Frankenstein 977social standing. Thus, although the class structure
described in Pygmalion is shown to be based on
arbitrary criteria, it nevertheless creates real social
and material inequalities.
While the theme of social class is treated
critically in Pygmalion, there are indications that
change is possible. The characters adapt to their
changing situation, and society adapts to them;
indeed, Eliza not only gets her shop but marries
Clara’s brother, Freddy. Likewise, because of his
skills as an orator, Mr. Doolittle triumphs “over
every prejudice and every disadvantage” and is
accepted by the upper classes. Finally, once Clara
discovers the “vanity” of her lifestyle, which is
disconnected from “real human needs,” she is no
longer a “useless little snob.” The class system
does not dissolve or disappear, but it does evolve
as characters are “disclassed.” In the end, Higgins’s
experiment reveals that “we’re all savages, more
or less” and that the important thing is to use the
“same manner for all human souls.” Ultimately,
over-emphasizing class divisions leads to prejudice
and inequality and prevents people from fulfilling
their potential as individuals.
Katherine Ashley
SHELLEy, mary Frankenstein (1818)
Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic novel Frankenstein; or,
the Modern Prometheus is widely considered to have
inaugurated the genres of both horror and science
fiction. The novel’s protagonist is the ambitious
Victor Frankenstein, whose study of both modern
science and the medieval occult lead him to discover
the means to create life. This breakthrough results
in the creation of an artificial man whose changing
nature and miserable fate are inextricably connected
with his own. While many of the popular cultural
retellings and adaptations of the plot emphasize
the hideousness of Victor’s creature, casting him as
a terrifying, primitive, inarticulate beast, Shelley’s
character is marked by a fully elaborated interiority,
deep self-consciousness, intellectual curiosity, elo-
quence, and an ability to elicit profound sympathy
from the reader.
The narrative of Frankenstein is structured con-
centrically: An epistolary frame story casts the text
as part of a correspondence between the explorer
Robert Walton and his sister back in London. The
novel opens with a series of letters detailing Walton’s
rescue of Victor from the sea after the plot of the
novel proper has unfolded. Walton’s letters encom-
pass Victor’s first-person account of his experiment
and its dreadful aftermath, just as Victor’s account
encompasses the pathetic experiential tale that his
creature addresses to him, and which many regard
as the heart of the novel. The reader’s perspec-
tive shifts and deepens as each narrator gives way
to the next and competing accounts of the same
and related events collide. Throughout, Shelley
explores themes of social and parental responsibil-
ity, human nature and connectedness, education
and self-education, and the proper limits of science
and technology.
Hilary EnglerteducatIon in Frankenstein
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a novel centrally
concerned with modes of learning and with the
perils of neglecting a regular system of education. Its
epistolary frame features Robert Walton, an explorer
on his way to the North Pole whose letters place a
curiously disproportionate emphasis on the inad-
equacies of his education as a child. Addressing his
sister (who has been raised with him and is therefore
presumably already familiar with the events of his
early life), Walton provides not one but two nearly
identical accounts of his upbringing in two con-
secutive letters home. In short, he complains that his
“education was neglected,” though he was “passion-
ately fond of reading.” In the absence of formal les-
sons, Walton has spent his childhood “in a Paradise
of [his] own creation,” insatiably reading “books of
voyages . . . made for the purposes of discovery” and
the works of “poets whose effusions entranced [his]
soul.” Notwithstanding the transcendent pleasures
afforded by this reading, Walton’s great regret is that
he is “self-educated” and, as a result of his narrow
program of study, “illiterate” and “romantic.” Indeed,
the first conversation between Walton and Victor
witnessed by the reader unfolds from Walton’s plain-
tive confession that he is (again) “self-educated” and
in need of a companion who might “endeavor to
regulate [his] mind.”