Magic To Science

Frankenstein's "Conversion" from Natural Magic to
Modern Science: And a "Shifted" (And Converted)

Last Draft Insert
David Ketterer
Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), pp.
57-78
Published by: SF-TH Inc
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240576
David Ketterer
Frankenstein's
"Conversion"
from Natural
Magic to Modern
Science-and a Shifted (and Converted)
Last Draft Insert
Over the past four years I have been much occupied by, and become
increas-
ingly familiar with, the Frankenstein manuscripts in Oxford's Bodleian
Library. These manuscripts, part of "The Abinger Deposit" of Shelley and
Godwin papers, consist of most of the Last Draft and most of the
concluding
fifth of the Fair Copy of that draft. In 1992 and 1993 I made what I believe
to be the first complete transcriptions
of the extant Last Draft and Fair Copy.
Shortly thereafter, I collated my transcriptions
with each other and with the
first published text of Frankenstein, the 1818 edition.1 My collation work
led
to the publication
of "The Corrected
Frankenstein:
Twelve Preferred
Readings
in the Last Draft" (which also describes a few errors traceable to the Last
Draft).2 In order to make available a detailed description of the
manuscripts
and to give an account of what I learned from them (aside from the
preferred
readings and the matter, previously discussed by E.B. Murray and others,
of
Percy Shelley's contribution
to Mary Shelley's novel), I wrote an article of
some length entitled "(De)Composing Frankenstein: The Import of
Altered
Character
Names in the Last Draft" which appeared
in 1996. In that second
article I speculate about, but pass rather
hurriedly
over, the two portions
of the
manuscript
(and the corresponding
portions of the published
novel) which re-
late particularly
to Frankenstein's claim to be a work of sf, possibly the first
genuine such.4 These portions of the Last Draft are especially illuminating
and
call for the rather more detailed attention
that I shall give them here.
1. In Chapter I of the published novel, Frankenstein
gives an account
of the
first stage of the "conversion" from his enthusiasm
for ancient occult philoso-
phers to modern science, a "conversion"
which hinges upon his experience of
seeing an oak tree destroyed by lightning when he was fifteen years old. I
have placed the word "conversion"
within qualifying quotation
marks for rea-
sons that will become increasingly apparent
as this analysis proceeds. For the
moment, it is sufficient to know that, in the Last Draft, this first phase of
Frankenstein's
exposure to modern science exists in the form of an unpaginat-
ed insert (which corresponds
approximately
to what is in the published
Chapter
1 of Volume One5
but minus the paragraph
about
the lightning
blasted tree and
the first clause of the following sentence [Rieger 32.15-36. 19/1.1:51-59
minus
Rieger 35.3-16 ["When I was ... astonishment;"])
on a conjunct
bifolium and
a single leaf of white paper of British manufacture,
the leaf dimensions of
which are rather larger than the light blue leaves of Continental
manufacture
58 SCIENCE-FICTION
STUDIES,
VOLUME
24 (1997)
on which approximately
the first half of the Last Draft is written. When Mary
Shelley wrote that half (ending with what corresponds
to Chapter VI of Vol-
ume Two of the 1818 edition) the light blue leaves (now for the most part
separated
bifolia) were part of a bound notebook as were the now dis-bound
white British leaves on which the surviving second half of the Frankenstein
Last Draft was written. After the Last Draft was completed, the leaves of
both
notebooks were separated
and the hardboard
covers are no longer extant. The
insert, which is written on British paper different from the British
notebook
paper, is headed "Chapt. 2" in the same insert ink.6
The surviving Last Draft begins on page 41, in the midst of what must
have been originally styled "Chapter 1" or "Chapter
2." This ambiguity
de-
rives from the fact that the next chapter
is designated
"Chapter
[2 cancelled]3"
(page 47 of Volume I of the Last Draft) and the one after that simply
"Chap.
4" (Vol. I, p. 55).7 Last Draft chapters "[2 cancelled]3" and "4"
correspond
to Chapter II of Volume One of the 1818 edition; the preceding manuscript
fragment corresponds to most of the last two-thirds
of Chapter I of the 1818
Volume One. Last Draft "Chap. 4" and the corresponding
portion
of the 1818
Volume One, Chapter
II (["The next morning"]
Rieger 40.18 to the end of the
chapter), comprise the second portion of the novel dealing with
Frankenstein's
"conversion"
to modern science-his experience at the University
of Ingolstadt
with professors Krempe and Waldman. The missing first 40 pages of the
Last
Draft must, in some way, have corresponded to the apparently somewhat
shorter corresponding pages of the 1818 text (approximately
18 pages in the
Rieger edition as opposed to the approximately
21 Rieger pages which corre-
spond to the next 40 Last Draft pages-i.e., up to and including page 72, and
counting the larger insert pages as equivalent to eight of the Continental
pages): Walton's opening frame letters and the first third of Chapter
I. If we
assume a now lost Last Draft version of the opening Walton frame
preceding
"Chapter
1" as in the 1818 edition,8 there are two ways to account for "Chap-
ter [2 cancelled]3" and both involve the insert. Either the insert was first
conceived as a new chapter immediately
preceding the original lengthy "Chap-
ter 2," or the original "Chapter 1" was divided into two separate chapters
when, as I shall demonstrate,
Mary Shelley decided the insert belonged in that
chapter (the "Chapt. 2" heading now marking the break). After the new
"Chapter
3," she numbered
the next four chapters
in sequence-although not,
in the case of chapters 4 and 6, at the time those chapters
were written. (Two
chapter 7s follow; she did not correct the second to "8" presumably
because
she decided, as she ultimately
did with the preceding Last Draft chapters
3 and
4, that they might better be combined as one chapter.)
It is necessary to be as clear as possible about all of this because of a
rather
enigmatic entry in Mary Shelley's journal for 27 October 1816: "Write
Ch. [3 cancelled]212?"
(Journals I: 142; noted under "Words Obscuring Re-
covered Matter," II: 700,9 and confirmed by my examination of the actual
journal in the Bodleian Library). This is a reference to the writing of the
Last
Draft of Frankenstein
but what exactly does it mean? Does it mean she wrote
"Ch. [3 cancelledl2" and half the next one? Or is it a reference to just the
FRANKENSTEIN'S
"CONVERSION" 59
next half chapter? Or should it be understood as a reference to the insert
material
headed "Chapt.
2" (actually half a chapter in the sense that it became
part of a chapter)? In "(De)Composing Frankenstein"
I opted for either the
second or the third of these possibilities. As it happens, the insert and the
possible half chapter-which I supposed (mistakenly, I now believe) to be
"Chap. 4" (a heading added at some point after the chapter
was written; Vol.
I, p. 55), the Last Draft material corresponding
to the last half of the 1818
Chapter
II (Rieger 40.18/1.2:69 ["The next morning"]
to the end of the chap-
ter)-are the two portions of the Last Draft concerned with Frankenstein's
"conversion" to modern science. This fits with the fact that the "Ch. [3
can-
celledJ2
/2?"
journal entry is immediately
followed on 28, 29, and 30 October,
and on 2 and 4 November by references to Mary Shelley's reading Sir
Hum-
phry Davy's "Chemistry"
(Journals 1:142-44). This reading was undertaken
with relation to her writing at the time.
What needs to be accounted for here, and what I may have incorrectly
accounted for in "(De)Composing Frankenstein,"
is the relationship
between
Mary Shelley's chapter designation "[2 cancelled]3 and her journal
reference
to writing "Ch. [3 cancelled]212 ." In "(De)Composing
Frankenstein",
with
misplaced confidence, I claimed that "the fact that the same numbers are
involved makes it a well-nigh certainty that the confused 'Ch. [3 can-
celledj2?12'
refers to 'Chapter [2 cancelled]3' plus its originally non-chapter-
designated continuation" (245). This was part of an argument
for preferring
the "Chap. 4" identification
to the insert identification.
Pursuing a line of argument
that did not occur to me when I wrote (and
some six times revised) "(De)Composing
Frankenstein,"
I am now convinced
that the "Ch. [3 cancelledj21?2"
reference is to the insert, and I now favor the
likelihood that the cancelled "3
" and the replacement
"2" refer to two different
chapters and to the momentary confusion in Mary Shelley's mind of those
chapters. What the original journal entry- "Write Ch. 3 /2"-meant was
that
Mary Shelley had written an addition
to Chapter
3. The revised
journal entry-
"Write Ch. 2?/2"
-is to the same addition but it is now an addition
to the pre-
vious chapter.
But it seems that the insert was originally to be a new "Chapt.
2" immedi-
ately preceding the original "Chapter
2," the chapter
that was subsequently
re-
numbered "Chapter
3" and that corresponds
to Chapter
II of the 1818 Volume
One. The opening sentence of "Ch. [2 cancelled]3" and of the
corresponding
1818 chapter- " When I had attained
the age of seventeen my [father
cancelled]
[parents
inserted by PBS, i. e., Percy Bysshe Shelley] resolved that I should [go
to cancelled] [become a student at inserted by PBS] the university of Ingol-
stadt" (Vol. I, p. 47; cf. Rieger 37.9-10/1.2:61))-follows (as the original
placement
of the insert intended) directly on the insert "chapter"
(which, with
revisions, corresponds
approximately
to Rieger
32.15-35.2/1.1:51-56("Natural
philosophy
...place in my mind.") and 35.18-36.19/1.1:57-59 ("He replied...
various literature"),
the gap being the blasted oak tree business). The reference
to "the age of seventeen" towards the end of the published version of the
in-
sert (Rieger 36.17/1.1:59)-corresponding to Percy Shelley's substitution
"age
60 SCIENCE-FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 24 (1997)
of," with the age unspecified (for Mary Shelley's "that
time"), in the manu-
script insert (folio 3 verso)-dovetails with "the age of seventeen" reference
quoted above at the beginning of the next chapter. Mary Shelley headed
the
insert "Chapt. 2" (at the time of writing) because it was to figure as a new
"Chapter
2" or, on second thoughts perhaps, as a new opening section of the
original "Chapter
2." But when she wrote "Write
Ch. 31/2"
in her journal she
had realized that that "Chapter
2" should actually be "Chapter
3." Later, she
decided that it was more appropriate
to shift the insert back into the preceding
chapter and. perhaps later again, to divide it into two segments in place of
deleted material on either side of the description of the blasted tree
incident
which then becomes a dramatic
fulcrum. As a consequence of that realization
and decision, she corrected her journal entry to read "Write Ch. [3 can-
celled]21/2.
