Mary Shelley's Christian Monster

Author(s): Robert M. Ryan

Source: The Wordsworth Circle, Vol. 19, No. 3 (SUMMER, 1988), pp. 150-155
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24042395
Accessed: 09-04-2020 12:19 UTC

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24042395?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and
extend access to The Wordsworth Circle

This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Thu, 09 Apr 2020 12:19:26 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
things move, not in progress, but in a ceaseless round; our with the other dreams of our youth, which we cannot recall,
strength lies in our weakness; our virtues are built on our but has left behind it traces, which are not to be effaced by
vices; our faculties are as limited as our being; nor can we Birth-day and Thanks-giving odes, or the chaunting of Te
lift man above his nature more than above the earth he treads. Deums in all the churches of Christendom. To those hopes
But though we cannot weave over again the airy, unsubstan- eternal regrets are due; to those who maliciously and wilfully
tial dream, which reason and experience have dispelled, blasted them, in the fear that they might be accomplished, we
feel no less what we owe—hatred and scorn as lasting
'What though the radiance, which was once so bright,
Be now for ever taken from our sight,
And I had expected to end, possibly, just there. How
Though nothing can bring back the hour
ever, this might also breed a new misapprehension because
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower':—
Hazlitt himself did not leave the whole argument there, and
yet we will never cease, nor be prevented from returning on I will give you just one further indication. When I first came
the wings of imagination to that bright dream of our youth; to Dove Cottage in 1973 I bought at the bookshop there a
that glad dawn of the day-star of liberty; that spring-time of copy of Hazlitt's The Spirit of the Age, and I've never come
the world, in which the hopes and expectations of the human back here or to the Lake District without bringing this pro
race seemed opening in the same gay career with our own; tection with me. And as I discovered last time, it was necessary,
when France called her children to partake of her equal On my way home in the train in the conversation I had with
blessings beneath her laughing skies; when the stranger was Tom—and as I've already assured you, it was an absolutely
met in all her villages with dance and festive songs, in cele- amicable discussion, as I hope we will have many future
bration of a new and golden era; and when, to the retired amicable ones—thanks to this protection that I always take
and contemplative student, the prospects of human happiness with me (I take it to some other places as well, but this is the
and glory were seen ascending like the steps of Jacob's ladder, place where it is obviously the best shield of all), I noted then:
in bright and never-ending succession. The dawn of that day "August 16th., 1986: reread the Coleridge essay to restore
was suddenly overcast; that season of hope is past; it is fled sanity following Thomas McFarland's great lecture."

Mary Shelley's Christian Monster

Robert M. Ryan
Rutgers University, Camden

Frankenstein has always been suspected of being sub- the novel's most sympathetic character—as a representation
versive in its religious tendency, even when the precise ob- of the author herself, the victim, to an extent the product, of
jectives of its hidden agenda were not clearly discerned. Partly Godwinian theory and experimentation. And the novel is
because of the dedication to Godwin, the novel's earliest read- therefore interpreted as asking how it is possible that a man
ers thought they detected immorality and impiety lurking like Frankenstein (or like Shelley or Godwin), considered by
somewhwere beneath the book's surface, and the notion has himself and others to be the benevolent benefactor of his
persisted that there is something ambiguous or oblique, even species, can somehow, with the best intentions and the highest
insidious, in the book's metaphysical disposition. The most principles, bring misery and ruin upon those around him as
common suspicion has been that the novel was meant as a the result of his experiments with human life.1
parody of Genesis, mocking traditional belief in a benevolent
Creator (e.g., Walling, p. 42). A quite different suggestion Since Miltonic religion and Godwinian "philosophy"
came from Leslie Tannenbaum in 1977 when he argued that offer radically antithetical views of human nature and destiny,
the novel's allusions to Paradise Lost work ironically to point one is left wondering at which ideology the novel's satiric or
up Victor Frankenstein's failures as a creator in contrast with parodie intent is primarily directed. That Milton's system is
Milton's more loving and responsible Divinity. Tannen- employed to show the inadequacies of Godwin's indicates one
baum's interpretation was part of a general reassessment of answer; that the Miltonic faith is espoused by a homicidal
the novel's meaning carried out during the 1970s, principally freak suggests another. The religious equivocality is, of course,
by feminist and psychoanalytic critics, who found in the novel only one aspect of a larger pattern of ambivalence that has
a subtle but insistent protest against some ideas and attitudes been detected in the novel. The dedication to Godwin of a
of the author's father, William Godwin, and of her husband, book now generally perceived as embodying a protest against
Godwin's disciple, Percy Bysshe Shelley. This revisionist Godwin's kind of radicalism suggests, as U. C. Knoepflmacher
reading sees Victor Frankenstein as a composite of Godwin has observed, the "conflicting emotions of allegiance and re
and Shelley (and perhaps Byron as well), and the monster— sentment" (p. 92) that always characterized Mary Shelley's

