A Monstrous Obsession: Monomania in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Ellie Rebecca Bunker
Ellie Rebecca Bunker recently graduated from the University of Sussex with a First-Class BA Honours Degree in Drama and English Literature. Her research focuses on the intersection between literature and psychoanalysis from the early 19th to the mid-20th century, considering how each can be used to illuminate the other. In September 2023 she begins a Master’s Degree in English Literature, during which she will enhance, and perhaps even challenge, the conclusions she reached in “A Monstrous Obsession.”
Abstract
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published three years after psychiatrist J.G. Spurzheim coined the term “monomania,” which describes a series of repetitive and intrusive thoughts or actions. In the novel, Victor’s obsession with science is oppressive, overbearing, and autonomous. This essay uses a combination of nineteenth-century psychiatry and twentieth-century psychoanalysis to consider whether the monster in Shelley’s science fiction novel personifies Victor’s obsession. In particular, it analyses the recurring image of the monster alongside the “shadow self” in Carl Jung’s psychoanalysis to best recognise how the unconscious is demonised both in and beyond fiction.
A Monstrous Obsession: Exploring Monomania in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
I had desired it with an ardour that far
exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished,
the beauty of the dream vanished,
and a breathless horror filled my heart.
-Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, first published in 1818, allows us to recognise how monomania functions in the psyche. In 1815, psychiatrist J.G. Spurzheim coined the term “monomania,” which he defines as a “single pattern of repetitive and intrusive thoughts or actions” (Spurzheim, 1933). In The Book of Phobias and Manias (2022), Kate Summerscale affirms that monomania is inherently linked to madness. “Mono” derives from the Greek word for “one,” whilst mania comes from madness (Summerscale, 2022, p.1). Nowadays, monomania is more commonly known as obsession and is best recognised as compulsive thoughts or behaviours that “centre on an object, action, or idea” (Summerscale, 2022, p. 5). In Frankenstein, Victor’s desire to create a human being from various body parts offers us a fictional example of monomania. In the novel’s early chapters, Victor’s obsession with the task quickly spirals out of his control. It overwhelms his conscious mind and governs his behaviour, leaving him anxious and fearful. Once the monster takes its first breath, Victor’s obsession vanishes, and he becomes petrified of the creature that he has created. In this essay, I argue that the monster in Shelley’s novel is not real, but personifies Victor’s obsession with science. To recognise how Victor’s obsession morphs into the monster, I examine the novel alongside philosophical and psychoanalytic texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In particular, I analyse the recurring image of the monster against Carl Jung’s theory in The Undiscovered Self (1958) that man harbours a “dangerous shadow” in his unconscious which will attack the psyche if repressed (Jung, 1990, p. 46). To best illustrate the consequences of repressing the unconscious, I compare Victor’s monster with Dr. Jekyll’s alter ego in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde (1886). Finally, I measure Victor’s narrative against “doubling” in Dr. Gwen Adshead’s The Devil You Know (2021) to recognise how “doubling” functions in modern-day psychiatry. By re-evaluating the role of the monster in Shelley’s science fiction novel, I hope to further investigate the dangers of repressing the unconscious and stifling obsession.
Victor’s desire to create a human being dominates his psyche early in the novel. In chapter four, we learn that Victor’s obsession begins when he first studies the sciences at the University of Ingolstadt: “From this day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, became my soul occupation” (Shelley, 2012, p. 43). Victor devotes himself to his work, and, after several years of study, “[begins] the creation of a human being” (Shelley, 2012, p. 47). Now, Victor’s desire to succeed becomes overbearing. He tells us, “No one can conceive the variety of feeling that bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasms of success” (Shelley, 2012, p. 47). His “variety of feeling,” which we will call his obsession, “bore [him]onwards” as if it is operating independently from his body. The monosyllables create a deliberate rhythm to Victor’s narration, making his desire to progress seem relentless.