" Thus can all the available, initially very confusing, data be
accounted for. According to the scenario here outlined, "Chap. 4" of Last
Draft Volume I was most probably
written very shortly after the insert materi-
al (rather
than shortly before) on one or more of the days that she was boning
up on Sir Humphry Davy's work. However, it should be emphasized that
when Mary Shelley wrote the "Ch. 2?"/2"
insert she was able to anticipate
what
would transpire in what became "Chap. 4" partly because the Last Draft
is
something like a rough copy of a previous draft that no longer exists. But
that
rough draft version of what became the Last Draft "Chap. 4' would have
been
consistent with a version of Frankenstein's
early exposure to science that the
insert significantly alters.
The following chronology is intended to clarify the crowded sequence of
Mary Shelley decisions here reconstructed:
(1) 26 October 1816: Mary Shelley finishes, or almost finishes, the original
"Chapter
2" (the first half of the 1818 Chapter
II) and is contemplating
her rewrite
of the chapter
dealing with Frankenstein's
exposure to the science taught
by profes-
sors Krempe and Waldman at the University of Ingolstadt
when she realizes that
she has not provided sufficient background
for what is now to be a "conversion"
experience.
(2) 27 October 1816: about to place Frankenstein
in the "chaise" (Vol I, p. 53;
Rieger 39.32/1.1:67) that is to convey him to Ingolstadt,10
or having already put
him there, Mary Shelley deletes material on either side of the blasted tree
para-
graph in "Chapter 1" and, with some reference to the deleted material,
writes the
"Chapt. 2" insert (intended as a complete chapter
to follow "Chapter
1"). Conse-
quently, the "Chapter
2" completed the previous day will be renumbered
"Chapter
3." But almost immediately Mary Shelley considers combining her new
"Chapt.
2" and her new "Chapter 3." The new "Chapt. 2" would become the
opening
section of "Chapter
3"-hence the confused
journal entry "Write
Ch. 3l/2
. " (Alter-
natively, "Chapt. 2" was originally written as a new opening section to
"Chapter
2" which, for whatever reason, was the same day changed to "Chapter
3.")
(3) By 28 October 1816 (see note 9 below), the decision to move the insert
into
"Chapter 1" is made. "Chapter 1" will be split into chapters 1 and 2
(unless, as
speculated in note 8 below, "Chapter 1" was actually a first "Chapter
2" and the
Walton letters constituted "Chapter 1"). The journal entry is corrected to
"Write
Ch. 21/2."
(4) 28 October-4
November
1816: Mary Shelley writes what will become
"Chap. 4" but she does not initially number
the chapter
because she is considering
FRANKENSTEIN'S "CONVERSION" 61
(maybe since 27 October) moving the insert back into "Chapter 1" and
turning
"Chapter
1" into two chapters. Consequently, she cannot be sure what the number
of the chapter she is writing will be.
(5) By 5 November 1816 "Chap. 5" (Vol. I, p. 61), the first half of the 1818
Chapter III (up to Rieger 48.18/1.3:87 ["nature will allow."]) is begun and
so
numbered at the time of writing and the previous chapter is numbered
"Chap.4."
(6) On some unknown subsequent
date-perhaps near the beginning of the Fair
Copy stage (18 April-13 May 1817)-the insert is revised to fit its new split
location.
(7) Finally, perhaps around 24 September 1817, a new transitional
paragraph
introducing
the insert (see pages 14-15 below) is written. This was necessary since
the beginning of the insert no longer marks the point at which "Chapter
1" was to
be divided into two chapters.
For sf scholarship, the journal entry for 27 October 1816 now assumes ex-
traordinary
importance. If, as Brian Aldiss famously argues, Frankenstein
is
the first genuine work of sf, then 27 October 1816 is the birth date of sf.
The
insert marks the transition from the gothic novel to sf; it decisively tips the
balance.
2. An understanding of the relationship between science and magic, or
science and alchemy/the supernatural,
in Frankenstein
depends upon a close
scrutiny of the manuscript
variants
to be found in the two relevant
portions of
the Last Draft and any variants in the corresponding portions of the three
editions of Frankenstein (the 1818, the 1823, and the 1831) as well as the
marginalia variants to be found in the copy of the 1818 edition that Mary
Shelley gave to her friend Mrs. Thomas in 1823 (variants
recorded
in Rieger's
and Crook's editions).11 All this evidence supports the conclusion that,
although
Frankenstein
supposedly
eschews the supernatural,
magic, or alchemy
in favor of modern science as a means of instilling life into dead tissue, the
distinction between natural magic and alchemy on the one hand and
natural
philosophy and chemistry on the other, and that between religion and
science,
is blurred at every surviving stage of the text. Likewise, generically
speaking,
at every stage, Frankenstein
blurs the distinction
between the gothic romance
form and sf. Mary Shelley seems to have envisaged a supernatural-
magical-
alchemical-scientific
continuum and the most one can say about the published
book is that the 1831 edition emphasizes the supernatural/alchemical
end rather
more than the 1818 and 1823 editions. In this respect it is well to
remember
that Frankenstein
was written, according to the 1818 Preface, as the result of
an agreement "to.. .write a story, founded on some supernatural
occurrence"
(Rieger 7/xii).
What follows is a review of the relevant evidence. In its original, pre-
cancelled form, the Last Draft included this pre-blasted
tree paragraph
about
Frankenstein's
early occult/scientific interests:
In this account of my early youth I wish particularly
to [mention cancelled] 'rec-
ordA those circumstances which led to and nourished my taste for that
science
which was the principal amusement
of my boyish days and in the end decided my
destiny. I mentioned before my taste for old books of chemistry and
natural
magic
and I remember very well that I learned latin principally that I might read
Pliny's
Natural History my father refusing to allow me to read a translation.
I used when
very young to attend lectures of chemistry given in Geneva and athough I
did not
understand
them the experiments never failed to attract my attention. (Vol. I, p.
43; throughout
I have not sic-ed spelling mistakes
and carets indicate
above-the-line
Ainserts')
This paragraph follows one which appears in the 1818 edition and which
concludes with the phrase "when Clerval was absent" (Vol. I. p. 43; Rieger
32.4/1.1:50). After that phrase, the published text diverges from the
original
Last Draft version until the account of the blasted tree in the Last Draft
paragraph
which follows immediately on the one I have just quoted. Note in
the quoted paragraph
the conjoining of "chemistry
and natural
magic...."
Frankenstein
previously alludes to his "taste for old books of chemistry"
in this original Last Draft sentence: "my amusements
were studying
old books
of chemistry and natural magic those of Elizabeth were drawing & music"
(Vol. I, p. 41; a sentence that is later cancelled and replaced in the margin
by
Percy Shelley's "I delighted in investigating the facts relating to the actual
world, she busied herself in AfollowingA
the aerial creations
of the poets.- The
world was to me a secret which I desired to discover,-to her it was a [haven
cancelled] vacancy which she sought to people with imaginations
of her own"
[cf. Rieger 30.20-24/1.1:47-48]). Twice, then, Mary Shelley, in the original
Last Draft, uses the term "natural
magic" to indicate the nature of Franken-
stein's interests and twice she indicates that his interest in natural
magic went
hand in hand with his interest in chemistry. There are no further
references to
"natural
magic" in the Last Draft. And the term is entirely absent from all
three editions of Frankenstein but, as we shall see, what is involved-
especial-
ly the invocation of natural but non-personal spirits, forces, or virtues to
achieve some desired result-is alluded
to at least twice in all three editions (as
in the Last Draft).
The paragraph
in the Last Draft describing the blasted tree corresponds
to
that in the 1818 and subsequent editions up to "The catastrophe
of the tree
excited my extreme astonishment"
(Vol. I, p. 44; cf. Rieger 35.16/1.1:57).
Thereafter
the texts again diverge. The original Last Draft continues:
[and caused cancelled]
AinducedA
[me to aply with fresh cancelled]
diligence to the
study of [chemistry cancelled
by PBS] ['natural philosophy' inserted
by PBS]
which promised an ex[clamatio cancelled]planation
of th[i cancelledlese sort of
phanomena. On Elizabeth and Clerval it produced
a di very different effect. They
admired the beauty of the storm without wishing to analyze its causes.
Henry said
that the Fairies and giants were at war and Elizabeth attempted
a picture of it.
As I grew older my attempts in science were of a higher nature. I
[endeavou
cancelled] produced
little earthquakes
and tried every kind of combination
of gasses
[to cancelled] and elements to ascertain the results. (Vol. I, pp. 44-45)
The next paragraph in what may be presumed was Last Draft "Chapter
1"
corresponds with the last two paragraphs
of the 1818 first volume Chapter
I.
The published text rejoins the Last Draft with the words "Another
task soon
AalsoA devolved upon me . . ." (Vol. I, p. 45; cf. Rieger 36.20/1.1:59).
