Scenes
1) Walton meets Dr. Frankenstein
Frankenstein opens with a series of letters written by Arctic explorer Robert Walton, engaged in a personal quest to expand the boundaries of the known world. It is Walton who first encounters Victor Frankenstein in the Arctic desperately searching for the monster he has created. The explorer becomes the only person to hear Victor Frankenstein's strange and tragic tale.
In a series of letters, Robert Walton, the captain of a ship bound for the North Pole, recounts to his sister back in England the progress of his dangerous mission. Successful early on, the mission is soon interrupted by seas full of impassable ice. Trapped, Walton encounters Victor Frankenstein, who has been traveling by dog-drawn sledge across the ice and is weakened by the cold. Walton takes him aboard ship, helps nurse him back to health, and hears the fantastic tale of the monster that Frankenstein created.
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2) Frankenstein's interest in science
I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak . . . and so soon as the dazzling light vanished the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. . . . I eagerly inquired of my father the nature and origin of thunder and lightning. He replied, "Electricity."
Victor first describes his early life in Geneva. At the end of a blissful childhood spent in the company of Elizabeth Lavenza (his cousin in the 1818 edition, his adopted sister in the 1831 edition) and friend Henry Clerval, Victor enters the university of Ingolstadt to study natural philosophy and chemistry.
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3) Frankenstein discovers "the new science" at university
The modern masters promise very little. . . . but these philosophers. . . have indeed performed miracles. . . . They have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows. (Professor Waldman to his class at the University of Ingolstadt, Frankenstein). By the early 19th century, philosophers like physician Erasmus Darwin and chemist Humphry Davy, both well known to Mary Shelley, pointed the way to mastery of the physical universe. Discoveries about the human body and the natural world promised the dawn of a new age of medical power, when such things as reanimation of dead tissue and the end of death and disease seemed within reach.
Victor enters the university of Ingolstadt to study natural philosophy and chemistry. There, he is consumed by the desire to discover the secret of life and, after several years of research, becomes convinced that he has found it.
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4) My Secret Toil: Frankenstein creates his monster
With feverish excitement, Victor Frankenstein pursues nature to her hiding places. By moonlight, he gathers the body parts he needs by visits to the graveyard, to the charnel house, to the hospital dissecting room and the slaughterhouse. Although he finds his solitary preoccupation repulsive, he is not deterred from his quest to restore life. He imagines creating a new race of beings which will hail him as their creator.
Armed with the knowledge he has long been seeking, Victor spends months feverishly fashioning a creature out of old body parts. One climactic night, in the secrecy of his apartment, he brings his creation to life.
<>
5) My hideous progeny: overcome, Frankenstein abandons Monster, falls ill
Overcome by the horror of what he has done, Victor Frankenstein abandons the "miserable monster" he fathered in his laboratory. That evening a nightmare disturbs his sleep; Elizabeth, his fiancée, becomes in his arms the decaying corpse of his own dead mother. The next morning when he returns to his "workshop of filthy creation," the monster has escaped.
When he looks at the monstrosity that he has created, however, the sight horrifies him. After a fitful night of sleep, interrupted by the specter of the monster looming over him, he runs into the streets, eventually wandering in remorse. Victor runs into Henry, who has come to study at the university, and he takes his friend back to his apartment. Though the monster is gone, Victor falls into a feverish illness.
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6) Meanwhile... The monster ponders "his accursed origins"
Fatherless and motherless, the monster struggles to find his place in human society, struggles with the most fundamental questions of identity and personal history. Alone, he learns to speak, to read, and to ponder "his accursed origins." All the while, he suffers from the loneliness of never seeing anyone resembling himself.
The Creature's first encounter with humans comes as he enters a hut, causing its inhabitant to flee in terror—the same terror he inspires in the residents of a village he enters, and after fleeing angry villagers he takes refuge in a "hovel" that allows him to see into an adjoining cottage. From there he silently watches the impoverished and despondent De Lacey family, consisting of the blind father, his son Felix, and his daughter Agatha; impressed with their "gentle manners," he secretly provides the family with firewood.
