
by laura , camille and me . Certains plans ont été modifiés , et sont désormais plus simples ( pour moi du moins ) .
Robert Walton, an English adventurer, undertakes an expedition to the North Pole. While on this expedition (which has been a lifelong dream of his), Walton corresponds with his sister by letter. Amid the ice floes, Walton and his crew find an extremely weary man traveling by dogsled. The man is near death, and they determine to take him aboard. Once the mysterious traveler has somewhat recovered from his weakness, Robert Walton begins to talk to him. They two strike up a friendshipÃ?Walton is very lonely and has long desired a close companion). The man is desolate, and for a long while will not talk about why he is traversing the Arctic alone. After becoming more comfortable with Walton, he decides to tell him his long-concealed story.
The speaker is Victor Frankenstein, for whom the book is named. He will be the narrator for the bulk of the novel. Born into a wealthy Swiss family, Victor enjoyed an idyllic, peaceful childhood. His parents were kind, marvelous people; they are presented as ideals  as shining examples of the goodness of the human spirit. His father, Alphonse, fell in love with his wife, Caroline, when her father, a dear friend of his, passed away. Alphonse took the young orphan under his care, and as time passed they fell in love. He provides for his wife in grand style. Out of gratitude for her own good fortune, Caroline is extremely altruistic. She frequently visits the poor who live in her part of the Italian countryside. One day she chances upon the home of a family who has a beautiful foster daughter. Her name is Elizabeth Lavenza. Though they are kind, the poverty of Elizabeth’s foster parents makes caring for her a financial burden. Caroline falls in love with the lovely girl on sight, and adopts her into the Frankenstein family. She is close in age to Victor, and becomes the central, most beloved part of his childhood. Elizabeth is Victor’s most cherished companion. Their parents encourage the children to be close in every imaginable way  as cousins, as brother and sister, and, in the future, as husband and wife.
Victor’s childhood years pass with astonishing speed. Two more sons, William and Ernest, are born into the family. At this time, the elder Frankensteins decide to stop their constant traveling: the family finally settles in Geneva. Though Victor is something of a loner, he does have one dear friend: Henry Clerval, from whom he is inseparable. The two have utterly different ambitions: Victor has developed a passion for science, while Henry longs to study the history of human struggle and endeavor. Eventually, Victor’s parents decide it is time for him to begin his university studies at Ingolstadt. Before his departure, Victor’s mother passes away. On her deathbed, she tells Victor and Elizabeth that it is her greatest desire to see the two of them married. Victor leaves for university, still in mourning for his mother and troubled by this separation from his loved ones.
Meanwhile, in Geneva, life goes on. Because Caroline was so generous, Elizabeth learns to be gracious as well. When she is old enough to know her mind, she extends housing and love to a young girl named Justine, whose mother dislikes her and wishes to be rid of her. Though Justine is a servant in the Frankenstein household, she is regarded as a sister by Elizabeth, Ernest and William.
At Ingolstadt, Victor’s passion for science increases exponentially. He falls into the hands of Waldeman, a chemistry professor, who excites in him ambition and the desire to achieve fame and distinction in the field of natural philosophy. Thus begins the mania that will end in destroying Victor’s life. Victor spends day and night in his laboratory. He develops a consuming interest in the life principle (that is, the force which imparts life to a human being). This interest develops into an unnatural obsession, and Victor undertakes to create a human being out of pieces of the dead. He haunts cemeteries and charnel-houses. He tells no one of this work, and years pass without his visiting home. Finally, his work is completed: one night, the yellow eyes of the creature finally open to stare at Victor. When Victor beholds the monstrous form of his creation (who is of a gargantuan size and a grotesque ugliness), he is horror-stricken. He flees his laboratory and seeks solace in the night. When he returns to his rooms, the creature has disappeared.
Henry joins Victor at school, and the two begin to pursue the study of languages and poetry. Victor has no desire to ever return to the natural philosophy that once ruled his life. He feels ill whenever he thinks of the monster he created. Victor and Clerval spend every available moment together in study and play; two years pass.