Clearly, in the original version of the Last Draft's "Chapter
1," Frankenstein
was interested in both ancient occult science and modem science from his
boyhood onwards.
As Mary Shelley reconceived the chapter
dealing with professors Krempe
and Waldman at the University of Ingolstadt, these professors were to be
in-
strumental
in diverting Frankenstein
from his early interest in only the occult
sciences to a new interest in modem science. This plot change necessitated
her
writing the insert which she planned
on placing at the beginning
of the Chapter
2 of the Last Draft and her deleting (by a vertical line) both of the
extended
passages that I have quoted above. The insert was written
to replace those pas-
sages and was in fact composed with those passages before her. We know
this
because in the midst of the portion of the insert which rewrites in
expanded
form the first cancelled passage (the complete paragraph)
Mary Shelley acci-
dentally began a sentence which corresponds
to the sentence which begins the
paragraph
describing the blasted tree: "[When I was about fifteen my f can-
celled]" (folio 2 verso). The corresponding
Last Draft first Chapter
2 sentence
begins as follows: "When I was about [twelve cancelled] AfourteenA
years old
..." (vol. I, p.43). The corresponding
1818 sentence
begins as follows: "When
I was about fifteen years old . . ." (Rieger 35.3/1.1:56). The earlier sentence
related to the "old books of chemistry" statement
in the first cancelled passage
was taken care of by the Percy Shelley substitution
that I have already noted.
The decision to fit the insert into the previous chapter necessitated some
revisions. Most probably, it was Percy Shelley who, after 24 September
1817
wrote this transitional
paragraph
(which is not in the Last Draft) to introduce
the insert:
I feel pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before
misfortune
had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive
usefulness into
gloomy and narrow reflection upon self. But in drawing the picture of my
early
days, I must not omit to record those events which led, by insensible steps
to my
after tale of misery: for when I would account to myself for the birth of
that
passion, which afterwards
ruled my destiny, I find it arise, like a mountain
river,
from
ignoble
and
almost
forgotten
sources;
but
swelling
as it proceeded,
it became
the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.
(Rieger
32.5-14/1 .1 :50-51
)12
There is one significant adjustment
to the insert itself (in addition to splitting
it into two portions which replace the two cancelled passages) that Mary
Shel-
ley probably made earlier, at the Fair Copy stage (18 April-13 May 1817;
Journals 1:
168-69). In order to directly relate Frankenstein's
father's explana-
tion of electricity to the blasted tree, Mary Shelley follows the original Last
Draft's "The catastrophe
of the tree excited my extreme astonishment"
(Vol.
I, p. 44; Rieger 35.16/1.1:57) with this new continuation
from the original
insert: "[And cancelled] ['Among other questions suggested by natural ob-
jectsA inserted by PBS] I [as cancelled] eagerly enquired of my father
[what
cancelled] [Athe
nature & the origin ofA inserted by PBS] thunder
and light-
ning. [was. cancelled by Percy]" (folio 3 recto; cf. Rieger 35.17-18/1.1:57).
With the shifted, slightly revised insert in place, the blasted tree
dramatically
signals Frankenstein's "conversion" from alchemy and the occult to
modem
science, a distinction which does not exist in the two cancelled passages
which
the now divided insert replaces.
As a result of the Last Draft insert and the related Chapter
4 which fol-
lows, Frankenstein
is supposedly "converted" from his passion for such an-
cient philosophers as Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus
to
modern chemistry in particular. But in fact significant traces of
Frankenstein
the alchemist and natural magician remain in the Last Draft and in the
three
editions of Frankenstein.
3. As we have seen, the main purpose of the insert that Mary Shelley com-
posed on 27 October 1816 was to establish-in place of what she had earlier
written about Frankenstein's interest in both the ancient philosophers and
modern science-that in his youth Frankenstein
was interested pretty much
exclusively in the ancient philosophers and only after the blasted tree
incident
did he become interested
in modern science and supposedly
dismiss the ancient
"sciences." A corollary purpose of the insert was to set up what became
"Chap. 4" of the Last Draft (and the corresponding
second half of the 1818
Chapter II) by explaining how any possible early interest in modern
science
was forestalled.
The reference to Frankenstein's attending "lectures of chemistry" in his
youth in the Last Draft "Chapter 1" had to go because Chapter
4 of the Last
Draft has him attending
an equivalent set of lectures given by Professor Wald-
man of Ingolstadt University. In what became the pre-blasted-tree
portion of
the insert, Frankenstein
explains his ignorance
of chemistry
by observing that
"our family was not scientifical[, supplied by PBS] and I [did cancelled]
[AhadA
inserted by PBS] not attend[ed
added by PBS] any of the lectures given
at Geneva" (Vol. I, folio 2 recto; cf. Rieger 34.5-7/1.1:54). Subsequently,
in
what became the post-blasted-tree
portion of the insert (and what constitutes
the toughest to read portion of the Last Draft), Frankenstein
explains how it
was that the one scientific lecture he did attend
made little impression
on him:
My father
expressed
a wish
that
I should
attend
a course
of lectures
upon
natural
philosophy, to which I ['cheerfully' inserted
by PBS; the words which
follow, until
the conclusion is noted, are cancelled by PBS's zigzag line.] [and one
evening
cancelled
by PBS]
that
I spent
in town
at the house
of Clerval's
father
I [heard
that
Mr.- was lef at cancelled] met M. [0 P cancelled] a proficient in Chemistry
who
left the company at an early hour to [h cancelled] give his lecture upon
tha[n can-
celled]t science enquiring as he went out [PBS's zigzag cancellation ends
here] [if
any one would cancelled by PBSfollowed by words that may be
conjectured
as like
to come or follow him also cancelled by PBS]. [I went but this lecture was
unfortu-
nately
nearly
the last cancelled
by PBS] ['Some accident
prevented
my attending
the seris of. these lectures until they were nearly over they it was nearly
finished.
The lecture which I attended being thus the almost the last in hi&' inserted
with
cancellations by PBS] the [las cancelled]t in his course ['was entirely
incomprehen-
sible to me.A inserted by PBS] the professor talked with the greatest
fluency of
potassium
& Boron
[zinc
bismuth
cancelled]
- of sulphats
and
oxids [and
displayed
so many words cancelled by PBS] ["terms"
inserted by PBS] to which I could not
affix [any cancelled by PBS] ["no" inserted by PBS] idea [: inserted by
PBS] [that
cancelled by PBS] I was disgusted with [the appearance
of cancelled by PBS] a
FRANKENSTEIN'S
"CONVERSION" 65
science
that
appeared
to me to contain
only
words.
(Vol. I, folio 3 recto
and
verso;
cf. Rieger 36.1-8/1. 1:58)13
As a result of Percy Shelley's zigzag cancellation, the lecture that
Frankenstein
attended
was on natural
philosophy rather
than chemistry. In "Chap. 4" Pro-
fessor Krempe gives the Ingolstadt university course on natural
philosophy
while Professor Waldman
gives that on chemistry. The old term "natural
phi-
losophy"' was the common eighteenth-century
(and earlier) term for the physi-
cal sciences, especially physics but including chemistry. Four times, the
term
"natural
philosophy" is linked with Professor Krempe in the Last Draft (Vol.
I, pp. 55, 56; Rieger 40.20/1.2:69, 40.23/1.2:69, 41.8/1.2:70, and 41.11/
1.2:70) and, in the same chapter, chemistry is described as a "branch
of natu-
ral philosophy" (Vol. I, p. 59; Rieger 43.13/1.2:76). There are three occa-
sions in the insert where "chemistry"
is corrected to "natural
philosophy." In
addition to the Percy revision above, there is the earlier statement (in the
second sentence of the insert) that "[Chemist cancelled] natural
philosophy
[has cancelled] is the genius that has regulated my fate... (Vol. I, folio 1
recto; cf. Rieger 32.15/1.1:51) and the later one to "my formerly adored
study
of Athe
science ofA [chemistry cancelled] [Anatural
philosophyAprobably
in-
serted by PBS]..." (Vol. I, folio 3 verso; cf. the abbreviated
Rieger 36.7-
8/1.1:58). The emphasis here that Frankenstein
was not preoccupied in his
early years with chemistry but with natural
philosophy is consistent with the
likelihood that the insert was drafted before "Chap. 4" and corrected
after-
wards.
Victor's early interest was the ancient natural
philosophers (including the
natural magicians) as opposed to the modem ones; "natural
philosophy" is a
term which covers both categories. Note that his Last Draft "contempt
for the
uses of modem [chemistry cancelled] [natural
philosophy inserted]" (Vol. I,
p. 57) becomes "a contempt for . . . modem natural philosophy" in 1818
(Rieger 41.20/1.3:71). Like the term "natural
magic," "natural
philosophy"
allows for a fusion of the metaphysical and science. The insert provides an
explanation (which is excised in the 1831 edition) for what Professor
Krempe
in "Chap. 4" regards as the unlikely circumstance of his coming across "a
disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus" (natural magicians or
ancient
natural philosophers) "in this enlightened and scientific age" (Vol. I, p. 56;
Rieger 41.4-5/1.2:70). Victor's father had an opportunity to set his son
straight when he came across Victor reading a volume by another ancient
philosopher, Cornelius Agrippa:
My father
looked
carelessly
at the title page of my book-[Ah cancelled]
and
said
Ah! Cornelius
Agrippa!-My
dear
Victor
do not waste
your
time
upon
this-it
is sad
trash.
If instead
of this remark
or rather
exclamation
my father
had
taken
the pains
to exp[ound
cancelled]lain
to me that
the principles
of Agrippa
had
been entirely
exploded.
