Sudipta Gupta
Assistant Professor
Department of
English
Women’s College,
Calcutta
West Bengal,
India
Abstract:
Mary Shelley is chiefly known for her magnum opus
Frankenstein which is often seen as an incipient specimen of science fiction on
the one hand, and as a novel which borrows immensely from the gothic romantic
genre on the other. The Romantic
poets were strongly
affected and influenced
by the gothic tradition in their
own ways, specially
by the figure of
the wanderer, the
vampire and the
solitary outlaw who
sought after the
forbidden which often
provided them with
an insight into
the terrifying yet
beautiful mysteries of
life. Being the daughter of
illustrious parents William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and later the wife
of the famous romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley
was no stranger
to the paraphernalia
associated with the
gothic school of
writing as well as Godwin’s ideas of social reform and both had a major
influence on her works In her short
story The Mortal Immortal, she
focuses on the mystery of the irrevocability of a Faustian dream, amalgamated
with the supernatural elements of alchemy and science, almost as a continuation
of Frankenstein. This paper
attempts to focus
on how Mary
Shelley borrows a
traditional trope prevalent
in the gothic
novel; the figure
of the wanderer
or the social
outlaw in her
short story The Mortal
Immortal and how
she deals with the issues of immortality, a curse- in- disguise and
overriding ambition vis-à-vis her more illustrious novel.
Keywords: Social outcast, Science, Faustian dream,
Curse
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
remains a unique novel in the history of British literature as it cannot be
classified into a single category. While some critics see it as one of the
earliest specimen of science fiction, others call it a feminist interrogation
of Milton’s Paradise Lost, while to
some others it is Mary Shelley’s
revision of Rousseau. However, the personal life of the author has sometimes
become a more discussed topic than her literary works, specially due to her
illustrious parents and her poet husband which has consequently eclipsed her
literary productions and their unique characteristics. As Charles E. Robinson
says: “But the notoriety Mary Shelley has gained because of her parents, her
husband and her science fiction novel has been at the expense of her literary
reputation.” (Robinson, intro, xi) Perhaps, this is the reason why Mary
Shelley’s other writings, specially her short stories, have not been the
subject of much critical debates and discussions.
The short story The Mortal
Immortal begins with a three hundred and twenty three year old Winzy, the
protagonist of the tale, ushering in the readers to the wearisome burden of his
life as well as to judge the issue of immortality vis-à-vis earthly mortality.
The readers come to know that Winzy, a poor young man was a pupil of the
renowned German scholar, alchemist and occultist of the Renaissance, Cornelius
Agrippa. The very mention of this figure along with the legendary Faust, who
had sold his soul to the devil in lieu of infinite knowledge and his consequent
destruction at the hand of the dark fiends foreground and prepare the readers
for the subsequent Icarian motive of the tale. The fact that Cornelius tempts
Winzy with a purse of gold to stay with him as his apprentice after the dire
consequence Faust suffered is no less than the Biblical temptation of Eve to
him. As Winzy says: “…I felt as if Satan himself tempted me. My teeth
clattered---my hair stood on end:-- I ran off as fast as my trembling knees
would permit.” (Shelley, 208) This equating one’s mentor with the devil is a
subtle technique used by Shelley which marks a distinct parallel between the
German scholar Agrippa and the Genevan scholar Victor Frankenstein.
It is only because of his undying love for Bertha, his childhood
neighbour and playmate that Winzy agrees to the apprenticeship under Cornelius
Agrippa. After her parents die of a malignant fever, an old, rich and childless
lady adopts her into her mansion. Bertha remains “true to the friend of her
humbler days” (Shelley, 208) and often visits Winzy’s parents, though she does
not hesitate to reproach Winzy for his poverty and also accuses him of
cowardice: “You pretend to love, and you fear to face the Devil for my sake!”
(Shelley, 209) Thus, both Winzy and Bertha, directly or indirectly, links
Agrippa with the infernal serpent and his scheming allurements. This childhood
friendship of Winzy and Bertha bring to mind the character of Elizabeth
Lavenza, who was Victor Frankenstein’s playmate from his childhood, whom he
eventually married and lost right on their wedding night. Readers of Frankenstein identify the ominous note
by which Mary Shelley’s crafty design hints at the idea that this relationship
is also doomed and will bring nothing but disaster for both of them.
