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FRANKENSTEIN AS AN IMPOTENT MAN AND OMNIPOTENT GOD IN MARY SHELLEY'S NOVEL AND JAMES WHALE'S FILM
by Gert Hans Wengel
The main character in Mary
Shelley’s 1818 science-fiction novel Frankenstein;
Or, The Modern Prometheus is Victor Frankenstein, who is studying science
in Ingolstadt, and is obsessed with the idea of reviving dead matter and thus
creating an artificial human. He collects body parts from graves, tombs,
charnel houses and dissecting rooms, experimenting with them and ultimately
piecing them together to form the body of a giant man, whom he brings to life
using galvanic electricity. Mary Shelley’s novel serves as the literary basis
for James Whale’s film Frankenstein, whose
plot starts with the scientist facing a major existential stage of his life: He
is to wed. At the time the film was made, in 1931, this generally meant more
than it does today: Marriage marked the end of carefree bachelorhood and the
start of a more serious life. A time when young men become fathers and take
responsibility for their family, whom they must feed, meaning they must set
themselves up professionally; they need to be role models for their sons. In
the Western world, however, it was becoming increasingly common, even back
then, for young men, particularly in more elite and educated circles, to shy
away from taking this step. And this was also true of Frankenstein junior,
whose first name in the film is Henry, not Victor. His obviously frail father,
nearing death, wants an heir to perpetuate his flesh and blood, and so is constantly
urging Henry to marry and give him a grandson. One of the times he does this is
right before the wedding ceremony, when he tells Henry he needs to produce an
heir so that the Frankenstein family can live on. With these words, he pins an
orange blossom to Henry’s lapel as a decorative element for the wedding. It’s
the same orange blossom Henry’s great-grandfather had worn at his wedding, and
which his – unborn – son can in turn wear at his wedding. Observing the
demeanour and facial expression of Frankenstein junior during this ceremonial
speech, it’s striking to see the way he stands to attention like a soldier
receiving orders, who is groaning inside but remains impassive on the outside
and puts on a brave face. When the old baron finally proposes a toast to the
hope of a son being born into the “House of Frankenstein”, Frankenstein
junior’s glance shifts from his father to the floor, briefly revealing not the
obligatory celebratory joy, but rather the fact that he feels burdened by what
is expected of him.
One can imagine the father has been badgering the son with this for some time. Frankenstein
initially escapes the demands of his father and society by making himself
scarce at home, retreating to an old tower housing his laboratory, where he
immerses himself in his experiments; his bride Elizabeth rightly feels
neglected by him.
Even in the novel, Frankenstein junior does not appear ready for marriage, and
is portrayed as an unstable young man who shies away from life’s demands and
does a runner. Because once he has brought the dead body to life with
electricity, in other words produced a son, he doesn’t take care of him.
Instead of adopting the role of parent and raising his son properly, he leaves
him to his fate, fleeing to his bedroom, where he falls asleep and has a dream
which reveals a lot about his character:
I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health,
walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her,
but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue
of death; her features appeared to chance, and I thought that I held the corpse
of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the
grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel.
His bride Elizabeth is
replaced by his mother, who is dead and buried. This says something about his
feelings: That he is still attached to his mother. Freud discovered that the
boy wants to have sex with his mother (or sister), but this is prohibited by
the incest taboo. So he is forced to shift the object of his sexual desires
from his mother (or sister) to a girl not related to him by blood. If he is
able to do this, he will become an adult and a real man. The young Frankenstein
is obviously unsuccessful here, even though his dream does start off
promisingly: He meets his wife in
Ingolstadt and treats her as his wife by embracing her and kissing her on the
lips. But he can only briefly keep up the active role of the husband who takes
sexual possession of his wife. The dream then takes on a different theme: His
desire to remain a child. This desire is stronger and ends up prevailing: The
active man is suddenly transformed into a frightened boy who has run into the
arms of his mother and latched onto her. His dream reflects his behaviour in
real life: He has just become a father, but wants to remain a mummy’s boy,
refusing to be a parent to his son, who has just come into the world. Instead
of taking responsibility for him and raising him properly, he abandons him and
seeks refuge in sleep, i.e. a regressive state where he hopes to feel safe and
secure.