[and
aan cancelled]
and
that
[another
cancelled]
'a modern'
system
of
science had been introduced
which possessed much greater power than the ancient
because the powers of the ancient were pretended
and chimerical,14
while those of
the moderns are real and practical; under such circumstances I should
certainly
have thrown Agrippa aside, and with my imagination
warmed as it was [w can-
celled sh supplied by PBSIould probably have aplied myself to [m
cancelled] the
more [ra cancelled] rational theory of chemistry which [has at present the
approbation
of the learned cancelled] ['has resulted from modem discoveries It is
even possible that the train of my ideas might never have recieved that
fatal
impulse which led to my ruin.' inserted
by PBS]
But the cursory glance my father
had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted
with [the
cancelled] A'its contents; and I continued to read with the greatest avidity.
(Vol.
I, folio 1 recto and verso; cf. Rieger 32.28-33.14/1.1:52-53)
Maxianne Berger points out (40) that Victor's indifferent response here is
rendered
more plausible in the 1818 text by changing
the subsequent
reference
to Victor's father's "definite censure of my favorite Agrippa"
(Vol. I, folio 2
recto) to "indefinite" (Rieger 33.20/1.1:54).
There is an inconsistency in the inserted material
that is noted in the copy
of the 1818 text that Mary Shelley gave to Mrs. Thomas in 1823 and which
she corrected in 1831. In spite of the statement
that "our family was not scien-
tific" (folio 2 recto; Rieger 34.5-6/1.1:54), it is Victor's father who explains
the power of electricity after Victor witnessed the oak destroyed
by lightning.
At the bottom of that page in the Thomas copy an unknown
backward-slanting
hand pencilled the comment, "you said your family was not sientific [sic]"
(Crook 27, footnote "d"
15) and, in the revised 1831 edition, after the new
specification "My father
was not scientific" (Joseph
4016), a convenient
visitor,
"a man of great research in natural
philosophy" (Joseph 41) does the explain-
ing. No doubt for the same reason, the more scientific references in what
be-
came the pre-blasted-tree
portion
of the insert-especially "Distillation,
and the
wonderful effects of steam" (Rieger 34.21-22/1.1:55; only the word
"distilla-
tion" appears on folio 2 verso of the insert) and Percy's "some experiments
[electrical machine cancelled] on an air-pump"
(Vol. I, folio 2 verso; cf. Rie-
ger 34.24/1.1:56)-along with all of the post-stricken-tree
portion of the in-
sert, are excised in the 1831 rewrites of Rieger 33.19-34.8/1.1:54 ("and al-
though I...by reality; and"), 34.20-35.2/1.155-56 ("The natural
phenomena
...in my mind."), and 35.16-37.8/1.1:57-60 ("The catastrophe
of...of each
other."). At the end of the next chapter
in the Thomas copy-Chapter II of the
1818 Volume One-Mary Shelley emphasized
the need for a thorough
rewrite:
"If there were ever to be another edition of this book, I should re-write
these
two first chapters. The incidents are tame and ill arranged-the language
some-
times childish. -They are unworthy of the rest of the [w book deleted]
narra-
tion" (Rieger 43, asterisked footnote; Crook 34, footnote a).
In the 1831 revision of the first two 1818 and 1823 chapters (which in-
cludes Victor's family history as well as his intellectual
history) it appears
that
Victor did study the modern natural
philosophers-Sir Isaac Newton is men-
tioned-as well as the ancient ones. There is a hint at this even-handedness
in
the post-blasted-tree-portion-of-the-insert
statement that "I still read with
delight Pliny [A.D. 23-79] and Buffons [1707-88] authors
[that
stood about on
a par cancelled, above which is PBS's Aar ofA cancelled].. .in my
estimation.
[of nearly equal interest & utility added by Percy]" (Vol. I, folio 3 verso;
cf.
Rieger 36.9-10/1.1: 58-59). But, according to the 1831 rewrite, "In spite of
the intense labour and wonderful discoveries of modem philosophers, I
always
came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied" (Joseph 39). And
while
FRANKENSTEIN'S
"CONVERSION" 67
his experience of the power of electricity overthrows Victor's ancient idols
in
both the 1818 and 1831 editions, in the latter Victor dismisses the modem
natural philosophers as well: "It seemed to me as if nothing would or
could
ever be known" (Joseph 41). Consequently instead of turning to both
mathe-
matics and languages, as in the 1818 insert, in 1831 he devotes himself
solely
to mathematics
because "that
science" was "built
upon secure foundations..."
(Joseph 41).
These changes in Frankenstein's
early interests result in changed interac-
tions with both professors Krempe and Waldman. Whereas in 1818
Krempe
"received me with politeness" (Rieger 40.21/1.2:69), in 1831 Krempe im-
presses Victor as "an uncouth man" (Joseph 45) whose questions on
natural
philosophy cause Victor to respond with the virtual reverse of the 1818
"fear
and trembling" (Rieger 40.23-24/1.2:69): "I replied carelessly; and partly
in
contempt, mentioned
the names of my alchymists
as the principal
authors
I had
studied" (Joseph 45). He goes on to reiterate in an 1831 insert that "As a
child," he had "retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time, and
exchanged the discoveries of recent enquirers for the dreams of forgotten
alchymists" (Joseph 46). After attending
Waldman's
lecture in the 1831 text,
Victor, in a state of turmoil, resolves "to return
to my ancient studies, and to
devote myself to a science for which I believed myself to possess a natural
talent" (Joseph 48). That "science"-alchemy-has just been implied in the
1831 edition by the two references to "alchymists," a term nowhere used,
albeit clearly implied by the ancient
philosophers
named, especially Paracelsus,
in the Last Draft and the 1818 edition. Alchemy, like "natural
magic," to
which it is allied, is the somewhat suppressed foundation of Frankenstein's
ambitions in the 1818 edition. In 183 1, Victor is simply more "up front"
about
his plan to yoke the modern science of chemistry and the work of the
modern
natural
philosophers
to the grand ambitions
associated
with the ancient
alchem-
ists.
Consequently it is a rather more devious Victor who in 1831 approaches
Professor Waldman for what he can get out of him: "I expressed myself in
measured terms, with the modesty and deference due from a youth to his
instructor, without letting escape (inexperience in life would have made me
ashamed) any of the enthusiasm which stimulated
my intended labours" (Jo-
seph 49). Any interest in chemistry is strictly subservient
to Victor's alchem-
ical ambitions. In Maxianne Berger's words, "In 1831, Mary replaces the
naive, assiduous, would-be chemist of 1818 by an avowed
alchemist..." (47).
4. It is appropriate at this point to recall the overlap between alchemy and
"natural
magic," a term twice introduced
and then twice deleted in the Last
Draft insert. As I have noted, it appears
nowhere else in the surviving Frank-
enstein manuscripts and nowhere in the three published editions. It is, of
course, implicit in Frankenstein's
recollection (originating
in the shifted insert)
that his enthusiasm for the ancient philosophers began at age 13 when he
"chanced
to find a [fo cancelled] volume[s cancelled] of the works of Corneli-
us Agrippa" (Vol. I, folio 1 recto; cf. Rieger 32.20-21/1.1:51; cf. Joseph 39),
the German physician and occultist (1486-1535). No doubt that volume
was
De Occulta Philosophia libra tres (1533), translated into English by John
French in 1651, a revision of the first part of which translation
appeared
in
1897 as Three
Books of Occult Philosophy
or Magic: Book One-Natural
Magic.
The very nebulous term "natural
magic" has a long and complicated
his-
tory. In Kitty W. Scoular's words,
During the sixteenth century it stood as a descriptive term on the
borderline be-
tween a mystical Paracelsan alchemy involving a supposed communion
with the
hidden forces of nature, and a more modern conception of scientific
effort.... the
suspicion of magic among the early Fathers of the Church gave place
gradually
to
the acceptance of 'natural magic' which was lawful and distinct from the
evil
practices of the necromancers.... (4)
In her eight volume
History
of Magic and the Experimental
Sciences,
Lynn
Thorndike devotes two chapters to natural magic, the first in her sixteenth
century coverage and the second in her coverage of the seventeenth.17
She
defines natural
magic as "the working of marvellous
effects, which may seem
preternatural,
by a knowledge of occult forces in nature without resort to
supernatural
assistance" (VII: 272)-and especially without resort to diabolical
assistance. Thorndike gives an account of professor Matthias Mairhofer's
famous "philosophical disputation" regarding natural magic in 1581 at the
University of Ingolstadt (VI: 414-18)-the university that Frankenstein
would
attend-and mentions a citation of "the artificial production
of human
beings"
as V. Rasis and Giulio Camillo's particular
natural
magic project (VI: 431).
Frankenstein
seems to have begun as a natural
magician
like Sir Francis
Bacon
whose interest was "harnessing
nature for the practical benefit of mankind"
(Scoular 4).
