DISPOSICIÓN N.º 871/DGIUR/

Goethe’s reading of a folk myth in Faust I and II connected the myth of Faust to the large- scale socio-political changes taking place across Western Europe, shifting the legend’s source of anxiety from religious instability to political and technological upheaval.

Nevertheless, Faust remains a medieval tale, and Goethe’s resurrection was only the most visible and well-assembled effort in a more widespread rediscovery of the legend and recognition of its resonance in a changing world. His effect in this study particularly will be clearest when addressing Carlyle, who took on and adapted many of Goethe’s ideas about history and development. More immediately, his incorporation of Promethean ideas is more significant, because British authors, particularly the Shelleys and Byron, all wrote versions of the myth themselves. Of these adaptations of the Prometheus myth, however, this chapter will centre around Mary Shelley’s modernisation of the story, because it questions the assumption that Goethe and many of her peers had made about the eventual triumph and justification of a human Promethean hero. By exploring the ways in which

Frankenstein (1818) undermines and critiques the Promethean hero, I will pose the novel as

a counterpoint to Goethe’s Faust, so that when we move on to directly considering the creation of an industrial myth, both narratives become useful as alternately optimistic and pessimistic ways of interpreting the industrial development that Marx and Carlyle observed in the nineteenth century.

Frankenstein, particularly in the guise of its subtitle, The Modern Prometheus, offers a

counterpoint to Goethe’s fundamental political conservatism and heroic optimism. It gestures back, as Goethe did, to the Renaissance past and the more recent past of the mid- eighteenth century, and also projects further into the modern period by envisioning the future consequences of Frankenstein’s innovation as a persisting, and indeed developing, situation. George Levine has argued that ‘[Frankenstein]’s modernity lies in its

transformation of fantasy and traditional Christian and pagan myths into unremitting secularity, into the myth of mankind as it must work within the limits of the visible, physical world’, but I will argue that secularity in itself explains only one part of the

usefulness of the Frankenstein myth to reading the Industrial Revolution (6-7). Shelley does not criticise the industrial ambition of her generation, but rather the Enlightenment conceit that mankind, even as a whole, has control over the results of such ambition, or the

technology through the Monster’s demand for a wife, and further destabilises the Christian roles the Monster envisions himself and his creator as occupying. This expands and

complicates the Faustian premise of the cost of innovation by giving autonomy to the ‘machines’, both social and technological, that are produced by human development. In this way, Faust and Frankenstein operate on much the same central premises of freedom and cost as determined by their Promethean origins. However, while Goethe analyses the metaphysical strengths and weaknesses of the modern condition and ultimately leans towards the belief that striving and development are worth their costs, Shelley tackles, as Levine asserts, the physicality of it in both its current effects and its reading of human nature. In doing so, she radically changes the outcome of the myth, and offers a narrative that would prove more directly applicable to contemporary industrial conditions than Goethe’s distant idealism.

Sourcing and deconstructing Prometheus

As we have already seen, Goethe’s brief poem ‘Prometheus’ touched on the central themes that he would address in the crafting of Faust:

Here sit I, forming Men After my image;

A race, to be equal to me, To suffer, to weep,

To glory and to delight themselves, And you to scorn,

As I! (51-57)

Even in this early hymn, Goethe gestures towards Faust’s final confident statement that man’s best condition is to live not safely, but freely and actively. The poem also implies the role of human innovation in this ambition for freedom and exploration—earlier in the poem, Prometheus emphasises that he has become self-sufficient, and has no need for the worship that Zeus relies upon. Goethe uses Aeschylus’s reading of Prometheus as a craftsman to explain how he is able to sustain his freedom, thereby proving his (and mankind’s) independence from the gods through material development. He makes the same connection between technology and liberty that Prometheus as a figurehead of revolution had come to embody, as explored in Chapter One. Furthermore, as we have seen, Prometheus is a transcendental force insofar as he is divine, but he chooses to align with his creations, which arguably anticipates the collaborative efforts of Faust with

his maker, but rather against a friend who has betrayed him, and so it is this very sense of the equality of men, or rather the ability of men to rise towards the powers of the gods, which Goethe valorises in both this short poem and in Faust, and which is central to the wider eighteenth-century use of Promethean references. Goethe confirms this by choosing that the deciding factor for Faust’s salvation was his continued restlessness and ambition, rather than the actions he took as a result of such restlessness. Prometheus’ vision and defiance, as a model for how he shaped man ‘After my image’, therefore encompasses both the boundlessness of possibility in mankind and the sanctity of continually striving to reach higher for those possibilities.