Upon emerging from his sleep, during which he sought to free himself by
forgetting everything, he comes face to face with the monster, who approaches
him like a helpless child and begs for his love and affection:
I started from my sleep with horror; a cold dew
covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb became convulsed; when,
by the dim and yellow light of the moon, as it forced its way through the
window shutters, I beheld the wretch – the miserable monster whom I had
created. He held up the curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be
called, were fixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate
sounds, while a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not
hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and
rushed downstairs.
Mummy’s boy Victor, who, in
his dream, ran into the arms of his mother like an infant, wakes up and sees
his son, who has come into his bedroom and wants to get into his bed just like
a small child does with his mother (1) – the roles are reversed; Frankenstein
the mummy’s boy is suddenly to become an adult and take on the role of parent –
that is the real horror.
The way Victor was raised is
part of the reason he becomes a mummy’s boy. As Susan Coulter rightly states, Victor grows up “indulged and spoiled
by his parents”, and, until the age of five, as an only child. His first
memories include his mother’s “tender caresses” and his father’s “smile of
benevolent pleasure”, with both of his parents raising him with “kindness and
indulgence”. The introverted child lacks “social skills”, says Susan Coulter,
rendering him unable “to mature and be a more social and compassionate
individual”. This was evident right from childhood, when “he chooses not to mix
with the other local children”. Susan Coulter refers to this sentence in
chapter 2 of the novel here:
It was my
temper to avoid a crowd and to attach myself fervently to a few. I was
indifferent, therefore, to my school-fellows in general
According to Coulter, this is Shelley’s
way of warning parents to not only raise their child with love and leniency,
but also with “discipline and guidance”, so that he/she can become a social
person “who can be assimilated into the wider society”. This unfortunately did
not happen with Victor, who became “selfish and too introspective”, and was
unable “to mature and develop self-discipline”. The over-“cosseted” child
lacks “true sense for his actions”. And Susan Coulter is right: Victor is a
nerd who tries to make up for his unmanliness and social shortcomings by excelling
in his specialist field of knowledge.
The film also frequently shows
Frankenstein as being weak, passive and indulged. The first time he finds
himself alone with his bride, he is sitting in a chair in an idyllic garden
like a convalescent, with Elizabeth crouching at his feet, offering him a cup
of tea or coffee to drink, and giving him a lighter so he can smoke a cigarette
– she cossets and looks after him like a nurse would a patient. And even
shortly beforehand, when being fetched from his tower, he collapses and is laid
on a sofa, given cognac to drink, with Elizabeth stroking him like a child in
need of comfort and consolation. Psychoanalysis interprets this molly-coddling
with luxuries like coffee, tea, cigarettes and cognac as being a regression to
the oral development phase of childhood when the mother’s breast was the most
important object of love for the infant. And Frankenstein junior even becomes
addicted to opium in the novel, trying to lull himself to sleep with Laudanum
every night.
In the closing scene of the film, the old baron finally proposes a toast,
expressing his hope for a grandson, and in doing so looks through the open door
to the bridal room. The viewers follow his gaze, and what they see is not
exactly promising: Frankenstein junior once again lying limp in bed, in need of
care, and Elizabeth cosseting him like a nurse.
But Frankenstein junior doesn’t always appear as a wimp in the film. While he
is passive, weak and in need of indulgence as a groom, he is energetic, dynamic
and venturesome as a scientist. When the film shows him and Elizabeth in his
laboratory – she as an observer of his impressive act of procreation which
brings the inanimate body to life amidst flashes of lightning –, Henry is also
confident, strong-willed, and exuding authority, commanding the respect of his
visitors and even Waldman, his former teacher. But it’s a completely different
story once his “son” disappointingly proves to be a monster, which Henry cannot
use to impress anyone, and which he prefers to keep locked away so that his
father and bride never see it. When he comes face to face with Elizabeth again,
he collapses almost immediately.