There are two occasions when the spirits or dxmons of natural
magic (as
opposed to, or-in my second quote-in addition
to, the spirits of the dead) are
alluded to. In the first instance, Clerval, in the company of Frankenstein,
exclaims as follows: "Oh Surely the spirit that inhabits & guards this place
[somewhere alongside the Rhine] has a soul more in [sympathy cancelled]
AharmonyA
with man than those who pile the glacier or retire to the inacces-
sible peaks of the mountains
of our own country" (Vol. II, p. 106; cf. Rieger
153.24-27/3.1:17). In the second instance, Frankenstein
is speaking: "I knelt
on the earth and with [a deleted] quir[v cancelled]ering
lips exclaimed - By the
Sacred earth ['on whichA
inserted by PBS] I kneel [on deleted], by the shades
[I deleted] AthatA
wander near me. By the deep & eternal grief that I feel I
swear-and by thee oh night and by the spirits that preside over thee I
swear
to pursue the demon who caused this misery . . ." (Vol. II, p. 174; cf. Rieger
199.31-200. 1/3.7:136-37). The same exclamation and invocation are also to
be found in the 1823 and 1831 editions. Frankenstein's
frequent use of the
term "dxmon" for the monster here and elsewhere, links the monster
with the
benevolent spirits of natural magic.l (The secondary meaning, "evil spirit"
or "devil," is more commonly associated with the alternative spelling "de-
mon.") Of possible relevance here is the monster's reflection at the
narrative's
conclusion that after his body has been immolated, "My spirit will sleep in
peace" (PBS Fair Copy Vol. III, p. 187; Rieger 221.8/3.7:192; in place of
this in the Last Draft, Vol. II, p. 203, is the reassurance
that "the flame that
consumes my body will give [rest & blessings cancelled by PBS]
[Aenjoyment
or tranquillityA
an agnostic replacement inserted by PBS]"). This reflection
seems less a reference to his Christian soul than an allusion to one of the
benevolent spirits of natural magic which imbued him with life.
The most vital spirit in Frankenstein-at all stages of its textual history-is
the natural spirit of magnetism/electricity.
Under the heading "Magnetism"
in
Frankenstein's Creation I argue that electro-magnetism
is the symbolic link
between "Walton's quest for the North Pole and Frankenstein's
interest in
animating dead flesh..." (78). At the North Pole (where, according to a re-
vealing Thomas copy substitution, "the aspect of nature differs ensentially
from anything of which we have any experience" [Crook, "Textual
Variants"
183 n3; cf. Rieger 10.11-12; my emphasis]), Walton hopes to "discover the
wondrous power which attracts the needle" and "the secret of the magnet"
(Rieger 10.12-13/1.1:3 and 10.26-27/1.1:4; the portions
of the Last Draft and
Fair Copy which would have contained
corresponding
statements
are no longer
extant). Frankenstein, we are led to believe, uses the natural
power of elec-
tricity to imbue his assemblage of natural
human remains with life. In Frank-
enstein's Creation I also argue that the demon "is at least as much a
creation
of the" sublime Alpine setting as of the laboratory
(70). Thus it is the partially
suppressed notion of natural magic-evident as the natural spirits or
powers
of Mont Blanc and other mountains, and the moon, in addition to
magnetism,
and electricity-which provides the foundation for all of Frankenstein's
sup-
posedly more modem scientific endeavours.
The sequence of textual changes relating to ancient and modem natural
philosophy reveals a fluctuating elision of the distinction, and a circular
development from Frankenstein
as natural
magician/alchemist
to Frankenstein
as alchemist/natural
magician. His intermediate
career as a would-be modem
chemist, while present in the 1831 text is more valued and clearly distin-
guished in the 1818 edition, partly as a consequence of the replacement-
mainly by Percy Shelley-of the word "chemistry"
by the term "natural
phi-
losophy" in the Last Draft insert and other places, whereby chemistry can
be
understood either as virtually synonymous with natural
philosophy or, more
accurately, distinguished as an aspect of modern natural
philosophy. By 1831
however, "natural
philosophy" has in effect more thoroughly
displaced chem-
istry to the extent that the inclusive term's embracing of both natural
magic
and alchemy has been emphasized. Summarily put, the distinction between
magic and science which first comes into sharp focus in the 27 October
1816
insert (and then again in the encounters with professors Kempe and
Waldman
as written immediately afterwards)
was, in the corresponding
places, blurred
in the pre-27 October manuscript
novel, and became somewhat blurred again
in the revised 1831 edition.
Throughout
its history, sf has repeatedly intermingled
or fused the meta-
physical/supernatural
and the scientific. For such works to be persuasively
categorized as sf, it is only necessary that the scientific elements
predominate
over the metaphysical. In the case of Frankenstein, the metaphysical
and the
scientific (as represented in the shifted insert which is divided into two by a
lightning bolt) achieve an ambiguous balance or perhaps near balance.
Thus
one might conclude that the 1818 and 1823 editions (and the Last Draft)
are
sf and the 1831 edition (at least without Mary's "Introduction")
is not. The
1831 "Introduction,"
with its references to "the experiments
of Dr. Darwin,"
"galvanism," and "the working of some powerful engine" in Mary
Shelley's
night-time vision, affects the interpretation
of the novel by providing it with
what might be construed as an sf frame (see Sutherland
25, 31).
In all three editions of Frankenstein
the fusion of the natural
and the "su-
pernatural," the physical and the metaphysical is embodied in the power
of
electricity which is apparently
used to animate
the monster. There is no direct
statement to that effect, only young Frankenstein's witnessing an oak tree
blasted by lightning and in the 1818 text (but not the 1831) his father's
subse-
quent electrical experiments; film directors
have concretized
and elaborated
on
what Mary Shelley ambiguously hints at. But to the extent that electricity
in
the novel is a spirit, a demon, it operates within the realm of natural
magic,
the term that Mary Shelley, according to the extant manuscript
evidence, first
used (alongside chemistry) to characterize
Frankenstein's
early studies.19
To a notable degree there is a correlation, on the one hand, between the
scientific/rationalistic aspects of Frankenstein (evidenced especially by the
influence of Davy's chemistry and Locke's empirical
philosophy) and the first
half of the Last Draft, which is on Continental
paper (except for the insert
which is on British paper) and which ends with Safie's story (the 1818
Chapter
VI of Volume Two) and, on the other hand, between the supernatu-
ral/superstitious/religious
aspects of the novel and the second half of the Last
Draft, which is all on British paper. Frankenstein's contrasting attitudes
towards graveyards are paradigmatic
of this difference. In the first half of the
Last Draft, Frankenstein
offers this rationalistic
self-characterization:
I do not ever remember having trembled at a [ghost story deleted by PBS]
[Atale
of superstitionA inserted by PBS], or to have feared the apparition of [AaA
inserted
by PBS] spirit [ligh deleted] darkness had no effect upon my fancy and a
church-
yard was to me merely ['asA inserted
by PBS]
the receptacle of [rotten b deleted]
bodies deprived of life and [becoming deleted
by PBS] [AwhichA
inserted
by PBS]
from being the seat of beauty & strength ['becameA inserted
by PBS]
food for the
worm. (Vol. I, p. 64; cf. Rieger 47.2-7/1.3:83)
In the second half of the Last Draft it is a markedly
superstitious
Frankenstein
who visits the graves of his brother, wife, and father: "The spirits of the [d
deleted] AdepartedA seemed to flit around, and Ato castA
a [gentle hallow de-
leted by PBS] [shadow which was felt but seen not added by PBS] around
AtheA head of the mourner." This is followed by his invocation to
elemental
powers and "the spirits of the dead" that I have previously quoted (Vol. II,
pp.
173-74; cf. Rieger 199.25-200.8/3.7:136-37). (It is also anomalous-as John
Sutherland
points out [31]-that the guilty creation of the monster's mate on
a remote Orkney island, described in the second half of the Last Draft,
seems
FRANKENSTEIN'S
"CONVERSION" 71
mysteriously [preternaturally?]
ex nihilo, seems not to require the availability
of corpses, an essential aspect of Frankenstein's
first creation.)
In "
(De)Composing Frankenstein,
" I note the difficulty of proving that the
Continental
paper, first half of the Last Draft was written, as one would nat-
urally suppose, before the British paper second, and discuss evidence
suggest-
ing that the second half of the Last Draft, or a large portion thereof, may,
in
fact, have been written before the first (Ketterer
249-50, 252-64). Of course,
the sense, based on intrinsic data, that the second half of the Last Draft
represents an earlier conception of the novel can equally well, or perhaps
better, be explained by the indications that the second half of the Last
Draft
is closer than the first to the no-longer-extant
rough draft ur-Frankenstein
of
which it is largely a rough copy, and that the first half is a much more
heavily
revised rough copy of the same ur-Frankenstein.
Certainly, the second half of
the Last Draft is much cleaner than the first. In either case, the portion of
Frankenstein which corresponds to the second half of the Last Draft
reflects
what appears to be Mary Shelley's original gothic, supernatural,
Faustian,
"orientalist,"20
"ghost story" conception of the novel, and the portion of
Frankenstein which corresponds to the first half of the Last Draft,
including
especially the "Chapt.
2" insert, her subsequent
much more rational
and scien-
tific conception. In short, the manuscript
evidence indicates that the sf Frank-
enstein was, in significant ways, an overlay-a dramatic and revolutionary
overlay-initiated on 27 October 1816.
NOTES
1. All references to, and quotations
from, the 1818 text of Frankenstein
are cited
by page and line numbers in James Rieger's edition followed, after a slash,
by volume,
chapter, and page numbers in the 1818 edition itself. My argument
in this article will
be much clearer if it is read with Rieger's edition, or Nora Crook's new
scholarly
edition, close at hand. Once it is available in paperback,
Crook's edition will replace
Rieger's. For the moment, however, the ready availability of Rieger, along
with its
useful line numbering, make it the obvious citation choice. At the same
time, my post-
slash (/) volume, chapter, and page citations from the original 1818 edition
(e.g.:
/1.1:51) can be easily located in Crook since she includes the corresponding
1818
pagination within brackets at the top of each page and a page-change
indicating "I"in
her 1818 text. The 1818 pages are small. Crook gets almost four of them to
one of her
pages. Consequently, quotations from 1818 pages are locatable almost as
quickly in
Crook as in Rieger.
