![]() What’s the purpose of this opening? In many ways, it shares much in common with The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, except for the fact that Shelley takes us into the character – at least the written character – of Walton. ![]() Walton’ is and why we do not start with the eponymous Frankenstein. Not unlike her husband’s use of layered narratives in Ozymandias, which Frankenstein pre-dates, Mary Shelley uses the layered narrative as a narrative tool to distance the reader from the narrative but to also create layers of intrigue. ![]() The novel starts with a series of four letters and then falls into twenty-four chapters. Which of these narratives is the one that affects us most in Frankenstein? #2 It clues us in to the potential narrative and yet at the same time tantalises us with a strong sense of mystery.Īt the same time, mysteries are not entirely resolved. Frankenstein or, the Modern Prometheus does both. However, it’s not like The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which, for contemporary readers at least, would have been the height of mystery, seeding and feeding our curiosity. Yet at the same time, it is relatively cryptic and indecipherable. Creation – Rebellion – Lawbreaking – Punishment. We also have an immortal being sentenced to eternal punishment for his actions.īefore we read, we might consider which of these narratives we expect Frankenstein to most imitate? Not unlike the prologue of Romeo and Juliet, this subheading gives much away. We also have a rebel and a thief who breaks laws: he stole fire from the gods to give to humans. We have then a story of creation: Prometheus created humanity. He was punished by being tied to a rock and having an eagle come down daily to peck out and eat his liver, which, being immortal, would regrow overnight. As a consequence of his actions, he was sentenced to eternal torment for his ‘crime’. He’s credited with creating humans from clay, and stealing fire from the early gods to give to humans. So we know that Prometheus was a Titan god of fire. Why ‘The Modern Prometheus’? Who was Prometheus? Why is Frankenstein ‘The Modern Prometheus’? What expectations does this set up for the novel? The title – or, more accurately, the subtitle. Yet it’s easy to forget the novel in itself was still relatively young and she plays around with techniques that many later readers will take for granted. Mary Shelley’s novel is so innovative in so many ways – perhaps her youth meant she hadn’t yet learned the things that were supposed to restrict her. We can look at whose thoughts they share and whose remain forever unknown. We can also look at the balance of dialogue and description, the way the writer sometimes seems to dip into the character’s thoughts and then sometimes refrains. It may not be the most popular choice at GCSE, losing out to shorter and simpler tales such as A Christmas Carol and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, but I have had one or two students in the past couple of years whose schools have tackled Mary Shelley’s classic to fruitful ends.Īs always, we can look at five or six key aspects of a novel when thinking about structure, not least the way the writer opens the novel, the way they develop and the way they end. That’s why I’m here today to address that. Truth be told, when I thought about writing about the ways we could write about structure in a number of popular GCSE English Literature texts, I forgot about Frankenstein.
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