As a scientist whose innovative technical feats have produced a forbidding,
superhuman son amidst a flurry of flashes and thunderbolts, he is an omnipotent
god. But alone with Elizabeth in the matrimonial bed, without his flashes and
technical equipment, he would likely be an impotent man. It can thus be
concluded that he uses his scientific experiments to make up for his human
shortcomings, and that he artificially produces a son in his laboratory
(because he can’t do it naturally) so that, despite his impotence, he can still
feel like a proud father, i.e. a real man:
No
one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a
hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me
ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light
into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source;
many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could
claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.
The act of procreation in the
laboratory is thus a show of his masculinity and omnipotent virility, not
serving science or progress, but rather his own personal vanity. This is
evidenced more clearly in the film than the book, with the film portraying him
as demonstrating his godlike power to create life in front of three witnesses:
The first is his friend, Victor, who doubts him and the success of his
experiments, calling him “crazy”, and who also has designs on Elizabeth, thus
acting as his love rival. But he sure shows him!
The second his Professor Waldman, who, though not his father, is a father
figure, with Frankenstein junior having studied under him. He boasts to him
about his scientific discoveries, which he uses to create life.
And the third, of course, is Elizabeth, his wife, whom he loves and from whom he
seeks admiration.
These three people, who are made witnesses to his grandiose act of creation on
that stormy night, are instilled with not only admiration but also horror by
his life-producing flashes and thunderbolts. And this horror reflects the
primal fear of thunder and lightning, which was originally a religious fear, an
awe, of the archetypical god of skies and storms, whose thunderbolts could both
create and destroy, and whose anger and spite were terrifying, appeased only by
victims. The fear Frankenstein awakens in Elizabeth, Victor and Professor
Waldman is a primordial religious experience. We thus want to further examine
the thunderbolts Frankenstein uses to frighten and create life like an
omnipotent god, and highlight the role it plays in religion.
The ancient sky god, whom the
Greeks called Zeus and the Romans called Jupiter, creates life with
thunderbolts. One example of this is the myth about the origins of Alexander
the Great, who is said to have been created by a thunderbolt which penetrated
the body of his mother, Olympia (2). This myth, which demotes Olympia’s
husband, King Philip II of Macedon, to the status of foster father, revolves
around a cult of personality: “The
uniqueness of the conqueror that was Alexander the Great required an
explanation. People did not believe he could have come from a human being, so
the story went that he was created by the sky god in the form of a thunderbolt”
(3). Alexander the Great is thus the child of God and a mortal woman; a demigod
of superhuman power. Frankenstein’s monster, whose creator feels like a god in
the film, similarly displays superhuman strength.
The god Dionysus was also created by a thunderbolt. His mother, Semele, was
Zeus’ lover. Zeus’ jealous wife, Hera, disguises herself as Semele’s old nurse
and talks Hera into mistrusting Zeus, plunging her into a state of unhappiness.
How could she be sure her lover really was Zeus and not an impostor
masquerading as the most supreme god of the sky and storms? For proof, she
would have to ask him lie with her in the same form he takes with his wife
Hera, the supreme goddess. So Semele asks Zeus for a present, and he swears by
Styx, the river of the underworld, to give her whatever she desires. She
expresses her wish, and the desperately unhappy Zeus cannot refuse, for he is
bound by his oath. So he approaches her as god of storms, and the mortal woman
is unable to cope with his phallus (the thunderbolt) and burns to death. But
the child, Dionysus, created by the thunderbolt survives, is taken in by Zeus,
and becomes a powerful deity.
Zeus goes back to what he originally was, a natural power which thunders and
flashes, fertilisers Mother Earth (embodied by Hera), gives and takes life in
accordance with the laws of nature, creates it with his celestial fire
(lightning), and destroys it.
The dual nature of the thunderbolt portrayed in the Semele myth – its manner of
creating and destroying – was also addressed in chapter 2 of Shelley’s novel:
During a fierce storm, a 15-year-old Frankenstein junior watches lightning hit
a magnificent old oak tree and burn it to a cinder. The same way Zeus, as a
thunderbolt, does to Semele. At this same time, a prominent scientist has come
to visit the Frankensteins. Inspired by the lightning strike, he talks a lot
about nature and the effects of galvanism and electricity. It is not until
later, with the wisdom of experience, that Victor understands this as being his
guardian angel warning him of the murderous powers he is unleashing with his
experiments –these powers, in the form of the monster he has created through
galvanism, end up murdering Elizabeth
and others. But seeing the tree destroyed by lightning does not put the teenager off for
long - his fatal interest in galvanism only wanes briefly, before instantly
sparking up again at university and taking hold of him.
