Narrative Passing in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

The narrative structure of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein occurs in passes, like a relay race with three runners, who each pass the baton in a circuitous pattern. Altogether, there are four passes. Starting with voyager Walton, who opens the novel with a series of letters to his sister Mrs. Saville; then to the Frankenstein's narrative, the ardent student, creator, sufferer; he passes the baton to the monster. The narrative at this point runs counter, where the monster relays back to Frankenstein's voice, then lastly to Walton and his letters to his sister. Keep in mind, though, that the whole of the story is conceived (after all, this is a novel about conception) via the letters from Walton to his sister, from December 11 to September 12:

I have resolved every night, when I am not engaged, to record, as nearly as possible in his own words, what he has related during the day. If I should be engaged, I will at least make notes. This manuscript will doubtless afford you the greatest pleasure: but to me, who know him, and who hear it from his own lips, with what interest and sympathy shall I read it in some future day!

The story is presented within this framework, documented and delivered to Mrs. Saville (we assume as much since we have in our hands the accumulation of his fifteen months of travel; if she never received them, how could we then have the story?). The first three letters are sent, a travelogue of his first five months of travel. The fourth letter, the last, sets in motion the story of the doctor and his monster. In this respect, Walton navigates our course for the novel. Indeed, when the narrative passes to Frankenstein and the monster, the tone remains static: The style of voice, the diction, and rhythm (all elevated, all High Language) stay loyal to the original voice of the letters. Even the dialogue between the old man and Frankenstein are contained within Walton's range. Therefore, we only know what he tells us; he becomes our narrator agent. When Dr. Frankenstein tells him early in their dialogue that he and his own sister were "strangers to any species of disunion and dispute," we have to assume that this is not only a compartmentalized piece of Frankenstein's nostalgia, but also that this line could have been easily rendered as artistic licensing from Walton's pen. Throughout, we must rely on his merit as our chief storyteller.

But to say that the novel is merely told in the first-person limited would be a disservice to Shelley's narrative strategy. With each pass of narrations comes a new and deliberate level of distancing. And this serves several purposes. The first separates Shelly the author from responsibility to the story's autobiographic markers, detaching herself from father William Godwin and his theories on the perfectibility of man, the countless miscarriages and deaths of her children, and her own doomed relationship with Percy Shelley. Indeed, with each pass from narrator to narrator, Shelley removes herself further from any cloying notion that this might be a metaphorical roman à clef. The second purpose creates a distance from the reader's reality, and with each pass in the narrative, the more plausible the story's conceit becomes. The ultimate trick is Shelley's success with creating the monster and pulling it off without any kind of biological detailing (aside from Frankenstein's painstaking grave-robbing and laboratory-as-apartment squatting, there is simply no medical proof or veracity that the monster could live.) The issue of verisimilitude is addresses by the novel's end, in the last of Walton's letters to his sister:

Sometimes I endeavoured to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature's formation; but on this point he was impenetrable. "Are you mad, my friend, said he, "or whither does your senseless curiosity lead you? Would you also
create for yourself and the world a deomoniacal enemy? Or to what do your questions tend? Peace, peace! I learn my miseries, and do not seek to increase your own."

Authenticity is achieved with each pass. The concept of the oral tradition is not just about creating myth or legend but a kind of reality, as if arrived from a vacuum (see The Bible, Beowulf, Radha and Krishnu). Shelley understands that this is a tale of bizarre, unbelievable circumstance, but something beyond the superficial skin had to be imposed for the reader's leap of faith. With the narrative passing, Shelley hooks her audience into a slow arrival of believability. Unlike Kafka's Metamorphosis, where the audience has barely chance to catch its breath before the confrontation with Samsa's sticky transformation, Shelley eases her readers in the grotesque, the abnormal - the absurd even. We follow the genesis of Frankenstein's interest in the paranormal, from his independent studies of Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Magnus, to his disdain for Professor Krempe, to his respect for the progressiveness taught by his mentor Professor Waldman. Thus, when Frankenstein states, "A man would make but a very sorry chemist, if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone," we can grasp his obsession with natural philosophy, the can see it natural, or unavoidable, for his character to dabble with life and death:

To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the
science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural decay and corruption
of the body.

Structural morality becomes the dominating motif in connecting these man against nature themes. Indeed, if one examines the circuitous motion, a mothering quality, the coddling of form and content, becomes apparent. The commitment is pure. Walton writes letters to his sister; on the ship the crew spots and rescues a drowning man; once the man regains his faculties, he tells his story to Walton; it's Dr. Frankenstein and his narrative takes over; everyone knows the middle - the creation, the monster, the betrayal between scientist and thing, the monster's escape, and then the reunion between Frankenstein and the monster; the monster's narrative dominates; once finished, the narrative voice is relayed back to Dr. Frankenstein, then passed finally to the explorer who finishes his letter to his sister. Explorer, Frankenstein, Monster, Frankenstein, Explorer. The monster in the structural womb. The womb is revealed by the novel's closing remarks:

You have read this strange and terrific story, Margaret; and do you feel your blood congealed with horror, like that which even now curdles mines. Sometimes, seized with sudden agony, he could not continue his tale, at others his voice broken, yet piercing, uttered with difficulty the words so replete with agony.

With Frankenstein, Mary Shelley confounds her audience in believing this fantastic story of monsters, science, and the errors of mortal creation. Exploiting methods of narration, she creates her own monster, an organic, literary being - complete with its own set of strengths and flaws.