Chance: A Masterpiece, Not a Monster
Ugly, grotesque, frightening, blood-curdling, hellish, putrid…words that describe a monstrosity, the main theme in Frankenstein. What exactly does that mean? A monster is scary, unknown, sometimes violent, and most of the time stumbled upon by chance. This leads directly into the second underlying theme in Frankenstein, chance, the absence of any cause of events that can be predicted. I believe that the theme of chance in Frankenstein is the most important, because if it were not for the many strange events in Mary Shelley’s life, the novel would not be as thoughtful as the one we have today. Frankenstein is a very well known piece of literature. Known by many, admired by many, and often hated by many. From its first birth critics have had wide and varying opinions because it is such a revolutionary writing for its time, because it was written by a woman, it was frightening and graphic, and because it contained many modern scientific ideas.
I enjoyed Frankenstein much more than I first believed that I would. It is true to not judge a book by its cover. My first impression was very poor, I had a mental picture of a mad, crazed scientist, with a hutch-back and possible a limp, scooting around his laboratory in the tower of a castle, creating this giant monster. In my mind he wore a white lab coat, his hair was silver and wild like a forest, and he was old and dirty. Then when he finally created the monster “Frankenstein” he did so, on a cold, dark and raining night, and the monster came to life because lightning struck the peak of his tower and jolted the monster’s heart into pumping. After reading the book my whole opinion was transformed, this was a very creative, realistic, in a way, book. Mary Shelley captured many themes in this novel. Of course we have the theme of monsters, but the one that I interpreted differently than many other critics and stuck out to me the most was the concept of chance.
Every event in Frankenstein was that of chance, which really developed, for me, a strong sense of who Mary Shelley was as a person. Shelley believed in events that befall upon a person, without any reason or purpose, very similarly to the many occurrences that happened in her life. Beginning with the letters that Robert Walton wrote to his sister, Shelley brings to light the theme of chance. In the second letter written by Walton he describes to his sister the need of a friend, “But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavor to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me; whose eyes would reply to mine.” (Shelley, page 10). Then the first event of chance occurs, “I said in one of my letters, my dear Margaret, that I should find no friend on the wide ocean; yet I have found a man who, before his spirit had been broken by misery, I should have been happy to have possessed as the brother of my heart.” (Shelley, page 15). The first event and displaying of chance is the happening of Walton meeting another man on the desolate ocean. This event of chance is also the largest one, because it leads directly into the story of Frankenstein.
I believe that Shelley included this event because it paralleled her life; critic Ellen Moers wrote a criticism entitled, “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother”, from this article I learned that Mary Shelley wrote in a journal, much like Walton’s letters, telling of her troubles and strife, with the deaths of her children. Similarly, in Frankenstein Walton describes that writing on paper is poor way to let the true feelings show, feelings such as depression and anxiety, which are probably the same feelings that Shelley felt after the devastating events unfolded in her life. In her journal Mary wrote, “Find my baby dead. A miserable day.” (Moers, page 221), Shelley does not have any one to console in, so she consoles with her journal, “…a poor medium for the communication of feeling…” (Shelley, page 10).
As the novel continues Frankenstein describes to Walton several events of chance. One main event of chance was that Frankenstein stumbled upon the very “scientific” books by Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus. He described the books as visionary genius of the natural sciences, just as Mary Shelley “…learned from Sir Humphry Davy’s book on chemistry and Erasmus Darwin on biology…she sat by while Shelley, Byron, and Polidori discussed the new sciences of mesmerism, electricity, and galvanism, which promised to unlock the riddle of life,” ( Moers, page 219). The events that led both Mary Shelley and Frankenstein to their peak of information to creation were so similar, and by chance, that it seems almost without uncertainty that Shelley was using her life events to construct the novel of Frankenstein. Critic Christopher Small wrote an article titled, “[Percy] Shelley and Frankenstein” which states, “It was the conversation between Byron and Shelley about “the principle of life” that gave Mary her starting point.” (Small, page 205). Many critics agree that it was events in Mary Shelley’s life that gave her the fervor to create Frankenstein.
The last event of chance that is pivotal to me was the beginning of the creation of the monster itself. Mary Shelley describes the beginning of the eye-opening birth of the monster to Frankenstein with detailed emotion, the strong emotion that could only be described by someone who has felt such emotion before, “My attention was fixed upon every object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human feelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I beheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I saw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused, examining the analyzing all the minute of causation, as exemplified in the change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me…” (Shelley, page 30). Ellen Moers informs in her article that Shelley wrote in her journal the sadness and fascination with death, “Death and birth were thus as hideously mixed in the life of Mary Shelley as in Frankenstein’s “workshop of filthy creation.” Who can read without shuddering, and without remembering her myth of the birth of a nameless monster, Mary’s journal entry of March 19, 1815, which records the trauma of her loss, when she was seventeen of her first baby, the little girl who did not live long enough to be given a name.” (Moers, page 220).
The unpredictable event that occurred to Shelley shaped the way the creation of Frankenstein’s monster would unfold. Shelley was unable to give her baby and creation a name, while Frankenstein was also unable to give his creation a name, because the day of his monster’s birth would also lead directly into its death. Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley in an attempt to create and show that many events that occurred in the beginning of Shelley’s life shaped who she was, and that events that Shelley could not control would not control her in life. She raised above it all and created a not a monster, but a masterpiece.