As such, the thunderbolt
Frankenstein uses to create his monster is more than just a physical
phenomenon. For the people of ancient times, it was considered the weapon and
phallus of the sky god, who uses it to create and destroy life. And this
ancient view, which both admires and fears lightning, continues to exist deep
in the soul of even modern, educated people, who are often unable to suppress
their irrational primal fear during storms. The fact that Frankenstein catches
the thunderbolts coming down from the sky, and uses them to bring the dead body
to life, is evidenced by bizarre technical equipment in his laboratory. The
gadgets are electrically charged during storms, causing them to crackle eerily,
spark, emit a flashing light that blinds and startles the three observers, and
produce electrical discharge which hisses and flickers. Anyone who gets too
close to the equipment without permission may suffer a deadly electric shock.
The thunderbolts see Frankenstein instil fear in his three observers, who had
dared to doubt him, and simultaneously create life. He makes the sky god’s
phallus into his own procreative phallus; the entire storm scene, in which
Frankenstein breathes life into the dead body, oozes a phallic grandiosity
which has gone to the head of the young man who, having been so afraid of
failing on his wedding night, now proclaims himself to be an omnipotent god: "It's
alive! It's alive! In the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be
God!" These words were deemed blasphemous and had to be censored.
The thunderbolt Frankenstein
uses to create life requires further examination, for it is an archetype, i.e.
an age-old idea innate in all humans. In ancient times, lightning was
considered a celestial fire. But the ancient sky god, whether known as Zeus or
Jupiter, was not just a god of storms; he was also a sun god. As such, the
celestial fire he radiates also includes the light of the sun. This, too, can
be used to create life, and the sunrays are similarly an expression of his
virility, his masculinity, and his divine power. At the start of time, this sky
god himself was the sun, a natural force indispensable for life on earth, as
described by Native American Indian Sitting Bull:
Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has
gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of
their love! Every seed is awakened, and all animal life. It is through this
mysterious power that we too have our being …
The phenomenon mentioned here
by the Sioux chief is something religious scholars call hieros gamos. The term
consists of two Ancient Greek words: Hieros,
meaning “sacred, divine”, and gamos,
meaning “wedding, love union, sexual act”. A hieros gamos is thus a “sacred
wedding”, a sexual act between two gods. In the hieros gamos, Sitting Bull
describes, Mother Earth is the female deity upon which the male sun god casts
his light and warmth to create life.
The idea of sex between a
husband and wife as a procreative act being related to the Sacred Wedding
between the natural forces of the sky and earth is an ancient belief. Even
Plutarch attests to this in his biography of Cato the Elder (4). He would only
embrace his wife, i.e. lie with her, during storms; he felt happy when Jupiter
was thundering. Cato and Frankenstein thus both create life during a storm –
but that’s the only thing they have in common; their relationship with nature
makes them polar opposites.
Cato, a Roman statesman yet to become worldly and sophisticated, wants to feel
at one with nature, part of nature, when making love and creating life.
Frankenstein, on the other hand, represents the decadent Western man who has
alienated himself from nature to the point where he can no longer create life
naturally, and must instead manipulate nature’s forces and make them useable to
him. During sex, humans, no matter how intellectually evolved they may be,
become animals again, a part of nature, and that’s something not everyone
likes, particularly many Western men who are used to controlling and exploiting
nature, not just in their own country, but also the nature and people living in
harmony with nature in the Third World. Scientist Frankenstein is one of these
Western men. He is scared of any nature he cannot control, including the nature
within his own body and soul. He doesn’t trust it, because he doesn’t want to
be at its mercy, doesn’t want to be humiliatingly left high and dry by it – so
he prefers to create a son in the laboratory rather than the marital bed.
