The Eponymous Entanglement of the Creator and the Creature

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n Mention the word ‘Frankenstein’nand then take out your stopwatch because it won’t be too long before someonensays, “You do know that Frankenstein is the Doctor and not the Monster.” Whichnis perfectly true, but referring to the Monster as Frankenstein has a longnpedigree and the usage is now so common that it’s a tad too pedantic to arguenthe point. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was one of the twonworks to come out of the literary challenge set by Lord Byron at Villa Diodatinin June 1816, (the other being John Polidori’s The Vampyre). It wasnwritten by the eighteen year old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (later Shelley,nafter she married the poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley), and was eventually publishednanonymously in 1818, as a three-volume novel, in a limited edition of 500.

Frontispiece – M Shelley – Frankenstein – 1831 ed.

nTheninitial reviews were not favourable but a second edition followed in 1822, inntwo volumes, with Mary credited as the author, following the success of a stagenplay, Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Peake, andnthen in a ‘popular’ edition, heavily amended and revised by Mary, was publishednin 1831.

nWilliam Ewart Gladstone, the fourntime Liberal Prime Minister, in an account of his visit to Sicily in 1838,npublished in Murray’s ‘Hand-book for Travellers in Sicily‘ (1864),nwrites of the mules that “… they really seem like Frankensteins of thenanimal creation.”

J Payn – By Proxy – 1878

nIn James Payn’s 1878 novel BynProxy, in Volume 2, Chapter 5 A Jesuitical Letter, is the sentence,

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n“To them the world is peopled by Frankensteins of their own creation, – whonare necessarily wanting in the attributes which they do not themselvesnpossess.”

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nWalter Pater, in his essay onnRossetti in Volume 4 of Ward’s English Poets (1880), wrote,

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n“… hisnhold upon them, or rather their hold upon him, with the force of anFrankenstein, when once they have taken life from him.”

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nAnd in the English IllustratednMagazine for July 1895, in a short article on Prince von Bismarck, thenwriter says,

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n“Bismarck had, of course, not the faintest idea that he wasncreating a Frankenstein for himself and for the German monarchy.”

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nSo, it seems, the usage was veryncommon in works throughout the Victorian period, and not only in written texts.

The Irish Frankenstein – Punch 1843

nAs early as 1843, Punch was using depictions of monsters with the titlenFrankenstein – an Irish Frankenstein appeared in November 1843, withnanother Irish Frankenstein, by Alfred Forrester, featured in 1882.

The Irish Frankenstein – Punch 1882

nAnother, by John Tenniel in September 1866 depicts a Brummagen Frankensteinnas a monstrous working class giant threatening John Bull.

The Brummagem Frankenstein – Punch 1866

nThe real uptake of thenFrankenstein/Monster interchange of names began when the creature began tonappear in the cinema.

C S Ogle as The Creature in Edison’s Frankenstein 1910

nIn 1910, in the earliest telling of the story on film,nCharles Stanton Ogle appears as the monster in the ten minute silent Frankensteinnby the Edison Studios. Another version, Life Without Soul, followed inn1915 but unfortunately this film is now lost.

Lobby Card – Life Without Soul – 1915

nThe definitive monster appearednin the 1931 Frankenstein, with Boris Karloff (billed as ‘?’) taking thenrole. His make up, by Jack Pierce, has the now familiar flat-topped head andnthe bolt through his neck, and Karloff plays the part as a lumbering but tenderngiant, who kills by accident and is tormented by Frankenstein’s assistant,nFritz (played by Dwight Frye).

Boris Karloff as The Creature – 1931

nThe film was controversial because of the scenenwhere the creature accidentally kills a little girl by drowning, and the linenuttered by Frankenstein, “It’s alive! It’s alive! In the name of God! Now Inknow what it feels like to be God!” caused other problems, as it wasninterpreted to be blasphemous. Karloff reappears in 1935, in The Bride ofnFrankenstein (with Elsa Lancaster in the title role) and in Son ofnFrankenstein (1939).

Karloff in colour

nIn The Bride of Frankenstein, Frye againnappears, as Karl, a crippled murderer who falls foul of the creature, and innthe Son of Frankenstein, the crippled, deformed assistant, now callednYgor, is played by Bela Lugosi (who played the creature himself in the 1943 FrankensteinnMeets the Wolfman), giving us the ubiquitous Igor now associated with thenstory. The name Frankenstein is now firmly associated with the creature, rathernthan the creator, as an avalanche of films appeared throughout the twentiethncentury.

Andrew Crosse

nA confusion of another sortnconcerns Andrew Crosse, the pioneer scientist and gentleman scholar, who somenclaim to be the model for Victor Frankenstein. Mary Godwin knew Crosse throughna mutual acquaintanceship with the poet Robert Southey, and she attended one ofnhis lectures on atmospheric electricity in December 1814. Crosse was an earlynexperimenter with electricity, and his use of voltaic piles at his home at FynenCourt, Somerset earned him the name ‘the thunder and lightning man.’

Description from Memorials, Scientific and Literary of Andrew Crosse – 1857

nInn1836, he experimented with electrocrystalization, dripping acid onto a porousnvolcanic stone from Vesuvius, with the apparatus linked to voltaic piles andnwith the intention of producing silica crystals. He noted small whitenexcrescences appearing, which continued to grow until, on the eighteenth day,nthey put forth seven or eight filaments, followed by the appearance eight daysnlater of small, perfectly formed animals which, two days later, detachednthemselves and moved about ‘at pleasure.’

Crosse’s note on the Acarus

nCrosse called the creatures ‘Acarusngalvanicus’, placing them in the mite subclass of arachnids, although henwas not a trained biologist. In reporting this occurrence in conversation withnfriends, there happened to be present the editor of a West of England newspapernwho, unauthorised but in ‘a friendly spirit’ reported the experiment.nThe story spread across the country and the continent, resulting in a viciousnattack on Crosse by many who believed that he had intentionally ‘created’ thencreatures, thereby challenging God’s position as the Creator. He was accused ofnblasphemy and received death threats; one ‘gentleman’ wrote to him, calling himna ‘disturber of the peace of families,’ and ‘a reviler of our holynreligion,’ and local farmers blamed him for bringing blight on their crops.Crosse’s response was that “n…he was sorry to see that the faith of his neighbours could be over-set by thenclaw of a mite.” Other scientists tried to repeat Crosse’s experiment – W HnWeeks achieved the same result but did not publish, for fear of reprisals.nCrosse himself thought that the eggs of the mites had been impregnated in hisnspecimen rock and the general consensus now is that the apparatus had beenninfected by either cheese or dust mites.

nSome authors have claimed that thisnincident inspired Mary Shelley to create Frankenstein and his monster animatednby electricity, but these same authors have overlooked one important detail –nMary began writing her story in 1816 and Crosse carried out his experiment inn1836, some twenty years later. It just goes to show – you can’t believeneverything you read.