Agrippa’s preoccupation with his scientific and alchemic pursuits keep
him busy and Winzy is left with no option other than waiting for his master and
keeping vigil over his work, “feeding his furnaces and watching his chemical
preparations.” (Shelley, 209) This leads to his inability to meet Bertha like
previous times and in turn, works as a catalyst for the changes in their
relationship. Feeling neglected and ignored by Winzy’s inability to be in two
places simultaneously, a furious Bertha dismisses Winzy in favour of Albert
Hoffer, a young man favoured by her benefactress as well. Winzy rants a
thousand curses on Bertha’s inconstancy while green- eyed jealousy replaces his
love for Bertha even as he continues to attend his duties.
It is this overpowering jealousy of Winzy that becomes the crux of the
tale. Agrippa asks his apprentice to wake him up when the liquid in the
experimental vial changes colour and warns him not to deal with either the
liquid or the vial by himself without consulting him. However, jealousy had already
overpowered Winzy like the many headed Hydra and hence Agrippa’s last words
before falling to a slumber: “it is a philter---a philter to cure love; you
would not cease to love your Bertha--“ (Shelley, 210) brings forth new
possibilities of punishing both Bertha and himself by consuming the potion and
curing himself of love. As Winzy’s wandering thoughts reach Bertha, he is too
busy heaping curses on her disloyalty, and forgets everything about waking up
the philosopher. It is only when the liquid in the vessel flashes with a bright
spark that Winzy is brought back to the present with a start, and he
instinctively gulps down half of the vessel’s contents to cure himself of love,
in an absolute contrast to the love potion used by Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. However, much to his dismay he finds his
love for Bertha ignited with more passion and more zest. The same woman he had
been cursing a little while ago, ironically seems to him now as “thousand times
more graceful and charming than ever” (Shelley, 212) and Winzy begins to adore
and worship her more than ever.
Cornelius Agrippa here becomes a figure akin to Victor Frankenstein:
both are learned men like the legendary
Faust figure and both possess a Faustian overriding ambition to conquer the yet unknown and discover the
yet undiscovered. Both are classic Icarian figures, who consider themselves to
be as powerful as God, defy the rules laid down by him and have an irresistible
desire to decipher the hidden secrets of this world and the divine world
aspiring “to become greater than his nature will allow.” (Shelley, Frank, 35) While Frankenstein wants to
usurp the role of God in creating another being and infusing life into an
inanimate body, Agrippa busies himself with his utmost capacity once again in
trying to discover the elusive potion for eternal life, “The Elixir of
Immortality.” (Shelley, 213) Both men pursue acts which are transgressive in
nature, and their unnatural aspirations remind us of Harry Levin’s words:
“…science is ruinous without conscience. It cannot but discern its culture-
hero in the ancient myth of Icarus…” (Levin, 163)
It takes Winzy, now married to Bertha, five long years to know the truth
about the potion he had swallowed and “the vanity of human wishes!” (Shelley,
213) With a masterstroke, Mary Shelley turns the tables on Winzy with an ironic
twist: Agrippa reveals the truth of the immortal elixir only on his deathbed.
For years, he had been seeking this elixir but it had eluded him until his last
breath, while Winzy had gained eternal youth since he had consumed the
concoction in absolute ignorance. Here, Mary Shelley juxtaposes matters of life
and death, mortality and eternity within this duo of master and apprentice as
immediately after his master bids adieu to the mortal world, Winzy realises
with a start: “But I lived, and was to live for ever!” (Shelley, 214) He
remembers the events of that day, examines himself to perceive any changes that
speak of time’s ravages on him within these five years and doubts the
philosopher’s last words as nothing but figments of his master’s imagination.
Failing to find any prevalent signs of aging he consoles himself by reflecting
that perhaps he had only drunk a soul- refreshing drink which was inebriating
and its medicinal properties had enabled him to lead a hale and hearty life
with joyous spirits. Once their powers gave out, he would also follow the
natural course of life and death.
The plot of The Mortal Immortal takes
a de- tour from here with Mary Shelley borrowing the prevalent trope of the
social outcast from the paraphernalia of the gothic tradition who is “the
symbol of a severance of communication, of wholeness; and at the same time he
is the living evidence of the terror at the heart of the world.” (Punter, 74)
As Winzy ponders over the truth about his immortality which turns out to be a
curse- in- disguise, he becomes a lonely figure belonging to the same league as
the Ancient Mariner and the Wandering Jew. Revoking her most famous work,
Shelley establishes Winzy as sharing common traits with both Victor
Frankenstein and his creation: all three of them inhabit their own secluded
worlds, without a soul to whom they can pour out their worries and the anxiety
of their existence and the enigma of their lives. Besides, it is almost as if
the soul of Agrippa continues to dwell in this world through his assistant as
Winzy was the sole recipient of the fruits of his labours. Just as Victor
Frankenstein and his creation become altar egos, here Agrippa, who wanted to
live forever on this earth proving his might over God’s decrees fulfills his
thwarted wish through the curse of eternal life which Winzy has to bear.