As documented by Herodotus,
the Ancient Egyptians also believed in the procreative power of the sky god,
who is said to have created the sacred Apis bull with a ray of light:
This Apis, or Epaphus, is a calf born of a cow that
can never conceive again. By what the Egyptians Say, the cow is made pregnant
by a light from heaven, and thereafter gives birth to Apis. The marks of this
calf called Apis are these: he is black, and he has on his forehead a
three-cornered white spot, and the likeness of an eagle on his back (5)
The
word translated as “light” appears as “selas” in the original Greek text,
meaning the shining light produced by the sun, a thunderbolt or a meteor.
Readers can thus imagine this procreative light to be a sunbeam, a flash of
lightning, or the light of a meteor. This is all Celestial Fire or “ignis
caelestis” – the term used by another ancient writer to describe the ray of
light which created the Apis (6).
Ovid also knows that Zeus was the sun initially, whose light and heat are of a phallic character. In his Metamorphoses
(I, 588-597), the god desires the beautiful Io and asks her to keep
herself ready for him in an umbrageous forest, namely when „the sun at
his zenith’s height is overwarm“ (7). The time of love’s union is hence
meant to be noon, when the potency of the sun is at its greatest.
Zeus also appears as a
procreative god of light in the myth of Danae. According to Sophocles (8),
Danae is being held captive by her father Acrisios in a grave-like room
underground, locked away from the “sky’s light”, to prevent her from falling
pregnant. But Zeus, god of light and the sky, impregnates her with his
“gold-streaming seed” (9), which penetrates through her prison walls and into her womb. This
is usually imagined as golden rain – “imber aureus“, as Hyginus (Fabula 63) calls it. The life-giving
light is perceived as a liquid seed, because it creates life both in Danae and
on the earth. It can thus be considered “light sperm”. But just as was the case
for the selas that created the Apis,
it can also mean fire: “On the other hand, gold represents fire, so the Danae
myth could also be expressing the idea of fiery seeds from the sky” (10).
A schizophrenic patient of
psychoanalyst and Carl Gustav Jung pupil Sabina Spielrein similarly found the
sun’s warmth and light to represent the effects of a potent male god. The
patient identified with Mother Earth, who, frozen under a blanket of snow, is
brought back to life and saved by sunshine and is penetrated by a sunbeam (11).
C.G. Jung’s Analytical Psychology certainly does not dismiss these ideas as
absurd or worthless. For Jung and his pupil, the notion of a sunbeam being the
phallus of the male sky god is an archetype, i.e. an ancient idea innate in all
humans. Another fantasy conjured up by Spielrein’s patient expressed the
archetypal notion of the sunbeam as a phallus: “Jesus Christ has shown me his love
by tapping at the window with a sunbeam” (12). The sunbeam has become hard,
virtually erect – enabling the Christian male god to use it to tap on her
window and ask for permission to enter her room (and body) (13).
Spielrein’s patient identified with Mother Earth, which is fertilised by
sunlight. Men, particularly when they become megalomaniacs, tend to identify
with the sun god. This is the case with Frankenstein. His ideal is conveyed in
Professor Waldman’s words: These are scientists who “penetrate into the recesses
of nature” and, like the storm god Zeus, “can command the thunder of heaven”.
So it is no surprise that Frankenstein’s fantasies of almightiness include the
notion we addressed in relation to the Danae myth: The archetype of raining
gold or light as the celestial sperm of the procreative sun god:
No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore
me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and
death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour
a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its
creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to
me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should
deserve theirs.
…
I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of
being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet.
These ideas prompt
Frankenstein, who is putting together a human body out of real body parts, to
bring it to life with electricity. At a superficial level, the image of the
“torrent of light” of course signifies a scientist bringing light to unexplored
realms of nature in order to gain control over them. But the following two
sentences reveal that he feels like a procreating father; that his scientific
curiosity is sublimated sexuality, and by pouring the “torrent of light” “into
our dark world”, he is penetrating Mother Nature and creating new life.