In Frankenstein, by contrast, we see the association of the old Promethean myth with unaided human endeavour. There is nothing of the divine in Frankenstein, though he presumes as such when he sets out to create life. Inspired by occult texts and modern science, he employs modern technological means through Shelley’s use of the electrical discoveries being made by Franklin and the Italian scientist, Galvani, the latter having become well known for animating dead tissue by running electricity through it. Shelley’s engagement with these discoveries demonstrates her knowledge and interest in the scientific work of her time, and arguably creates a narrative that is more suited to reading the Industrial Revolution as well as the French Revolution. But first, in exploring how

Frankenstein begins to interrogate the Romantic figure of Prometheus, we must first look at

Shelley’s experience with that figure in the works of her predecessors and contemporaries, and establish the central points of resonance and contention between them.

Mary Shelley’s biography has been the subject of scrutiny for the purposes of elevating and denigrating her work in equal measure, but I will argue that her letters and journals inform us most relevantly of her outlying position among a host of

contemporaries who held more Goethean views on science and technology. It is worth appreciating the wealth of aesthetic experience, both through literature and travel, which she gained during her younger years, particularly over the course of her writing of

Frankenstein. These would inform the way in which the novel grew from both the

ideologies she was exposed to and the natural and political environments she would encounter outside her family. Mary Godwin was born in 1797 to well-known radicals William Godwin and Mary Wollestonecraft, who married, despite their opposition to the institution of marriage, for the sake of their child’s legitimacy (Reiger xii). Though Mary would only know her father, both parents and their ideologies would have a profound

impact on their daughter’s approach to philosophy and to literature, spurred on by her intensive reading of their works throughout her life. Godwin’s most influential work, An

Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), offered an inspiring and powerful argument for

libertarian anarchy, while Wollestonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) gained her an enduring fame and reputation very quickly after its publishing. Mary, along with her half-sisters, Fanny and Claire, were brought up by Godwin, and Godwin’s second wife, and she grew up exposed not only to her mother’s legacy and Godwin’s work, but a very large number of the day’s intellectuals who came to the house to pay homage to Godwin and to discuss science unencumbered by conventional morality (Knellwolf 10). She was, in this way, primed from an early age to participate in dialogue on philosophy and science with her peers, which would manifest in her extensive and meticulous reading lists. Some of these sources particularly illuminate how Frankenstein subverted or otherwise altered the Prometheus story noticeably enough to form a new and distinct mythic narrative.

The circumstances of the conceiving of the Frankenstein tale itself are equally filled with both significant reading and significant environmental events of which the novel would bear traces, particularly in the contrasts between social and physical conditions. The summer of 1816 would become famous and infamous for the recollection of it Mary would recount in the second edition of Frankenstein, wherein she related (somewhat inaccurately) the ghost story contest held between her companions. Through the early tempestuous years of development and short-lived but intensive collaboration with Percy Shelley, what is most materially apparent is Mary Shelley’s absorption of the Romantic aesthetic and ideologies of her husband and father. What becomes clear when comparing Mary Shelley’s work to those of her family members and her contemporaries is that she was intent upon questioning the individual culpability and frailty of human beings, and how that incurred consequences in the present, rather than looking towards a utopian future. Her engagement with her husband’s work, as well as that of her father and peers, was from a stance of active participation in many of the larger Romantic considerations of the power of nature and the perfectibility of mankind, but questioned much of the idealism that characterised Romantic work by pulling it back down towards the observable world. In this way, we can see how her vision might align with what Marx and Carlyle would see around them, rather than what they would foresee. I will therefore address works of Godwin, Percy Shelley, and, briefly, Milton, in recognition of Paradise Lost’s importance within Frankenstein, as an introduction to Mary Shelley’s contrasting approach to human

nature and idealism.