In “The Monstrous Idea in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”, Kathleen Béres Rogers (2018) pathologizes Victor’s obsession with science by reading the novel alongside David Hartley’s Theory of the Human Mind (1775). In his text, Hartley suggests that obsession is rooted in “an idea” typically related to academic study (Béres Rogers, 2018, p. 357). The idea progressively stretches and irritates the mind to an agonizing degree, causing what we would now call obsessive anxiety (Béres Rogers, 2018, p. 357). In Shelley’s novel, Victor certainly exhibits a kind of Hartleian irritation, so much so that he cannot reflect on his work without becoming distressed: “My limbs now tremble, and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit” (Shelley, 2012, p. 47). The first semi-colon creates an immediate separation between Victor’s present and past. Whilst he works toward completion, he is governed by his obsession alone; his “very soul” is stifled beneath its weight. As Victor recalls its influence, he is overcome with terror. Béres Rogers suggests that Victor’s physical symptoms of anxiety “illustrate the feverish qualities associated with what we would now call obsession” (Béres Rogers, 2018, p. 364). However, she insists that Victor’s obsessive anxiety only climaxes once he has created the monster. Victor believes that the creature is following him, and his fear generates a lapse in his physical and mental health. Béres Rogers insists that Victor’s terror “has become a process of associationism gone awry,” and by the end of the novel, Victor’s mind is “stretched past the brink until it becomes monstrous” (Béres Rogers, 2018, p. 367). Yet, if we return to chapter four, Victor exhibits severe anxiety before he introduces us to the monster. His obsession with science becomes his “soul occupation”, and its vigour overwhelms his consciousness. By concluding that Victor’s psyche becomes monstrous only at the end of the novel, Béres Rogers reduces the significance of his obsession in the early chapters. Victor’s obsession with science subjugates his sense of self, and is the primary catalyst for his mental instability.
As Victor’s fear of his obsession increases, he begins to regard it as unnatural rather than innate. In “Fear, Phobia and the Victorian Psyche,” Sally Shuttleworth (2018) explores inexplicable states of fear in literary and medical discourses from the late nineteenth century. Shuttleworth proposes that the preoccupation with fear and phobia does not begin with Freud, but “finds [its] roots in … the emerging sciences of both psychology and sociology in the 1880s and 1890s” (Shuttleworth, 2018, p. 178). Shuttleworth begins by introducing us to psychologist G. Stanley Hall’s Synthetic Genetic Study of Fear (1914), wherein he collates various accounts of childhood fears and examines their psycho-physical effects. Hall bases his study on research from the late nineteenth century and discovers that the majority of his subjects are most afraid of their primal instincts: “What man most fears is himself, because his inner primal nature is that which he knows least, and which might seize and control his body and soul” (as cited in Shuttleworth, 2018, p. 181). Shuttleworth applies Hall’s analysis to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde (1886), proposing that Jekyll constructs a “divided self, where the social being could be surprised and overtaken by a threatening, unknown other” (Shuttleworth, 2018, p. 181). However, Shelley’s Frankenstein provides us with a much earlier example of split consciousness. As Victor proceeds with his task, his language creates a clear divide between himself and his obsessive impulse: “Often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work to a near conclusion” (Shelley, 2012, p. 48). Whilst the part of consciousness that rejects his task is “human,” Victor characterises the impulse that drives his progress as inhuman. It is presented to us as “an eagerness” that prevails against his “human nature;” it is his antagonist, and is alienated from the self.
However, the fact that Victor’s obsession operates beyond his control contradicts his attempts to regard it as unnatural. In A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), David Hume suggests that there are two types of human perception: impressions and ideas. Impressions are “all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul”; they can be forceful, and often violent (Hume, 1978, p. 1). Ideas, on the other hand, refer to thinking and reasoning (Hume, p. 1). In Frankenstein, Victor’s obsession is the first passionate emotion that he displays in the novel. His desire to create the monster drives his behaviour, overpowering the terror that he feels throughout, and is therefore as natural as his subsequent horror. If, as Hume suggests, impressions are unpredictable and often overpowering, then they are well-aligned with Hall’s understanding of our “inner primal nature.” Victor’s obsession is not unnatural, but his inability to control it leads him to classify it as such.