150

This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Thu, 09 Apr 2020 12:19:26 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
relationship with her father. This conflict is one way of ac- the Christian maledictory tradition to find terms of abuse
counting for the opposing tendencies detectable in the novel's with which to berate his creature, it becomes clear early on
metaphysics. By making a monster the exponent of the reli- that Victor is not even a theist in any traditional sense. The
gious system that stood in radical ideological opposition to 1831 revision allows him to indulge in some brief metaphys
her father's views, she set up a curious dialectic by which she ical meditations in the ravine of Arve (Rieger, p. 248), where,
was able to call the Godwinian order into question without like Shelley, he detects intimations of Omnipotence, but in
distinctly affirming the Christian alternative, which functions the 1818 edition, and as a general rule in 1831, he demon
so ambiguously as to leave its validity in question. What I strates a scientist's interest in proximate causes rather than
argue here is that the ineffectual, baffled Christian faith of a philosopher's concern for ultimate ones. At the same time,
the Monster—the main victim and critic of benevolent phi- he is shown to have more than his quota of superstition, such
losophy in Frankenstein—is used by Mary Shelley to call into as his belief that various good and evil agencies were strug
question both Christianity itself and the ideology that Godwin gling for control of his destiny (p. 45). This lack of a coherent
and Shelley were offering as an alternative to it.2 metaphysics may be blamed in part for his irresponsible cre
ation of a living being with so little forethought given to the
When one sets out to read Frankenstein in search of its meaning or consequences of his act.
religious meaning, what is immediately striking is the total
absence of the supernatural as a functioning element in the By contrast, his creature, from the beginning of his
plot. Judith Wilt has called attention to the rich freight of existence, shows a strong metaphysical curiosity. He subjects
religious imagery and allusion the novel inherited from the himself early on to a rigorous catechetical inquisition: "Who
"God-haunted Gothic tradition" (p. 32), but on inspection was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my
these religious elements show themselves to be purely deco- destination? These questions continually recurred," he says,
rative. One need only compare the book with that other great "but I was unable to solve them" (p. 128). The answers come
horror myth conceived in Geneva in 1816, which, as developed to him unexpectedly when he stumbles, by chance, upon a
in Bram Stoker's Dracula, depends so heavily on powerful copy of Paradise Lost. He receives the poem literally as a
sacramentals and effective necromancy, to be reminded how revelation, "a true history" as he calls it (p. 129), not only
bare of supernatural machinery Frankenstein is. Indeed, the of the events recorded in Genesis but of the subsequent un
very lack of religious resonance is one of the things that gives folding of the divine redemptive plan and even of the devel
Mary Shelley's story its peculiar horror. Neither God nor opment of Christian doctrine as presented in Michael's proph
demon has any role to play in this tale of human curiosity, ecy to Adam in Book XII. Milton's epic provides the Monster
pride, and error, in which man has only himself to blame and with an organized, identifiable set of religious beliefs, a quite
fear. The absence of the supernatural is not surprising in a adequately orthodox creed.3 He becomes not only a theist but
novel emanating from the Shelley circle. What is peculiar is what one has to call a Christian, since he accepts as true the
that on those occasions when traditional religion is introduced, central tenets of the Christian faith. And it is worth noting
it is not subjected to the kind of criticism or ridicule one might that his acceptance of Milton's religion is not a case of vulgar
anticipate. On the contrary, Christian belief is almost always superstition or credulous ignorance seduced by the art of a
depicted in a positive light. Practical concerns about the nov- persuasive poet. The Monster had already heard the standard
el's marketability would have encouraged discretion in reli- Enlightenment critique of Christianity earlier on in the book,
gious editorializing, but it would not account for, say, the when he eavesdropped as Felix DeLacey read aloud and
sympathetic treatment of Justine Moritz's Catholic faith, since offered "very minute explanations" of Volney's Ruins, which
in English Gothic fiction Popery was always fair game. Jus- runs through, in some detail, the long catalogue of Christian
tine's religious beliefs and piety, reported uncritically by Vic- crime and imposture (pp. 178-81). When, therefore, the
tor Frankenstein, are attractive enough to neutralize the neg- Monster accepts the religion of Paradist Lost he does so having
ative impression given by the priest who threatens her with heard the worst of what was being said against it in his time,
"excommunication and hellfire" for continuing to maintain He deliberately embraces the Miltonic world-view in pref
her innocence. Her faith brings consolation and serenity to erence to the critical rationalism of modern "philosophy,"
"the saintly sufferer" (Victor's phrase) as she awaits execu- with which Mary Shelley has thus taken pains to acquaint
tion, a serenity that is in striking contrast with Victor's own him.
paralyzing anxiety.
The Monster's Christian concepts, attitudes, and lan
Although Victor Frankenstein's own religious views guage affect significantly our assessment of him and also of
are never clearly articulated, it is evident that he is not a the society that rejects him. The director James Whale saw
Christian. M. Krempe's joking remark that Victor "believed this tendency in the novel and emphasized it when in The
in Cornelius Agrippa as firmly as in the gospel" (p. 68) serves Bride of Frankenstein he depicted the Monster as a kind of
only to remind us of the absence of any other suggestion that Christ-figure. While that was surely not Mary Shelley's in
he believed in the gospel at all. In fact, although he refers to tent, the Christian frame of reference in which she placed the
himself and Elizabeth as children sent from heaven and pe- Monster accounts for much of our sympathetic response to
riodically exclaims "Great God!"—and although he ransacks him. His Christian beliefs and language do not estrange or