Nature of course includes the
earth, which is also perceived as a female, a mighty goddess: Mother Earth,
Gaia. She, too, is penetrated by Frankenstein when he digs up graves to find
body parts – though it still gives him the creeps, because he can sense he is
transcending boundaries:
Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I
dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave…
This quote contains the
religious term “unhallowed”, the past participle of the verb “to unhallow”,
which is a synonym for “to desecrate”. The holy cemetery soil is defiled by
Frankenstein because he penetrates it; he is a tomb raider. Katey Castellano
has a similar view here: “Shelley intensifies this Gothic horror as Victor’s
scientific discovery further requires his intrusion into the ‘unhallowed damps
of the grave’ – unhallowed because of
his intrusion and subsequent mutilation and manipulation of dead bodies” (14).
The earth penetrated by Frankenstein is damp – this ensues from the noun “damps”, but also
from the verb “to dabble” whose meaning in our quote is defined by COLLINS as
follows: “to dip, move, or splash (the fingers, feet, etc.) in a liquid”. Freud
explains it as follows: The holes Frankenstein digs at cemeteries symbolise the
vagina, because the archetypical notion of the earth is one of a woman’s body,
and Frankenstein penetrating it to find buried bodies is a sexual act; he is
penetrating the cemetery soil to become a father – the monster becomes his
child. This also fits with the “damps of the grave”, since the vagina gets
moist during sex.
But the moisture in the womb of the earth can also be interpreted in the
context of an Ancient Roman wedding custom described by Varro (Delingua Latina V,61):
Therefore the conditions of procreation are two: fire
and water. Thus these are used at the threshold in weddings, because there is
union here, and fire is male, which the semen is in the other case, and the
water is the female, because the embryo develops from her moisture, and the
force that brings their vinctio
‘binding’ is Venus ‘Love’. (15)
Varro’s explanation once again
mentions the notion of fire as a male procreative principle, as light sperm,
for “the fire element was particularly seen as an expression of male power and
the masculine principle in ancient times” (16). But water represents the
amniotic fluid of the uterus in which the unborn child is growing. Even Mother
Earth’s womb is moist because, according to ancient beliefs, a dead person has
penetrated it in order to be reborn (17) – this is part of the circle of nature
Frankenstein is tampering with.
For the young Victor, digging around at cemeteries is thus substitutive
gratification to replace the sex he cannot have with his wife Elizabeth due to
him being impotent. And by bringing a dead body to life in his laboratory, he
creates the son he cannot produce naturally, so that he can still feel like a
proud father.
Shelley’s novel is thus
inspired by the archetype of Mother Earth, which we will be examining further.
People have always seen the
earth as being a fertile woman, calling her Mother Earth, Gaia or “universal
mother earth” (18). The farmer who rips her open to sow seeds in her furrows
plays the role of the man in a sexual act. The earth is impregnated by him, and
bears him children, the field crops. “Attic
religion clearly attests to the fact that the sowing and harvesting of fruit
was equated with human procreation and birth, that is to say, they were seen as
one,” writes Albrecht Dieterich in his essay Mother Earth: an essay on
folk-religion, still considered fundamental to this day. Of the many examples
listed by Dieterich (19), one in particular is worth mentioning. In Sophocles’
drama The Women of Trachis, Deianira is the wife of Hercules, bearing
his children but still feeling neglected by him, as the adventurous hero is
rarely at home with her; she compares herself to a distant field, with him as
the farmer:
And
then children were born to us; whom he has seen only as the husbandman sees his
distant field, which he visits at seed-time, and once again at harvest. (20)
The archetypal image of the field, which is female, and of ploughing,
which symbolises procreation, also inspired Shakespeare, who, in his Sonnet
3, urges a handsome young man to father a son to perpetuate his own beauty,
which fades with age:
Look
in thy glass, and tell the face thou viewest
Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
Forwhere is she so fair whose unear’d womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
The Koran (The Cow, 2:223)also
compares a wife with a field cultivated by her husband; although not expressly
stated, the archetypal analogy insinuates that sex not only conduces to lust,
but also procreation:
Your
wives are a tilth for you; so approach your tilth when and how you like
This also includes the ancient
and once widespread wedding custom of throwing seeds (or in today’s Western
world more commonly rice grains) over the bridal pair (21). The rice grains
which fall on the bride’s body as if on a seed plot celebrate life. Because
they say to her: Do as Mother Earth does and become fertile! And to the groom:
Be a diligent farmer! Then your marriage will be blessed with children, and
wherever there are children, there is nature and life. One woman refuses to do
this is Eleanor Rigby in the song of the same name by the Beatles. She doesn’t
bother with reality, and instead “lives in a dream”. As such, no man is ever
good enough for her and she remains alone. She dies and, as she has no children
and therefore also no grandchildren, no one comes to her funeral. The song
begins with the pious Eleanor Rigby cleaning her church, picking up the rice
grains which have been thrown over a bridal pair during a wedding – in contrast
to the infertile, lonely existence of the old spinster. The song is depressing,
for it addresses the themes of single life and childlessness, both of which are
becoming increasingly prevalent in the Western world.
