Narrative framing devices in Frankenstein

NARRATIVE STRUCTURE IN

FRANKENSTEIN

FRANKENSTEIN

Frankenstein opens with letters from an

explorer, Robert Walton, to his sister.

The Explorer is stuck on his ship in the ice of

the North Pole.

LAYERS OF STORIES IN FRANKENSTEIN

Robert Walton’s

NarrativeVictor’s Story

Creature’s

Story

FRAME NARRATIVE

A fusion of two respected 18th

century genres

epistolary novel, a traditionally feminine genre

explorer’s journal, a traditionally masculine genre and an archetypal enlightenment genre

FRAME NARRATIVE

Functions:

provide a frame of verisimilitude to an

improbable tale

It SEEMS more true

It is VERY familiar and

conventional: it was told…

Ancient Mariner

Ozymandias

EPISTOLARY NOVEL

A Novel written as a series of documents

Letters

Diary entries

Newspaper clippings

Blogs

Emails

EPISTOLARY NOVEL CONVENTIONS

Reveal inner life: individual psychological

struggles

Growth to knowledge and virtue

IDEOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS

Reassure readers of the capacity of

individual to combat the temptations of evil

and grow towards virtue

FRANKENSTEIN SUBVERTS THE

EPISTOLARY NOVEL

Male narrator

No growth: fails to resists temptations; learns

nothing

EXPLORER’S JOURNAL CONVENTIONS

Protagonist : heroic scientist-explorer

Quest structure – pursuit and achievement

of a goal (c.f. the hero’s journey)

Encounters with strange lands, creatures

and beings

Increased understanding of the world and

humanity

EXPLORER’S JOURNAL

Ideological functions

celebrate the quest for knowledge and the

power of reason

celebrate human achievement - illustrate

man’s increasing mastery of his world

(archetypal embodiment of enlightenment

ideologies)

Frankenstein subverts the conventions and ideologies of the Explorer’s Journal genre

• Heroic protagonist exposed as flawed: narcissistic etc

• Quest ends in failure – reveals human limitations, rather than celebrating achievements

• Protagonist learns nothing fromexperiences and encounters

NB: Gulliver’s Travels

Further subverts the Explorer’s Journal by

embedding within it a disreputable genre – a

gothic tale.

Foregrounds the importance of the

Explorer’s Journal genre’s neglect of the:

irrational

inexplicable

supernatural

VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN’S GOTHIC TALE

Gothic conventions

Emphasis on the irrational and fantastic

Emphasis on emotion rather than reason

Challenge to enlightenment values

Setting: relics of past corrupt society or

wilds of nature

Protagonist: innocent, often virginal, victim

Villain: supernatural figure or authoritarian

patriarchal figure representative of past,

corrupt regime

Narrative structure: triumph over the

monstrous

IDEOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS

Acknowledge the existence of the monstrous

Reassure readers that the monstrous can be

defeated or controlled

FRANKENSTEIN SUBVERTS THESE

CONVENTIONS AND IDEOLOGIES

Setting: locates monstrosity in everyday

world: bourgeois domestic sphere

Protagonist: is victim and villain/monster

Ironically, victim of own villainy

The monstrous a product of human action:

external diabolical agency replaced by

internal human agency

The evil patriarch is an archetypal

enlightenment bourgeois figure

Villain is victim and hero

Blurs boundaries between victim, villain and

hero and human/non-human

The monstrous not defeated or controlled