As Bertha’s beauty fades away, Winzy discovers a freshness in his
cheeks, brows, eyes and finds his whole personality as untarnished as a youth
of twenty years. Their neighbours began to believe that Winzy possessed powers
of sorcery and necromancy and started to call him Scholar bewitched among
themselves. While Bertha becomes an old woman of fifty years, “her vivacious
spirit became a little allied to ill- temper, and her beauty sadly diminished,”
(Shelley, 215) Winzy is still the fresh youth of twenty years, appearing to
others as Bertha’s son than her husband. To maintain the gravity of his age,
Winzy restrains himself from joining in the celebrations with the young and gay
people, with reluctance on his face to please Bertha and enthusiastic alacrity
in his heart as his youthful spirit wanted to participate in the celebrations
and merry making. This duplicity of maintaining an outward facade to mask his
innermost wishes and turmoil lead him to utter his anguish like Victor
Frankenstein: “I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every
avenue to enjoyment.” (Shelley, Frank, 122) Winzy’s youthful hues and outward appearance,
in contrast to the natural way of life, become a matter of chief concern for
everyone and the entire community shuns them for it is believed that Winzy
still maintains close relations with Cornelius Agrippa’s acquaintances and
himself is a practitioner of black arts.
While people still sympathise with Bertha, Winzy is regarded with horror
and detestation and people scorn his company for fear of the black arts making
him realize that this immortality is actually no better than a curse- in-
disguise which has rendered him “…a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity,
pitiable to others, and abhorrent to myself.” (Shelley, Frank, 126) Even Bertha
begins to believe in the rumour of Winzy being a demonic scholar who practiced
necromancy and other black arts, begins to argue for the respect and reverence
which grey hairs bestow, and requests Winzy to cast off this magic spell of
eternal youth which would put an end to their disgraceful, secluded and
isolated lives. She fears the worst for both of them and laments that their
neighbours might burn “the old- hearted youth” for being a dealer of the black
arts and “his antiquated wife” (Shelley, 215) would be stoned to death for being
his accomplice.
In an extreme move to save themselves from the wrath of the native
villagers, Winzy and Bertha emigrate to a remote part of western France,
without informing anyone of their departure. Despite financial constraints and
the hardships they would face in a different place with its different language
and customs, they undertake this flight to take a final challenge of survival.
While Bertha resorts to the use of “a thousand feminine arts-- rouge, youthful
dresses and assumed juvenility of manner” (Shelley, 216) to mask up the gray
hair and withered skin, and the apparent disparity in their ages, Winzy is
forced to conceal his true self within the exterior of his youthful gait.
Bertha becomes the stereotype of the jealous wife who is the happiest at every
small sign of age and decrepitude that manifests itself on Winzy’s outward
appearance. While it becomes a painful experience for Winzy, Bertha convinces
herself and her acquaintances that Winzy’s youth was a disease which would
suddenly pervade his youthful exterior and express itself in him with all the
marks of advanced years. Her warnings propel further speculation and confusion
in Winzy’s perplexed mind and the pretences of keeping up appearances before
the strangers shatter him even more.
Bertha’s death leaves Winzy all alone in this world, both literally and
figuratively. He had been a stranger to the outside world for a long time, but
now without anyone to talk to and quarrel with even within the domestic space
renders him “a sailor without rudder or compass, tossed on a stormy sea--- a
traveler lost on a wide- spread heath, without landmark or star to guide him”
(Shelley, 217) Like Faustus repenting for half a drop of Christ’s blood for
redemption, in his frenzied yearning for death, Winzy seeks desperate
consolation in the fact that he had drunk only half of the contents of that
magic potion and therefore he is only half mortal. Yet it is unfathomable to
number the years which constitute even half of eternity. His situation
establishes a familiarity with both Frankenstein and his creature whom society
has deserted and who in a state of self- exile, does not care anymore for the
customs, mores and regulations of society. “I felt as if I had committed some
great crime, the consciousness of which haunted me. I was guiltless, but I had
indeed drawn a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of crime.”