William Godwin is a useful place to start when piecing together the inspiration for

Frankenstein, both in terms of the plots of his novels, and his use of electricity in his

rhetoric. As has been pointed out by previous critics, Frankenstein shares many similarities in storylines with some of his novels, which will be addressed further; in addition, however, some of her interest in electricity can also be traced to him.18 _{Beyond describing the body}

as a machine, as many Enlightenment philosophers had done, Godwin used electricity to illustrate the transmission of revolutionary ideas and politics. 19 _{He also made the general}

connection between technological and political revolutions at this time, as Erasmus Darwin and Priestley had done:

We touch each other…when they wait the stroke of an electrical machine, and the spark spreads along man to man. It is this that we have our feelings in common at a theatrical representative and at a public dinner, that indignation is communicated, and patriotism become irresistible (6).

This portrayal of transmission through electricity in Thoughts of Man (1831) echoes the occult writings of Agrippa, who had written on the ‘Soothsayings of Flashes and

Lightnings’ in The Philosophy of Natural Magic (1533). Godwin makes use of the alchemical text by evoking the fervour of belief rallied at a ‘theatrical representative’ or ‘public dinner’, which speaks of lightning as a means of communication from the heavens, presaging ‘monstrous, prodigious and wondrous things’ (179). Agrippa, clearly a familiar name in Godwin’s household, would come to have an even greater influence upon Mary, whose protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, discovers his passion for science in the alchemist’s assertion of the ability of certain herbs to ‘recover life’ (Agrippa 127). While Percy Shelley would devote his focus purely to the Promethean heroism of bringing fire and hope, Godwin’s influence can be felt in both Shelley’s scientific interests and in key components of the narrative premise of Frankenstein, particularly through his novels Things as They Are; or

The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) and St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century (1799).

While it is commonly known that the creation of the Monster was in part inspired by the work of Galvani, the Promethean narrative surrounding that technological innovation can

18 A. D. Harvey has specifically discussed Caleb Williams’ similarity, while Burton R. Pollin points out that ary appeared so indebted to Godwin that the Victorian critic George Gilfillan ‘enrolled her in the “Godwin school”’ (99).

19 Yolton discusses the use of the ‘clockwork man’ in Cartesian debates at length.in his chapter ‘The Automatical Man’ in Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain (1983). Even earlier discussions on this same subject are also explored in Otto Mayr’s Authority, Liberty, and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Culture (Johns Hopkins UP: 1989).

in part be traced to Godwin as well.

St. Leon, a sixteenth century tale used alchemical science as the foundation of a

philosophical deconstruction of technology’s role in society. Set during the Reformation, St. Leon is a knight transformed into alchemist after having been gifted the philosopher’s stone. Though he sets out to do good with his power and gains immortality through the elixir the stone creates, the superstitious society around him ostracises rather than

welcomes him, and he is rejected by his family. The novel’s setting displays strong Gothic roots which Frankenstein would emulate, as well as offering a similar well-meaning

protagonist who wields extraordinary power and hopes to do good with it, but instead sows his own ruin. Caleb Williams also can be seen to have an impact on Frankenstein’s narrative arc, as it spins out a story of pursuit between a victim and perpetrator of a crime that creates confusion as to who is actually pursued and pursuer. In it, the apparently well- meaning and reserved aristocrat Falkland is revealed to have secretly been guilty of murder. He chases Caleb Williams, his former employee and accuser, across the country, and Caleb suffers persecution in multiple circumstances and settings as a result, while Falkland’s motivations become increasingly unclear. The unending persecution experienced by Caleb, which opens the narrative, appear to have inspired Victor Frankenstein’s lament of his sufferings:

I have been a mark for the vigilance of tyranny, and I could not escape. My fairest prospects have been blasted. My enemy has shown himself inaccessible to intreaties and untired in persecution. My fame, as well as my happiness, has become his victim (1).

