Читать книгу Children of Prometheus: Romanticism and Its Legacy - Gregory Maertz - Страница 10

Following Wollstonecraft’s death in 1797, Godwin was left to care for their infant daughter and the three-year old Fanny Imlay. At this time he began to work on St. Leon, and the new novel, which anticipates the interest in history and the historical accuracy of his Life of Chaucer (1803) and History of the Commonwealth of England (1824–28), examines what Godwin described a few years before as “the evils which arise out of the present system of civilized society,” and he considered the novel’s publication an effort to “disengage the minds of men from prepossession, and launch them upon the sea of moral and political inquiry.”4 Thus St. Leon resumes the critique of “things as they are” that commenced with An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) and was continued in Caleb Williams (1794) and, like the previous novel, St. Leon was intended to make Godwin’s political teachings more widely accessible. In particular, the new novel reveals the extent to which Godwin’s views on marriage had been modified under the tutelage of Wollstonecraft; in fact, even friendly critics charged that he had recanted his revolutionary views on relationships between the sexes. (He concedes this point in the novel’s Preface: “I apprehend domestic and private affections inseparable from the nature of man, and from what may be styled the culture of the heart, and am fully persuaded that they are not incompatible with a profound and active sense of justice in the mind that cherishes them.”)5 Scattered throughout the text, variations of this view contradict Godwin’s memorable description of marriage given in Book VIII of Political Justice (1793) as “the worst of all monopolies.”6 And yet, the revised argument presented in St. Leon, which accommodates bourgeois family life, is but another example of the intertextual dialogue conducted between Political Justice and Godwin’s prose fiction: the later texts suggest modifications to the ideology set down in the philosophical treatise.

The overall design and thematic patterns of St. Leon are replicated typologically in Frankenstein. At the center is a presentation of the “education” of the protagonist Reginald de St. Leon alternately via chivalry and alchemy. (Alchemy, it is implied, is analogous to chivalry; both are anachronistic social and scientific paradigms.) The latter is perceived initially by the protagonist as a possible vehicle by which he might simultaneously serve mankind and seek atonement for his betrayal of the chivalric code. Reginald’s travels embody an ironic inversion of the classical Bildungsreise; his education is based on disillusioning rather than edifying experiences. And, anticipating the trajectory of the Monster’s experience, rather than the popular gratitude he expects in response to his benevolent actions, suffering and destruction seem ineluctably to follow in his wake and he is rejected precisely by those whom he had intended to help. As a result, he is hunted down by such adversaries as his son Charles and his erstwhile friend, Bethlem Gabor. Reginald’s fate is shared by Victor and the Monster (who alternately serve as each other’s prey), and parallels to all three characters are found in the tragic situation of Oedipus. Sophocles’s tragedy, St. Leon, and Frankenstein are all myths of misguided benevolence in which hubristic transgression of social, religious, and epistemological boundaries is punished by exile from human society. Mary Godwin also suffers ostracism from her family following her elopement with Shelley—an intolerable act of rebellion against her father’s authority—which coincides with a new phase of authorship independent of her father’s influence. And yet her new status as an author connects her more closely than ever to her precursors Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Shelley.

Following his disillusioning experience of the brutalities of war in the Italian campaigns of French King Francis I (1494–1547), Reginald finds himself ill-equipped to function in civilian society. Precisely because he is publicly celebrated as a paragon of chivalry who no longer believes in its values, Godwin presents his fall from grace as symptomatic of a culture in decline. Thus chivalry, Edmund Burke’s shibboleth in The Reflections on the Revolution in France and Godwin’s target in Caleb Williams, is exposed as already otiose even during its supposed heyday. A living anachronism driven to gambling, Reginald forfeits his family’s honor and fortune. Flying from France in disgrace, he settles his family near Lake Geneva. The idyllic scene is reminiscent of the De Laceys’ cottage in the forest where Victor’s Monster finds refuge.

The appearance of a mysterious interloper, Zampieri, violates the intimacy of the family circle and awakens Reginald’s dormant ambition. The stranger offers to share the mystery of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir vitae but only on condition that Reginald agrees in advance not to share this secret with anyone, not even Marguerite, his high-minded wife. Her character is an idealized portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft and serves as the model for all the noble female characters in Frankenstein: Caroline, Agatha, Safie, Justine, and Victor’s cousin, childhood companion, and fiancée Elizabeth Lavenza. Reginald’s first impulse is to refuse Zampieri’s offer, insisting that his “heart was formed by nature for social ties . . . and I will not now consent to anything that shall infringe on the happiness of my soul.” (II, 7) Zampieri responds by striking at Reginald’s Achilles’ heel; as a true knight and the flower of French chivalry he desires to serve once again as an agent of justice and public welfare: “Feeble and effeminate mortal! Was ever a great discovery prosecuted, or an important benefit conferred upon the human race, by him who was incapable of standing, and thinking, and feeling, alone?” (II, 7, 8) The esoteric skills are imparted and immediately Reginald experiences a complete resurrection of his former pride and ambition. His transformation parallels Victor’s metamorphosis following the creation of his hideous offspring, but as the bearer of a monstrous secret he embarks on an odyssey “hated by mankind, hunted from the face of the earth, pursued by atrocious calumny, without country, without a roof, without a friend.” (II, 9)