In between my returning
the page proofs of this article and its publication, Charles
E. Robinson's facsimile edition of the Frankenstein manuscripts, The
Frankenstein
Notebooks, will become available. The comparative 1818 text in The
Frankenstein
Notebooks also includes the 1818 pagination
in brackets. I am most grateful to Charles
E. Robinson for reading the first version of this article, for making
suggestions, and
for correcting errors in the quotations from my transcription
of the Last Draft. Such
quotations are published with the kind permission of Lord Abinger.
I am also grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of
Canada for a 1992-95 Research Grant which enabled my work on the
Frankenstein
manuscripts.
2. This article provides me with an opportunity
to correct an error on pages 24-25
of "The Corrected Frankenstein" noted by Brian Aldiss (letter to Ketterer,
15 April
1996). In the article, I trace what I mistakenly read as an omitted "n" in
the following
quote to the same "error" in the Last Draft: "[Safie] sickened at the
prospect of again
returning to Asia, and the[n] being immured within the walls of a
haram..." (Rieger
119.23/2.6:89). I persistently misread this; "the being immured within the
walls of a
haram" is, of course, a perfectly acceptable gerund construction. There
are unfor-
tunately a number of typos in my article because the page proofs were
mistakenly sent
to Canada while I was in England. The only substantively
significant of these occurs
on page 30. After note number "
19," the following sentence should be inserted: "'Five
years' is, in fact, the period specified in the Last Draft" (Vol. I, p. 115).
Six of the twelve preferred
Last Draft readings
that I draw attention
to are adopted
in the new scholarly edition of the 1818 Frankenstein
edited by Nora Crook (the others
appear
as footnoted possibilities). I now wish to propose three more. (1) The Last
Draft
"She was no longer that happy creature [she had been when I last saw her
canceled by
PBS] [who in earlier youth had added in margin by PBS] - [PBS had over
MWS who]
wandered with [on cancelled] me... (Vol. I, pp. 142-43) becomes "She was
no longer
that happy creature, who in earlier youth wandered with me... (Rieger
88.1-3/2.1:8).
The 1818 text was not changed in 1823 or 1831 but it seems likely that
Percy Shelley's
"had"-because of the overwritten additional "had"-was accidentally
omitted at the
fair copy or typesetting phase and should be restored. (2) The Last Draft
"I who have
so disinterested
an affection for you" (Vol. II, p. 152; the monster
is addressing
Frank-
enstein) becomes "I, who have so interested
an affection for you" in the 1818 and 1823
editions (Rieger 185.19-20/3.5:99; II: 168). Only in the 1831 edition is
"disinterested"
restored (Joseph 188). But there is a previously unnoted correction in the
copy of the
1818 edition that Mary Shelley gave to Mrs. Thomas (see note 15 below):
Mary Shel-
ley's correction "dis" appears
before "interested."
It seems clear that "interested"
was
an error introduced
either at the Fair Copy stage or by the compositor. (3) There is a
further
preferred
reading in the Last Draft which I overlooked in Frankenstein's
exhor-
tatory address to Walton's crew:" You were to AbeA hereafter
hailed as AtheA
benefac-
tors of your species - Your names adored as the brave men who
encountered
death for
honor... (Vol. II, page 191; carets indicate above the line insertions). In the
1818 one-
sentence equivalent, the singular form "name" appears (Rieger
212.13/3.7:169). Al-
though Crook points out that the plural form appears
in the Last Draft, as a correction
in the 1818 Thomas copy, and in the 1823 and 1831 editions (Crook c n26,
227 n17),
"name" is not amended in her text. For whatever reason, Crook does not
cite the Fair
Copy where the plural "names" also appears (page 167). That is surely the
clinching
evidence for emendation. The plural form appears everywhere except in
the 1818
edition.
3. On pages 256 and 274 of "(De)Composing
Frankenstein"
I give the impression
that the alternative name "Amina" for a character
finally named "Safie" only occurs
twice. It actually occurs five times in total, all in the same manuscript
paragraph.
Also in "(De)Composing Frankenstein"
I hypothesise about a puzzling notation in
Mary Shelley's journal for 23 October 1817: "[write cancelled] translate
F." (I: 182).
Editors Feldman and Scott-Kilvert point out that "'F' is written clearly in
the
manuscript, but is probably a mistake for 'S.' [Spinoza] or 'A' [Apuleius],
both of
which they were translating at this time" (Journals I:182 n4). Feldman
and Scott-
Kilvert are mistaken. So too is Mary Shelley's biographer, Emily Sunstein,
who sup-
poses that the entry refers to Mary Shelley's translating
some of Frankenstein, "proba-
bly into French" (146). I suggest in the continuation
of my footnote 11 on page 242
that "translate"
here means "transfer"
and refers to duplicate
Fair Copy pages in Mary
Shelley's hand. I have now realized (thanks largely to a telephone
conversation with
Charles E. Robinson) that "translate"
here also means "alter" and "improve," and
refers to a revision of the Last Draft account of Frankenstein
and Clerval's stay in
Oxford, a revision that, in part, draws directly on an experience three days
previous
that Mary Shelley records in her journal entry for 21 October 1817: "On
Monday [20
October] go to Hambden in a gig with Papa-see Hambdens [John
Hampden's] monu-
ment" (I: 181). The revised account in the 1818 edition includes three
sentences related
to a visit to "the tomb of the illustrious Hampden" (Rieger
158.14-22/3.2:28). The
entire revised account amounts to just over three paragraphs
(replacing
just under two
Last Draft paragraphs);
it begins "As we entered this city" (Rieger 157.4/3.2:25) and
ends "We left Oxford with regret, and proceeded to" (Rieger
158.23/3.2:29). Percy
Shelley is referring to this very revision in his letter to the publisher of
Frankenstein
dated 28 October 1817: "I thought it necessary to add that I shall not find
it necessary
in future to trouble the printer
with any considerable
alterations
such as he will find in
the present sheet & that which immediately preceded it" (Letters of Percy
Bysshe
Shelley 1:565). The Oxford rewrite, then, "the present sheet," would seem
to have
been the last extended revision that Mary Shelley made to her manuscript.
As for the
preceding sheet-which I assume was sent on a date in between Percy
Shelley's letter
to Lackington
dated 23 October (with its reference to his correcting
the "few instances
of baldness of style" only) and the next extant, the above-noted letter of 28
October
1817-that must have been the sheet including the last six paragraphs
of the preceding
chapter (Chapter I of Volume Three), the first three of which (Rieger
153.28/3.1:17
["Clerval! beloved friend!"] to 154.25/3.1:19) are not in the Last Draft. A
paragraph
which is in the Last Draft (in between the Rieger paragraph
ending at 154.28 ["to aid
us."] and the next one beginning at 154.29 ["Our
journey"]) was deleted and a variant
(a revision?) of it appears in the Shelleys' History of a Six Weeks' Tour (see
Ketterer,
"(De)Composing Frankenstein"
254 n19; Mary Shelley last records working on that
book on 12 October 1817 [Journals I:181]). The above reconstruction
lends some
support
to my hypothesis in "(De)Composing
Frankenstein"
(264 n26) that
nine "trans-
late" entries in Mary Shelley's journal between 7 and 16 August 1816 (I:
123-26) might
refer to her transferring,
or changing, rough draft material into Last Draft material in
her British notebook (and not to her translating
Tacitus's Annales, which Percy Shelley
was reading at the time).
A new question now arises. Were the alterations
in the preceding sheet-the three
new paragraphs (including, at the end of the first, the extract from
Wordsworth's
"Tintern
Abbey")-contributed by Percy Shelley? My colleague, Gerald
Auchinachie,
who is knowledgeable about Percy Shelley, informs me that instances of
Percy Shel-
ley's vocabulary and ideas are prominent in the paragraphs
concerned. According to
Auchinachie's note to me, Frederick
Ellis's Lexical Concordance
to the Poetical Works
of Percy Bysshe Shelley indicates that "There
are 22 instances of 'overflow' plus vari-
ants; 'ardent' and variants equal 6; 'ardour' 9; 'gentle and x' is a Shelleyan
phrase and
the word 'gentle' occurs over a hundred times. There are 93 'divines' (not
counting
cognates like 'diviner' etc. The entries under 'bright' are virtually endless-
it must be
the Shelleyan word; 'gush' is used twice and with cognates 9 times;
'ineffectual' is
there only twice (cf. Arnold's calling Shelley a 'beautiful ineffectual
angel'). The
phrase 'human sympathies' is there but only once. There are countless
entries under
'world.' The idea of the mind perishing with the body is a frequent
Shelleyan specula-
tion." For Auchinachie's report on another paragraph
which Percy Shelley may have
contributed
see note 12 below.
4. See Chapter 1 ("The Origins of the Species: MARY SHELLEY") in
Aldiss,
Billion Year Spree, 7-39. Revised-more confidently-as "On the Origin
[singular]
of
Species: Mary Shelley" in Trillion Year Spree, 29-65.
5. Here and elsewhere, I spell out the three volume numbers of the 1818
edition
(as in Rieger's edition but not in the original) to distinguish them from
volumes I and
II of the Last Draft.
6. Although the heading is in the same ink as what follows, the fact that it
slightly
overlaps the first line of what follows suggests that it was inserted-
squeezed in-at
some point while the insert was being drafted. Dr. Bruce C. Barker
Benfield, Senior
Assistant Librarian
at the Bodleian Library's Department
of Western Manuscripts,
has
examamined the heading under a magnifying glass. His conclusions are as
follows:
"The combined evidence of layout and overlapping strokes makes it more
or less cer-
tain that MWS did not write the heading before she began drafting, but
the similarity
of the ink probably indicates that she put it in at the same sitting. It could
be that she
inserted the heading fairly soon, after writing no more than a few lines of
fol. Ir [1
recto]; but my confidence in this is somewhat shaken by the observation
of the return
of the nib to something like its original thickness by the end of fol. 3v [3
verso],
allowing the alternative
possibility that she inserted the heading at the end of the sitting
rather than near the beginning" (letter to Ketterer, 12 August 1996).