Once we have recognised that Victor perceives his obsession as unnatural, we can begin to understand how it becomes his “other.” In The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Hegel classifies the “other” as part of the self that has become split from the psyche, which he refers to as self-consciousness:
Self-consciousness … has come out of itself. Firstly, it has lost itself, for it finds itself an other being; secondly, in doing so, it has superseded the other, for it does not see the other as an essential being, but in the other sees its own self (Hegel, 1979, p. 111).
Like Victor’s obsessive impulse, the “other” in Hegel’s text is simultaneously separate and indistinguishable from the self. Victor recognises that his obsession functions beyond his control; it functions autonomously, as if it has “come out” of his brain. Yet, it is not an “essential being” as it resides in his psyche, and so it remains part of him.
At the beginning of chapter five, Victor’s obsessive anxiety reaches its climax, and he achieves his task: “With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me…. I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs” (Shelley, 2012, p. 50). However, Victor’s obsession with the task vanishes as soon as the monster takes its first breath. He tells us, “I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and a breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (Shelley, 2012, p. 50). In the first quotation, Victor’s desire to create the monster is agonizing. In the second, his obsession with the idea is immediately placed in the past tense, as if it has disappeared from his psyche.
It seems rather odd for such a dominant impulse to vanish so quickly. In New Introductory Lectures to Psychoanalysis (1933), Sigmund Freud identifies two types of anxiety that can shift and mutate. Freud proclaims that “realistic anxiety” is a fear of external objects, whilst “neurotic anxiety” concerns “the strengths and passions of the id” (Freud, 1933, p. 4686). For Freud, the id is the unconscious, which contains our most innate urges and desires. Though realistic and neurotic anxiety typically exist separately, an “internal danger [can be] transformed into an external one” (Freud, 1933, p. 4691). Freud uses the example of an agoraphobic who, afraid that he will be sexually aroused by strangers, becomes afraid of the external world. The agoraphobic’s anxiety is similar to Victor’s in that both are most afraid of a primal instinct that they cannot control. Freud concludes that the mutation from neurotic to realistic anxiety is an unconscious attempt at self-preservation: “One can save oneself from an external danger by flight; fleeing from an internal danger is a difficult enterprise” (Freud, 1933, p. 4691). We can use Freud’s analysis of neurotic anxiety to determine how Victor rids himself of his obsessive impulse. To prevent his obsession from further dominating his psyche, Victor displaces it onto the monster. His phobia of his obsession becomes a fear of the creature, and he flees from the scene: “Unable to endure the aspect of the being I created, I rushed out of the room” (Shelley, 2012, p. 50). Victor does what the self in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit cannot do. He gives his “other” a body, and removes it from his consciousness.
Now, the monster becomes the primary object of Victor’s disgust. In The Meaning of Disgust (2011), Colin McGinn argues that disgust prevents unwanted experiences from entering our consciousness. Disgust belongs in the same category as fear; both are “aversive emotions” (McGinn, 2011, p. 5). Whilst fear protects us from physical danger, disgust prevents psychological harm: “The primary focus of disgust is contact – we seek to avoid being close to what disgusts us. More specifically … our aversion is primarily to the invasion of the disgusting object into our consciousness, mediated by the body” (McGinn, 2011, p. 11). By creating the monster, Victor contains his other in a repulsive form and endorses his aversion to his obsession. On the night of the monster’s birth, Victor wakes from the “wildest dreams” to find the monster at his bedside:
I beheld the wretch – the miserable monster whom I created. He held up the curtain of this bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were fixed on me … one hand stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped…. Oh! No mortal could support the horror of that countenance (Shelley, 2012, p. 50).
