Postlude - on Mutiny
I had one final thought about ‘Frankenstein’, and that is Mary Shelley’s use of the concept of ‘mutiny’.
Just before Victor Frankenstein died, he changed his mind, and he released Robert Walton from his promise to pursue the demon after Victor was dead. Victor had said:
“Think not, Walton, that in the last moments of my existence, I feel that burning hatred and ardent desire of revenge I once expressed ... When actuated by selfish and vicious motives, I asked you to undertake my unfinished work … Yet I cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends to fulfil this task.”
Victor was putting an end to his ‘revenge’; and with that ending of revenge, when Victor died, the demon had no more reason to live.
[I think we could all learn a lesson for today, in trying to find peace in the Middle East – to end revenge!]
And Victor says that the reason for this change was that:
“In a fit of enthusiastic madness, I created a rational creature and was bound towards him to assure, as far as was in my power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty, but there was another still paramount to that. My duties towards the beings of my own species had greater claims to my attention …”
He changed, because of his ‘duty’ to the human race – to the common good.
And, it is interesting to see that this change in Victor, to end his revenge, occurs after (and perhaps because of) the threat of mutiny by the crew of Robert Walton’s ship of discovery.
Now, what did Mary Shelley think of ‘mutiny’?
Well, firstly, I think we should refer to Victor’s visit to Oxford, and her reference to John Hampden and the English civil war, when Victor says that:
“For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and self-sacrifice of which these sights were the monuments and the remembrancers.”
And so, that English revolt should not be called a ‘mutiny’, because it was fought for the common good, and for ‘the divine ideas of liberty and self-sacrifice’.
But Aaron Burr’s revolt can be called a ‘mutiny’, because it was fought on behalf of an empire, and against the common good.
And so, the revolt of the thirteen colonies can not be called a ‘mutiny’, because it was fought against an empire, and for the common good.
Now secondly, a fight for the common good is not called a ‘mutiny’, if it is successful. Then, if successful, it’ll be called a ‘revolution’, and it won’t be called a ‘paradise lost’.
Mary Shelley, like her mother, was quite the revolutionary!