Paper presented at the conference “The notion of the Sublime in creativity and destruction” The Divinity School, St John’s College, Cambridge, 12-14 September 2014.
Abstract
As a child Victor Frankenstein opted-out of the oedipal confrontation. His study of a science outside the Discourse of University was driven by his father’s view of his readings as being “sad trash." Later, the spectacle of nature’s utter destructiveness seduced him and his desire was magnetized by a signifier: Electricity. Victor did not compete to bear or to possess the Phallus, but the mother’s body - its sublime ability to provide serenity and comfort and also its dangerous force. Outside the expertise of his forefathers, Victor embarked on the adventure of giving birth. The result could not be anything other than catastrophe. Victor’s way did not involve castration and the confirmation of human fundamental taboos. His lawless creation and the lawlessness of his position lead to death, not simply the punishment of the transgressive perpetrator but death in his family as a warning to social cohesion.
There is little doubt that Mary Shelley’s story Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus has become a modern myth. Almost everybody on the planet knows of the monster even if it is mostly through its cinematic shape. This creature they call Frankenstein. This in itself is an interesting fact. Shelley never called ‘it’ this. He was the ‘monster’, the ‘demoniacal corpse’, the ‘filthy daemon’ but over time the public asserted the monster’s right to a patronym. Victor Frankenstein was his father, he should therefore rightfully inherit the name.
It is commonly accepted that one of the function of myths is to validate and maintain a certain sociological system: a shared set of rights and wrongs, proprieties or improprieties, on which a particular social unit depends for its existence. The story of Oedipus in its connection with the prohibition of incest is at the heart of mankind move from nature to culture according to anthropologists. The Oedipus story itself contains a few monsters: in the background the Chtonian dragon killed by Kadmos in order that mankind be born from the earth and obviously the Sphinx, a monster unwilling to permit men to live. Claude Levi-Strauss suggests that myth have to do with “the inability, for a culture which holds the belief that mankind is autochthonous to find a satisfactory transition between this theory and the knowledge that human beings are actually born from the union of man and woman”. (Levi-Strauss, 1955). [In mythology autochthones are those mortals to have sprung from the soil, rocks and trees. They are rooted and belong to the land eternally]
Born from the union of man and woman… how do we know? How are human beings being born? Freud pointed out that this type of questioning appears to have been a human preoccupation since time immemorial: “We seem to hear the echoes of this first riddle in innumerable riddles of myth and legend”. Children try to answer this question and one example of the theories they make is given by Freud (1908): “…the child now comes to be occupied with the first, grand problem of life and asks himself the question: ‘Where do babies come from?’” Freud took the development of children’s sexual theories to be the prototype of the individual’s abstract thinking both in what brings it on - the subject is confronted with dangerous information (the primal scene, the impending arrival of a new baby) - and how the threat is dealt with: by the formation of a hypothesis. The theory is therefore the result of a defensive process, and Freud felt that its effectiveness lies in giving the Subject an illusion of possible control over reality: “as though thinking were entrusted with the task of preventing the recurrence of such dreaded events”. Not only is the sexual theory an independent creation of the child, but it “goes on operating as a self-sustained instinct for research”.
During this research the child is going to realise first the crucial role of the mother and in particular how to monopolise her. This is well described by Lacan’s version of the Oedipus complex. It involves a young child and focuses in a first phase on the dealings of the mother and the child. The child is aware that the mother is coming and going. This awareness comes from the fact that when she is present, the world of the child changes and changes again when she leaves, something that the baby senses even before being able to fully symbolise it. This leads, Lacan suggests, to a theoretical reflection about the mothers’ comings and goings and what causes it: “. “What does she want? I'd like it to be me that she wants, but it is clear that it's not just me, there is something else on her mind”. And Lacan to continue: ”What is on her mind is the x, the signified. This signified of her comings and goings it's the Phallus”. (Lacan, 1958).
With the first symbolization of the mother, something is instituted which is subjectified at a primitive level. This “subjectification consists simply in posing her as the primordial being who can be there, or not be there”. The first symbolization of the mother leads the child to separate out its dependence on her desire from the living experience of that dependence. More importantly, “what the subject desires, is not simply the craving for her care, for her contact, even for presence, it is the craving for her desire”. What the child seeks is to be able to satisfy his mother's desire, to be the object of the mother's desire and to do so will identify with this object that is the satisfying object for the mother.
Lacan is then going to move away from a litteral interpretation of the role of the father in the Oedipus complex by stating that in the Oedipus complex the father is not a real object even though he must intervene as a real object to embody castration. The father is symbolic, more precisely says Lacan, the father is a metaphor. “The function of the father in the Oedipus complex is to be a signifier substituted for the signifier, that is for the first signifier introduced into symbolization, the maternal signifier” (Lacan, 1958). The mother being the first object to be symbolised, she is at the centre of the baby’s preoccupations and the need to ‘secure’ her is paramount.
However, as we have seen above, in the dialectic of the presence/absence the child has to think about what keeps her away and faces the question of the mother’s desire. Having been able to symbolise its first object, it is logical for the child to postulate an object that the mother is after, even though from the point of view of the child “it should be me that she wants”. This imagined object, something the mother desire more than anything else is the Phallus. The Oedipal drama in its first phase rests on an impossible exchange: ‘prove me, by your behaviour, that I have it’ is the child’s demand; ‘how can I tell him/her that he/she’s not everything for me?’ underlines the mother’s non-response. The mother anticipates that the whole truth would be devastating in its raw form: you don’t have it, you can’t fully please me and I will leave you because of this; or worse: you have it, I don’t need anything or anyone else and we will stay forever enmeshed. A subterfuge is in the best of interest of both the baby and the mother’s libidinal investments. The disguising of the truth is going to be made possible by the metaphoric process, which precisely substitutes and hides signifiers.