7. The Last Draft is divided into two volumes which do not coincide with
the two
notebooks used. The beginning of Volume II (which is in the first
notebook) corre-
sponds to the beginning of Chapter
III of Volume Two of the three-volume 1818 edi-
tion.
8. This is also to assume that the missing opening 40 pages were not all
part of an
extraordinarily
long "Chapter
1" or that Mary Shelley did not mistakenly
number
two
chapters "Chapter
2" (just as she later headed two successive chapters "Chapter
7th"
and "Chap. 7" [Vol. I, pp. 75 and 85]) after giving the Walton
opening frame a "Chap-
ter 1" designation.
9. Actually misnoted as "21/2]
over 3" (Journals II:700)-it is only the "2" which
is over the "3." Dr. Barker Benfield, having examined the change under a
magnifying
glass, writes, "The over-written '2' is in a stronger tint of the same grey ink
as the
surrounding
letters; the stronger tint could be simply because the pen had just been
redipped,
but perhaps
more likely because the same ink had been restirred-i.e. slightly
but not much later." He thinks it most probable that Mary Shelley
"originally wrote
'Write Ch.3 /2 .-Fin ish...' ["the ?/2 has definitely not been squeezed in
later"]
and then
came back only slightly later-during the period of her restir-and altered
the '3' to
a '2'.... MWS might have come back and made this alteration
at any time during the
two days 27 and 28 Oct. when the same ink-mix was evidently in use (with
occasional
restirring), but not later" (letter to Ketterer, 22 August 1996).
10. There is a pagination glitch here which may mark the exact moment
when
Mary Shelley turned to writing the insert-the previous page (which ends
with "a
mother's blessing would have accompanied me.") is numbered 51; at the
top of the
following page, which is numbered 53, with a newly sharpened nib, Mary
Shelley
wrote: "I threw myself into the chaise...."
11. My study of the variants which follows is indebted
to a paper which Maxianne
Berger (see Works Cited) wrote for my Fall 1993 graduate course
"Contemporary
Critical Approaches, Textual Scholarship, and Frankenstein."
Although my arguments
differ in places from hers, we arrive at essentially the same conclusions.
For the variants in the 1823 edition of Frankenstein (for which Mary's
father,
William Godwin, seems to have been responsible
and none of which bear on the pres-
ent "conversion" issue), see the list in E. B. Murray's 1982 article (320-23).
Because
my collation of the 1818 and 1823 editions in the British Library revealed
eight
variants
additional
to Murray's 114, I record
them here. Murray
somewhat
confusingly
keys his list to "the page numbers in the [1831] Joseph edition [which
contains the
corrections of the 1823 edition which Mary used as the copytext basis for
her 1831
revision], listing the 1818 reading first and the 1823 correction second.
Asterisks...
indicate changes not in [the 1874] Rieger" (320). My listing is keyed to the
Rieger
page and line numbers/the 1818 volume, chapter, and page numbers [the
1823 chapter
and page numbers, which are all in Volume II/the 1831 Joseph page
references appear
in brackets after the 1823 reading]:
Rieger 112.28/2.5:73 *or herselfinor herself [1:4/117]
Rieger 115.29/2.5:79 acquisitions]advantages
[1: 11
/120]
Rieger 124.11/2.7:101 *unlike]unlike
to [3:33/128]
Rieger 125.17/2.7:104 *created apparently]apparently
[3:36/129]
Rieger 156.30/3.2:25 *packed]packed
up [7:113/159]
Rieger 170.16-17/3.3:60 *very much]much [8:148/173]
Rieger 172.10/3.4:65 *all]at [9:153/174]
Rieger 206.8/3.7:153 *still pursuelpursue
[12:241/208]
The correction at Rieger 125.17 is among the thirteen
"Additional
1818/1831 Variants"
on the final page 288 of his 1982 edition. The "Endnotes:
Textual Variants"
in Crook's
new scholarly edition of the 1818 text, which provide for the first time a
properly
sequential collation of the 1818 edition, the Thomas copy autograph
corrections, the
1823 edition, and the 1831 edition, add nine substantive
differences in the 1823 edition
to Murray's list (see Crook xcvi). Missing, however, are the two variants
above at
Rieger 170.16 and 206.8 (see Crook 220, superscript 12; and Crook 226,
superscript
15; in the second case, the corresponding
superscript
number 15 which should be in
the text is missing at Crook 159, line 8 [1818: HI. 153]).
12. This paragraph, like the three possible Percy Shelley paragraphs
discussed in
note 4 above, weds water and recollection. Gerald Auchinachie writes: "I
realize as
do you that the metaphor
comparing the cycles of life to a fountain-spring-river-sea
is
not exclusive to Shelley though that it should occur in Alastor (almost
contemporane-
ous) is of some interest. The Concordance
reports
that in Queen Mab there occurs the
line "Poisoned the spring of happiness and life." The entries under 'taint,'
'taintless'
and 'poison' are interesting: e.g., 'taintless infancy,' 'Taintless body and
mind.' The
phrase 'mountain river' occurs twice in Shelley: 'Hymn to Intellectual
Beauty' and
'Laon and Cyntha.' The phrase 'hopes and
joys' is there once in the fragment 'Home,'
though Shelley is littered with 'hopes and fears' and 'hopes and x'; 'life's
dark river
That time' etc. is Shelleyan; 'torrent'
also bulks large in Shelley. The 'ideas': stainless
innocence spotted by an obsession is there in Alastor as is the river-life
comparison."
Should this early added paragraph
in Frankenstein
be understood
as repairing one of
the "abruptnesses"
that Mary Shelley mentions in her letter to Percy Shelley of 24
September 1817? "I send you my dearest another
proof-which arrived
tonight in look-
ing it over there appeared
to me some abruptnesses
which I have endeavoured
to sup-
ply-but I am tired and not very clear headed so I give you carte blanche to
make what
alterations
you please" (Letters 1:42). (The three paragraph
"eulogy" discussed in note
4, of course, prepares for the abruptness
of Clerval's imminent
death.)
13. On page 28 of her 1818 text, Crook's footnote "a" glossing the list of
scientific
terms points out that "The first two are anachronistic, being the names of
elements
isolated by Humphry Davy in 1807 and by Gay-Lussac in 1808; the last
two were
coined by Lavoisier and others and made current c. 1787. The terms are
probably
derived from Mary Shelley's reading of Davy. The spelling [in the 1818
text] 'oxyd'
was favoured by English scientists, 'oxide' [the Last Draft spelling except
for the "e"]
by the French." But, according to the OED, 'oxide' (the original French
spelling) has
been the preferred English spelling since the nineteenth
century.
14. Mary Shelley's reference to the "chimerical"
powers of the ancients here is
recalled in the "Chap. 4" encounter with Professor Krempe by her
reference (again
speaking for Frankenstein)
to the ancient's "expulsion
of chimera...." Although Percy
Shelley deleted this phrase and its immediate sketchy context, he "picks up
the term
'chimera' from Mary's original" (Berger 43) in his revision in the margin:
the [utmost cancelled] ambition of [the] enquirer seemed to limit itself to
the
annihilation
of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded.
I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of
little
worth. (Vol. I, p. 57; cf. Rieger 41.23-26/1.2:71)
Percy Shelley here considerably sharpens Frankenstein's
view of the choice between
ancient philosophy and modern science.
16. Rieger 35 n8 quotes the same Thomas copy comment and opines-
wrongly-
that "The hand is probably Mrs. Shelley's. ... There are errors in both
Rieger's
and Crook's transcriptions
of the Thomas copy variants
and comments. Crook mentions
(182) using the 1962 microfilm and Rieger probably also worked from the
microfilm.
My recent examination
of the actual Thomas copy in the Pierpont
Morgan Library
has
resulted in an article-in-progress
entitled "The Thomas Copy of Frankenstein:
A Full
Description and (Almost) Complete Transcription
of Revisions, Notes, and Underlin-
ings." For example, what is represented
as a slash in "the illustrious Hampden,/and
the field" (Rieger 158.14-15/3.2:28; Crook 220 n6) is actually a cut in the
page which
bisects the "n" of "and"
and which continues either side as a curving indentation
made
by a sharp implement. And both Rieger and Crook overlook the marginal
"dis" added
before "interested"
(the first word in the line) on 3.5:99 of the Thomas copy (one of
only three Thomas copy changes to be exactly reproduced
in the 1831 edition; see also
note 2 above). The pencilled additions
on 1.1:42 (in the backwards-sloping
hand in the
lower left margin and at the foot of the page) and on 1.1:43 (at the foot of
the page,
perhaps in Mary Shelley's hand) of the Thomas copy, which have been
almost entirely
erased, are not noted by Rieger or Crook. Unfortunately,
they remained
indecipherable
to me (except for a line-beginning "to" and a line-beginning "of' on 1.1:43)
in spite
of the application of a magnifying glass and ultra-violet light.
17. Crook's list of "Unauthorized
Variants" (229) demonstrates
the unreliability
of Joseph's edition of the 1831 Frankenstein. Consequently, all the
quotations from
Joseph in this article have been checked against the 1831 original. I cite
Joseph simply
because his edition of 1818 is among the currently most easily available.
18. See the chapters entitled "Natural
Philosophy and Natural Magic" (VI: 390-
436) and "Natural
Magic" (VII: 272-322).
