Jonathan Bate: "Frankenstein and the State of Nature"

The three main keys that really resinated with me after reading Jonathan Bate's criticism of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein were as follows:

         -First, was the fact that Bate drew a connection between Frankenstein's creature, and the novel's narrator, Robert Walton. Bate says that Walton will always be a "wonderer" or an "alien,"and the monster obviously has the same afflictions. This was a new connection that I hadn't thought to make, and I found that very interesting.

         -Another observation Bate made was that the first sighting of both the creature and Dr. Frankenstein himself were made by Robert Walton. This allowed for an interesting juxtaposition. Walton and his crew first saw the beast, who was large and brute-like. Frankenstein on the other hand, from first glance even, seemed sophisticated and educated. This set up the whole premise for the book-Frankenstein versus the beast.

          - Finally, Bate basically says that Frankenstein's beast has no chance of success from his creation. He says that the evolution of human institutions goes as such: "first the forests, after that the huts, then the villages, next the cities, and finally the academies'." Since, though, the beast was born as the creation of Frankenstein and the academies', the creature has nowhere to go but down. The monster never had a chance.

     The criticism that Jonathan Bate lays out made me think of the book from many new angles that I hadn't before. He made me see the monster in a new light. I still do not feel any sympathy for Frankenstein's creation, but I see how he was set up for failure. I also see how Dr. Frankenstein committed transgressions against the monster and the human condition. The original sin from the novel was committed by Frankenstein himself, and that was his trying to "cheat death through knowledge instead of intercourse."