151

This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Thu, 09 Apr 2020 12:19:26 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
gothicize him; on the contrary, they situate him in a familiar I often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck
universe in which the reader, even today, feels intellectually me, to my own. Like Adam, I was apparently united by no
more at home than in the uncharted ontological borderland link to any other being in existence; but his state was far
that Victor Frankenstein inhabits. In addition to providing different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth
him with a history and a map of the cosmos (to guide his and from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and pros
our perception of his place in the order of things), Milton perous, guarded by the special care of his Creator; he was
equips the Monster with an identifiable set of values, of ethical allowed to converse with and acquire knowledge from beings
norms, a standard of right and wrong to which he appeals of a superior nature, but I was wretched, helpless, and alone
with fine rhetorical effect when hurling reproaches at his (p. 129).
negligent creator, reminding him over and over of the Chris
tian duties of charity and pity for the unfortunate, demanding And when he learns from Victor's notebooks the circum
as his due not only justice (Godwin would give him that), but stances of his own special creation, the contrast becomes even
also clemency and even affection, and promising in return more painful. He says to Victor:
mildness and docility. Victor's own rhetorical borrowings from
the Christian tradition, by contrast, seem histrionic and fac- God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own
titious: "Fiend that thou art!" he screams in a typical diatribe, image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid
"The tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes. even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions,
Wretched devil!" (p. 99). fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary
and abhorred (p. 130).
It would not be a mere flippancy to say that the Monster
is a better Christian than Victor Frankenstein. Some ap
Only in fantasy can he live in Milton's cosmos and share its
proximation of that perception contributes in an important
joys and rewards.
way to our assessment of him as a moral being. The ideal of
"benevolence" that Victor claims as his motivating principle
I allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in
and which is so problematic in its fruits compares unfavorably
the fields of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and loving
with the practical charity (to use a less enlightened, tradi
creatures sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my
tionally Christian term) demonstrated in the Monster's hum
gloom; their angelic countenances breathed smiles of conso
ble, anonymous services to the DeLacey family. The word
lation. But it was all a dream; no Eve soothed my sorrows
"humble" suggests another Christian virtue that one may
nor shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam's
justifiably claim for the Monster. The new student of Paradise
supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had
Lost seems to have learned a lesson about man's place in the
abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him
order of things that makes him less likely than Victor to
(p. 131).
succumb to the sin of hubris, or—once again to use a more
characteristically Christian term—the sin of pride. The
"Adam's supplication to his Creator" in Paradise Lost includes
Monster's humility is revealed most clearly in an attitude that
the lines used as an epigraph to Frankenstein:
in 1816 was especially characteristic of a Christian conscious
ness—a sense of sin. While his Christian beliefs do not prevent
Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay
the Monster from becoming a criminal, they do lead him to
To mould me Man, did I solicit thee
acknowledge his sins (as he calls them) and the apparently
From darkness to promote me? (PL X.743-45)
sinful nature that has led to their commission. The Monster's