There he discovers the use of language, and learns the rudiments of this "godlike science" by listening to their conversations. His progress quickens with the arrival of the Arab Safie, whose language lessons he observes attentively. Volney's Ruins of Empire provides him with not only a grasp of the language, but "a cursory knowledge of history" as well. As his knowledge of language and politics improves, he is able to make sense of "the history of [his] friends."
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7) The monster begins his revenge
Abandoned by his creator and shunned by other humans because of his appearance, the monster takes his revenge on Victor Frankenstein by killing his younger brother, William. Frankenstein's silence, in the face of the monster's murderous actions, exacts a terrible price. His self-imposed isolation from society mirrors the social isolation the monster experiences from all who see him. Frankenstein's decision to remain silent about the monster leads to further tragedy.
Sickened by his horrific deed, Victor prepares to return to Geneva, to his family, and to health. Just before departing Ingolstadt, however, he receives a letter from his father informing him that his youngest brother, William, has been murdered. Grief-stricken, Victor hurries home. While passing through the woods where William was strangled, he catches sight of the monster and becomes convinced that the monster is his brother’s murderer. Arriving in Geneva, Victor finds that Justine Moritz, a kind, gentle girl who had been adopted by the Frankenstein household, has been accused. She is tried, condemned, and executed, despite her assertions of innocence. Victor grows despondent, guilty with the knowledge that the monster he has created bears responsibility for the death of two innocent loved ones.
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8) Oh! my creator, make me happy
I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself. . . . It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless, and free from the misery I now feel. Oh! my creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude toward you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!
Hoping to ease his grief, Victor takes a vacation to the mountains. While he is alone one day, crossing an enormous glacier, the monster approaches him. The monster admits to the murder of William but begs for understanding. Lonely, shunned, and forlorn, he says that he struck out at William in a desperate attempt to injure Victor, his cruel creator. The monster begs Victor to create a mate for him, a monster equally grotesque to serve as his sole companion.
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9) Race of devils
Victor Frankenstein initially agrees to create a mate for his monster. But as Frankenstein begins to assemble an Eve for his Adam, he grows terrified by the prospect that this female creature will be "ten thousand times more malignant" than her companion, and that the two might themselves produce "a race of devils." Breaking his promise to the monster, Frankenstein disposes of the body parts he gathered to produce the female creature.
Victor refuses at first, horrified by the prospect of creating a second monster. The monster is eloquent and persuasive, however, and he eventually convinces Victor. After returning to Geneva, Victor heads for England, accompanied by Henry, to gather information for the creation of a female monster. Leaving Henry in Scotland, he secludes himself on a desolate island in the Orkneys and works reluctantly at repeating his first success. One night, struck by doubts about the morality of his actions, Victor glances out the window to see the monster glaring in at him with a frightening grin. Horrified by the possible consequences of his work, Victor destroys his new creation. The monster, enraged, vows revenge, swearing that he will be with Victor on Victor’s wedding night.
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10) The monster exacts his revenge
Inflamed with hatred, the monster sets outs to destroy in Frankenstein's life all that he coveted for his own. After killing Clerval, Frankenstein's best friend, the monster murders Elizabeth, Frankenstein's bride, on their wedding night.
Later that night, Victor takes a boat out onto a lake and dumps the remains of the second creature in the water. The wind picks up and prevents him from returning to the island. In the morning, he finds himself ashore near an unknown town. Upon landing, he is arrested and informed that he will be tried for a murder discovered the previous night. Victor denies any knowledge of the murder, but when shown the body, he is shocked to behold his friend Henry Clerval, with the mark of the monster’s fingers on his neck. Victor falls ill, raving and feverish, and is kept in prison until his recovery, after which he is acquitted of the crime.
