in this first in a series of videos on Frankenstein I'm going to explore the two main characters Victor Frankenstein himself and the monster keen to develop a far more detailed insight into these fascinating characters desperate to acquire and then learn some less obvious quotations for that wretched exam or just interested in a fresh alternative perspective stay tuned you're watching Schofield odd Shakespeare on my most recent reading of this classic novel I was struck by how much I disliked Victor Frankenstein in particular on so many occasions I found him horribly and repellent ly judgmental for instance on arrival in Ingolstadt s-- he cannot bring himself to hear a lecturer speak largely due to feelings about his appearance and manner he tells Wharton in chapter 3 of volume 1 masu cramp was a little squat man with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance I could not consent to go in here that little conceited fellow deliver sentences out of a pulpit now the same monsieur crimp also gave Frankenstein a no-nonsense dressing down for spending so much time studying discredited alchemists and he could argue that the latter's dislike may be triggered partially understandably by wounded pride however there is no explicit suggestion of this and indeed Frankenstein himself tells Wharton that he had long considered those authors useless who the professor reprobated thus the reader is simply left with an early impression of Frankenstein's arrogance and with hindsight fatal tendency to be swayed overwhelmingly by appearance rather than in a character his metaphorical use of the term pulpit rather than say lectern or even desk implies that he feels Monsieur Kremp would preach pompously and dogmatically at his audience with little or no allowances made for alternative perspectives however his earlier superfluous in terms of judging his worth as a university professor adjective squats gruff and repulsive confirmed that above all Young Frankenstein simply cannot stop himself reacting judging than dismissing virtually solely on appearance thus foreshadowing his disgraceful abandonment of his creation another rather random example of Victor's repellant ly judgmental attitude towards others is seen in the latter stages of the novel in in three chapter four he is in islands in a prison accused of the murder of Clavell however his illness has meant there any trial or further detailed questioning has had to be put on hold until he is fully recuperated on finally awakening to coherent consciousness he is greeted with a direct no-nonsense speech from a hired nurse like virtually everyone else within the local community her assumption is that he murdered clove owl note Victor's reaction I turned with loathing from the woman who could utter so unfeeling a speech to a person just saved on the very edge of death there are two words I would like to draw attention to here loathing and saved does it the abstract noun loathing sum up Victor's unhelpfully unnecessarily extreme reactions to people who are in some way different to him with different perspectives in this case she's clearly of a lower class to feel loathing is not just to feel hatred but strong disgust - and note that this is towards someone who has nursed him back back towards health and has done so successfully remember that was raving and delirious in prison Frankenstein Stein himself admitted that he called himself the murderer of William or Justine and of clove owl therefore it is perfectly understandable if an onlooker has taken this at face value and referred directly to it so for Victor to react with loathing actually says far more about him and his narrow self-absorbed prejudices than the Irish country woman he is denigrating meanwhile his use of the past participle saved is notable for its convenient passive tense and a mission of who has done the saving it is presumably the nurse herself who is principally facilitated Frankenstein's return to functioning consciousness and so perhaps should be given more licence for frank unfeeling words not so for Victor whose narrative repeatedly shows signs of a remarkable self absorption here he must be the victim he speak pitied in spite of the fact both the reader and the nurse in different ways have good reason to condemn him for past actions which have had devastating consequences there are more of his examples of Frankenstein's pathetic self-absorption how about his extraordinary claim in Chapter 8 of volume 1 that his suffering exceeds Justine's an innocent victim of his egocentric unnatural mushy Nations and someone who is shortly to be condemned to death for a crime she didn't commit he blubs self-indulgent Lee the tortures of the accused did not equal mine she was sustained by innocence but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom and would not forego their hold do not be taken in as Wharton unquestionably is by victors use of melodramatic extravagant imagery the metaphor fangs of remorse is a lot is an ornate attempt to dress up his feelings of regret within an image of some kind of wild dog with teeth snapping repeatedly way at its heart to punish past presumption however behind the imagery in the emotive language lies the brutal reality that a dear loyal friend of the family is about to be sentenced to death because he gave life to a creature which he subsequently totally ignored and a port without any thought for the potential consequences another example of Frankenstein's egocentricity can be seen in his frequent references to his long expected marriage to saintly Elizabeth in Chapter one of volume three referring to his plan to create a female partner for his monster he reflects I must perform