The Political Geography of Horror in Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein"

The monster who startles unsuspecting victims in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein by his sudden and fatal appearance seems to them to come from nowhere. He steps out of the placeless space of our most terrifying nightmares. For many fans of the novel and its filmic adaptations, the murders of Frankenstein are likewise situated in a shadowy land of Gothic fantasy and thrillprovoking manipulations of our unconscious. Thanks to recent scholarship, however, many of the historicities of Frankenstein-its interactions with French Revolutionary era discourses about gender, race, class, revolution, and science-are now as recognizable to informed readers as its psychodrama.' But we have only begun to decipher the significance of the geography of this novel, the rationale for setting its horrors in particular places, arranged in a specific sequence. Franco Moretti's Atlas of the European Novel 1800-1900 argues that "in modern European novels, what happens depends a lot on where it happens," but omits Frankenstein from his analysis.2 Does it really matter that William Frankenstein dies at Plainpalais, Justine Moritz and Alphonse in or near Geneva, Elizabeth at Evian, and Henry Clerval in Ireland? Does Victor's trip through England and Scotland serve any purpose except to evoke personal memories of Mary and Percy Shelley? Why does the novel begin and end in Russia and the Arctic?