Given the body of a young woman is akin to a field, then the furrow in which
the seed is sown is her vagina. For instance, the name of the Indian goddess
Sita, who epitomises a flawless wife, comes from Sanskrit and literally means
“furrow”; she was originally an earth goddess who represented fertility and
rich harvests (22).
Also symbolic of the vagina are the holes dug by the native Wachandi people of
Australia as part of a fertilisation ceremony in spring: They dig a hole in the ground, so shaping it and setting
it about with bushes that it looks like a woman’s genitals. Then they dance round
this hole all night, holding their spears in front of them in imitation of an erect
penis. As they dance round, they thrust their spears into the hole, shouting: Pulli
nira, pulli nira, wataka! (Not a pit, not a pit, but a c____!)” (23).
One question which continues to be raised is that of why what Frankenstein does
with the earth at cemeteries is considered objectionable, forbidden, even
sacrilegious, when the same attitude does not apply to what Shakespeare or the
Koran advise men to do or what the Beatles sing as being natural: namely making
the woman the seed plot.
The answer is as follows: The reason what Frankenstein does is unnatural and
forbidden is because it is something incestuous; he is penetrating Mother
Earth. But won’t yet suffice as an explanation, for the earth due to be
impregnated with the sperm of the husband (as per the Koran) or the worshipped
youth (as per Shakespeare), and into which the Wachandi thrust their spears or
which the Beatles compare with a bride, is also a mother; Mother Earth. But
there’s one key difference: In the examples listed above, the woman into whom
the man drives his sperm is actually a mother or mother-to-be, namely the
mother of his children. The earth that Frankenstein penetrates, however,
represents his own mother. This is revealed to us by the nightmare he has
straight after bringing the monster to life, when he dreams of kissing his wife
Elizabeth:
I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health,
walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her,
but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue
of death; her features appeared to chance, and I thought that I held the corpse
of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I saw the
grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel.
The dream replays what Victor
used to do every day, namely dig up graves to find dead bodies, which is
something that also causes him sleepless nights due to the raw “horrors” it has
left in his mind:
Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I
dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave…
He felt these “horrors”
because, in his subconscious, he knew he was transgressing two boundaries: He
was defiling the cemetery’s earth and also violating his mother. His actions
are incestuous because he wants them to make him a father without him having to
overcome his attachment to his mother. Frankenstein transgresses the boundary
set by the incest taboo by penetrating the “hiding places”, the “recesses of
nature”, of Mother Nature. His enquiring mind has sexual overtones, and prompts
him to commit male acts of violence against the female nature in order to
colonise her: “Penetration into ‘the recesses of nature’ equates the scientific
mastery of nature with the sexual mastery of women” (24). In our eyes, a man
who, in ancient times, cleared a primeval forest in a heroic act of force,
often having to fight wild animals and even dragons, in order to establish a
city and gain farmland, is definitely not considered a mummy’s boy, even if it
means he is burdened with the original guilt as a result of this attack on
nature; he is instead seen as being healthy and masculine, as a mythical role
model and culture hero like Heracles or Cadmus. In the case of Frankenstein,
however, the penetration of Mother Earth and Mother Nature is something unmanly
because it is incestuous, since Mother Earth, and Mother Nature in general,
represents his own mother. She is his actual sex object, which he ends up
attaining in his dream by penetrating the earth. She is covered in a burial
shroud; in other words, she is an object he wants to unveil, to disrobe, in
order to take sexual possession of her. The same is true for Mother Nature,
which Victor seeks to fight even as a pubescent school pupil with his
scientific curiosity:
The
most learned philosopher knew little more. He had partially unveiled the face
of Nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He
might dissect, anatomise, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause,
causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. I
had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human
beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly I had
repined.