my engagement and let the monster depart with his mate before I allowed myself to enjoy the delight of a union from which I expected peace though the implicit arrogance of Elizabeth's omission from the sentence structure it is not the first-person plural we or dare I even suggest it the third person singular she which is deemed relevant here but just repeat it aye-aye-aye in his Frankenstein who must now himself to anticipate future delight and peace within a marriage with another person whether that person will be also be similarly enchanted is not directly considered or even worse just assumed why would a life with a man who was absented himself for a number of years to play with dead body parts before leg units from a particularly sex successful compilation of dead body parts not be one of endless happiness and bliss but of course a degree of self confidence and self belief is important for both personal happiness and success within both our worlds and that of the early 19th century however what makes Frankenstein's arrogance so unpalatable is that it often results in him abdicating responsibility for his actions yes there is the occasional self-indulgent metaphorical self flagellation there is no reason not to believe him or play down his suffering when for example in Chapter one of volume two he reveals he considered suicide following the deaths of justine and william often i say i was tempted to plunge into the silent lake that the waters might close over me and my calamities forever however beneath these occasional melodramatic pronouncements lies a deeply unpleasant narcissism summed up perfectly within the breathtaking the arrogant lines from Chapter two of volume three i was formed for peaceful happiness but I am a blasted tree the bolt has entered my soul in other words he feels he was made for a wonderful life of ease and contentment this was his entitlement and the fact that the majority of his fellow human beings at the toil and struggle achieving happiness only intermittently is of no concern to him he was formed for happiness oh my goodness how dreadful it is that he didn't end up with a life of minute-by-minute ease and contentment but just as his earlier metaphor in Chapter eight of Volume one about fangs of remorse consigned track the less discerning reader into sympathy when simple facts in that this should be almost exclusively directed towards Justine so here his imagery of a blasted tree is similarly disingenuous it suggests falsely that he is an entirely natural part of creation but one which has been wrecked by a metaphorical bolt of lightning in a way which never could have been predicted or foreseen the implied passivity and lack of responsibility within this image is so misleading Frankenstein himself made the decision to wrench himself away from his family and from nature by spending years holed up on his own within a disgusting dirty dead body lines laboratory it was not an outside force such as a bolt of lightning which caused his moral and spiritual ruin but his own obsessive arrogance and assumption to state the obvious trees cannot blast themselves and so Frankenstein's image sums up one of his key character flaws his inability to take genuine responsibility for the consequences of his past actions and to persist in painting himself as a helpless victim worthy of our sympathy Victor's dying words confirm the impression of him as an unpleasant smug individual who ironically doesn't appear to have learnt a great deal from his experiences even though he is desperate for Wharton to do so reflecting on his past actions he sums up I created a rational creature and was bound towards him to assure as far as was in my power his happiness and well-being this was my duty but there was another still paramount to that my duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to my attention because they included a greater proportion of happiness or misery urged by this view I refused and I did right and refusing to create a companion for the first creature this is simply yet another classic Frankenstein Dutch in which yet again he is not prepared to accept responsibility for his own failings on the one hand he seemed to suggest perhaps for the first time that he had a duty to assure the happiness and well-being of his creation yet he attempts to justify his failure to do stew this by claiming pompously that his duties towards the beam of my own species had to take precedence how should we interpret these duties based on his subsequent reference to his refusal to create a female monster it implies that his duty first and foremost as a human being with the ability to create was to ensure the protection and well-being of his fellow human beings the spurious equivocator II argument spectacularly misses the points which is that surely by following up on his duty to the monster by giving him a modicum of attention all of the subsequent difficulties might have been avoided if he had made a reasonable attempt to ensure the creatures happiness from the beginning of his life as was the case with his own parents then the likelihood is that he wouldn't need it to have focused on discharging his duties to protect his fellow human beings because the creature would not have felt so torturously isolated and so may well not have ended up showing in his words unparalleled malignity and selfishness as well as being disgustingly quick to judge and look down upon others egocentric and unable or unwilling to take genuine responsibility for the consequences of his actions fixa often seems somewhat naive and even stupid in geneva with his family following his epic encounter with the monster in the alps which resulted in his