acceptance of moral culpability is a refreshing contrast with

The Maker's response to this protest is a decision to redeem
Victor's nearly invincible innocence. Frankenstein's unwill
man by sacrificing himself. In striking contrast is Victor's
ingness to admit to any serious moral fault is one of the things ,. , , . .,,,
, , , . , , , „„ , response to his own creature s complaint: You reproach me
that make him seem less human than his creature. When the . , , . . , ,
with your creation; come on, then, tha
Monster is driven to crime by frustration and rage, he does
spark which I so negligently bestowe
not justify himself morally. He acknowledges his feelings of
in scripture that God does not desire t
revenge and hatred to be wrong and "hellish." Robert Walton
but Victor from the beginning desir
calls him "Hypocritical fiend!" but the Monster is not in the
death. Repentance, a change of heart,
least a hypocrite. He freely confesses what he calls "the fright
option. While one is conscious through
ful catalogue of my sins" (pp. 220-21).
local genius of Rousseau presided over
And yet, despite his willingness to confess and repent, zerland, not
there is no religious consolation, and there can be no salvation John Cal
for this believer. The strangest aspect of the Monster's Chris- Roussea
tianity is his realization that, although he accepts the truth stern the
of the Christian faith, the faith is uniquely irrelevant to him. being w
Nowhere in Paradise Lost can he find any parallel for his form," sa
condition: (pp. 198-99). Victor plays the role of punishing divinity de