This process however implies the submission of the child to the metaphoric process. There are numerous ways of refusing, avoiding, rebelling against this necessity to submit. However, these all have consequences. They can be individual consequences for the psyche of the individual (for example the famous forclusion of the name-of-the father and the creation of a psychotic structure) but they could also be consequences at a social level. I have mentioned the social role of the prohibition of incest described by anthropologists. Lévi-Strauss points out that the prohibition of incest is less a rule prohibiting marriage with the mother, sister or daughter, than rule obliging the mother, sister or daughter to be given to others. Incest is prohibited “not because [of] a biological danger ... but because exogamous marriage results in a social benefit”… “provides the fundamental and immutable rule ensuring the existence of the group as a group”.
As a child Victor Frankenstein opted-out of the oedipal confrontation. Let’s examine his background:
I am by birth a Genevese, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years counsellors and syndics, and my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation.
In other words a famous family, a filiation one can be proud of but also a father who is a mighty rival.
This powerful father is going to marry a woman whose position is at least fantasmatically incestuous: the very young daughter of a deceased friend
…after the interment of his friend he conducted her to Geneva and placed her under the protection of a relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife.
Young Victor’s life is described as blissful but marked by his conviction of having a special status:
There was a considerable difference between the ages of my parents… My mother's tender caresses and my father's smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me are my first recollections. I was their plaything and their idol, and something better—their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven…
The family’s tendency to transgress rules and fascination for the sublime qualities of certain being continues with the adoption of a girl met by chance. Their infatuation for the girl derives from their immediate imaginary fantasies about her look and qualities:
Her hair was the brightest living gold, and despite the poverty of her clothing, seemed to set a crown of distinction on her head. Her brow was clear and ample, her blue eyes cloudless, and her lips and the moulding of her face so expressive of sensibility and sweetness that none could behold her without looking on her as of a distinct species, a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features.
Next on the list of transgression is the mother’s confusing statement for Victor’s sexual theories:
On the evening previous to her being brought to my home, my mother had said playfully, "I have a pretty present for my Victor—tomorrow he shall have it." And when, on the morrow, she presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon Elizabeth as mine—mine to protect, love, and cherish.
Elizabeth, incarnation of the feminine, is sublime in body and mind and thriving in the equally sublime landscape:
She busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets; and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home —the sublime shapes of the mountains, the changes of the seasons, tempest and calm, the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence of our Alpine summers
Victor becomes engaged in a different pursuit:
While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember.
His research is going to be influenced by a particular event:
When I was about fifteen years old, we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunder-storm… on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak, which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump… I never beheld any thing so utterly destroyed.
What is so powerful that mighty oak can be utterly destroyed. ?
The catastrophe of this tree excited my extreme astonishment; and I eagerly inquired of my father the nature and origin of thunder and lightning. He replied, "Electricity"
Victor’s research is going to aim at the mastery of this amazing power and he could have become a scientist but:
I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa… A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind; and, bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father… My father looked carelessly at the title-page of my book, and said, "Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash." …
Victor is going to teach himself of to rely on a knowledge his father did not have:
While I followed the routine of education in the schools of Geneva, I was, to a great degree, self-taught with regard to my favourite studies. My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child's blindness, added to a student's thirst for knowledge. Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life
His intentions and fantasies are very clear:
I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.
Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery [!]
I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery soon gave place to delight and rapture.
Victor is going to give birth outside the laws of procreation, his creation is going to be made from dead parts, berried bodies…the earth (autochtonous). He will then become the founder of a new ‘species’:
A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.
Not only Victor avoids any oedipal rivalry with his father and risk of castration but will have sons who won’t be in a position to rival him:
No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.
The story however warns of the impossible of such a project and the product of the procreation is a deception:
by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
This child is not good enough and once the tension of the process of making a baby is gone it is disgust that Victor experiences:
I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.
In a cowardly way Victor is going to run away from his responsibility:
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.
The reader is then going to witness the collapse of Victor’s family and in some ways of society. The creature will murder his brother William, his friend Clerval and his then wife Elizabeth; Justine, William's nanny, is hanged for the murder of William, Victor is imprisoned for the murder of his friend and suffers a mental breakdown in prison….
These plagues are the punishment for having tried to be outside humanity, defined by the fundamental law of procreation and also having refused both his responsibility but also any attempt at humanising the creature: teaching it to speak, showing love or giving him a bride so that maybe they can reintegrate the human family.
As a child Victor did not compete to bear or to possess the Phallus, but revelled in the sublime enjoyment of nature, his adopted sister’s beauty and his mother’s ability to provide serenity and comfort. Enjoying nature he also noticed its overwhelming and dangerous force and decided that this was what he wanted to control. Outside the expertise of his forefathers, Victor studied and decided to embark on the adventure of giving birth outside sexuality, being himself the catalyst of a process where nature (electricity) self-fecundate the earth, the dead flesh of bodies. The return to the pre-oedipal world of the Greek autochtons, could not be anything for mankind other than a catastrophe. Victor’s way did not involve castration and the confirmation of human fundamental taboos. His lawless creation and the lawlessness of his position lead to death, not simply the punishment of the transgressive perpetrator but death in his family as a warning to social cohesion.
References
Freud, S. (1908). On the Sexual Theories of Children. SE Volume IX (1906-1908): Jensen's ‘Gradiva’ and Other Works, 205-226.
Lacan J. (1958) D’une question preliminaire a tout traitement des psychoses, La psychanalyse, n° 4, 1-50.
Lévi-Strauss C. (1955) The Journal of American Folklore, The structural study of myth, 68, 270:428-44.
Lévi-Strauss C., Elementary structure of kinship, Beacon Press, 1969.