agreement to create a second monster victor manages to achieve a degree of mental repose he speculates about the happy effects of the monster disappearing to South America with his mates never to be seen or heard of again at least within privileged Western Europe and even wonders or so my fond fancy imagined some accident might meanwhile occur to destroy him and put an end to my slavery forever as is typical within Frankenstein's skewed narrative we can see him positioning himself self-pitying Lee as the victim as passivity is implied within the suggestion that he's in slavery even though this so-called slave previously displayed an astonishing superhuman amount of agency to create life however his hope that somehow an eight-foot creature with proportionately supercharged strength already seen at this stage in the novel through his instant strangling of William and his successful battling against a current within a rapid stream to save the life of a young girl may somehow get killed within some unspecified accident is to say the very least wishful thinking however is naivety comes stupidity in Chapter six of volume three has far more deadly consequences knowing that the monster has ominously vowed to be with him on his wedding night he assumes that the monsters only aim will be booby to attack or kill himself even though by this stage in the novel the same monster has killed William Clavell and frames their devoted friends of the family Justine so on his wedding night he leaves his panting new wife alone I reflected how fearful the combat which I momentarily expected would be to my wife and I earnestly entreated her to retire resolving not to join her until I had obtained some knowledge as to the situation of my enemy sure enough soon after patrolling various passages within the house he hears a scream signifying that the monster has secured another victim and thus continued his plan to gain revenge on his negligence of his most basic of duties master the reader is left to scream why on earth did he not realize that Elizabeth's life was in danger on the one hand we must assume that at least in terms of practical common sensical intelligence he is not as bright as he thinks he is when younger he believed himself destined for some great enterprise however it is also likely that his ego centrism his tendency to see the world uniquely in relation to himself with himself not just in the middle of his vision but to the left right in front and behind as blinded him to logical highly probable scenarios which more balanced more human individuals would have identified immediately for whether you assign it to his naivety or to his meat/meat me perspective on the world there is no doubt that Victor fails spectacularly when it comes to protecting his friends and family on the one hand when with clavo in the late districts worrying about whether the fiend is following him he would not quit Henry for a moment that followed him as his shadow to protect him from the fancied range of his destroyer yet given the impractical tease of a ceaseless vigil over a group of people who don't all live together it is surely his failure to tell his loved one about his creation which ultimately leads them so vulnerable and unprepared for their deeply unpleasant deaths yes having such a conversation would be difficult and problematic and unlike when revealing nearly all to Wharton he would not have had the advantage of a wild setting to make a wild story seem more probable however it would at least have put his loved ones on red alerts as well as help provide further insights into seemingly erratic occasionally mad behavior in Chapter five of volume three Victor explains why he never told his loved ones about his creation I had a persuasion that I should be supposed mad and listened itself would forever have changed my tongue but besides I could not bring myself to disclose a secret which would fill my hero with consternation and make fear and our natural horror the inmates of his breast so entirely predictably his first reason relates back to his own preoccupation with himself in particular how he is perceived by others as for the second there is no doubt that Elizabeth Henry his father and Co would have been horrified and scared to hear that a vengeful eight foot monster composed of dead body parts was on the loose and quite possibly coming to get them but at least it would have given them the chance to take some kind of precautions to preserve their precarious existences through her portrayal of the character of Victor Frankenstein Shelley shows the dangers of arrogant male presumption and the unhealthiness of excess whether that is excessive study or far too much time spent within self-imposed isolated exile through the evolution of the creature from potentially benign to monstrous she shows the potential consequences of parental neglect and loathing who knows how the monster would have turned out had Frankenstein not instantly propelled himself away from him sickened by the fruits of his own hands finally Shelley also shows the perils of a failure to communicate openly with those you love in Victor Frankenstein's case it results in tragedies which arguably could have been avoided or at least deferreds let's now look at Shelley's portrayal of the monster and actually I'm not totally happy using this term taken as it is from Victor's bias narrative perhaps in order to allow for a more balanced perspective let's use the term creature well on a physical level there's universal acceptance of its horrific appearance which incidentally was totally unintended by its creator who had selected his features as beautiful towards the very end of the novel Walton