A.D. Harvey has pointed it out that the two novels are similar both in regards to this structure and to the ‘crucial symbiotic relationship’ between the pursuer and pursued, which is founded on a father-son relationship, but then gets tangled by rejection and persecution (24). In building this relationship, Caleb Williams elaborated upon and

dramatized the treatise Godwin had set forth in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its

Influence on Morals and Happiness (1793). Political Justice had a strong strain of Prometheanism

in it, best exemplified by Godwin’s belief in the ‘perfectibility of Man’ (43). It also placed the burden upon society to instil future generations with the knowledge and morals that would move them towards this greater perfection. In this way, Godwin’s philosophy appears to be dependent upon the revolutionary and progressive power embodied by the divinity of Prometheus present in mankind. Without such reform, we instead, ‘instil into the [children] the vices of a tyrant’, which we see in Caleb Williams being inflicted upon Caleb by the father figure, Falkland (17). By presenting the destruction of his prospects

and reputation as a result specifically of ‘the vigilance of tyranny’, Godwin accuses not the characters involved for their misdeeds, but rather the system which perpetuates tyrannical behaviour in both innocent and guilty parties. Therefore, Godwin’s own description of the novel in Bentley’s 1832 reprint, as ‘a series of adventures of flight and pursuit; the fugitive in perpetual apprehension of being overwhelmed with the worst calamities, and the pursuer, by his ingenuity and resources’ (1), seems to be a perfect narrative template for the pursuit between man and Monster in Frankenstein.

The responsibility of society in shaping morality and personal choices, as opposed to individual predisposition or nature, would become a central point of contention between his works and Mary’s. Frankenstein’s recounting of his story to the explorer, Walton, is certainly similar as a narrative of pursuit, once the Monster is created and Frankenstein abandons him in horror, but Frankenstein’s experiences leading up to the Monster’s creation are very different. After a peaceful childhood, Frankenstein becomes obsessed with creating life against the advice of one of his educators and in opposition to what his upbringing—a rational and civil Godwinian one—should have led him towards. The purpose of Caleb Williams as a primarily social critique within the model presented by

Political Justice is diverted in Frankenstein into a broader consideration of human nature

within its natural environment, as well as within society. Victor Frankenstein, while arguably ‘a latter-day Godwinian’ for his efforts to create a new and improved mankind unburdened by the systematised mistakes of his society, is also a man morally crippled by his own obsession and self-absorption (Sterrenburg 148). It is this, more than society’s expectations or constraints, which leads to his downfall. Frankenstein departs from both of Godwin’s novels by addressing Frankenstein’s responsibility for his actions, which Godwin did not consider for his characters. Where Caleb Williams is and remains blameless at the end of his novel, and St. Leon is held back by society rather than his own personal limitations, Shelley creates a situation wherein both society and the man are not without blame, and each create and perpetuate the other’s suffering. Godwin hints at this when Caleb laments that he has, in bringing accusations down upon Falkland in order to exonerate himself, become part of the system of tyranny he opposed, such that ‘the same tyranny and wanton oppression become the inheritance of his successor’ (251). However, Godwin’s critique, as it was in Political Justice, remains focused on social institutions ‘by which the mind is advanced towards a state of perfection’ (19). The Rousseauian ‘hitherto unprejudiced mind’ with which Godwin believed human life began allowed him to place all responsibility for personal moral health upon the social structures surrounding the

individual (19). As a result, Caleb Williams retains a form of innocence throughout the novel, such that when his pursuer, the murderer Mr Falkland of whose deeds Williams has been accused, offers clemency in exchange for taking the blame for his crimes, Williams refuses to ‘be driven to an act repugnant to all reason, integrity, and justice’ (393).

Where Godwin has confidence in the limitless ability of man to improve himself