Literary Critique:Scott Juengel,s “Face, Figure, Physiognomics: Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and The Moving Image”

Literary Critique of:

Juengel, Scott. “Face, Figure, Physiognomics: Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein and The Moving Image.” A Forum on Fiction: 33 (2000 Summer): 353-76

 

Juengel argues that physiognomic determinism is deployed in Shelley’s Frankenstein.  He believes that the governing logic of physiognomics of the day (which was heavily influenced by Lavater’s physiognomy) is implicated in Frankenstein through the “circulating, miniature portrait” of the protagonist’s mother that seems to herald the deaths of Frankenstein’s mother, brother (William), and Justin.  He further argues that the monster’s hunting gaze in the two scenes by the window also casts him as an “image of moving portraiture” since it is this horrid image that Frankenstein runs for/away from that which ultimately causes his death.  Lastly, he questions the ethics of physiognomic determinism in Frankenstein, and believes that the novel interrogates this issue itself by illuminating how the monster’s hunting visage thwarts any descent, intersubjective relationship between the creator (Victor) and his creature (monster).

Although Juengel’s essay is insightful and convincing, I take issue with his occasional, obscure use of the term “physiognomics.”  Juengel quotes Lavater’s theory of physiognomics extensively to lay out the meaning of physiognomics, however, his essay, in large, does not follow this precept in the strict sense, and thereby confuses the reader in grasping his central points.  For instance, his main points of the essay are more about the devastating effects of this “moving image of portraiture” (the picture of Victor’s mother and the monster’s gaze framed by the window), rather than about the cause and effects of physiognomic determinism (showing how the specific facial features of the monster mirror his character, or presage future events according to Lavater’s theory). 

Juengel does, however, persuasively argue that monster’s conspicuously structured body from the corpses  – “the construction of living from the dead” which Juengel defines as an act of “prosopopeia” – foreshadows iconoclastic fate of his mate’s unfinished, destroyed body.  He also does an excellent job of convincing that portraits, specifically, close-ups of human face, have “talismanic” or “fetishistic” power over the beholder because they force the gazer to confront, acknowledge, and linger over an imagined face; but more significantly, because they freeze the image of a moving, living person as static and inanimate, symbolizing death.  His final argument, the “ethics of physiognomy,” claims that the immediacy of “face-to-face tableau” – the exchange of monster’s and Frankenstein’s gaze in their encounters – accentuates and augments “fetishistic power,” and thereby, more poignantly provokes and summons Frankenstein’s paternal duty to his creature.  For Frankenstein, however, the monster’s distorted visage produces a certain impenetrability that blocks and hampers any “intersubjective intercourse” between the two.  Thus, according to Juenguel’s ethics of physiognomy, the fact that Frankenstein escapes from the monster’s proffered hand during this “face-to face” encounter holds him that much more accountable and unethical. 

I find this essay intriguing and valuable in investigating and understanding the subtle and powerful impact of the portrait imagery deployed in Frankenstein.  Moreover, Juengel’s ethics of physiognomy – the ethics of reading/misreading only what is visible and external (even among the elite scientists) – is interesting and informative because it discloses human’s irrational, biased tendencies in evaluating one’s physicality.

Comparative Analysis on Ariel Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden” and Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”

                The Galvanized Victims Reciprocate Abuse to the Electroscientists

    In the 19^th century, Thomas Edison laid the basis for the technological and social revolution of the modern electric world.  Today, electricity has become one of the core elements of human civilization.  Its study and experimentations, however, if not monitored with moral conscience, can bring devastating, irreparable outcomes, not only to the experimentees, but also to the experimenters.  In Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the two scientists, Roberto and Victor, both conduct inhumane and bizarre experiments that involve electricity on human anatomy.  Their electrological assays, however, due to their abusive use of high-voltage electricity, produce reciprocal behavior in the laboratory victims that stem from the two central characteristics of electricity: the “electrogenesis” (the effects of electric stimulus on organisms) and the “electromotion” (the mobility of galvanic currents).  The synergy of these two electrodynamics transmogrify the victims into perpetrators who “reciprocate” the same level of abuse back to the scientists – metaphorically and literally, resulting in a reversal of role and power between the two parties.  Thus, the electricized Paulina reciprocates by assuming the role of a patriarch, undermining the authority and power of Roberto; likewise, the electrically vivified monster reciprocates by presuming the master’s role, ultimately dismantling the authority and power of Victor.