152

This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Thu, 09 Apr 2020 12:19:26 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
spite the Monster's quiet reminder that Victor too is a creature The Monster resembles Job in other ways too, such as his
who had a creator. "You, my creator, abhor me; what hope inability to understand the reason for the suffering he has
can I gather from your fellow creatures, who owe me noth- endured even when still innocent of any offense. Like Job he
ing?" attempts to justify himself by defining a rational relationship
with his creator: "I am thy creature, a
Thus cast out from human society, the Monster is more
and docile to my natural lord and k
alone than any being in the Miltonic order that he accepts as
perform thy part, the which thou ow
real. Having been repudiated by his own creator, he has no
also like Job in his inability to connec
relationship to any other. He is metaphysically as well as
with the supposedly benevolent God r
physically a monster, a surd in the theological system to which
adise Lost, preserving his faith intact d
he subscribes. While spiritual isolation is not uncommon in
understand. But the Monster's intellectual dilemma is curi
English Romantic literature, Frankenstein's monster is unique
ously more complicated than Job's because he has to reckon
in his peculiar ontological loneliness. He resembles to some
with two different creators. In the lower ontological context
degree those other trapped individuals driven to violence by
of the Monster's creation by Victor Frankenstein, the crea
a kind of religious desperation, Byron's Cain and Shelley's
ture's sufferings have not even an educational value; they are
Beatrice Cenci. Cain likewise can find no mental refuge in a
no test of fortitude or faith; they manifest neither his own
Biblical milieu from which there is no escape, and Beatrice
virtues nor God's inscrutable righteousness. While Job's Cre
is lost within a religious power structure she has to accept as
ator rejects all claims upon Him by reason of His utter
inevitable. Each illustrates from his or her own experience
transcendence and mystery, the Monster's human creator re
the intolerability rather than the invalidity of an orthodox
pudiates the claimant out of something more like human self
religious system. Their protest involves not heterodoxy so
righteousness and vanity. By contrast with Job's confrontation
much as what one might be etymologically tempted to call
with the whirlwind, the Monster's encounter with his human
paradoxy—a feeling that one is somehow outside, set apart
creator only accentuates Victor's diminutive stature, both
from, a religious system whose truth one cannot deny. But
physical and moral. Having tried humbling himself before
the Monster's ontological plight is even worse than that of
his creator and having experienced only rejection, the creature
Cain or Beatrice. Cain is repudiated by a God who is ac
inverts the Jobean archetype by threatening devastation upon
knowledged, even by Cain himself, to be a Supreme Being j- 'r~ """" ~r
... ^ . , his vulnerable maker and all his household. The Monster
and he is encouraged in his disaffection by yet another pow
finally becomes a kind of existentialist criminal, driven to
erful supernatural personage who assures him that if he is to
violence by realization of the absurdity of his situation. It is
be damned he will have company in his eternal misery. Be
as though Job, taking his wife's advice, had agreed at last to
atrice can demand, if only rhetorically, vindication in the next
curse his Creator and die. The Monster's resemblance to Job
world from the same God that her executioners profess to
finally serves only to accentuate the difference between the
worship. But Frankenstein's creature has no reason to expect
. , . two figures, demonstrating again the creature's peculiar iso
divine protection or even attention; there is lor him no mercy, , . , , , . r ,
, . . , lation from the sublimities as well as the consolations of the
no redemption, no heavenly destiny. The most he expects
Judaeo-Christian religious tradition he
after death is that "My spirit will sleep in peace, or if it
from which he has so strangely been pr
thinks, it will not surely think thus" (p. 223). Victor Fran
kenstein is all the god he has, and the Monster with a logical
Why did Mary Shelley create this r
and desperate kind of piety prays to him continually—wres
this disconnected Christian whose faith
tling with him like Jacob or Job with their own visions of
The question requires particular interest i
God, but receiving neither blessing nor insight.
ing critical consensus that the reader's s
At times Frankenstein seems as much a parody of Job to the Monster i
as of Genesis, and a comparison with the Old Testament with him. "B
drama serves to illustrate further the Monster's anomalous creature, wro
religious status. When he pleads with Victor, "Listen to me, determined f
and then if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your isolation w
hands" (p. 96), one hears a distinct echo of Chapter ten of in the Godwini
Job, in which creature says to creator: validity she accepted b
could not always clearly see. In relation
Is it good unto thee that thou shouldst oppress, that thou was in the pa
shouldst despise the work of thine hands. . . ? to Christianity—
Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together feeling in a pec
round about; yet thou dost destroy me. ings and consolations.
Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast made me as the
clay; and wilt thou bring me into dust again? More than one critic has seen in Frankenstein what Lee
Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fenced Sterrenberg called a subversion of all ideology (p. 144)—
me with bones and sinews. ... result of a profound if not completely articulate disenchant

