Part 3 - Robert’s tale
Mary Shelley’s novel ‘Frankenstein’ should remind us of one of those Russian nested dolls – that are called Matryoshka dolls, but some people call them babushka dolls – with smaller dolls found inside the outer dolls. Because as we read the story that the ‘daemon’ told to Victor Frankenstein; and of Victor’s story that he told to Robert Walton; and of Robert’s story that he told to his sister; all these stories are opened one after the other, and together they are told to us (the reader) by Mary Shelley.
Our story starts with four letters that Robert Walton wrote, from St. Petersburgh and from Archangel in Russia, to his sister back home in England, where Robert recounts his boyhood dream:
“a history of all the voyages made for purposes of discovery composed the whole of our good uncle Thomas’s library. My education was neglected, yet I was passionately fond of reading. These volumes were my study day and night …”
But these stories faded as Robert grew older, but then:
“I perused, for the first time those poets whose effusions entranced my soul, and lifted it up to heaven. I also became a poet … and imagined that I also might obtain a niche in the temple where the names of Homer and Shakespeare are consecrated.”
Although his career in poetry failed, he then inherited the fortune of his cousin, and his thoughts turned back to his earlier love of discovery in his uncle’s books –
“My life might have passed in ease and luxury; but I preferred glory to every enticement that wealth placed in my path.”
And so he began planning an expedition – of arriving at the north Pacific ocean through the seas which surround the north pole. And if he was successful in reaching the north Pacific ocean, he would have to return to England, by rounding Cape of Good Hope of Africa, or rounding Cape Horn of South America, and that he may not see his sister for two or three years. And why did he want to do this?
“I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever.”
And now after 6 years of preparation, he has hired a ship and is gathering a crew of sailors, and he writes that:
“I am going to unexplored regions to ‘the land of mist and snow’; but I shall kill no albatross, therefore do not be alarmed for my safety, or I should come back to you as worn and woeful as the ‘Ancient Mariner’. You will smile at my allusion; but I will disclose a secret.
[he is referring to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, that was published in ‘Lyrical Ballads’ along with the poems of William Wordsworth, in 1798, as part of the English Romantic movement.]
I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of the ocean, to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets ... there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and uninvited region I am about to explore.”
So, Mary … I mean Robert … had wished to be a poet, and wished to have ‘a purpose of discovery’, and preferred glory instead of wealth, and sounds like a healthy-minded individual. But Robert is sad about one thing –
“I have no friend Margaret, when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection.”
So, maybe Robert is searching for a north-east passage, and also for a friend.
Some months later after starting on his voyage, the ship was closed in by ice, and while waiting for a change in the weather and to break free of the ice, the sailors found on one of the large fragments of ice, a carriage fixed on a sledge that was drawn by dogs, but with only one of the dogs alive, and a single man within it:
“His limbs were nearly frozen, and his body dreadfully emaciated by fatigue and suffering. I never saw a man in so wretched a condition.”
And for Robert, who cared for this stranger, who was ‘generally melancholy and despairing’ and who slowly recovered his health and his spirit:
“I begin to love him as a brother, and his constant and deep grief fills me with sympathy and compassion.”
And they soon became good friends, as Robert explained his project and the stranger showed sympathy for Robert’s motivation:
“One man’s life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race.”
But this only caused the stranger grief and despair, and yet Robert says:
“Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth.”
And the stranger [Victor Frankenstein], who had at one time wished that the memory of his great and unparalleled misfortunes might die with him, decided to tell Robert the story of his life:
“I do not know that the relation of my disasters will be useful to you; yet, when I reflect that you are pursuing the same course, exposing yourself to the same dangers which have rendered me what I am, I imagine that you may deduce an apt moral from my tale; one that may direct you if you succeed in your undertaking, and console you in case of failure.”
But, whether (as Victor thought) Robert and Victor were ‘pursuing the same course’, we shall have to wait and see, but Mary does want us to draw ‘an apt moral’ from his tale.