In order to understand how electric stimulations affect the two protagonists, Paulina and the monster, first, the nature and the power of electricity need to be examined.  Electricity has both regenerative and annihilative powers.  Its regenerative power is seen in all living organisms, from the photosynthesis of plants to the radiation therapy of humans (that uses X-rays or ultraviolet light to heal and lengthen human life).  Today, in fact, electricity is an inextricable component in most of the scientific assays, whether it is to eradicate bacteria, germs, or cancerous cells, or to revive, lengthen, and enhance the lives of various organisms.  Electricity’s annihilative power, however, is just as actively sought after by humans: for example, radiation injury (ionizing radiation) that causes sickness to nuclear energy (radioactive energy from fission) that causes widespread destruction of life and the environment.  Fifteen-year-old Victor witnesses the electro-annihilation of a tree firsthand: “[It was] a most violent and terrible thunder-storm…I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak…and as soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared” (25, emphasis added).  He inquires of his father what that fire or light was, and his “[father] replies, ‘Electricity’”(26, emphasis added).  The power of electricity, just as Victor had witnessed, has the power to kill and obliterate.  Electricity, therefore, can either electrocute (kill) or electrify (revive) organisms; for this reason, the electrological experiments must be conducted with ethical prudence.

Because electricity has power to kill, the danger of mishandling its power escalates in the hands of the perverse and brutal scientists like Roberto and Victor, who are morbidly curious and devoid of ethics.  Roberto, in Death and the Maiden, confesses his perverse curiosity in electro-stimulated, human anatomy: “My curiosity was partly morbid, partly scientific.  How much can this woman take?…Does her sex dry up when you put the current through her?  Can she have an orgasm under those circumstances?” (59).  The victims who fall under such perverse scientists, at best, are severely abused, and at worst, face possible death: “She is entirely in your power, you can carry out all your fantasies, you can do what you want with her” (59).  Victor in Frankenstein is just as perverse and dangerous in his scientific imagination: “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world” (37).  According to Peterfreund, Victor’s phrase “pour a torrent of light” was conceived in the late eighteenth century as an “electricity fluid,…‘infusing life into an inanimate’ – that is, an unmoving – ‘body,’ a matter pouring electrical fluid into it” (Peterfreund 5).  Victor further confesses that his morbid violence increases as his perverse curiosity – “infusing life into an inanimate” (Peterfreund 5) – increases: “I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay…and almost frantic impulse, urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit” (38).  This passage shows that Victor had succumbed to the dangerous, potentially annihilating “enticements of science” (34).  The monster curses Victor’s “enticements of science” (34) as unhallowed curiosity: “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” (191, emphasis added).  Thus, the monster’s curse suggests that none but those who have prudence and ethics should have the access to this prodigious, yet destructive, power of electricity.

Surely, the ethicality of scientific methods convicts Roberto and Victor’s electrological experiments as inhumane, abusive, and potentially producing psychological electrogenetic symptoms in the victims.  For instance, Paulina avoids light, so much so that her husband, Geraldo, constantly adds more light in their habitation.  In the dark of the night, Geraldo comes home to his wife, Paulina, and finds her “hidden behind the curtains.  He switches on a light” (3).  Geraldo, again, adds more light to find his dinner: “He puts on another lamp and sees the table set” (4).  Furthermore, the scene in which Roberto visits Geraldo reveals that between the two dwellers – Geraldo and Paulina – there are conflicting behavioral patterns towards light: “Someone knocks…A lamp is switched on…[but] is immediately switched off…Gerardo switches on the lamp” (12) again.  Whereas Paulina psychologically and physically withdraws from the light and finds security in the dark, the monster, in contrast, acts hysterical to light, more specifically, to fire: “I placed a variety of combustibles around the cottage… As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose…and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits, that burst all bounds of reason and reflection…with a loud scream, I fired…The wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames” (116, emphasis added).  Furthermore, it is significant to note that the first word the monster ever learns is, strangely, “fire”: “I learned and applied the words fire, milk, bread, and word” (93, emphasis in original).  The monster’s hysterical and mystical ties to “fire” and Paulina’s aberrant behavior towards “light” seem to suggest that these symptoms link to the high voltage, electro-shocks they suffered – the psychological electrogenetic effect. 