Then, a letter from Elizabeth arrives, bearing tragic news. Victor’s younger brother, William, has been murdered in the countryside near the Frankenstein estate. On his way back to Geneva, Victor is seized by an unnamable fear. Upon arriving at his village, he staggers through the countryside in the middle of a lightning storm, wracked with grief at the loss of his brother. Suddenly, he sees a figure, far too colossal to be that of a man, illuminated in a flash of lightning: he instantly recognizes it as his grotesque creation. At that moment, he realizes that the monster is his brother’s murderer.
Upon speaking to his family the next morning, Victor learns that Justine (his family’s trusted maidservant and friend) has been accused of William’s murder. William was wearing an antique locket at the time of his death; this bauble was found in Justine’s dress the morning after the murder. Victor knows she has been framed, but cannot bring himself to say so: his tale will be dismissed as the ranting of a madman. The family refuses to believe that Justine is guilty. Elizabeth, especially, is heartbroken at the wrongful imprisonment of her cherished friend. Though Elizabeth speaks eloquently of Justine’s goodness at her trial, she is found guilty and condemned to death. Justine gracefully accepts her fate. In the aftermath of the double tragedy, the Frankenstein family remains in a state of stupefied grief.
While on a solitary hike in the mountains, Victor comes face to face with the creature, who proceeds to narrate what has became of him since he fled Victor’s laboratory. After wandering great distances and suffering immense cold and hunger, the monster sought shelter in an abandoned hovel. His refuge adjoined the cottage of an exiled French family: by observing them, the monster acquired language, as well as an extensive knowledge of the ways of humanity. He was greatly aided in this by the reading of three books recovered from a satchel in the snow: Milton’s Paradise Lost, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, and a volume of Plutarch’s Lives. The monster speaks with great eloquence and cultivation as a result of his limited but admirable education.
He developed a deep love for the noble (if impoverished) French family, and finally made an overture of friendship. Having already learned that his hideous appearance inspires fear and disgust, he spoke first to the family’s elderly patriarch: this honorable old gentleman’s blindness rendered him able to recognize the monster’s sincerity and refinement (irrespective of his appearance). The other members of the family returned unexpectedly, however, and drove the creature from the cottage with stones.
The monster was full of sorrow, and cursed his creator and his own hideousness. He therefore determined to revenge himself upon Frankenstein, whose whereabouts he had discovered from the laboratory notebooks. Upon his arrival in Geneva, the creature encountered William, whose unspoiled boyish beauty greatly attracted him. The monster, longing for companionship, asked William to come away with him, in the hopes that the boy’s youthful innocence would cause him to forgive the monster his ugliness. Instead, William struggled and called the monster a number of cruel names; upon learning that the boy was related to Victor, he strangled him in a vengeful fury. Drawn to the beauty of the locket, he took it, and fled to a nearby barn.
There, he found Justine, who had fallen into an exhausted sleep after searching all day and all night for William. The monster’s heart was rent (torn) by her angelic loveliness, and he found himself full of longing for her. Suddenly, he was gripped by the agonizing realization that he would never know love. He tucked the locket into the folds of Justine’s dress in an attempt to seek revenge on all withholding womankind.
The monster concludes his tale by denouncing Victor for his abandonment; he demands that Victor construct a female mate for him, so that he may no longer be so utterly alone. If Victor complies with this rather reasonable request, he promises to leave human society forever. Though he has a brief crisis of conscience, Victor agrees to the task in order to save his remaining loved ones.
He journeys to England with Clerval to learn new scientific techniques that will aid him in his hateful task. Once he has acquired the necessary data, he retreats to a dark corner of Scotland, promising to return to Henry when the job is done. Victor is nearly halfway through the work of creation when he is suddenly seized by fear. Apprehensive that the creature and his mistress will spawn yet more monsters, and thus destroy humanity, he tears the new woman to bits before the monster’s very eyes. The creature emits a tortured scream. He leaves Victor with a single, most ominous promise: “I shall be with you on your wedding night.”