Shortly after returning to Geneva with his father, Victor marries Elizabeth. He fears the monster’s warning and suspects that he will be murdered on his wedding night. To be cautious, he sends Elizabeth away to wait for him. While he awaits the monster, he hears Elizabeth scream and realizes that the monster had been hinting at killing his new bride, not himself. Victor returns home to his father, who dies of grief a short time later. Victor vows to devote the rest of his life to finding the monster and exacting his revenge, and he soon departs to begin his quest.
<>
11) Frankenstein's demise
As he lies dying aboard Walton's ship, Frankenstein offers an ambivalent assessment of his own conduct. In both the subtitle (The Modern Prometheus) of her novel and through Frankenstein's dying words, Mary Shelley suggests that Frankenstein's misfortune did not arise from his Promethean ambition of creating life, but in the mistreatment of his creature. Frankenstein's failure to assume responsibility for the miserable wretch he fathered in his workshop is his real tragedy.
Victor tracks the monster ever northward into the ice. In a dogsled chase, Victor almost catches up with the monster, but the sea beneath them swells and the ice breaks, leaving an unbridgeable gap between them. At this point, Walton encounters Victor, and the narrative catches up to the time of Walton’s fourth letter to his sister. Walton tells the remainder of the story in another series of letters to his sister. Victor, already ill when the two men meet, worsens and dies shortly thereafter.
<>
12) Monster's remorse
Encountering Robert Walton aboard his ship, the monster expresses overwhelming remorse for his frightful catalogue of misdeeds, the deaths of William, Clerval, Elizabeth, and his creator. The creature informs the explorer that he will destroy himself in the frozen north, and disappears in the icy waves. The tragedy of Frankenstein and his monster is complete.
When Walton returns, several days later, to the room in which the body lies, he is startled to see the monster weeping over Victor. The monster tells Walton of his immense solitude, suffering, hatred, and remorse. He asserts that now that his creator has died, he too can end his suffering. The monster then departs for the northernmost ice to die.
Frankenstein opens with a series of letters written by Arctic explorer Robert Walton, engaged in a personal quest to expand the boundaries of the known world. It is Walton who first encounters Victor Frankenstein in the Arctic desperately searching for the monster he has created. The explorer becomes the only person to hear Victor Frankenstein's strange and tragic tale.
In a series of letters, Robert Walton, the captain of a ship bound for the North Pole, recounts to his sister back in England the progress of his dangerous mission. Successful early on, the mission is soon interrupted by seas full of impassable ice. Trapped, Walton encounters Victor Frankenstein, who has been traveling by dog-drawn sledge across the ice and is weakened by the cold. Walton takes him aboard ship, helps nurse him back to health, and hears the fantastic tale of the monster that Frankenstein created.
<>
2) Frankenstein's interest in science
I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak . . . and so soon as the dazzling light vanished the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. . . . I eagerly inquired of my father the nature and origin of thunder and lightning. He replied, "Electricity."
Victor first describes his early life in Geneva. At the end of a blissful childhood spent in the company of Elizabeth Lavenza (his cousin in the 1818 edition, his adopted sister in the 1831 edition) and friend Henry Clerval, Victor enters the university of Ingolstadt to study natural philosophy and chemistry.
<>
3) Frankenstein discovers "the new science" at university
The modern masters promise very little. . . . but these philosophers. . . have indeed performed miracles. . . . They have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows. (Professor Waldman to his class at the University of Ingolstadt, Frankenstein). By the early 19th century, philosophers like physician Erasmus Darwin and chemist Humphry Davy, both well known to Mary Shelley, pointed the way to mastery of the physical universe. Discoveries about the human body and the natural world promised the dawn of a new age of medical power, when such things as reanimation of dead tissue and the end of death and disease seemed within reach.
Victor enters the university of Ingolstadt to study natural philosophy and chemistry. There, he is consumed by the desire to discover the secret of life and, after several years of research, becomes convinced that he has found it.