Although the monster occupies a human form, it is presented to us as inhuman. Victor characterises it as “the wretch,” and he is so disgusted by its appearance that he declares no human being could house the “horror of its countenance.” Victor’s perception of the monster preserves his own sense of self. He is the human subject; the monster is the repulsive object. In The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir proposes that Hegel’s notion of the other in The Phenomenology of Spirit reaffirms the importance of the subject:
If, following Hegel, we find in consciousness itself a fundamental hostility towards every other consciousness; the subject can only be posed in being opposed – he sets himself up as the essential, as opposed to the other, the inessential, the object (de Beauvoir, 1972, p.17).
By characterising the monster as the object of his disgust, Victor identifies it as the “inessential” creature. In doing so, he encourages us to perceive him as not only separate from his “other”, but as the superior figure in the novel.
The monster epitomises the “shadow self” in Carl Jung’s psychoanalysis. Jung first introduces us to the “shadow self” in The Undiscovered Self (1958), wherein he proposes that man is not “simplex,” but “duplex:” “For more than fifty years, we have known … that there is an unconscious counterbalance to consciousness … which demonstrably influences consciousness and all its content” (Jung, 1990, p. 46). Jung suggests that man “harbours within himself a dangerous shadow,” which lives in the unconscious and whose existence is “grounded in our instinctual nature” (Jung, 1990, p. 46). Victor’s monster is rooted in his unconscious; it personifies his obsession with science, which governs his psyche in the novel’s early chapters. Jung warns his reader that neglecting the “shadow self” is detrimental to consciousness: “[If] the smallest stirrings of the psyche … remain as unrecognized as they have hitherto, they will go on accumulating and produce mass movements which cannot be subjected to reasonable control” (Jung, 1990, p. 55). Victor does not simply ignore his “other;” he attempts to remove it from his consciousness. As the novel progresses, his anxiety increases, and he is plagued by visions of the monster: “Towards morning I was possessed by a kind of nightmare; I felt the fiend’s grasp in my neck; and could not free myself from it” (Shelley, 2012, p. 190). Though Victor is no longer governed by his obsession, he becomes “possessed” by his monstrous nightmares. In sleep, he is smothered by the “fiend,” and he cannot escape its grasp. In fact, most of Victor’s encounters with the monster occur during or directly after sleep. In New Introductory Lectures (1933), Freud suggests that neuroses are often revealed through dreams, as the energy required to repress unwanted thoughts is weakened by sleep (Freud, 1933, p. 4629). Victor’s monster seems more prevalent in his unconscious than in the physical world. As Victor wakes from the dream, he confirms that the “fiend” has disappeared (Shelley, 2012, p. 190). Once Victor returns from Geneva, his fear of the monster extends beyond his nightmares: “As night obscured the shapes of objects, a thousand fears rose in my mind. I was anxious and watchful, while my right hand grasped a pistol which was hidden in my bosom; every sound terrified me” (Shelley, 2012, p. 201). Victor’s anxiety becomes incessant; he lives in fear of the monster and carries a weapon to protect himself. Now, the recurring image of the monster throughout the novel demonstrates the consequences of stifling the unconscious. By attempting to sever his obsession from his psyche, Victor does not erase his anxiety. Instead, he gives life to his “dangerous shadow” and creates a fiend that he cannot control.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde (1886) magnifies the consequences of repressing the unconscious. Like Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde exemplifies the struggle between the self and the “shadow” that we find in Jung’s psychoanalysis. Whilst Victor’s monster represents his obsession with science, Mr. Hyde personifies Dr. Jekyll’s violent nature. In the final chapter, Jekyll proclaims that his psyche is split; he is “not truly one, but truly two” (Stevenson, 2002, p. 55). By day, he is the esteemed Dr. Jekyll; by night, he surrenders to his immoral desires. Jekyll becomes so tormented by his dual nature that he divides his identity in two:
If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust might go his way … and the just could walk securely on his upright path … no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil (Stevenson, 2002, p. 56).