153

This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Thu, 09 Apr 2020 12:19:26 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
ment with the actualization of her father's and her husband's
Godwin or Shelley, she would at this time have readily sub
moral ideals. There was at this time large room for disen scribed to the critique of Christianity expressed, for example,
chantment with "philosophy," "benevolence," and "virtue" in the text and notes of Queen Mab—agreeing with Shelley
as defined and practiced in the Shelley family circle. Mary that the Christian religion was dying and that, as he put it,
was hard at work on Frankenstein in October of 1816 when "Milton's poem alone will give permanency to the remem
Fanny Imlay (Mary's half-sister) committed suicide, brance and of its absurdities" (Poetical Works, p. 821). But when
Godwin, dreading unfavorable publicity, refused to claim she the herself selects Milton's poem as the vehicle of relevation
to the character with whom she most sympathizes, and when
body or acknowledge kinship and allowed the girl to be buried
anonymously in a pauper's grave. Two months later came the novel consistently points not to the absurdities and iniq
the suicide of Harriet Shelley, pregnant with an illegitimate
uities of Christianity but to its more positive aspects, some
thing un-Shelleyan and un-Godwinian is going on. It appears
child, and Shelley's apparent inability to accept responsibility
or even express remorse for the fate of his abandoned wife. that Mary's own attitude to the Christian tradition was more
One month afterward there was the birth of Claire Clair
sophisticated, or at least more detached, in its ability to ac
mont's child by Byron, a child dismissed with apparent in
knowledge Christianity's cultural value without endorsing its
theology. Her Creature's Miltonic faith accounts for much
difference by a father who refused any further communication
with the mother. Much of this strange behavior Mary that
would is appealing, even beautiful, in his character; it clothes
have heard rationalized according to Godwinian notionshimofwith a cultural identity and at times a moral dignity that
makes him more than a match for Victor Frankenstein in
moral pragmatism, the supremacy of the individual conscience
and the triumph of reason over emotion. After Fanny's death,
their competition for the reader's sympathy. But as religion,
for example, when she wrote to console her father, his cool
the Monster's Christianity is comfortless, ineffectual, and fi
pedagogical reply was: "I cannot but thank you for your strong
nally pointless. It does not prevent his crimes; it cannot forgive
his sins; it cannot make him happy. If Mary Shelley was
expressions of sympathy. I do not see however that sympathy
can be of any service to me" (qtd. in Locke, p. 273). searching for an alternative to Godwinism, her book suggests
that the most obvious alternative, Christianity, was not for
How, among these prophets of universal justice and
her a viable one. There is an element of pathos in her handling
benevolence, could there be so much misery, and so much
of this which may suggest regret, or perhaps only nostalgia,
obduracy in response to misery? If common sense suggested
for an older kind of spiritual security that was no longer
that something had gone wrong with the Godwinian system,
available. In her Monster's strange metaphysical distress we
Mary would have found it difficult to formulate or express
can see a representation of Mary Shelley's own uncertainty,
an effective critical response, living as she did in an intellectual
anxiety, and sense of isolation as she searched, independently,
milieu where Godwinian theory was in control of the prem for a system of belief and consolation adequate to her own
needs and those of the society at large.
ises, where the ideas and actions of her father and his disciples
were, almost by definition, morally unassailable. To question
the system she would have had to assume a position outside
The following works have been cited in the text:
it, and in doing so she would have found herself sharingBloom, H. "Frankenstein, or the New Prometheus." Partisan
strategic ideological ground with other philosophical criticsReview 32 (1965), 611-18.
of Godwin. Most obviously outside the Godwinian system,Cameron, K. N. Shelley: The Golden Years (1974).
Fleck, P. D. "Mary Shelley's Notes to Shelley's Poems and
and most potently in ideological opposition to it, was Chris
tianity, which had recently been offering metaphysical sancFrankenstein." Studies in Romanticism 6 (1967), 226
tuary to disaffected radicals of the caliber of Wordsworth,54.
Coleridge, and Southey. If her book was meant as a subversion
Knoepflmacher, U. C. "Thoughts on the Agression of Daugh
of Godwinian-Shelleyan ideology, it would have been nicelyters." In The Endurance of Frankenstein, ed. G. Levine
subversive to make the victim of philosophic experimentation and U. C. Knoepflmacher (1979), pp. 88-119.
a partisan of that Biblical faith to which her father andD. A Fantasy of Reason: The Life and Thought of William
Locke,
husband were sworn ideological enemies. To have enlisted Godwin (1980).
Mineka,
the intellectual and cultural force of a Christian ideology in F. E. "The Religious Press Vs. John Milton, He
which she did not believe as a weapon against another which retic." The Dissidence of Dissent: The Monthly Reposi
she was beginning to question was a brilliant dialectical strattory, 1806-1838 (1944 and 1972), pp. 84-97.
egy, allowing her to challenge one system without distinctly
Paul, C. William Godwin, His Friends and Contemporaries, 2
affirming the other—since the other appears, after all, onlyvols. (1876).
as the content of an epic poem naively accepted as trueShelley,
by a M. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, ed. J.
creature who is not precisely human. Rieger (1974).
Shelley, M. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus, ed. M.
The positive treatment of Christianity in Frankenstein, K. Joseph (1969).
then, seems to have been more a matter of literary and political
Shelley, M. The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, ed. B.
T. Bennett, 2 vols. (1980-84).
strategy than of religious advocacy. All evidence indicates that,
while Mary Shelley was more inclined toward theismShelley,
than M. Mary Shelley's Journal, ed. F. L. Jones (1947).