(Shelley, Frank, 128) His diseased
youth makes him long for death like Tithonus with passionate intensity and
crave for the silence of the tomb. He is half in love with easeful death:
“Death! Mysterious, ill- visaged friend of weak humanity!” and invokes death as
a devoutly wished consummation: “O, for the peace of the grave! The deep
silence of the iron- bound tomb!” (Shelley, 217) since for him “The cup of life
was poisoned forever” (Shelley, Frank, 145)
A deathly atmosphere
and an uncanny pre-occupation with death looms large over both the narratives
and bring about the catastrophes in the lives of the protagonists respectively.
In Frankenstein the cemetery becomes
a site of forbidden knowledge where Victor Frankenstein assembles the nameless
creature without a history, from fragments of corpses in an attempt to recreate
life after death while in The Mortal
Immortal, Agrippa devoutly pursues
his unrelenting mission to discover a death- defying magic potion. Both the
scientist and the alchemist are almost equal contenders in their individual
races to defeat death and proclaim their superiority over it. The last place
Frankenstein visits before leaving Geneva in search of the monster is the
cemetery where his father and wife are buried. Similarly, Agrippa’s laboratory
where he creates the death- defying drug becomes no less than a graveyard for
Winzy, since it his presence in that fateful place which determines the further
catastrophic incidents of his life and is instrumental for his obsession with
his own death as the natural conclusion to a mortal life, which constantly
eludes him: “O, for the peace of the grave! The deep- silence of the iron bound
tomb!” (Shelley, 217)
While talking about the gothic novel, Ellen Mores holds that “fantasy
dominates over reality, the strange over the commonplace, and the supernatural
over the natural with nocturnal intent; to scare.” (Mores, 77) As he roams over
the world bearing the burden of the curse in every bone of his anatomy and
every inch of his tired soul, Winzy becomes a source of terror to every other
living being; one who has defied death and transgressed the laws of mortality
and traverses all over this earth perhaps as a punishment of his transgression.
He is seen as one who has dared to defy God and his laws by which this world is
governed. To the other living mortals, his name itself is symbolic of a
potential threat to the society “and the threat he carries with him is of the
wholesale disturbance of the natural order…” (Punter, 74) just as Victor
Frankenstein had remarked: “I was cursed by some devil, and carried about with
me my eternal hell;…” (Shelley, Frank, 162-163)
Even Winzy understands that he has broken the natural cycle of life and death
and perhaps is doomed to bear this enormous burden forever without a friend,
without a partner or even a kindred soul: “and the more I live, the more I
dread death, even while I abhor life.” (Shelley, 218) Enduring such a life for three centuries with
an ardent desire for death, his weary soul in constant conflict with the blessings
of mortality and the curses of immortality leads him to interrogate himself
whether suicide would still be a crime to such a man as him, for whom it was
the only option to put an end to his sufferings and thereby put an end to the
burden of immortality which becomes too Herculean a burden for his mortal frame
to endure. Hence the solitary mortal immortal, weary of the world, weary of
himself, weary of a desperate death wish, yet desirous of death utters a final
wish to be consumed by the elemental forces: “I yield this body, too tenacious
a cage for a soul which thirsts for freedom, to the destructive elements of air
and water” (Shelley, 219) “…and by
scattering and annihilating the atoms that compose my frame, set at liberty the
life imprisoned within, and so cruelly prevented from soaring from this dim
earth to a sphere more congenial to its immortal essence.” (Shelley, 219) In
this wish to demolish this corporeal frame, there is an unmistakable Biblical
echo of a return to the elements, a return to dust fused with the nightmarish
consequences of an over soaring Faustian overreacher, whose unnatural
machinations hinders the natural course of life.