Victor takes a small rowboat out into the center of a vast Scottish lake; there, he throws the new woman’s tattered remains overboard. He falls into an exhausted sleep, and drifts for an entire day upon the open water. When he finally washes ashore, he is immediately seized and charged with murder. A bewildered Victor is taken into a dingy little room and shown the body of his beloved Henry, murdered at the creature’s hands. This brings on a fever of delirium that lasts for months. His father comes to escort him home, and Victor is eventually cleared of all charges.
At home in Geneva, the family begins planning the marriage of Elizabeth and Victor. On their wedding night, Elizabeth is strangled to death in the conjugal bed. Upon hearing the news, Victor’s father takes to his bed, where he promptly dies of grief.
Having lost everyone he has ever loved, Victor determines to spend the rest of his life pursuing the creature. This is precisely what the creature himself wants: now, Frankenstein will be as wretched and bereft as he is. For some time, the creator pursues his creation; he had chased him as far as the Arctic Circle when he was rescued by Walton. Though he cautions the sea captain against excessive ambition and curiosity, he contradictorily encourages the sailors to continue on their doomed voyage, though it will mean certain death. His reason: for glory, and for human knowledge. He finally can no longer struggle against his illness, and dies peacefully in his sleep. At the moment of his death, the creature appears: he mourns all that he has done, but maintains that he could not have done otherwise, given the magnitude of his suffering: he is “the miserable and the abandoned, an abortion, to be spurned, and kicked, and trampled on.” He then flees, vowing that he will build for himself a funeral pyre and throw his despised form upon the flames.
FRANKENSTEIN
TEXT 1
A ) Pride / Arrogance
- Walton’s story, his projet is paralleled to Victor Frankenstein
( both impossible )
- W makes reference to the ‘Ancient Mariner’
- All 3 are disturbing the natural ordre of the world
- God’s place in it
- This is the basic of the romantic mouvement and also it’s a tragedy
B ) Conquest / Control of natural world
- Walton wants to discover a passage because he wans to do something no one has never done before
and if he succed, his name will be remember by the futur generation
- Walton will fight with :
- Elements : ( citation : ex : ‘wild sea’ … )
- himself : ( citation : ex : ‘afraid’ … )
- Solitude : ( citation : ex : ‘I shal certainly find no friend on thy on the west
C ) loneliness/despair
- “i have no friend ” ; as no one seems abble to understand him , he feels lonely .
- alone in his undertaking : disturbing the natural order of things scares him ” it is impossible to communicate you a conception of the trembling sensation , half pleasurable , half fearful , with wich i am preparing to depart “
TEXT 2
A ) the gothic
- weather
- the nightmarish atmosphere
- the characters
B ) the contrast
- the creature was supposed to be beautiful . Turns out it’s a monster .
- starting from the modern promethus , finishing with a reference to dante’s hell
C ) dream’s interpretation
- elizabeth and the mother are killed : by giving life to the monster , he cursed them .
- the church doesn’t offers refuge to Victor , may be ’cause he wanted to usurp the role of God by creating a being ?
D ) who is the monster ?
- victor abandons his “baby”
- at first , the creature isn’t evil , just curious , waiting for a sign of compassion , of love .
- sometimes , Shelley describes Victor as if he was the monster ( ex: reference to victor’s limbs which “convulsed” )
TEXT 3
Intro :
The monster has killed Williams and his responsible for Justine’s death.
Frankenstein is tormented by feelings of guilt and rage.
Frankenstein wants to get away from the situation at home, and to try and forget the horror of what has happened.
On the first day, when he arrives, the magnificient scenery calms him down.
Analysis
Begins : second day when even the scenery and the weather are against him.
“the cold gale of the mountains”(l7)
He can’t, as usual, escape or run away.
This time he must confront the creature.
He nearly loses consciousness and so loss his senses , but the cold wind prevents him from even doing this.
So=> kill him
“to wait for his approach and then close with him in mortal combat” (l9/11)
Victor calls the monster a “devil” , a “vile insect”, aggressive but ridiculous epithets
Hysteric : telling him to go and the next ordering him to stay so he can turn him into dust.
