November 9, 2020
Reality in Frankenstein: Dreams and Temporal Distortion
Note: the following article on reality in Frankenstein is a modified excerpt (pp. 150-152) from my doctoral dissertation, “Time is Everything with Him”: The Concept of the Eternal Now in Nineteenth-Century Gothic, which is available for free from the repository of the Tampere University Press. For a list of my other academic publications, presentations, etc. feel free to visit the relevant page on the main Home for Fiction website.
Reality in Frankenstein is a matter of temporal perception. On more than one occasion Victor Frankenstein alludes to a distorted sense of time, which effectively precludes the possibility of defining reality. As the grieving scientist admits, “[s]ix years had elapsed, passed as a dream” (F 61).
However, the most powerful sense of loss of reality for Frankenstein comes after his friend, Henry Clerval, is found dead. The hapless man mentions how everything “passed like a dream from [his] memory” (F 135), and a little later, while in prison, he insists saying “if it all be true, if indeed I did not dream” (F 136).
Furthermore, he confesses that his entire life passed before his eyes like a dream, causing him to doubt whether any of it was real, “for it never presented itself to [his] mind with the force of reality” (F 136).
Reality in Frankenstein: From Dreams to Narratives
While narrating his story to a Genevan magistrate, Frankenstein refers to it as “too connected to be mistaken for a dream” (F 152). However, this only reinforces the exact opposite conclusion, considering the fragmentation of the narrative.
In fact, the scene is eminently self-conflicting: The magistrate “both believes and disbelieves Frankenstein’s story … [having] a negative legal response and a positive ‘readerly’ response. Like the novel, Victor Frankenstein’s tale is presented both as realism and as Gothic romance” (Joshua 2001, 279).
The intermixing of fantasy and reality in Frankenstein is something that becomes evident when the scientist directly and with no hesitation describes how “reality” and dreams are all but reversed:
[I]t was during sleep alone that I could taste joy. O blessed sleep! often, when most miserable, I sank to repose, and my dreams lulled me even to rapture … During the day I was sustained and inspirited by the hope of night: for in sleep I saw my friends, my wife, and my beloved country; again I saw the benevolent countenance of my father, heard the silver tones of my Elizabeth’s voice, and beheld Clerval enjoying health and youth. Often, when wearied by a toilsome march, I persuaded myself that I was dreaming, until night should come, and that I should then enjoy reality in the arms of my dearest friends.
(F 156; my emphasis)
It is telling that, as far as Frankenstein is concerned, time is essentially reversed. Day becomes night and night becomes day. Time and space lose any objective status, as the man’s reality comprises the dream-like intermixing of various temporal instances and spatial locations.
A Lack of Hierarchical Relations
The crucial element that should be underlined is that this lack of objectivity is essentially not compared to some other, “more objective” reality.
There is no qualitative arrangement of “realities”, as narrative accounts and described experiences (whether “factual” or “dream-like”) essentially form the omnijective cosmos of the novel.
In other words, although readers – or, indeed, Walton – might feel convinced about their ability to distinguish objective truth from subjective dream-like experience, the novel in fact highlights the very opposite.
Ultimately, there is nothing to be certain of, nothing to feel assured of, and no other reality but the one offered by sensory inputs or, metatextually speaking, narrations.
Reality in Frankenstein: Linear and Cyclical Temporal Models
With regard to the temporal scheme of the novel, it is also worth emphasizing that it is not what it appears to be on the surface.
Linearity is only seemingly maintained, although not entirely, as there are still flashbacks, narrative breaks, and foreshadowing. On a deeper level, however, the novel in its entirety rather reinforces a picture of cyclical time at work.
As Brown argues, the temporality of Frankenstein is “disjunctive – intermittent or repetitious, without growth and gradual change” (2005, 190). In particular, it becomes apparent that the novel possesses neither a real beginning nor a true conclusion.
The Unchanging World
Despite the somewhat cathartic demise of Victor Frankenstein – and possibly of the creature – there is little if any evidence that Victor’s story changes the world in any significant way in regard to the anxieties presented in the text. In many aspects, everything remains exactly as it was.
It is implied that Walton decides to take the example and subdue his exploratory desires, although this is little more than an assumption. Indeed, considering the absence of any concluding comment on his behalf that would reveal his intentions, his last words – “lost in darkness and distance” (F 170) – are all but ominous in view of his intentions.
Besides, one of the very first things Walton reveals is his inability to “be persuaded that the pole is the seat of frost and desolation” (F 13). Even Victor Frankenstein himself who, if anyone, should have learned something from his miseries, tells Walton that perhaps others might succeed where he has failed. In a way, he thus reinforces the menacing motif of the inevitability of fate.
Perhaps the most depressing realization this cyclical essence of the novel presents is that the world at large remains unaltered. If not this specific Walton, then some other “Walton” would surely undertake some similarly risky endeavor – and indeed has, based on our knowledge of historical reality in regard to polar exploration.
Like the monster itself, the ending of Frankenstein appears inaccessible and unseeable. It is an ambiguous, blurred rendering of the sublime, “at the limit of the tellable [that] concludes irresolutely, even incoherently. The legitimating epistolary frame is not only forgotten but positively dissolved into legend” (Brown 2005, 199).
Works Cited
Brown, Marshall. The Gothic Text. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.
Joshua, Essaka. “‘Marking the Dates with Accuracy’ The Time Problem in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”. Gothic Studies. 3.3 (2001): 279–308.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1999. Cited as F.
3 Comments
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Just how meta-textual this is, is beyond me (pun unintended). Linearity is the illusion of written and spoken language. Not because we can only read and say one thing at a time means it is linear: language moves in waves that crash with each other in many directions. Not only this, the argument itself seems to be how language, as soon as it provides access to the world and the community, blocks access to the extra-linguistic: we now name things, which enables us to talk about them and understand them, but now we don’t have them anymore, they are forever veiled behind language. Again: the lack of distinction between any reality mirrors the fact that any and every metalanguage remains yet a language – and we, sometimes, believe the lie: the false distinction between langue and parole, viz., language in theory and language in use, is merely fictional (and fiction is the condition necessary for all thought): a dictionary is still a book, a grammar remains yet a book, a linguistics class still explains language with language, sometimes the very same language explained is used in explaining, thus affecting the very same language it purports to explain (thus: to freeze, to still, to dissect). Circularity, mind you?
This is very intriguing. It once again reminds me of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, i.e. a system is either incomplete or inconsistent – that is, any system complex enough will always entail a proposition that is unprovable within the system. There is something both frustrating and sublime in realizing these inherent limitations of language.
Yes, but I think there is a crucial distinction in interpretation: the void upon which language rests is not solvable by a metalanguage (Tarski’s solution), neither is it reducible to a Kripkean solution, because it is not subsumed by logic, but rather flies over its head. Language, more, is the proto-system, the proto-structure, and the proto-media. Without it, none of the others. Better, or worse, still: these (inherent) limit(ation)s are the measure of our measuring, the measure of measurement itself. Incomplete, yes, because completeness is a tasty lie (letters themselves have holes and openings, empty spaces between them, incompleteness in the atom, etc.).