The fantasy of the pupil
wanting to “unveil” nature recurs in his dream as a university student: His
mother is veiled, i.e. is something capable of being unveiled, but he is
prevented from accessing it because of the incest taboo, which intervenes as a
censor in the dream. As a result, the dream does not continue, and he instead
wakes up. This personal, incestuous guilt is joined by the original guilt of
the human being who defiles nature in order to colonise it – and these two
guilt categories are closely related, for only it is only through the mastering
and intensive exploitation of nature that the Western man, embodied by
Frankenstein, has become addicted to consumption, softened by wealth, and,
essentially, a decadent mummy’s boy. This dual guilt gives rise to the Western
man’s masochistic need for punishment, which similarly characterises Shelley’s
novel and Whale’s film – namely, the notion that nature strikes back in the
form of the monster.
1)
Cf. Susan Coulter, who argues that Frankenstein
fails as a “parent”: ‘Frankenstein’ – a cautionary tale of bad
parenting: “…the creature made his way to Frankenstein’s bedside … as a
small child does to their mother”.
2) Plutarch: Alexander 2
3) Wolfgang Speyer: Die Zeugungskraft des himmlischen Feuers in
Antike und Urchristentum, p. 241f.
4) Plutarch: Live
of Cato the Elder 17,7; cf. Speyer, loc. cit., p. 243 and Otto Schönberger:
Der glückliche Cato. In: Rheinisches
Museum 112 (1969) p. 190
5) Herodotus III, 28
6) Pomponius Mela: Chorographia
I, 49
7) Translated by Frank Justus Miller (The Loeb Classical Library)
8) Sophocles: Antigone
944 ff.
9) Sophocles: Antigone
950 - translated by Blake Tyrrell and Larry J. Bennett
10) Wolfgang Speyer: Die
Zeugungskraft des himmlischen Feuers in Antike und Christentum, in:
Wolfgang Speyer: Frühes Christentum im
antiken Strahlungsfeld, p. 242 f.
11) Sabina Spielrein: Über
den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falles von Schizophrenie. In: Jahrbuch für
psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen 3 (1912), p. 375 and 382 f.
12) Cf. C. G. Jung: Symbols
of Transformation, § 637-638 – translated by R. F. C. Hull
13) Jung, loc. cit.
14) Katey Castellano: Feminism to Ecofeminism: The Legacy
of Gilbert and Gubar’s Readings of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and the Last
Man. In: Annette R. Federico (ed.): Gilbert & Gubar’s The Madwoman in the
Attic. After thirty Years. 2009, p. 83
15) Translation:
Roland G. Kent (The Loeb Classical Library)
16) Speyer, loc. cit., p. 240
17) “God’s acre” is a churchyard or burial ground. Its
original meaning is “Field of God”. It is based on the archetypal idea that the
buried body waiting to be reborn or resurrected is like a grain seed sown into
the earth. This archetype was the inspiration for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s
poem God’s
Acre. In order for the seed to grow and the plant to thrive, the soil
must be moist, which is why Gaia is also known as “Мать сыра земля /Damp Mother Earth” in Russian folklore.
18) Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound 90 - translated by
Smyth, Herbert Weir (Loeb Classical Library Volumes)
19) Albrecht Dieterich: Mutter Erde. Ein Versuch über Volksreligion, 3rd edition, 1925, p.
46f.
20) Translated by Richard C. Jebb
21) Cf. Dieterich, loc. cit.; p. 102
22) Cf.
C. G. Jung: Symbols of Transformation,
§ 306
23) C.
G. Jung: Symbols of Transformation, §
213 -translated by R. F. C. Hull