Both Victor Frankenstein and Cornelius Agrippa as the eminent men of
science want to recreate history by reconstructing the story between the
creator and creation, by aspiring for personal glory through the use of science
beyond the earthly. This ardent desire to achieve personal glory and
immortality through the role reversal of creator and creation give rise to this
story of the hubris of intellect where the line between life and death, the
horizon between mortality and immortality is constantly breached, is
transgressed by the overrider in the classic manner of Icarus. It is
interesting to note that in the process of this transgression of mortal
barriers and human capacities, the thin line between humanity and monstrosity
also vanishes away: both the over ambitious men, in their zeal to attain
immortal personal glory meddle with the natural order of beings, which is no
less monstrous than the nameless creature Frankenstein creates and Winzy turns
into after consuming Agrippa’s concoction who are exiled from the human race
for no fault of their own. This zeal to achieve glory and tread on the sphere
of forbidden knowledge ccoupled with their scientific arrogance blinds them to
such an extent that they attempt to rival the laws of nature. Both the
overreachers bring about their own destructions through their abuse of science
where they become usurpers; they usurp the creator’s role as they misuse
science with their radical ideas which are completely devoid of emotion. They
use their scientific knowledge to penetrate the natural order of beings which
jeopardizes the natural harmony between man and nature and ultimately become the
instruments of their own destruction (which percolates to the figures of the
creator and Winzy as well). Through these two Faustian overriders, Mary Shelley
raises pertinent questions about the all pervasive and uninhibited use and
abuse of science without emotion, without conscience which leads to a monstrous
violation of the natural order of the universe with disastrous and irrevocable
consequences, where intellectual hubris leads to isolation, unscrupulous use of
science paves the way for extreme alienation.
The nameless creature in Frankenstein
and Winzy of The Mortal Immortal become
parallel figures by a supreme irony. Both are experimental progenies of learned
men who manipulate their scientific knowledge ruthlessly for their own personal
boundless ambitions. The creature in his
initial days is completely ignorant of the process of his creation and creator
and only understands that he is different from the people around him who never
extended a friendly touch towards him or associated themselves with him in any
way. This segregation and deliberate isolation made him aware of his solitary
existence, his hideous and loathsome deformation which gradually led to self
interrogation upon the harsher truths of his life: “Was I then a monster, a
blot upon the earth, from which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?”
(Shelley, Frank, 92) Winzy, on the
other hand, experiences a similar kind of isolation and ostracizing after the
climax of the short story only when his wife Bertha begins to age and her
youthful beauty begins to diminish while he remains the same man of his youth,
yet unvanquished by “time’s winged- chariot.” Just as the monster’s grotesque
appearance becomes the reason for his social isolation, Winzy’s diseased youth
results in his exclusion from mainstream society. The creature’s words of self
loathing mirrors Winzy’s disgust for himself and remorse for the human ties
which are lost forever, to which he can no longer cling to but only remember as
fond memories of a distant past like a rudderless hopeless soldier lost on the
stormy seas.
In the words of Edmund Burke: “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite
the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort
terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner
analogous to terror, is a source of sublime; that is, it is productive of the
strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.” (Burke, 39) In his
earnest wish for death, as well as in life, Winzy is established as a true kin
of Frankenstein’s creature by Mary Shelley. The nameless, miserable victim of
Frankenstein’s overriding ambitions had also voiced a similar wish for death:
“I shall collect my funeral pile, and consume to ashes this miserable frame,
that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch, who
would create such another as I have been.” (Shelley, Frank, 179) Both these wretched figures, who had faced the
consequences of the hellish intentions of their masters and “wandered a
friendless outcast over the earth” (Shelley, Frank, 152) express a desire to be consumed by the elements, along
with a word of caution for the Victor Frankensteins and Cornelius Agrippas of
the future who nurture Faustian dreams and aspire to be Godlike in their
ambitions. At the end of the respective narratives, both transcend the burdens
of the curses they were compelled to carry within their selves and emerge as
humane creatures who suffer for their masters’ overreaching ambitions and
Icarian purposes, bringing about a sense of ‘sublime’ which inspires admiration
and reverence for both.
Works Cited
Burke, Edmund. A
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful. Eds. J.T. Boulton. London: 1958. Print
Levin, Harry. “Science Without Conscience.” Doctor Faustus: A Selection of Critical
Essays. Ed. John Jump. London: Macmillan, 1975. Print
Mores, Ellen. “Female Gothic.” The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s Novel. Ed.
George Levin and U.C. Knoepflmacher. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University
of California Press, 1979. Print
Punter, David. The
Literature of Terror. London: Longman, 1980. Print
Robinson, Charles E. Eds. Mary Shelley: Collected Tales and Stories. Baltimore and London:
The John Hopkins University Press, 1976. Print
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein.
New Delhi: Worldview Publications, 2003. Print
Shelley, Mary. “The Mortal Immortal.” Frankenstein. New Delhi: Worldview
Publications, 2003. Print