19. Mary Shelley has a number of different names for Frankenstein's
creation.
According to one person's count in the 1831 edition, "A simple word-tally
shows
'monster', with 27 appearances, to have won by a short head from
'fiend' (25),
followed by 'dxmon' (18), 'creature' (16), 'wretch' (15), and 'devil' (8);
'being' (4)
and 'ogre' (1) also ran (Baldick 10 nl). Naming is a central issue in the
novel, and the
naming of Mary Shelley herself can also be problematic.
The title itself, Frankenstein;
Or, The Modern Prometheus, is the outstanding
and representative
example of peri-
phrastic
naming in the novel (see Duythuizen). Famously, Frankenstein's
name is often
confused with the unnamed monster. The author of the 1818 edition of
Frankenstein
was also unnamed. See my article, "(De)Composing
Frankenstein:
The Import
of Al-
tered Character Names in the Last Draft," for the variant names Carigan/
Clerval,
Myrtella/Elizabeth, Amina/Maimouna/Safie, etc. And, of course, then there
is the
problem of generic naming. Is Frankenstein
best described as sf or as something else?
Like the monster, the novel was something different, something new,
something un-
named, perhaps something unnameable.
19. After writing this article, I was pleased to come across the 1994 article
"Frankenstein
and Natural Magic" by Crosbie Smith, a Reader in the History of Sci-
ence at the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Smith states, "By setting the text against
a broad context of 'Enlightenment'
ideology, I argue that the persistent subversion of
that ideology by Frankenstein's
personal inclination
towards natural
and even demonic
magic, adapted
to his 'Romantic' character,
underpinned
a major
textual preoccupation
with questions of human knowledge and power" (40). Smith arrives at this
conclusion
without any reference to, and presumably
without having read, the Last Draft. That is
to say, he connects Frankenstein
with natural
magic in spite of the fact that the term
does not figure in the three editions. As I have emphasized, it appears
only as two Last
Draft cancellations.
20. For the "orientalist"
Frankenstein, see Lew; and Ketterer, "(De)Composing
Frankenstein
266-72. There is at least one further
aspect to this reading. The idealized
mating in the monster's narrative of Felix and Safie (an anglicization of
the Arabic
Safiyyah), the woman at least six times referred to as "his
Arabian" (Rieger 112.33/
2.5:73), or qualified variants thereof, cannot but suggest that they inhabit
a metaphoric
"Arabia
Felix." It was Ptolemy who geographically
distinguished
Happy or Flourishing
Arabia (the comparatively fertile southwestern and southern region) from
"Arabia
Petrwa" (Stony) and "Arabia Deserta."
WORKS CITED
Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius. De Occulta Philosophia libra tres. Cologne,
1533.
English translation
by John French, 1651. Rev. trans. as Three Books of Occult
Philosophy and Magic: Book One-Natural Magic, ed. Willis F. Whitehead
(1897,
books two and three were not published; rpt. New York: Samuel Weizer,
Inc.,
1971).
Aldiss, Brian W. Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction.
New York:
Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1973. Revised (with David Wingrove) as
Trillion
Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1986; London Paladin, 1988).
Baldick, Chris. In Frankenstein's Shadow: Myth, Monstrosity
and Nineteenth-century
Writing. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Berger, Maxianne. "The Frankensteins:
Collation and Discussion from [Rieger] 30.13
to 45.17." Graduate
seminar paper (November 1993). 49 pp.
Duyfhuizen, Bernard. "Periphrastic
Naming in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein."
Studies
in the Novel 27 (Winter 1995): 477-92.
Ellis, Frederick Startridge. A Lexical Concordance to the Poetical Works
of Percy
Bysshe Shelley: An attempt to classify every word therein according to its
signification. 1892; New York: Burt Franklin, 1968.
The Frankenstein
Notebooks:
A Facsimile Edition of Mary Shelley's Manuscript
Novel,
1816-17 (with alterations in the hand of Percy Bysshe Shelley), as it
survives in
draft and fair copy deposited by Lord Abinger in the Bodleian Library,
Oxford
(Dep. c. 477/1 and Dep. c. 534/1-2). Transcribed
and ed. Charles E. Robinson.
2 vols. New York and London: Garland
Publishing, 2 December 1996 (announced
publication date).
The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814-1844. Ed. Paula R. Feldman and
Diana Scott-
Kilvert. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.
Ketterer, David. "The Corrected
Frankenstein:
Twelve Preferred
Readings in the Last
Draft." English Language Notes 33 (September 1995): 23-35.
--. "(De)Composing Frankenstein: The Import of Altered Character
Names
in the Last Draft." Studies in Bibliography 49 (1996): 232-76.
--. Frankenstein's Creation: The Book, the Monster and Human Reality.
English Literary Studies Monograph Series, no. 16. Victoria, B.C.:
University of
Victoria, 1979.
The
Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Ed. F. L. Jones. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon
Press,
1964.
Lew, Joseph W. "The Deceptive Other: Mary Shelley's Critique of
Orientalism in
Frankenstein." Studies in Romanticism
30 (Summer 1991): 255-83.
Murray, E. B. "Changes in the 1823 Edition of Frankenstein."
Library, Sixth Series,
3 (1981): 320-27.
?---. "Shelley's Contribution
to Mary's Frankenstein."
Keats-Shelley
Memorial
Bulletin 29 (1978): 50-68.
Scoular, Kitty W. Natural Magic: Studies in the Presentation of Nature in
English
Poetry from Spenser to Marvell. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1965.
[Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft.] Frankenstein; Or, The Modern
Prometheus. 3 vols.
London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor and Jones, 1818. (Facsimile
text:
The Annotated Frankenstein, ed. Leonard Wolf [New York: Clarkson N.
Potter,
Inc., 1977].)
---. Frankenstein:
or, The Modern Prometheus. 2 vols. London: G. and W. B.
Whitaker, 1823. (Facsimile edition, introduced
by Jonathan
Wordsworth:
Oxford
and New York: Woodstock Books, 1993.)
[------- .1 Frankenstein, Or, the Modern Prometheus, Revised, Corrected,
and
Illustrated with a New Introduction, by the Author. No. IX in Bentley's
Standard
Novels. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley; Edinburgh: Bell
and
Bradfute; Dublin: Cumming, 1831.
?. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus (The 1818 Text). Ed. James
Rieger. Indianapolis:
The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1974. (Reprinted
by the
University of Chicago Press, 1982.) Cited as "Rieger."
--. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. The 1831 text. Ed. James
Kinsley and M. K. Joseph. 1969; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Cited
as "Joseph.
"
?--. Frankenstein,
or The
Modern
Prometheus
[the 1818 text]. Ed. Nora Crook.
Vol. 1 (of 8) of "The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley." London:
William Pickering, 1996. Cited as "Crook."
---. The Last Draft and the Fair Copy of Frankenstein.
Dep. c. 477/1 and Dep.
c. 534/1 and 2; The Abinger Deposit: Papers of P. B. Shelley, W. Godwin,
and
Their Circles; The Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Smith, Crosbie. "Frankenstein
and Natural Magic." In Frankenstein, Creation and
Monstrosity, ed. Stephen Bann (London: Reaktion
Books Ltd., 1994), 39-59, 196-
98.
Sunstein, Emily W. Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. Boston: Little,
1989.
Sutherland,
John. "How does Victor make his monsters?"
In Sutherland,
Is Heathcliff
a Murderer? Great Puzzles in Nineteenth-Century
Literature (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1996), 24-34.
Thorndike, Lynn. A History of Magic and Experimental
Science. 8 vols. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1923-58.
ABSTRACT
"Write Ch. [3 cancelled21/2?." This puzzling entry in Mary Shelley's
journal for 27
October 1816" (the birth date of sf if Frankenstein
is indeed the first true example of
the genre) is explained as referring to a Last Draft insert headed "Chapt.
2" which
describes the first stage of Frankenstein's supposed "conversion" from the
ancient
philosophers to modern science. This insert, originally intended either as
an entire
chapter
preceding what became Chapter
II of Volume I of the 1818 Frankenstein
or as
the opening section of that chapter, was subsequently
shifted back into the preceding
chapter. Then, most probably at the Fair Copy stage, it was revised and
divided into
two portions which replace material in the Last Draft cancelled
immediately
before and
immediately after Frankenstein's description of his witnessing an oak
destroyed by
lightning. Since the issue of Frankenstein's "conversion" determines the
generic
identification of the novel as sf (perhaps the first such), and bears on the
case for
viewing sf generally as a mixed material/metaphysical
genre, a detailed analysis of the
relevant manuscript
and published variants follows. The variant
term "natural
magic,"
which appears twice in cancelled form in the Last Draft and nowhere in
the 1818,
1823, and 1831 editions, accounts for significant aspects of the published
and
manuscript
texts-the invocation of nature spirits, the term "damon," references to the
moon, and various "active," "sublime," landscapes, phenomena, and
forces. These
"traces" of natural magic significantly counter the impression that, in
turning to
modern science, Frankenstein
entirely forsook the old philosophers. At the same time,
the relatively clean writing on the British notebook leaves (the second half
of the Last
Draft), which seem closer to a previous, now lost rough draft ur-
Frankenstein,
which
the Last Draft roughly copies, than the more heavily revised writing on the
Continental
notebook leaves, seems also closer to an original more purely gothic and
supernatural
conception. The overlaid sf conception is largely confined to what appears
on the
Continental leaves and, especially, the "Chapt. 2" insert on British leaves
(and the
corresponding 1818 text). (DK)

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Frankenstein's "Conversion" from Natural Magic to

Modern Science: And a "Shifted" (And Converted)

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