This document discusses the frame narrative technique used in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It examines the complex narration through multiple narrators - Captain Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the monster. The story is told through a series of letters, narratives, and flashbacks seen through different character perspectives. This creates a story within a story structure and builds suspense for the reader to understand the events that led Victor to his current state. The frame narrative is a key literary technique that Shelley employs in her famous novel.

1. Topic: Frame Narrative in
Frankenstein
Paper Name: The
Romantic Age
Paper No.: 5
Name: Bhatt Urvi
Roll No: 32
Std: M.A.
Sem: 2
Submitted to:
Department of English
M.K.B.U.

2. What is Frame Narrative?
* Frame narrative is literary
technique that some times serves as a
story within story, whereby an
introductory or main narrative is
presented, at list in part, for the
purpose of setting the stage either for
a more emphasized second narrative
or for a set of shorter stories. The
frame story leads readers from a first
story in to another, smaller [or several
ones] within it.

3. What is narration?
* Narration is the way in which a
story is told.
* The narrator tells us the story its,
first person narration and hence ‘I’
is used while the story is told.
* The narrator speaks from outside
* Narration is in the third person

4. Complexity of narration
in Frankenstein
* Unable to narrate in to ability
and normalcy, the creature
attempts to narrate
* Disfigurement that ‘monster’
Frankenstein’s narration is
complex

5. Main narrator
* Captain Robert Walton writes
letters to his sister Margaret
Saville
* Typical epistolary manner
* Victor recounts his history to
Walton who takes notes

6. (Narrator)
Walton
( 1st
audience)
Saville
( 2nd
audience)
Reader

7. (Narrator)
Monster
(2nd
audience)
Walton
(3rd
audience)
Saville
(4rt
audience)
Reader
(1st audience)
Victor

8. Narrator
De Laceys
1st audience Monster
2nd audience Victor
3rd audience
Walton
4th audience
Saville
5th audience
Reader

9. Letters
* Letters appear many times
* Captain Walton’s letters
* The bulk of the story is told
* Letters of his beloved
Justine's story

10. Some pieces of Narrative
technique
* “Happy happy earth! Fit habitation for Gods…the
present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright
rays of hope, and anticipation a joy.”
* “The tranquility which I now enjoyed did not
endure.”
* “The best hope and the purest creature of earth.”
* The above extracts shows the richness of narration
and the marvelous qualitative writing technique of
Mary Shelley many faced novel.

11. Character perspectives
* A story within story
* Reader to get several
characters perspectives.
* Three characters
[Walton, Victor and
The Monster]
* Switching narrators
outright

12. Frame structure
* Shelly builds suspense from
the beginning
* Pursuits of the Monster, the
reader wants to know what has
made Victor so sick
* search a remote location

13. Suspense
• Shelley make use of
suspense and
technique of
flashback
• Well depicted in
the novel
deliberately by the
novelist.

14. Science
• Victor and Walton are mirror characters
• Victor stop Walton
• He has to loss will be in vain