Mr. Hyde becomes Jekyll’s alter ego, the form in which he conceals his “unjust” and “evil” tendencies. Jung’s analysis of the unconscious in “Psychological Types and the Self-regulating Psyche” (1921) anticipates his later theory that suppressing the “shadow self” increases its ferocity. Jung insists that psychoanalysis presents the unconscious in a “thoroughly negative light,” and its “nursery talks about the “infantile-perverse-criminal” unconscious [has] led people to make a dangerous ogre out of something perfectly natural” (Jung, 1983, p. 180). By creating Mr. Hyde to conceal his “evil” desires, Jekyll literally makes a “dangerous ogre” out of his unconscious. Hyde is Jekyll’s grotesque “other;” he is aesthetically deformed and appears “hardly human” (Stevenson, 2002, p. 16). At first, the transition from Jekyll to Hyde is arduous; Hyde struggles to “throw off the body of Jekyll” (Stevenson, 2022, p. 62). However, Hyde quickly becomes more powerful, and Jekyll finds himself waking as his “other:” “I had gone to bed Henry Jekyll, I had awakened Edward Hyde” (Stevenson, 2022, p. 61).
In “Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde and the Double Brain” (2006), Anne Stiles attributes Jekyll’s downfall to the split between the logical, left-sided brain and the irrational, impulsive right. For Stiles, “Hyde increasingly predominates once he is unleashed with greater frequency” (Stiles, 2006, p. 886). As Hyde’s violence increases, Jekyll becomes “racked” with “horror” at the thought of “being” Hyde (Stevenson, 2022, p. 68). Hyde begins to resent Jekyll’s weakness, and Jekyll’s failure to usurp Hyde leads to his suicide. Thus, Jekyll’s tremendous desire to remove his “evil” unconscious from his psyche results in a deathly conflict between the two. Jekyll and Hyde affirms Jung’s suggestion that the unconscious “is not a demonical monster, but a natural entity [which] only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong” (Jung, 1983, p. 181). Stevenson’s text does not encourage us to demonise the unconscious, but to regard its removal from the psyche as a dangerous and suicidal act.
We can now equate Victor’s madness at the end of the novel with his desire to remove his obsession from his psyche which, as we know, manifests in the monster. In the final chapters, Victor lives in perpetual fear of the monster and dedicates the remainder of his life to its destruction: “I resolved that I would sell my life dearly, and not shrink from the conflict, until my own life, or that of my adversary, was extinguished” (Shelley, 2012, p. 201). Like Jekyll and Hyde, the “conflict” between Victor and his adversary has become so great that neither can live whilst the other survives. In Psychological Types (1983), Jung insists that the psyche is a “self-regulating system” (Jung, 1983, p. 181). If the unconscious is considerably repressed, it will begin to overpower the conscious mind (Jung, 1983, p. 181). In the novel, Victor’s determination to destroy the monster perpetuates his belief that his obsession is harmful to his consciousness. As a consequence, he becomes overwhelmed by the image of the monster and begins to lose control of his emotions: “I was possessed by a maddening rage when I thought of him, and prayed that I might have him within my grasp” (Shelley, 2012, p. 205). Victor’s search for the monster leads him to the North Pole, and, failing to capture his adversary, he is rescued by Richard Walton. The perspective of the novel shifts. Walton becomes our narrator, and his letters to his sister Margaret portray Victor as erratic and unpredictable: “Sometimes, seized with sudden agony, he could not continue his tale … then, like a volcano bursting forth, his face would suddenly change to an expression of the wildest rage, as he shrieked out imprecations on his persecutor” (Shelley, 2012, p. 216). Victor’s desire to kill the monster has become unbearable; he shifts from “sudden agony” to “wild rage,” and his thoughts become impulsive and irrational. Victor’s madness offers an extreme example of Jung’s “self-regulating psyche.” The repression of his unconscious is so great that his psyche over-compensates, and he loses control of his consciousness. Victor creates a narrative in which he must destroy his monstrous “other,” and in doing so, he encourages his unconscious to overpower his psyche.
