Class 18 - Introducing Frankenstein

Introducing Frankenstein

In this session, we’re going to introduce the text for the next few weeks — Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This is a long text, and difficult for non-native speakers. It it is written in 19th century English, which may present challenges.

We will mainly be exploring the story and its influence, rather than focussing in detail on the text itself. The text will mainly be centre of gravity for our discussions, and we’ll be orbiting around it, exploring its influence from different angles.

Checking In

As usual, we’ll spend some time checking-in before we start.

Introduction

Frankenstein is one of the most famous of all 19th century novels in English. It has been called everything from a parable on the dangers of scientific knowledge, to one of the first science fiction novels, to monster story, to a prophetic text

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRppXdKDY_c

Reading

Now we know the full story, at least in outline, we’re going to read a couple of sections, to get a feel for Mary Shelley’s prose. We’ll read the section from the beginning of chapter five where the monster opens its eye. It’s quite creepy! So by this point in the text, Frankenstein has made this creature out of reassembled corpses. He is hoping that it will be something beautiful, but he’s in this moment he becomes aware that he’s made something monstrous.

We’ll read from the beginning of chapter five up to the line that says “unable to compose my mind to sleep.”

Background

Now that we have a sense of the book as a whole, let’s have a look at the background. The book was written by the author Mary Shelley. Here’s an introduction to her and to her life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4p96vqI3zA

Writing exercise

In this course, we’re talking about ways of knowing. Frankenstein is famous as an early text about the dangerous of scientific ways of knowing. It is still referred to today, when people want to call science into question. The idea is that there is potentially something monstrous in our human question for knowledge.

In his book, Strangers, Gods and Monsters (Routledge 2003, pp. 3-4), Richard Kearney writes: “‘Monsters’ also signal borderline experiences of uncontainable excess, reminding the ego that it is never wholly sovereign… each monster narrative recalls that the self is never secure in itself. ‘There are monsters on the prowl’, as Michel Foucault writes, ‘whose form changes with the history of knowledge’. For as our ideas of self-identity alter so do our ideas of what menaces this identity… Monsters are what keep us awake at night and make us nervous during the day. And even when they claim as in Monsters Inc. that ‘they only scare because they care’, they still scare.”

Writing task

Write in response to the following questions for 10 minutes (free-writing):

• What monsters keep you awake at night and make you nervous during the day?

Highlight individual sentences from the free-writing, followed by sharing — popcorn style.

Build Your Own Monster

Now your task is this: to build your own monster. Think back to your earlier writing task, where you thought about what is monstrous to you — what is frightening, or threatening to your identity, or makes you shudder!

We’re going to focus on the moment that your monster is “born” or “created”. Take this as literally or metaphorically as you like.

• Writing task: Write a story about the birth of a monster. What is the monster? How does it come into existence? How is it monstrous?

Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation and grammar. This is just a first draft! Just keep writing.

Sharing our monsters

Post to the Padlet with:

• A section of the writing you have been working on — select a section where you think the monster is most vividly and powerfully — depicted.
• A suitable illustration!

Homework

The readings this week are from chapters 4 and 5, where Frankenstein, full of hope, creates his monster (chapter 4), and then sees the hope come crashing down into unspeakable horror (chapter 5). We’ll use the Dover edition on perlego: https://ereader.perlego.com/1/book/113049/0