JoanP, In Chapter 19, Frankenstein says that he sometimes refused to go on outings with Henry, alleging that he had other appointments. He spent some of this time "to collect the materials necessary for my new creation." Of course, months go by and it seems that the materials don't go bad. Maybe he was able to preserve them somehow.
That's an interesting question about "soul" and, as you say,
JoanP, how you define it. Whether or not one attributes the idea of the potential "goodness" in individuals to the concept of "soul," Mary Shelley did seem to believe in the fundamental goodness of mankind.
Babi, these ideas might explain the possibility that Frankenstein's creature might have lived in harmony with little William and others if he had been treated more fairly by society. In the introduction to my edition of the book, Diane Johnson says,"From Godwin, Mary had taken the notion that man i his wild state is a social being, capable of living, like the charming cottagers in her story, in affectionate cooperation. Yet society, after Rousseau's idea of it, is also the corrupting force. The rudimentary and ideal society of the cottagers is blighted by the monster, who, like Rousseau's natural man, is naturally good until he is embittered by his contact with human society and by learning. As he is educated to self-awareness, his resentment increases; he becomes a serpent in the cottagers' Eden. The cottagers pursue knowledge for the sake of cultivation, to refine and improve the sensibilities, and this relatively innocent pursuit is contrasted to Frankenstein's quest for knowledge, which has the object of tampering with or altering nature."
Frankenstein does seem to sense that he had lost control over his original quest to benefit mankind through his experiments with animation of the "life force." At the end of Chapter 19, he's reflecting on his process of creating the female creature and says: "It was, indeed, a filthy process in which I was engaged. During my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment; my mind was intently fixed on the consummation of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands."
I agree with you,
PatH, when you say that Victor should not have made the Creature to begin with, but having done so, he has a responsibility for it.
There is an interesting article at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279684/ about a possible source of Mary Shelley's (via her husband Percy) knowledge about experiments in "reanimation."
JoanK, I hadn't thought of it exactly in that way but I think you are right that "the mythic qualities, rather than the writing, are clearly why it has survived, and the basic story has such a hold."
I found an interesting exhibit at
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/frankenstein/index.html sponsored by the National Library of Medicine.
