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.
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