meets the creature on board his ship in the North Pole seeing him hovering and mourning over the dead body of Victor he finds that he cannot find words to describe gigantic in stature yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions as he hung over the coffin his face was concealed by long locks of ragged hair but one vast hand was extended in color and apparent texture like that of a mummy such an account contradicts Victor's initial claim that his creatures limbs were in proportion although it is unclear as to whether this was just his original intention or whether he continued to hold this view when surveying his living final products the overrun impression is of a wild chaotic huge with a horrible decayed death like brown skin color terrified reactions to innocuous or even benign life-saving actions on the part of the creature such as saving a young girl from a roaring stream or introducing himself to a blind father confirmed that there is indeed something initially repulsive and deeply unsettling about his appearance and repulsive for everyone not just Victor who is of course particularly easily repulsed however whilst clearly emphasizing it's unsettling appearance Shelley seems to draw parallels between the creatures earliest movements and that of a human baby which has the effect of making the reader question the legitimacy and morality of Frankenstein's reactions in volume 1 chapter 5 Frankenstein tells a presumably a gorg Walton about the creatures earliest actions he held up the curtain of the bed and his eyes if eyes they may be called were fixed on me his jaws opened and he muttered some inarticulate sounds what a grin wrinkled his cheeks he might have spoken but I did not hear one hand was stretched out seemingly to detain me but I escaped and rushed downstairs imagine if you will reading the lines on screen out of context only knowing that there he is newly born newly brought to life wouldn't this leave us at the very least to challenge the behavior and language of the first person narrator although newborn babies can see objects and colors from the very beginning of their lives they can only see objects that are eight to fifteen inches away faced with a large object in the near distance is there any wonder that the creatures eyes focus on him though probably without being out to figure figure out who or what he is references to muttering some inarticulate sounds and a grin wrinkling his cheeks need to be challenged similarly both phrases have negative connotations the verb mutter seems dismissive in tone of the creatures attempt to speak and of course a newborn or a neuter life is going to be able to use articulate language at the age of a few hours meanwhile the noun grin rather than smile or laugh particularly given it is followed by wrinkled seems to suggest a smile which is too wide perhaps even masking hidden malice finally how about the reference to a hand being stretched out seemingly to detain surely a newborn or a neuter life stretching our arms to a parent or creator or just any adult present is a natural call for affection and protection any parent suggesting that a newborns intention is to detain and/or inconvenience would quite rightly be dismissed as deeply selfish and perverse and so a close reading of the lines on-screen forces us to challenge Frankenstein's self-justifying narrative and results in feelings of sympathy for a creature who although clearly unpleasant to the eye may just be desperately trying to engage and bond with a parent figure but of course it is not only newborns who are vulnerable propelled into strange and especially in the creatures case hostile environments in the early months of the creatures life he has to make his own way in the world and independently discover things which if he'd been a natural human or indeed any other natural species would have been taught to him by a parent figure in Chapter three of volume two when talking to Frankenstein who have caused relaized the entire narrative to Wharton and later added some life and detail to the latter's notes the creature is initially thrilled to discover the fire in my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain how strange I thought that the same cause should produce such opposite effects in any conventional human or other living species set up a parent would be on hand to educate the child about fire to warn them of its dangers and if the worse happened comfort and soothe the creature has no such basic network which seems all the more unfair and tragic when here and in other places of the novel he comes across as so thoughtful and sensitive he is right and perceptive to point out the ironic incongruity of a single source fire producing both the wonderful joy of warmth and if you get too close the sharp pain of burning these reflections paint the creature is clearly a sentient intelligent being and this is similarly seen in his appreciation of the beauty of nature something Viktor also appreciates when he isn't obsessively holed up inside collating and rejigging body parts in the same chapter he refers to the beauty of the moon and has the discernment to note I found that the sparrow uttered none but harsh notes whilst those of the Blackbird and thrush were sweet and enticing these are not the words you would expect from either Victor's own description of the monster or popular stereotypes stemming from the numerous inaccurate film productions of the novel but rather than language of a sensitive poetic soul who evidently has their inner potential to live a peaceful life provided the society within which he lives is able to overlook external hideousness something which by the end of the novel