While the victims’ abnormal behaviors in immediate contact with the light or fire can be regarded as psychological electrogenetic symptoms, there are other signs in the victims that are neurological in origin.  Modern science illuminate that electric stimuli not only manipulate the minds of the experimentees, but also desensitize their fear stimuli.  In 2003, Berg R.W. and Kleinfeld D. from UCSD Department of Physics have conducted a study of rhythmic, motor activity of the vibrissae (whisk) to understand the patterned, motor activity in mammals (Berg 1).  Evidence suggests that “neural circuitry in the brain provides rhythmic drive to the vibrissae” (Berg 1).  In other words, electric stimuli alter the minds of the animals, engendering involuntary muscular motions that they have no control over.  More significantly, scientists have discovered that “in mammalian…central nervous systems exhibit habituation and/or sensitization of their responses to repetitive [electric] stimuli” (Siniaia, 1).  In other words, “electric stimulation of infralimbic subregion (lower area of cerebrum) reduces conditioned…fear stimuli” (Milad 1).  These neurological electrogenetic findings provide cues to why, perhaps, as the monster informs Victor – the electroscientist who has severely galvanized him – that he no longer has fearful senses: “you, my tyrant and tormentor…[b]eware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful” (144).  The monster is so desensitized and thus fearless that he even plans to end his own life by the flames: “I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames” (191, emphasis added).  Likewise, Paulina, who had undergone near-death experience with electro-abuses, shows no fear of abusing or killing her perpetrator, Roberto: “When I heard his voice, I thought the only thing I want is to have him raped” (40).  She continues: “What do we lose by killing one of them?” (66)  The only thing that stops her from actually killing Roberto is that her abuse from him, however brutal, does not add up to a murder: “Kill them? Kill him?  As he didn’t kill me, I think it wouldn’t be fair to –” (34).  Thus, the electrically desensitized Paulina and the monster seem to exhibit neurological electrogenetic symptoms – no fear to violence or death.

While psychological and neurological electrogenetic symptoms in the victims are more visible and external, their internal electrogenetic wounds, however, are much less legible.  For instance, Paulina’s electrogenetic conditions, though real, are only visible to her husband who lives with her: “If I were to accept, I must know I can count on you, that you don’t feel…if you were to have a relapse” (9) – Geraldo worries.  He deals with Paulina’s electrogenetic conditions on a daily basis, but it is hidden, rather, invisible to others: “Nobody knows.  Not even your mother knows” (9).  The modern day science, however, detects electrogenetic conditions at cellular levels, and thus sheds insight into symptoms that are like that of Paulina’s or the monster’s.  The following medical studies by American and German scientists illuminate that even a very small amount of electricity can have a devastating, physiological impact on organisms: “The fate of the killed cells shows that for electroporation [or wounding], the duration is generally a few hundred milliseconds;…up to tens of seconds result in cell killing” (Giaever, 3).  If only a few, hundred milliseconds of low voltage, electro-shocks can seriously wound and tens of seconds kill cultured cells, then, it is scientifically feasible to diagnose that Paulina, as well as the monster, being gone through such high-voltage electro-shocks, carry wounded, altered, or dead cells in their bodies, thus having internal, invisible electrogenetic scars. 

If psychological, neurological, and internal electrogenetic symptoms in the galvanized victims are scientifically feasible, the “electromotion,” however, although scientifically sound, can not convey human behaviors.  Therefore, to interpret literature, especially to better understand why the victims reciprocate abuse back to the perpetrators, the term “electromotion,” in addition to its scientific meaning, should be reinterpreted metaphorically.  First, if electromotion is scientifically applied, then, the reciprocal impulse in the victims can be analyzed as, hypothetically, that the victim’s “impedance” is at action, an electro-phenomenon that is defined as an overall opposition to electric currents (Giaever 2).  In other words, the various organisms, innately, either neutralize or resist electric stimuli off their bodies.  Secondly, electricity is intrinsically mobile, not static.  Electricity – either negatively/positively charged – naturally travels from one place/thing to another, transmitting its energy on to that which it comes in contact with.  In order to apply this intrinsic nature of electricity to human phenomena, this mobility of electricity can be figuratively adapted as “violence begets violence.”  In other words, the electromotion – the galvanic mobility – can be reinterpreted metaphorically to explicate why Roberto and Victor’s electro-abuses would affect Paulina and the monster, and why Paulina and the monster’s galvanized energies, in turn, would haunt Roberto and Victor respectively.  Thus, from electromotive phenomena, a simile can be drawn to theorize human phenomena: that one’s negative/positive motives engender another’s negative/positive motives accordingly.  Whether the interpretation is scientific or metaphoric, one, coterminous analysis can be derived from this electromotive hypothesis: humans, in general, innately have the reciprocal impulses to, at least, oppose or resist negative energy, if not to reciprocate exactly, as ill for ill and good for good.  Thus, analogically, it is only natural that Paulina and the monster will reciprocate the same level of abuse back to Roberto and Victor respectively. 

This analogical interpretation of electromotion – the galvanic mobility as representing the victim’s tendency to reciprocate – can be divided into two successive, insurgent movements to analyze Paulina’s and the monster’s acts of revenge.  The first movement of insurgence is the victim’s character metamorphosis – the victim’s character transformation into that of the perpetrator – which prepares and enables them to reciprocate abuse.  The second movement of insurgence is the consummation of the revenge, reciprocating abuse for abuse, and violence for violence. 