While Reginald’s and Victor’s horrible inner transformation is comparable, the knowledge engendering such change in the psyche of the protagonists is different and must be distinguished. In contrast to the “new science” of natural philosophy that engenders Victor’s creative act of hubris, Godwin’s protagonist, Reginald de St. Leon, pursues the arcane arts of alchemy, but both Reginald and Victor are both afflicted by a mania for illicit knowledge that Chris Baldick has called “epistemophilia.”7 Knowledge per se is, however, not the crucial issue; it is rather the specific character of the knowledge that they seek. Awakened by the writings of Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus, alchemy is also Victor’s first intellectual passion, and he confesses to Walton that “if only he had been content to study the more rational theory of chemistry which had resulted from modern discoveries” it is possible “that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin.” The following passage, with its self-analysis and confessional tone, might just as easily have been spoken by Godwin’s protagonist:

My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality, and I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life. But the latter obtained my most undivided attention: wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render men in vulnerable to any but a violent death.8

Masao Miyoshi observes that “in Frankenstein the main vehicle of Gothic fantasy is no longer the conventional supernatural” such as alchemy; instead, it is the “new science,” which, as a result of the protagonist’s misapplication, vitiated its claims to being “a humane pursuit by demonstrating its possible monstrous results.” Shelley reveals in her appropriation and revision of her father’s novel that “science,” the definitive Enlightenment pursuit, “can generate a totally new species of terror. If scientific man is a kind of God, his scientific method becomes a new supernaturalism, a contemporary witchdoctoring of frightening potential.”9 But clearly, what Reginald and Victor have most in common is the abuse of their respective sciences. Both novels present the distortion and perversion of procreation as a misapplication of science, old and new, and the process leading to Mary Godwin’s emergence as a novelist corresponds to Reginald’s application of alchemy and Victor’s exploitation of the “new science,” since all three processes presuppose the transgression of nature, established authority, and, ultimately, the social order.

The enormous destructive potential of Reginald and Frankenstein’s secret powers condemns them to the remorseless isolation experienced by all those who possess the Midas touch, starting with Godwin himself, whose influence as a philosopher appears under the guise of alchemy and science in both novels.10 If Reginald’s powers are shared with others the laws of nature will be violated, thus posing a threat to the whole basis of human civilization: “Exhaustless wealth, if communicated to all men, would be but an exhaustless heap of pebbles and dust; and nature will not admit her everlasting laws to be so abrogated, as they would be by rendering the whole race of sublunary man immortal.” (II, 103) In this way, Reginald’s concerns over the potential misuse of his powers anticipate Victor’s principled refusal to create a female companion for the Monster. It is important to note that altruism dominates the following passage and not, as Anne K. Mellor insists,11 fear of female sexuality or the conscious drive to “usurp” the female principle in procreation:

I was now about to form another being of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighborhood of man and hide himself in deserts; but she had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation . . . . Even if they were to leave Europe and inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the demon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had I a right for my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations? (122–123)

The use of his illicit powers increases Reginald’s sense of isolation, and his lament resonates with his counterpart’s in Frankenstein: “Man was not born to live alone. He is linked to his brethren by a thousand ties; and, when those ties are broken, he ceases from all genuine existence.” (III, 97) But rather than put an end to his wretched wanderings, Reginald, after employing the elixir vitae in order to make good his escape from the Spanish Inquisition, “panted for something to contend with and something to conquer. My senses unfolded themselves to all the curiosity of remark; my thoughts seemed capable of industry unwearied, and investigation the most constant and invincible. Ambition revived in my bosom . . . desired to perform something . . . that I might see the world start at and applaud.” (III, 284)

Illustrating Godwin’s prowess in the historical travel mode made popular by Ann Radcliffe and M. G. Lewis, Reginald crosses Europe and finds his desired new field of action in Hungary. Ravaged by war, famine, and grinding servitude under the Turks, the inhabitants of this nation seem ready for a savior, and Reginald seizes the chance to atone for the death of his wife and the breakup of his family with some supreme act of charity and benevolence. However, rather than endearing himself to his Hungarian hosts, the gold he creates in order to buy wheat undermines the nation’s markets, stokes runaway inflation, and increases the suffering of the population. Once again, the use of alchemy has been shown to disrupt the laws of nature and society and to alienate the protagonist still further from the human circle. Reginald’s ostracism marks him as another member of the band of Romantic outcasts: the Ancient Mariner, Childe Harold, Prometheus, and his literary double, Victor Frankenstein. Transgression is the natural consequence of hubris, and it is punished by exile from one’s home culture. Mary suffers ostracism from her family as a result of transgressing her father’s will and the hubris of elopement is equated with the exercise of her procreative powers and her emergence as the author of her own literary texts. This is the same pattern of creation/transgression/isolation replicated in St. Leon and Frankenstein. Release from this condition is achieved only in confession or by acts of unselfish caring that lead to absolution. But such deliverance is denied to Reginald and Victor. Even though the Monster reads Victor’s lab notes, his scientific method is never disclosed to others. Similarly, Reginald keeps his promise to Zampieri and the secret of the philosopher’s stone is never revealed to the reader. Indeed, the entire first-person narrative in St. Leon forms a series of complex circumlocutions corresponding to the evasive actions and disguises that Reginald requires to preserve his secret at all costs. Instead of genuine communication, Godwin’s protagonist offers what he admits is only the semblance of communication and “the unburdening of the mind” simply because he recognizes it is of the essence of being human “insatiably [to thirst] for a confident [sic] and a friend.” (II, 103) Reginald’s faux confession functions merely as auto-therapy, and his sufferings, while offering an admonition to the reader, are not redeemed. He is doomed to continue his wanderings without respite.