kind of thinking and acting that
Romanticism encourages, right?

I mean Romanticism preaches a radical
self-involvement that privileges the individual's pursuit

of knowledge and glory but for all of Victor
and Walton's encountering nature and going

with their gut it's pretty disastrous. .
Another popular reading is to interpret “Frankenstein”

autobiographically, a reading that was encouraged
via 1970s feminist criticism of the novel.

Earlier readings along these lines situates
“Frankenstein” as a tale of monstrous

birth and look to Mary Shelley's own experiences
with birth, which were pretty terrible..

I mean Mary Shelley's mother died while
giving birth to her and Mary and Percy's

own first child, a daughter, died when she
was just a few weeks old.

And in her journal, Mary recounted an incredibly
sad dream about this daughter: “Dream that

my little baby came to life again; that it
had only been cold & that we rubbed it before

the fire & it lived.”
So, of course, the idea of bringing the dead

back to life had occurred to her even before
she listened in on Percy Shelley and Byron

discussing new developments in electricity.
Mary Shelley even refers to the book itself

as a child. In her intro to the 1831 edition,
she wrote, “I bid my hideous progeny go

forth and prosper. I have an affection for
it, for it was the offspring of happy days.”

That's a very tempting reading, but it's
also really literal and reductive.

First off, and I'm saying this partly defensively
as a novelist, novelist don't write exclusively

from their own experience.
More importantly, I'm not at all convinced

that making an author the central character
of a novel is a particularly helpful way to

read it.
So if you read “Frankenstein” as merely

as Mary Shelley working out her own personal
issues you miss the great and terrible questions

at the center of the book. The questions that
really can change you.

There's in fact a term for trying to do
this kind of reading—“intentional fallacy”—in

which we believe we can know exactly what
the author was thinking when they wrote a

book.
But putting aside those biographical readings

there are still some pretty interesting feminist
critiques of “Frankenstein.”

For instance, the novel clearly shows what
harm comes to women (and families and relationships)

when men pursue single-minded goals.
In fact, thanks to Victor's lack of work-life

balance, pretty much all the women in this
novel die. I mean Victor's creation of the

monster leads to the hanging of the servant
Justine, the murder of Victor's bride Elizabeth

on their wedding night.
And occasionally in the novel Mary Shelley

refers to nature itself as female, suggesting
that Victor is violating it, as when Victor

discusses how with “unrelaxed and breathless
eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.”

I mean you can say I'm reading sex into
that if you want but “unrelaxed and breathless

eagerness.”?
And there are also plenty of suggestions that

Victor might not like women very much. The
creature says that he will leave Victor and

all mankind alone forever if Victor just creates
a mate for him and Victor begins work, but

then he gets freaked out over what it will
mean to create a lady monster.

Now admittedly that's partly because it
might mean monster progeny but just look at

the text, “She might become ten thousand
times more malignant than her mate,” thinks

Victor, “and delight, for its own sake,
in murder and wretchedness.”

He worries, “a race of devils would be propagated
upon the earth who might make the very existence

of the species of man a condition precarious
and full of terror.”

So Victor destroys the female creature while
the monster watches. He recalls, how “trembling

with passion, [I] tore to pieces the thing
on which I was engaged.”

I don't think I'm being too weird to point
out the sexy stuff there: “trembling with

passion.” Anyway, Victor claims to love
his cousin, Elizabeth, but he deserts her

for years at a time and even though the creature
says—really, really, really clearly—“I

will be with you on your wedding-night,”
he leaves her alone on his wedding night.

Now we can all wonder why Mary Shelley didn't
create any strong female characters here and

instead a collection of suffering, passive,
doomed ones, but we can certainly read the

novel as an exploration of what happens when
men fear, distrust, or devalue women so much

that they attempt to reproduce without them.
I mean in some ways Victor is trying to bypass

the feminine altogether. He's creating life
without recourse to egg or womb. Now you could

counter this by saying that Mary Shelley's
original Creator—God—did the same thing.

But that's precisely the point. Victor is
not God.

And perhaps this is where “Frankenstein”
is still most relevant, in its discussion

of “playing God,” of the single-minded
pursuit of science without an accompanying

concern about you know, morality.
Now, obviously, the experiments that Victor

undertakes are extreme, but Mary Shelley was
basing them on some of the scientific debates

and discoveries of her day. And even if the
book is largely science fiction, there's

a certain amount of scientific fact in it,
and a lot of scientific questioning.

And part of why this book has survived is
because the questions she was asking were

important in her day, but they're also
pretty important now.

I mean there was a recent book on genetic
modifications in animals called “Frankenstein's

Cat”, those who object to GMO foods often
label them Frankenfoods, which only makes

them sound like Franken-berry cereal - which
is delicious!

So Mary Shelley was influenced… oh… it
must be time for The Open Letter.

Oh look, it's Frankenstein's monster.
No, wait, it's the Hulk. It actually occurs

to me that they're quite similar.
Both monsters created by failed scientific

experiments who only really become monstrous
when they're rejected by society.

Anyway, an Open Letter to scientists: Dear
Scientists, here's a little rule of thumb.

Anytime you're doing any kind of experiment,
ask yourself the question, “Could this create