Monster (first time that he speaks in the book) : intelligence and dignity
Even his treats is elegant ” If you will comply with my conditions….with blood of your remaining riends”(l29/32)
Exemple of antithesis
“if you comply….but if you refuse” , creating an effect of balance and harmony.
Frankenstein’s replies => cacophony in contrast he can only spill out insults.
he repeated by refers to how angry he is the rage is “withtout bonds” , he “trembled with rage” , “furious detestation”
“come on them” that i may kill you.
=> F ridiculous in the combative spirit
F calls monster Insect => irony # the monster superhuman size and strengh
“superhuman speed”
=> bilbical impact “thou” => moral superiority.
Monster attends to F
=> make his duty (devoir) about him
=> make him happy
Monster = Adam and F = God
But no
=> “i’am rather the angel” => Lucifer
Texte 4
=> revenge/hate
=> rage/despair
=> a compagnion female
Monster saved a girl but man accompagning her suspecting that he had attacked her , shot him ,-Wonded , he wanders in the forest and swears revenge on mankind.
summary: monster has now met up with F and explaining to him the circumstances of William’s death, and the way he made justine appear guilty of his murder.He had taken a portrait from William, and placed it near justine, which makes it seem that she has stolen it.
I.Revenge
=> describing events W’s death.
=> explaining his actions, feelings, own words
=> extreme transformations
” the feelings of kindness and gentleness which i had enternained” (l3-4)
=> result of the injustice
=>thanks -> no -> wound
“the miserable pain of woun” (l2)
=>role of William -> scream
“beautiful child” (l24)
” he struggled violently” (l34)
=> alien different language
“monster! ugly wretch” (l33)
II.rage and despair
=> becomes demoniac
=> ” hellish triumph” (strangle) (l42)
=> shows of joy -> ” a most lovely woman” (l46)
=> deprived of the delights
=> he attemps to seduce -> fiend Justine
=> no longer innocent , injustice
III.Loneliness, desire for compagnion
=> suicide
” i should not be desolated in this peopled earth”(l2 
=>completely alone -> victor can help him
=> a companion “awake fairest” (l61-62)
=> women -> notable
“a woman was sleeping in somes straw” (l5 
=> rage -> from all such female companionship
=> desire -> W’s project
Shelley shows an image of how personnalities are formed, a psychological study of how peoples become good or bad?
Is the monster behaviour understanding?
Who is the monster ? Blame him for W’s murder?
Texte 5
Intro:
F has promised to make a mate for the monster, and in exchange the monster will leave F alone, and go to the completely different deserted part of the world.
Summary: F has to create a female which will go to the monster in an isolated part of the world.However F doesn’t obey, stops the creation. F refuses the risk of “race of devils” if the couple gives birth childrens.For him it’s a threat for humanity.Nevertheless, the monster stakes out him all the times, he orders to F to achieve the female creature and he considers F like a “slave” .F doesn’t accept.The monster threats to be at F and Elizabeth wedding.
=> making another creature
=> begins to think of the companion
=> he destroys his work
=> the monster becomes enraged
=> the monster threatens to be with Victor on his wedding night
Part 1 (l1-27)
part 2 (l28-42)
Part 3 (l43-73)
Part 4 (l74-end)
Part 1
F no create a mate=> starts to reflecting on the “dangers of his promise”
Dangers of creating a female:
=> had already created a “fiend” of unparalled barbarity”
=> danger another creature?
” she might become 10 000 times more malignant than her mate”
=> monster promise to leave but would he keep his promise?
=>disagreement between them?
=> threat -> “a race of devils which put humanity un danger”
What does all this questionning show about V.F?
-> irresponsability : he should have thought about the “dangers” before.
-> unselfish ( généreux) as he thinks about future generations, but in fact only thinking about his reputation
people will cure him
Part 2
“I trembled” => F -> fear
monster ” a daemon” (l30)
-> F hysterical “malice and treachery”
- F destroys the “thing” in front of the monster
Who is the monster?
