Naina.T.P/ LEC052033 / Psychoanalytic Approach to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

A Psychoanalytic Approach to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 

By: Naina.T.P.

          Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel written by the famous women novelist Mary Shelley and it got published in the year 1818.The novel Frankenstein is written in the form of a frame-story and this novel is considered as one of the best pioneering works in the genre of Science fiction in English language.The main plot of the novel is the creation of life by a human protagonist of the novel, Victor Frankenstein ; which ultimately turn to a disastrous monstrous creature . The novel Frankenstein acclaimed great appreciation as well as criticism. This novel can be claimed to have introduced an ideal monstrous creature to the world of writing. It is evident in the societal conviction that the term or the name ‘Frankenstein ‘itself is synonymous with a hideous or monstrous attribution, since the publication of Frankenstein in 1818 for the first time. Many film adaptations of the novel followed the centuries later. 

     Mary Shelley, commonly known as ‘the grandmother of Science fiction’, an eminent English novelist, biographer,  short story writer and editor,  initiated the genre of Science fiction through her classic Frankenstein (1818). In her life time she was often overshadowed by many literary influences with whom she associated i.e. from her own parents, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and William Godwin and to her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley as well as with their common friend Lord Byron. However, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus , from its inception on a stormy night, to its publication in 1818 to its numerous forms on stage and scree  ,crept into the popular psyche more deeply than anything written by her associates. Mary Shelley penned Frankenstein after her elopement with Percy Bysshe Shelley; when she was twenty years old.

     The novel Frankenstein can be scrutinized or analysed on the basis of Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. Psychoanalysis is thus extended here to analyse the work’s content by probing the characters of the novel and the possible interpretations are recorded. The foundation of Freud’s contribution to modern psychology is his emphasis on the unconscious aspects of the human psyche. He believed that most of our actions are motivated by psychological forces over  which we have very little control. Psychoanalysis in literature, however, does not aim to analyse or diagnose character’s mental condition  but simply to track down the desires of  the movement of the story , as well as the psychic character of the author, characters, readers and writers. Most of the psychoanalytic literary criticism deploys methods of ‘reading' into texts ,paintings, films, human actions.They believe that every piece of writing reveals secrets and unconscious desires of the author, or, on the other hand, his fears and pre-occupations.

      The first version of the novel Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley as a result of her leisure trip with Percy Bysshe Shelley ,her lover at the time, and some of her friends, one of which was Lord Byron. They arranged a story writing competition to while away the time. Mary Shelley was deeply agitated and even doubted her talent  on the fact that , she has to compete with well known literary figures like P.B.Shelley and Lord Byron because of her inferiority complex. The horrors of not being able to write a story for the contest and her hard life also influenced the themes within Frankenstein. Thus, the theory of 'Anxiety of Influence', proposed by Harold Bloom can be applied here in relation to the author, Mary Shelley. 

      The themes of loss, guilt, and the consequences of defying nature present in the novel all developed from Mary Shelley’s own life. Mary  Shelley, herself claimed and argued that she derived the name ‘Frankenstein ‘ from a dream vision. Initially,  at the starting of her literary career,  Mary had writer’s block, unable to come up with a good idea for a ghost story. Then, she had  a waking dream- “ I did not sleep , nor could I be said to think", she once said. In the introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, or she described the version in the dream as: “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantoms of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, shows signs of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened .He opens his eyes, behold, the horrified thing stands at his beside, opening his curtains and looking on him with yellow, watery but speculative eyes”. Mary opened her eyes and realizes she had found her story. “ What terrified me will terrify others",she thought. She began working on it the next day and its result was the ever renowned science fiction Frankenstein’s birth to the literary world. Since the interpretation of dreams is one of the major concepts of Freudian psychoanalysis ; it is inevitable to analyse Mary Shelley’s dreams to prove the psychology of the author. Freudian psychoanalysis put forward the  idea that dreams are one of the important mediums through which the repressed desires or the unconscious mentality of a person is protruded outwards. So, such a dreadful vision in the dream can mean that Mary Shelley, in her unconscious chamber of her mind might have repressed such an experiment of creation to be held.

       The dreadful nature and the hideous appearance of the creature can be interpreted as the fear of Mary Shelley. The fear of Mary Shelley can be attributed to the atheism of her and her family. Mary Wollstonecraft,  her mother and William Godwin, her father are known atheists in their society then. Naturally and gradually,  Mary Shelley might have followed their path and accepted her parent’s doctrines and principles only superficially accepted by her, fears within herself that a human being can create only powerful entity who can create a perfect life or an ideal being. Even though,  superficially he belongs to the doctrines of atheism, in her unconscious,  she always fears the aesthetic principles and also agrees with the fact that God is the only supreme power who can create life in the nature and also believes that any other experiments could end up only with hideous creations, which leads to complete destruction.

       Mary Shelley’s personal psychology is the main theme in the novel .The characters in the novel, when analysed , show a true parallel with the author in different aspects. Theoretically, it can be interpreted that, Mary Shelley’s ‘ id ‘ is the Creature. She wants to show her ‘id' to the world,  so she created the Creature . The monstrous demeanor of the Creature can be interpreted as the reflection of the disturbed psyche of the author, Mary Shelley. Thus, it is evident that, on a psychoanalytic approach to the novel Frankenstein , it can be assumed that the author reflects herself throughout the work , both through the characters as well as through the entire content of the novel.

 

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein, Oxford UP, 2015.

Abrams, M H and Groffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. Ceenage Learning ,2015.

Baldick, Chris. In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth,Monstrosity and Nineteenth-Century Writing. Oxford UP, 1987.

Bloom, Harold.The Anxiety of Influence. Oxford UP, 1997.

Bary, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Viva Books, 2018.

Adams, Will. "Making Daemons of Death and Love: Frankenstein, Existentialism and Psychoanalysis."Journal of Humanistic Psychology.vol.1,no.5,2001,np,doi.org/10.1777/0022167801414004.