In the final chapter, Walton’s letters magnify the fictional nature of Victor’s tale. Although Victor narrates his encounters with the monster to Walton, he refuses to reveal the details of its creation. Walton tells us, “I endeavoured to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature’s formation, but on this point he was impenetrable” (Shelley, 2012, p. 216). Once he discovers that Walton has documented his tale, Victor manipulates the narrative:
Frankenstein discovered that I made notes concerning his history: he asked to see them, and then himself corrected and augmented them in many places; but principally in giving the life and spirit to the conversations he held with his enemy (Shelley, 2012, p. 217).
Walton’s letters suggest that the monster is created through language. Victor refuses to disclose the details of the monster’s birth but prefers to use Walton’s notes to “[give] the life and spirit” to its existence. Although the narrative presented to us is written by Walton, it is modelled on and manipulated by Victor.
In The Devil You Know (2021), Gwen Adshead argues that psychiatric patients often use “doubling” to conceal the thoughts and behaviours that they cannot control. In the text, Adshead documents her therapy sessions with patients from Broadmoor psychiatric hospital. Chapter one focuses on Tony, a male patient who is convicted of killing several gay men in the late 1980s. Tony reveals that he would oscillate between two identities to convince himself that he had not committed his crimes. By day, he acted as the “pleasant waiter;” by night, he became the “tough sexual predator” (Adshead & Horne, 2021, p. 33). Adshead characterises Tony’s behaviour as “doubling,” which is modelled on Jung’s “shadow self” and allows Tony to “compartmentalise his cruelty” (Adshead & Horne, 2021, p. 33). By acting as the “pleasant waiter,” Tony creates a narrative that conceals his crimes from himself and from his peers. Although Victor is not a convicted serial killer, he also creates a fictional tale that allows him to separate himself from his monstrous “other.” His obsession with science becomes the monster, and his desire to manipulate Walton’s narrative magnifies his determination to conceal the unconscious behaviours that he cannot control. Thus, Victor is more like Tony than Jekyll; his double is a psychic fabrication. In both texts, “doubling” sustains violence. By masquerading as the “pleasant waiter,” Tony creates a coping mechanism that allows him to continue his crimes. By creating the monster, Victor buries his obsession beneath a fictional narrative and damages his psyche beyond repair. The monster in Frankenstein is not fake but fabricated; it resides in Victor’s unconscious, and is, ultimately, human.
Though Frankenstein is fictional, Shelley’s portrayal of Victor’s obsessive anxiety predates the detailed analysis of the unconscious that we find in twentieth-century psychoanalysis. By exploring monomania through the recurring image of the monster, we can recognise how the unconscious is demonised both in and beyond fiction. Most importantly, characterising the monster as part of Victor’s consciousness allows us to normalise duality in the psyche. By comparing Victor’s tale with Jekyll and Hyde as well as Tony’s use of ‘doubling’ in The Devil You Know, we find that labelling the unconscious as monstrous does not eradicate it, but increases its power over the psyche. If we are to reduce obsessive anxiety and prevent the kind of violence that is exacerbated by obsessive thoughts, we must begin by recognising that repetitive and intrusive thoughts are not abnormal. We experience both rational and irrational desires, and accepting both brings us closer to a unified self, which Jung defines as the “complete actualization of the whole human being” (Jung, 1983, p. 189). Like all monsters, the monster in Frankenstein is perceived as inhuman. Therefore, we must break the divide between the human narrator and the monstrous “other” to cultivate a deeper understanding of the unconscious. In doing so, we can further investigate the compulsive behaviour patterns associated with the monomaniac and challenge ourselves to better understand the dual natures of our psyches.
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