<>
4) My Secret Toil: Frankenstein creates his monster
With feverish excitement, Victor Frankenstein pursues nature to her hiding places. By moonlight, he gathers the body parts he needs by visits to the graveyard, to the charnel house, to the hospital dissecting room and the slaughterhouse. Although he finds his solitary preoccupation repulsive, he is not deterred from his quest to restore life. He imagines creating a new race of beings which will hail him as their creator.
Armed with the knowledge he has long been seeking, Victor spends months feverishly fashioning a creature out of old body parts. One climactic night, in the secrecy of his apartment, he brings his creation to life.
<>
5) My hideous progeny: overcome, Frankenstein abandons Monster, falls ill
Overcome by the horror of what he has done, Victor Frankenstein abandons the "miserable monster" he fathered in his laboratory. That evening a nightmare disturbs his sleep; Elizabeth, his fiancée, becomes in his arms the decaying corpse of his own dead mother. The next morning when he returns to his "workshop of filthy creation," the monster has escaped.
When he looks at the monstrosity that he has created, however, the sight horrifies him. After a fitful night of sleep, interrupted by the specter of the monster looming over him, he runs into the streets, eventually wandering in remorse. Victor runs into Henry, who has come to study at the university, and he takes his friend back to his apartment. Though the monster is gone, Victor falls into a feverish illness.
<>
6) Meanwhile... The monster ponders "his accursed origins"
Fatherless and motherless, the monster struggles to find his place in human society, struggles with the most fundamental questions of identity and personal history. Alone, he learns to speak, to read, and to ponder "his accursed origins." All the while, he suffers from the loneliness of never seeing anyone resembling himself.
The Creature's first encounter with humans comes as he enters a hut, causing its inhabitant to flee in terror—the same terror he inspires in the residents of a village he enters, and after fleeing angry villagers he takes refuge in a "hovel" that allows him to see into an adjoining cottage. From there he silently watches the impoverished and despondent De Lacey family, consisting of the blind father, his son Felix, and his daughter Agatha; impressed with their "gentle manners," he secretly provides the family with firewood.
There he discovers the use of language, and learns the rudiments of this "godlike science" by listening to their conversations. His progress quickens with the arrival of the Arab Safie, whose language lessons he observes attentively. Volney's Ruins of Empire provides him with not only a grasp of the language, but "a cursory knowledge of history" as well. As his knowledge of language and politics improves, he is able to make sense of "the history of [his] friends."
<>
7) The monster begins his revenge
Abandoned by his creator and shunned by other humans because of his appearance, the monster takes his revenge on Victor Frankenstein by killing his younger brother, William. Frankenstein's silence, in the face of the monster's murderous actions, exacts a terrible price. His self-imposed isolation from society mirrors the social isolation the monster experiences from all who see him. Frankenstein's decision to remain silent about the monster leads to further tragedy.
Sickened by his horrific deed, Victor prepares to return to Geneva, to his family, and to health. Just before departing Ingolstadt, however, he receives a letter from his father informing him that his youngest brother, William, has been murdered. Grief-stricken, Victor hurries home. While passing through the woods where William was strangled, he catches sight of the monster and becomes convinced that the monster is his brother’s murderer. Arriving in Geneva, Victor finds that Justine Moritz, a kind, gentle girl who had been adopted by the Frankenstein household, has been accused. She is tried, condemned, and executed, despite her assertions of innocence. Victor grows despondent, guilty with the knowledge that the monster he has created bears responsibility for the death of two innocent loved ones.
<>
8) Oh! my creator, make me happy
I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself. . . . It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be happy, but they will be harmless, and free from the misery I now feel. Oh! my creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude toward you for one benefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing; do not deny me my request!
Hoping to ease his grief, Victor takes a vacation to the mountains. While he is alone one day, crossing an enormous glacier, the monster approaches him. The monster admits to the murder of William but begs for understanding. Lonely, shunned, and forlorn, he says that he struck out at William in a desperate attempt to injure Victor, his cruel creator. The monster begs Victor to create a mate for him, a monster equally grotesque to serve as his sole companion.
