Hail Mary Shelley!
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Exercise Untried Resources of Mind
With Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein and the monster Mary Shelley
created still live, and the real horror is yet to come.
The design and purpose of this famous horror fiction have
been seriously underrated for more than 180 years. Important
opportunities to better understand and respond to a common
and frequently harmful disorder are missed because the tools
and demonstrations Shelley provides are ignored. Our business
is to advertise the considerable unrecognized value to humanity
that comes with the understanding of human conflict that Mary
Shelley designed her frightening novel to develop. Many of the
discrepancies or inconsistencies in the novel have been dismissed
as errors and unimportant, are not errors at all, but are design
elements vital to the purpose proposed in the preface.
The ways that the novel may be read differ so greatly that it
is almost as though it is a book that can be read twice for the first
time. The horror fiction or gothic tale reads front to back. The
real horror and monsters appear as the book is read back to front
and they will not go away. If you have read Frankenstein, here
you may begin to see how differently it reads, when the preface is
used to guide our understanding of the novel's design. Just click
on the Frankenstein Exercise link below for a new way of reading
the book at this site that can be useful and truly satisfying.What there is to fear from Mary Shelley's
exercise of untried resources of mind
In her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein,
Mary Shelley refers to the machinery of a story. The 1818
preface identifies several purposes the author has in mind
and suggests that readers may have some difficulty with the
novel as a result. If we examine the novel as though it
were a machine and the preface as though it were an owner's
manual, many odd features of the novel make sense. Some parts
of the novel we hardly notice or that don't make sense on the
first reading are vital and, when set in motion, transform the
book entirely.
In a way, Frankenstein is rather like the Trojan Horse. It is
impressive, entertaining, fascinating, yet it is designed to do
more than that. There is a surprise inside and a hint in the
author's dedication as to what the surprise is. To some the
surprise will be a horror. Mary Shelley dedicated Frankenstein
to her father, William Godwin, who believed that the object of
education is properly to prepare a generation capable of saving
the human race.Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice describes
dangers we humans pose to ourselves and method he
sees as necessary to successfully address those dangers.
The problem, of course, is that a system for salvation already
exists, one that is not welcoming of the kind of examination
in which Godwin engages. By the time Mary Shelley wrote
Frankenstein, her father's ideas, which had for a time been
widely discussed, were being tried by only a few, such as
Robert Owen. More recently they have been used by people
such as Gandhi. Shelley designed Frankenstein to insure
that her father's life's work would survive a long period of
neglect and be available when needed.
Before Godwin died, he asked Mary to see to it that the
work he considered to be his best not be consigned to
obscurity. It now appears that she had done as much many
years in advance. What is concealed inside Frankenstein
is her father's system for finding the defects of society and
remedying them. Some of the defects of society Godwin
identifies are not seen as defects at all by institutions of society,
such as churches and governments. It is to be expected that
the operation of the machinery of Frankenstein, as it exposes
defects in such institutions, will irritate, dismay, and even
shock those who have depended upon them. Many of us
grow up with the idea that discussing religion in the way
that William Godwin or Thomas Paine have done is
impolite and is to be avoided. We see such an attitude as
representative of a lack of faith in the ability of humans to
improve upon their points of view and to reconcile conflicts
that have long caused great suffering and loss of life.
As evident through the examination of the historical record,
we are not alone in the conviction that topics usually
considered impolite are often most valuable means to the
discovery of political justice and the excellence of universal
virtue. We see the discrepancies embedded in ancient
writings as indicative of a keen awareness of the tendency
to allow the best of intentions to go awry and the need
for the very kind of review we engage in here. Mary
Shelley's parable of the ship's master reflects the same
awareness of the difficulties that are bound to present
themselves as seemingly intractable barriers to those
interested in the improvement of human society, as
well as the inextinguishable confidence in our ability
to overcome them. This is really what this site is all
about. The ancients, and more recently Shelley, have
included discrepancies to prompt us to review human
events and to see how we may do better.
It is too late to stop what Mary Shelley began. Her
Frankenstein was brought inside the walls of society
long ago and became a source of entertainment and,
as a metaphor, useful to discussions of all kinds. Furthermore,
the machinery within the novel has been discovered and is
being operated. The book that much of this site draws from,
To a Candid World, includes some of the results of the
Godwin method that Mary Shelley put inside Frankenstein.
Among the features mentioned in To a Candid World is what
appears to be a clock which seems to have predicted
the very progress of Frankenstein that has been suggested
here.
Hail Mary Shelley! for her genius and generosity
& Thank Godwin for this: ".... though the effects
of truth may be obscured for a time, they will break
out in the sequel with double lustre."** This quote is from Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political
Justice and its Influence on Modern Morals and Happiness
toward the end of Chapter V Voluntary Actions of Men Originate
in their Opinions. The paragraph continues with, "But this at least
depends upon circumstances. No comet must come in the meantime
and sweep away the human species: no Attila must have it in his
power once again to lead back the flood of barbarism to deluge the
civilized world: and the disciples, or at least the books of the
origninal champions must remain, or their discoveries and
demonstrations must be nearly lost to the world."
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This site is maintained by Tom Wolfsehr Copyright 1999
e-mail: ToMMLI@netscape.net