Notes on "Frankenstein"

THE LAST ON WUTHERING HEIGHTS:

- What happens to the characters in "Wuthering Heights" - how Linton Heathcliff, Hareton Earnshaw, and Catherine Linton end up. (The first dies, a pathetic soul; the last two marry, thereby reconciling the warring generations of Heathcliff and Earnshaw).

- Read Charlotte Bronte's review/preface to her sister's novel; acknowledges the brutality in the novel; "Heathcliff, indeed, stands unredeemed, never once swerving in his course to perdition - he betrays one solitary human feeling... but a man's shape animated by demon life (satan)".

FRANKENSTEIN:

- Walton - wants to find a passage to the North Pole, and if he does he'll be considered a great explorer; he wants to be memorialized.


- Group question: what happens to Walter and the crew, and how does Victor intervene?

They're on a ship surrounded by ice, and they see the monster and Dr. Frankenstein. After bringing them on-board, the doctor tells Walter a story. Victor tells him the story because he wants to teach him a lesson. "Unhappy man, do you share my madness? " (Letter 4)

- 2 editions, 1819 and 1831; many prefer the former edition. Her husband, the Romantic poet Percy Shelley, helped her rewrite parts, MAYBE.

- Percy Shelley's poem, "Music, when Soft Voices Die":

USIC, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory;

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heap'd for the belovèd's bed;

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on."

- Walton wants to best "elemental forces" for the human race - and for himself. At saying this, the doctor chooses to warn him of this ambition by telling him his story.

- Up to Chapter 4 for Friday!