Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818/1831, subtitled The Modern Prometheus) tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who animates a creature, then recoils from what he’s made. In Frankenstein and his “monster,” readers experience the perils of naïve ambition, the moral costs of creation, and the descent from innocence into hatred in those deprived of family and friendship.

This seminar will consider Frankenstein as a Gothic–Romantic and early science fiction text that reflects on modern science, nature, and the ambitions of enlightenment; human nature and the need for education, family, community, and responsibility; and the catastrophe of unleashing forces beyond our control.

Image: Christian Schussele, Prometheus Bound

Prof. McGrath on Sacrificial Politics & Sacred Victims

This course is offered by Humanities at Hertog. It takes place weekly on Thursdays, via Zoom, from 6 PM to 8 PM ET. Fellows will receive a $150 Amazon Bookshelf voucher contingent upon participation in the course and completion of a brief response paper. All course materials will be provided.

Faculty

Molly Brigid McGrath

Molly Brigid McGrath is a professor of philosophy at Assumption University. She specializes in phenomenology, social ontology, and political philosophy, with particular interests in the works of Husserl, Aristotle, Searle, and classic texts by Plato, Aquinas, and Montesquieu.

Preview the Syllabus by Week/Session

Text:

 

Readings:

  • Volume 1, Letters I–IV (pp. 16–32)
  • Volume 1, Chapters 1–4 (pp. 33–57)

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. What is the ethos and what are the desires behind Walton’s journey to the North Pole? Why does Walton respond so deeply to Victor Frankenstein? What is the ethos and what are the desires underlying Frankenstein’s inquiries into death and life?
  2. How does Victor frame his story for Walton and how does he portray himself and his family before the creation of the creature?
  3. What are the different attitudes toward nature exhibited, and do you find one particularly compelling? (For example, what is the attitude toward nature shown by Walton? By Frankenstein? By the books he read while young (pseudo-Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus) and by his professors, Krempe and Waldman?)

Readings:

  • Volume 1, Chapters 5–8 (pp. 58–90)
  • Volume 2, Chapters 1–5 (pp. 93–124)

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. Why might Victor respond so severely to the creature? Does he seem justified in feeling disgust? Does he seem justified in fleeing?
  2. How do the senses of guilt and avoidance shape Frankenstein’s character and the aftermath of this creation?
  3. How does the novel portray the creature’s education? How is the creature’s education like or different from the other educations portrayed (of Walton, Victor, Clerval)?
  4. Is the creature either good or bad by nature? What is the creature’s nature? How human is the creature?
  5. How does the reader’s view of the creature change with his autobiographical narration? How does the creature understand himself in relation to Adam, Satan, and human beings?

Readings:

  • Volume 2, Chapters 6–9 (pp. 125–151)
  • Volume 3, Chapter 1–6 (pp. 155–204)

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. What functions do the De Laceys play in the novel? How are the themes of the novel augmented by the addition of their family, its backstory, and their reaction to the creature?
  2. What are the reasons for and against Victor making a female creature? Why does Victor agree to do so? Why does Victor take so long to make the female creature? Why does he destroy her?
  3. How does the creature come to understand himself, his nature and his motivations?
  4. Given how women are portrayed in the novel in general, in your judgment, does the act of violence toward this female body suggest anything about Victor’s attitudes toward women?
  5. Describe Victor’s relationship with Elizabeth. What has been his attitude toward her and their possible marriage? How might we interpret the creature’s vow “I will be with you on your wedding night”?
  6. In what ways might Frankenstein and his creature be doppelgangers or not—how are they like or unlike each other?

Readings:

  • Volume 3, Chapter 7 (pp. 205–225), and rereading of Letters I-IV (pp. 16–32)
  • Review of themes of the whole

 

Discussion Questions:

  1. What changes in our understanding of the opening letters now that we have seen the whole story? Who are our narrators? How do the nested narrations affect reliability, sympathy, and irony in the story?
  2. What does the creature’s final speech suggest about his self-understanding (or deficiencies thereof)? Does he seem sincere?
  3. What has Victor learned—or not learned—from his own story? What has Walton learned—or not learned—from Victor’s story?
  4. In your judgment, how political might this story plausibly be read? Which political themes might be suggested by the text, and its people and its places? [For example, Ingolstadt as represented by both Krempe and Waldman? Geneva, as a republic, where the Frankensteins have been “counsellors and syndics”? By the story of the DeLaceys? Oxford and other spots relating to “the most animating epoch of English history (the Civil War)”?]
  5. What does the novel as a whole suggest about the nature of nature? For the novel, is nature something to be dissected and conquered (Enlightenment) or something to be revered and experienced (Romantic), or something else?
  6.  What does the novel as a whole suggest about the nature of modern science? What does the novel suggest about what is wrong, or what goes wrong, with Victor’s pursuit of knowledge?
  7. Has Victor become more or less admirable or culpable as the story progressed and concluded? Does Victor play the role of God, a parent, Prometheus, or something else? To what extent is Victor an Enlightenment hero? A Romantic hero? A tragic hero? A hero at all?

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Biography Image

Robert C. Bartlett

Robert C. Bartlett is the Behrakis Professor of Hellenic Political Studies at Boston College. His principal area of research is classical political philosophy, with particular attention to the thinkers of ancient Hellas, including Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle. He is the co-translator of a new edition of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.