<>
9) Race of devils
Victor Frankenstein initially agrees to create a mate for his monster. But as Frankenstein begins to assemble an Eve for his Adam, he grows terrified by the prospect that this female creature will be "ten thousand times more malignant" than her companion, and that the two might themselves produce "a race of devils." Breaking his promise to the monster, Frankenstein disposes of the body parts he gathered to produce the female creature.
Victor refuses at first, horrified by the prospect of creating a second monster. The monster is eloquent and persuasive, however, and he eventually convinces Victor. After returning to Geneva, Victor heads for England, accompanied by Henry, to gather information for the creation of a female monster. Leaving Henry in Scotland, he secludes himself on a desolate island in the Orkneys and works reluctantly at repeating his first success. One night, struck by doubts about the morality of his actions, Victor glances out the window to see the monster glaring in at him with a frightening grin. Horrified by the possible consequences of his work, Victor destroys his new creation. The monster, enraged, vows revenge, swearing that he will be with Victor on Victor’s wedding night.
<>
10) The monster exacts his revenge
Inflamed with hatred, the monster sets outs to destroy in Frankenstein's life all that he coveted for his own. After killing Clerval, Frankenstein's best friend, the monster murders Elizabeth, Frankenstein's bride, on their wedding night.
Later that night, Victor takes a boat out onto a lake and dumps the remains of the second creature in the water. The wind picks up and prevents him from returning to the island. In the morning, he finds himself ashore near an unknown town. Upon landing, he is arrested and informed that he will be tried for a murder discovered the previous night. Victor denies any knowledge of the murder, but when shown the body, he is shocked to behold his friend Henry Clerval, with the mark of the monster’s fingers on his neck. Victor falls ill, raving and feverish, and is kept in prison until his recovery, after which he is acquitted of the crime.
Shortly after returning to Geneva with his father, Victor marries Elizabeth. He fears the monster’s warning and suspects that he will be murdered on his wedding night. To be cautious, he sends Elizabeth away to wait for him. While he awaits the monster, he hears Elizabeth scream and realizes that the monster had been hinting at killing his new bride, not himself. Victor returns home to his father, who dies of grief a short time later. Victor vows to devote the rest of his life to finding the monster and exacting his revenge, and he soon departs to begin his quest.
<>
11) Frankenstein's demise
As he lies dying aboard Walton's ship, Frankenstein offers an ambivalent assessment of his own conduct. In both the subtitle (The Modern Prometheus) of her novel and through Frankenstein's dying words, Mary Shelley suggests that Frankenstein's misfortune did not arise from his Promethean ambition of creating life, but in the mistreatment of his creature. Frankenstein's failure to assume responsibility for the miserable wretch he fathered in his workshop is his real tragedy.
Victor tracks the monster ever northward into the ice. In a dogsled chase, Victor almost catches up with the monster, but the sea beneath them swells and the ice breaks, leaving an unbridgeable gap between them. At this point, Walton encounters Victor, and the narrative catches up to the time of Walton’s fourth letter to his sister. Walton tells the remainder of the story in another series of letters to his sister. Victor, already ill when the two men meet, worsens and dies shortly thereafter.
<>
12) Monster's remorse
Encountering Robert Walton aboard his ship, the monster expresses overwhelming remorse for his frightful catalogue of misdeeds, the deaths of William, Clerval, Elizabeth, and his creator. The creature informs the explorer that he will destroy himself in the frozen north, and disappears in the icy waves. The tragedy of Frankenstein and his monster is complete.
When Walton returns, several days later, to the room in which the body lies, he is startled to see the monster weeping over Victor. The monster tells Walton of his immense solitude, suffering, hatred, and remorse. He asserts that now that his creator has died, he too can end his suffering. The monster then departs for the northernmost ice to die.