” the wretch saw me destroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for happiness”
F again hide in his room ( repetition of three years before)
Part 3
What does he compare his feeling with?
classic nightmare of when you are running and not getting anywhere - he is “rooted to the spot”
Part 4
F takes control for once in his life.
creature orders him to himself but F refuses and takes charge of the situation
adamently refuses to “do an act of wickedness”
monster -> “gnashed his teeth in the importance of anger”
he knows that he cannot kill on threaten F because if he does , he will still be left without a mate.
Text 6
Situate the text
V has been arrested + irish jail
He had drifted in a boat,from Scotland and landed on the coast of Island. A body had been found + witness had seen a man in a boat = V is suspected
The murdered (?)=> corpse was Clerval and we can supposed that the murderer was the monster.
Summary
Mr Kirwin, the magistrate,takes VF to the room where the body is.
VF >> ‘ perfectly tranquil ‘, he sees with horror > body of his friend >>
Because of his action = an other death
VF falls into a fit and continues to incriminate himself in French, which Mr Kirwin understands.
VF is in despair and laments the fact that he’ not dead
He’s ill for many weeks, looked after by a old woman who is not very sympathic
Commentary
- A body has been found = the method of death is familiar ( masks of fingers on the neck ) > VF ‘ extreme agitation ‘ > Body on the beach = deposit and leave > saw by two witnesses
- Henry Clerval = Lifeless = VF = madness = Gothic Term = takes reponsibility for the deaths that have occured against his family and friend. > ‘ strong convulsion ‘
- Mentally agonies transformed into physical symptoms > fever > raving about the murders > sees himself like the future victim >
- VF thinks, he is ‘ more miserable than man ever was before ‘ > Gothic Element > death is described snatching ‘blooming children’,’brides and youthful lovers’ who become ‘a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb’
- When F comes out of this long illness > ‘awaking from a dream, in a prison, stretched on a wretched bed’, the nurse speacks perfertly english > Shelley maintains linguistic verismilitude, tunrkey’s wife > F ‘to feel this misery and horror = to be alive > woman agrees > it would be better if V deads > V hates her because she is ‘ unfeeling.very edge of death’
- Vf same position to Justice = unjustly accused of having commited murder > don’t think about what it could be for justice but continues to wallow in self pity )
- This extract = like a dream
Conclusion
- Confession > V = Monster > Physically and Mentally ill
- Does F deserve Walton’s admiration at the end of the book ?
- V who was aspiring yo be god-like is weak, in a morass of madness and self loathing. He is driven by throught of revenge and destruction
Text 7
Intro
- Chap 23, F and E > Married and they vave travelled to Lake Geneva to spend their honeymoon
Summary
- Monster’s threat > F arms himself > F is agitated and E asks him > Anticipating the fight, W sends E to the room > reader understands that the threat was towards E even if VF thinks, it’s towards him > E, alone
> Open to be attack > Scream : ‘ Shrill and dreadful scream ‘ > VF wants to die ‘ Great God ! Why did I not then expire ‘ > Role of victim > Description of E body = Gothic Element > Body throw out of the bed > Mariage = Death > V’s horror of natural sexuality > Freudian > F guilt cerning his deep affection for his mother > After death = Able to express his love for E
- A lot of gothic element = ‘dreadful’, Monster on the window, ‘ a grin was on the face of the monster’
analyse by themes :
F’s relationship with Eliz
- nearly brothers and sisters ( educated together )
-mother’s dying wish ( death and sexuality )
- why did F wanted to cancel the wedding ?
gothic elements
- horror
- marriage associated to death
the monster’s revenge
- F destroyed his mate
- is the monster really responsible ? Isn’t F guilty too ?
Conclusion
- VF > Victim to Averger >> too late > he has lose every single member of his family and his best friend > Father death with new of E death
- Why did he not react before > informs the magistrate > claim to believe but refuses to take any action.
- Why didn’t he inform the magistrate and save Elizabeth life…