has been shown to be impossible and indeed as you as you can tell by listening to the bird sounds his judgment is clearly and do excuse the pun sound the sparrows notes are harsher and less melodic than those admitted by blackbirds and thrushes and indeed what is ironic about the extraordinary exchange between the creature and victor within the alps is that for a great deal of the time the former seems far more civilized than the latter the creature is regularly able to use reason far more effectively than his apparently superior human creator as the comparison on screen makes abundantly clear my rage was without bounds I sprang on him verses remember that was maybe more powerful than thyself my height is superior to thine my joints more supple but I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee one creature is unable to control his emotions and resorts to senseless attempted attack the other uses reason argument and exhibit self-control the effect of Shelley's role-reversal here is to emphasize the ludicrousness unfairness of Victor's portrayal of his creation at different points of the novel he refers to him as devil fee monster and even hilariously vile insect at times especially during this encounter in the Alps it is Viktor who seems more monstrous and uncivilized thus making it harder to come to a simple conclusion about how we as readers should react to these two characters for Shelley makes it even harder for the reader to determine where we stand in relation to Viktor and the monster and the extent to which we assign blame or responsibility to each of them by blurring the boundaries between them this is something Jeanette Winterson plays with and extends in a 20-19 novel Frankenstein based on and inspired by Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein has multiple narratives including the story of transsexual dr. rye Shelley who falls in love with Viktor Stein and that of Mary Shelley herself in the 19th century leading up to was writing her famous novel in a section within a madhouse entitled bedroom three Winterson even has Viktor directly addressing his author refuting the separation between himself and the monster or at least reassigning their roles you have appeared in the pages of a novel Mary Shelley said you and the monster you created I am the monster you created said Victor Frankenstein I am the thing that cannot die and I cannot die because I have never lived the original novel clearly doesn't go that though Mary Shelley doesn't decide at any point to put herself directly in as a character but there are times when lines and descriptions would seem to fit equally well for either creator or created for instance from the lines on screen can you identify which one refers to Victor and which to the creature now have a go at this one which one refers to Victor and which to the creature as it happens in both examples the first one is uttered by or describes Victor whilst the second is spoken by the monster however it could easily have been the other way rounds and this is the point Shelley wants to challenge Victor's and perhaps humans in general assumption of superiority and moral outrage she wants to challenge the existence of essential clear-cut differences between the tomb the longer the novel goes on the harder it gets for the reader to placidly accept Victor's view that his creation is a malignant abomination and this is in spite of the fact that the longer the novel goes on the greater than numbers killed by the creature as we read we observed the role reversals in which the creature seemed so much more civilized and eloquent that the human we see both of them expressing their love for nature yet when thinking of the other gnashing their teeth and getting angry we know their appetites for learning albeit in different fields and the facts that during their formative years they were largely self-taught and in Waltons 4th letter to his sister as well as the closing stages of the novel the same time period we see them all consumed and solely focused on the other thus we must conclude that Shelley's portrayal of the monster is unquestionably ambivalence yes he succumbs to appalling violence and at times revels albeit in crazy short bursts in the deaths of Victor's loved ones but it is difficult to forget or understate the potential effect of his extraordinarily isolated position within the world and Victor's total failure to provide any kind of nurturing or parenting whatsoever nowadays all parents understand the vital importance of responding actively to a newborn's calls and actions according to attachment theory babies and toddlers who are repeatedly ignored are more likely to experience long-term difficulties with their social and emotional interim interactions but within this context it is impossible for the reader not to sympathize with the creature for having his smiles coos and arm stretches albeit ones us humans are likely to see as grotesque given the creatures size and body formation so utterly neglected and despised the creature like Victor clearly has the potential for good as seen in his noble persuasive speeches in the Alps his appreciation of nature and is almost extraordinary success with his self education the overall feeling at the end of the novel is almost like that experienced at the end of a Shakespearean tragedy so much death so much waste with a significant proportion being due to the fatal flaws of the so called hero what can't help but think this could also easily have been avoided this has been a stroke good on Shakespeare production exploring the character of wreaked Victor Frankenstein and the creature in Mary Shelley's classic novel many thanks for what