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Note: the following article on fate and chance in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a modified excerpt (pp. 83-84) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which can be downloaded (for free) from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, see here.

Fate and Chance as Dichotomies of Timing

In several Gothic works, fate and chance (and particularly their dynamic balance) are often the main force driving the plot forward. As Frankenstein exemplifies, characters often fall prey to their fate as a result of frustratingly well-timed occurrences.

As the character of Walton mentions in his letter to his sister, his plans would have failed if he had not inherited a fortune “just at [the] time” of a failed previous endeavor (Shelley 14).

At the beginning of his narration, Victor Frankenstein mentions how “a variety of circumstances” did not allow his father to marry early (Ibid 26). This is only the beginning, as Victor himself soon falls victim to the machinations of time. Just as he is about to leave Ingolstadt and return to his hometown, “an incident happened that protracted [his] stay” (Ibid 40). Later on, Victor sees his plans falling apart again. As he plans to return to Geneva, he is “delayed by several accidents” (Ibid 55).

These instances of tragic irony are what I define as dichotomies of timing. Essentially, the plot splits into two different directions: the thetical one that is the actual outcome leading to the events described in the story, and the antithetical one that is its opposite. Such a reading poses a question: Had Victor escaped these events, would the ensuing catastrophe have happened? Is fate avoidable?

Coincidence versus Divine Interference

Brown argues that coincidence in Frankenstein can be examined either as something indeed random or as something behind which a guiding hand is hidden, adding that in such a context “[t]he improbable becomes the inevitable” (2005, 195). This is an important point, as in the framework of Hegelian synthesis one could speak of becoming, as the one semantic category transforms into the other.

The in-between ambiguity, perhaps especially when examined from the temporal perspective of the eternal now, has a clearly sublime aura around it. The undefinable eternal present, the “point” when sublimity occurs and when the improbable becomes the inevitable, allows a glimpse into another reality, but one which does not entirely come into focus:

The terror of Frankenstein lies in the collapse of the antinomial categories of reason into a grotesque deformation of the order of the experience. The narrative is perfectly connected with a ring of inevitability, but not with a logic humans can live by. The normal and the pathological can scarcely be distinguished. (Brown 2005, 195)

In effect, the novel seems less preoccupied with resolving the quandary as to whether the characters face the improbable or the inevitable, and instead underlines their ambiguous border.

Employing Todorov’s approach on ambiguity, there is a contrast between the supernatural presence of fate or a “guiding hand” and the illusion that such a force exists. Furthermore, it is this very ambiguity – the temporally abstract “duration of the uncertainty” (Todorov 1973, 25) – where the Gothic can be most effectively located.

Ambiguity: Fate and Chance, Reality and Fantasy

The ambiguous placement of Frankenstein between reality and fantasy was already noticed right after its publication, as a contemporary critic reveals:

There never was a wilder story imagined, yet, like most of the fictions of this age, it has an air of reality attached to it, by being connected with the favourite projects and passions of the times … Our appetite, we say, for every sort of wonder and vehement interest, has in this way become so desperately inflamed, that especially as the world around us has again settled into its old dull state of happiness and legitimacy, we can be satisfied with nothing in fiction that is not highly coloured and exaggerated. (The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany 1818)

The perceptive anonymous reviewer notices not only the balancing of Frankenstein between reality and fantasy – as well as the fact that it represents a wider cultural milieu – but also the function Gothic novels can serve, namely as means of expressing the rebellion of “every sort of wonder” against the “dull state of happiness and legitimacy”.

Frankenstein, by refusing to side clearly with either the improbable or the inevitable, the supernatural presence of fate or the acknowledgment of its illusion, underlines the need for a never-ending process of doubting, a permanent revolution of sorts, in a true Marxist fashion (Punter 1980, 128).

Works Cited

Brown, Marshall. The Gothic Text. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.
Punter, David. The Literature of Terror. London: Longman, 1980.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1999.
The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany; A New Series of “The Scots Magazine”. 2 (1818): 249–53.
Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Translated by Richard Howard. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973.

Read more: Angelis, Christos. “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic. Doctoral Dissertation. Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Press, 2017. Available from the repository of the Tampere University Press.