Shelley as a Precursor Psychoanalytic Theory

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Mary Shelley predicts the development of psychoanalytic criticism creating in Victor’s monster an ideal platform to demonstrate the methods of the theoretic approach. The discourse of psychoanalytic theory has evolved into a pervasive system at the foundation of multiple critical disciplines. While Freud outlines a system intended for the analysis of the dream world, his system also serves as the dialogue for approaching criticism of literary works. Literature is language. But language is amorphous, a system based on arbitrary representation of concepts defined by and greed upon by the users of the system of language. Thus to enter a dialogue on literature is to enter a dialogue on language itself. The fictional realities constructed by authors are a fantastical reality, a dream world invented by authors with language. But a dream world cannot be consumed literally. A dream world requires interpretation to correctly assess the information contained within it. Freud argues that literal meaning exists in opposition to the actual meaning and attempting “to read these characters according to their pictorial value instead of according to their symbolic relation” would lead inevitably to error (Freud 819). Thus approaching a text from a literal standpoint will inevitably lead the reader astray. If a “dream is a picture-puzzle,” than literature is a puzzle constructed of linguistic signs (Freud 819). The signs of a literary text are misleading and comprehending the meaning requires interpretation because “meaning is always in some sense an approximation, a near miss, a part-failure, mixing non-sense and non-communication into sense and dialogue” because language is fundamentally a subjective system (Eeagleton 147). Literary criticism is an attempt to extract the true meaning from the series of symbols of a text.

Frankenstein’s monster encounters the same difficulties faced by readers: assimilating the system of language. Language is not innate. The crisis the monster faces arises because he is not privy to the system of language. The monster evolves much like a child beginning first in a state without language and then conforming to the system in order to participate in it. Such is the fundamental component of any discourse; “language and its structure exist prior to the moment at which each subject at a certain point in his mental development makes his entry into it” (Lacan 1169). That is, the participation in language requires participation in and acceptance of an existing system. Lacan serves as an extension to Freud’s construction; not only does the dream world – the fictional reality of a literary work – require interpretation, but that interpretation is dependent on participation in language, a system that can itself be misleading. As a result of the ambiguities of language, “there are no interpretations but only misinterpretations” (Bloom 1658).

The monster of Shelley’s Frankenstein serves to demonstrate these theories in action. The monster begins in a child like state, discovers the importance of language, and then uses his knowledge of language to construct his perception of reality. However, the reality the monster comes to perceive is a fictional one, even within in the limits of the fictional world created by Shelley. The monster’s perception of the world is the result of misinterpreting literature. The monster comes to understand reality but it is a fictional construction of reality based on a false interpretation.

Both Freud and Lacan begin their arguments with childhood development. Victor’s monster too endures a childhood like experience that ultimately sets the stage for his for his ascent into the broader societal context: language. While the monster advances at a much faster pace than a normal child would, he nevertheless evolves over time exhibiting the stages of maturation. The monster at first begins to “distinguish [his] sensations from each other” (Shelley 68). Much as a child begins to gain a sense of his surroundings, the monster grows aware of his environment and his power over that environment. The monster too plays with fire, thrusting his hand “into the live embers but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain” (69). It is with this experience with fire that the monster understands both pain and a system of cause and effect, fundamental lessons of a natural childhood. He further learns to control his environment using fire for heat and light. He learns to forage and to wear clothing. But much like a child, the ultimate lesson becomes that of language, a moment when the monster transcends his existence outside of the human experience and develops a relationship, albeit a distant one, with humanity. Through this process, the monster “discovered the names that were given to some of the most familiar objects of discourse” (75). Like a child, the monster evolves from an infant stage without understanding of basic sense to an adult with the understanding of language as a system of signs; the words lacked “any apparent connexion with visible objects” (75). Because language is a system of arbitrary signs, the words the monster learns possess no innate link to the objects they describe. The Monster, and by extension Shelley, has stumbled on the fundamental component of Lacan’s interpretation of language. The relationship between these signs and language as a method of communication provides a link between Freud and Lacan; Lacan recognizes, much as the monster does, that language is a system already in existence.

Before the monster can assimilate and participate in the dialogue of humanity—before he can fulfill his lacking—he understands that he must learn the language of the dominant culture. In his earliest interactions with the cottagers, the monster recognizes he must “first become master of their language” (76). He also observes “they made many signs which I did not comprehend” (78). And when he overhears Felix reading a story, he is left “puzzled” (76). The important point here is that the monster identifies language as a sign that leaves him puzzled, the very same lexicon that Freud and Lacan would later use in describing the system of psychoanalysis; language, the monster unknowingly observes, is like Freud’s picture-puzzle. Further illustrating the importance of language is the monster’s observation of the barrier between Felix and the Turkish girl. Felix reads her letter, a text that has been translated by an old man. Without assimilating the preexisting system of language, two persons cannot communicate.

When the monster has learned the language of the cottagers, he is able to communicate and construct an identity. When the monster speaks to the old man of the cottage, the man remarks, “by your language, stranger, I suppose you are my countryman” (90). The monster’s identity then is tied explicitly to the language; the man feels kinship to him precisely because the monster has adopted the language of the dominant culture. Of course had the old man possessed the gift of sight, the monster’s appearance would have acted as a sign conveying a different and distinct concept: fear. It is at this moment where Shelley briefly introduces Freud’s concept of the uncanny, something that is “frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar” (Freud 826). However, neither Shelley’s focus nor the focus of this paper is on the concept of the uncanny. Rather, the critical point is that the monster begins to form his identity based on common language with the cottagers.

Once in possession of language, the monster sets about reading the texts of Paradise Lost and The Sorrows of Young Werther. In so doing, he springs the trap set by the ambiguity of language; he misinterprets the texts. The monster read the books “as a true history” (Shelley 87). He allows the texts to serve as a model for his reality. But while the monster is “able to decypher the characters,” he has not unlocked the meaning of the signs (87). He reads the books literally falling into the trap that Freud warns about: literal interpretation leads to error. The reality the monster creates then is no more real than the world Shelley lays out for her reader; he is living in a fictional reality, a dream world to which he is the author. The moment the monster creates a fictional reality, he succumbs to the very problem laid out by Bloom in The Anxiety of Influence. His fictional reality is a misinterpretation of the texts he has read. He comes to believe in Paradise Lost as containing real historical events rather than as a parody or fable. As a result his worldview is cast in the terms set out by Milton. The reality the monster comes to know is then a manifestation—in the same way an authors created work is a manifestation—of anxiety.

The monster’s narrative serves as an example of psychoanalytic theory in action; the use of and the interpretation of language play a central role in shaping the monster and his relationships with society. Shelley, perhaps unknowingly, predicts Freud and the subsequent psychoanalytic method of literary criticism. But even more salient, Shelley perhaps serves as a precursor to Freud and The Interpretation of Dreams merely the resulting anxiety from the misinterpretation of Frankenstein.

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Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. “The Anxiety of Influence.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1651 – 1659. Print.

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2003 Print.

Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 814 – 844. Print.

Lacan, Jacques. The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic
Experience. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Leitch, Vincent B.; Cain, William E.; Finke, Laurie; Johnson, Barbara; McGowan, John; Sharpley-Whiting, T. Denean; Williams, Jeffrey J. New York: Norton, 2010. 1156 – 1189. Print.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed J. Paul Hunter. New York: Norton, 1996. Print.