The first movement of insurgence – the victim’s character metamorphosis – primarily comes through “character mimesis,” meaning that the victims transform into perpetrators through mimicry, ultimately mirroring the perpetrators’ demeanor, class, and gender.  For instance, Paulina mimics male’s voice and demeanor: “She…discovers Roberto about to free himself…Paulina ties him up again, while her voice assumes male tones” (37).  She, in effect, is transmogrifying herself into an assertive and preemptive patriarch.  She no longer wants to be the submissive female anymore.  In fact, she regrets that in “All [her] life, [she’s] always been much too obedient” (58).  Paulina is no longer reactive, nor heeds to male authority.  The following passage shows that she is now a different woman – she appropriates male authority: “I don’t need to ask him…I gave him the name Bud, Doctor…I inserted in my story to Gerardo, and you corrected most of them.  It turned out just as I planned…I’m not going to kill you because you’re guilty, Doctor, but because you haven’t repented at all” (64-5).  The monster shows even more of this character mimesis.  He, too, mimics his creator’s high class culture; he learns his master’s language “in close attention, that [he] might more speedily master the language” (98).  His readings, to name a few, include “Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch’s Lives, and the Sorrows of Werter” (99).  The monster eventually transforms into a persuasive, authoritative elitist like his creator, so much so that Victor warns Walton of the monster’s eloquence: “He is eloquent and persuasive; and once his words had even power over my heart: but trust him not” (179).  The monster’s impressive linguistic skills resemble the very intelligence, charm, and class of Victor.  In fact, Walton, who later becomes utterly overwhelmed by the monster’s audacity and eloquence, writes to his sister: “Great God! What a scene has just taken place!” (187)  The monster’s demeanor and eloquence that Walton later witnesses evince that he has successfully acculturated into that of the master’s class through mimicry.  Thus, both Paulina and the monster, through character mimesis, transmogrify into perpetrators; and this character transformation enables them to reciprocate abuse – the first movement of insurgence.

The final movement of insurgence – the culmination of reciprocity – reaches its full cycle as Paulina and the monster not only gain full control of their perpetrators, but also dismantle their power and authority.  Paulina triumphs when Roberto, after many hours of psychological and physical abuse, begs her for a pardon.  “Forgiveness” (60), Roberto cries out, and “writes down” (61) his confession while Paulina “hear [his vocal] confession on the tape” (61).  Roberto even “gets down on his knees,” (65) his once-powerful, male authority as a perpetrator totally dismantles.   Likewise, the monster successfully inflicts the same level of, if not an exceeding amount of, pain to Victor.  He kills his best friend, Clerval; his wife, Elizabeth; his brother, William; and frames Justine for William’s murder.  Furthermore, Victor’s father dies from the sorrow, and he himself eventually dies due to the horror and trauma caused by his creature who reciprocates evil to his most beloved, circle of people.  Perhaps, the monster’s most defining moment of victory over his creator is best resonated in the words he utters to Victor in their last encounter: “Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension.  Remember that I have power…You are my creator, but I am your master; — obey!” (144).  The fact that monster overpowers Victor  effectuates a reversal of role between the two party.  Thus, both Paulina and the monster ultimately succeed in dismantling the power and authority of Roberto and Victor respectively, the consummation of reciprocity.

Could the insurgence been prevented by the perpetrators?  Are the electrogenetic symptoms in the victims real?  Are the electromotive forces in the galvanized victims unstoppable?  Either electrically abused or animated, Paulina in Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden and the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein both manifest electrogenetic symptoms that are scientifically conceivable.  While the victims’ electrogenetic symptoms can be analyzed scientifically, their reciprocal behaviors, however, can not be explained by science alone.  Therefore, the intrinsic mobility of electricity – the electromotion – is applied metaphorically as “violence begets violence” to explicate why the galvanized victims reciprocate violence to their perpetrators.  Both Dorfman’s play and Shelley’s novel send strong warnings to the readers that mishandling the prodigious, yet destructive, power of electricity can bring irreparable outcomes, not only to the experimentees, but also to the experimenters.

Works Cited

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Dorfman, Ariel. Death and the Maiden. New York: Penguin, 1991.

Giaever, Ivar, et al., eds. “Electrical Wound-Healing Assay for Cells in Vitro.”  PNAS

101.6 (2004): 1554-1559.

Hustis, Harriet. “Responsible Creativity and the ‘Modernity’ of Mary Shelley’s

        Prometheus.” Studies in English Literature 43 (2003): 845-60.

Milad, M.R. et al., eds. “Electrical Stimulation of Medial Prefrontal Cortex Reduces

Conditioned Fear in a Temporally Specific Manner.” Behavioral Neuroscience

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Peterfreund, Stuart. “Composing What May Not Be ‘Sad Trash’: A Reconsideration of

        Mary Shelley’s of Paracelsus in Frankenstein.” Studies in Romanticism 43

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Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. J.M. Dent: Everyman, 1994.

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        Rat.” The Journal of Physiology 523.2 (2000): 479-91.