154

This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Thu, 09 Apr 2020 12:19:26 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Shelley, P. B. The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe tionships with her father and her husband found expression in the
Shelley, ed. T. Hutchinson (1960). novel. The direction pursued by feminist critics in the seventies is
Spark, M. "Mary Shelley: A Prophetic Novelist." The Lis suggested by the title of Judith Weissman's article, "A Reading of
tener (22 Feb. 1951), 305-06. Frankenstein as the Complaint of a Political Wife." How quickly
Sterrenburg, L. "Mary Shelley's Monster: Politics and Psy this revisionist interpretation became critical commonplace is illus
che in Frankenstein." In Endurance of Frankenstein, pp. trated in George Levine's collection The Endurance oj Frankenstein
143-171. (1979), in which essay after essay takes for granted the polemic
Tannenbaum, L. "From Filthy Type to Truth: Miltonic
against Mary Shelley's father and husband, disagreeing only as to
Myth in Frankenstein." Keats-Shelley Journal 26 (1977),
how deliberate or specific the criticism is.
101-13.

Volney, C. F. C. de. The Ruins, or, A Survey ojthe Revolutions

2For the purpose of my argument I will use "Godwinian"
of Empires (1792).
and "Christian" to denote broadly conflicting ideological systems.
Walling, W. A. Mary Shelley (1972).
By "Christianity" I mean what Percy Shelley meant by it in 1816,
Weissman, J. "A Reading of Frankenstein as the Complaint
a term unspecific enough to comprehend Romanism on the right and
of a Political Wife." Colby Library Quarterly 12 (1976),
Socinianism on the left and to describe the religion of Pardise Lost.
171-80.
I also use "Godwinism" in a Shelleyan sense. In 1816 he could have
Wilt, J. "Frankenstein as Mystery Play." In The Endurance
been described as more Godwinian than Godwin, since he used the
of Frankenstein, pp. 31-48.
first edition of Political Justice as his vade mecum although Godwin
had moderated some of his more radical views in later editions of
NOTES
the book.

This paper was originally delivered at the 1987 Wordsworth

Summer Conference in Grasmere. 3I set aside as irrelevant here the question of Milton's ortho
doxy. The main source for our knowledge of his Arianism and
'Scholars seem to credit Muriel Spark with initiating this Materialism, the De Doctrina Christiana, was not published until
revisionary reading of the novel when she suggested in a 1951 article 1825, at which time orthodox readers were astonished and dismayed
in The Listener that Frankenstein is a critique of Godwin's kind of to discover the heretical tendencies they had not noticed in Paradise
rational humanism. Harold Bloom and P. D. Fleck in the mid Lost. As wary a reader as Dr. Johnson had declared the poem
sixties developed Spark's insight into analyses of the novel"untainted
as em with any heretical peculiarity of opinion" (Mineka, pp.
bodying a negative attitude toward Shelleyan idealism and Romantic
85-86). Apparently Shelley also believed the poem to be an adequate
Prometheanism in general, and in 1972 Christopher Small contrib
compendium of what Christians believed. See his note to Queen Mab
uted a book-length analysis of how Mary Shelley's troubled rela Works, p. 821).
(Poetical

Mary Shelley
. . the fullest account of Mart; Shelley
we haue or are likely to haue . . . Mary
Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her
Monsters will quickly become the stan
ANNE K. MELLOR dard account of Mary Shelley. . . .
Anne Mellor is the only critic I know . . .
Methuen, New York who traces the complete development
May 1988: 6x9": 320 pp: Illus °f that diuided woman.'
Cloth: 0 416 01761 4: «A1131: $22.50/t
[Can. ciS3i.50/t] —Nina Auerbach, author of Ellen Terry
and Woman and the Demon

155

This content downloaded from 117.240.50.232 on Thu, 09 Apr 2020 12:19:26 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms