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I. THe one and THe many
It's no secret that when we think of frankenstein what comes to mind isn't the title character, but his creature.1 Popular culture conflates "Frankenstein" with the monster, and major critical interpretations of mary shelley's novel describe the creature-not Victor-as the tale's dramatic crux and conscience: the monster is the bearer of linguistic consequence, the narrator who most appreciates "scientific spirit," and the nonconformist figure with whom shelley herself is "compelled" to identify.2 such varied readings all locate the creature's significance largely in his incredible erudition and rhetorical prowess, features present in his articulate autobiography, the innermost of the novel's three first-person narratives. but these readings in fact underestimate the creature's exceptionality. While most of the rhetorical and thematic traits that critics attach to him are also found, in varying degrees, in the narrative frames of the novel's other two first-person narrators, Victor and Walton, the creature is truly unique in one regard: his ability to understand and narrate the perspectives of other characters.
In this essay, i suggest that the creature's influence is a result of his narrative exemplification of a form of characterization i call protagonism: protagonism describes the character systems of texts in which many minor characters are imbued with rich consciousness through the application of narrative techniques such as free indirect discourse and focalization. Though literary critics typically associate depictions of consciousness with major characters, the limited amounts of text allotted to minor characters may also yield the kind of rounded psychology normally linked to copious quantities of dialogue or exposi- tion. While protagonism can be found in the morally weighted minor characterizations of numerous nineteenth-century british novels, from charles dickens's Bleak House, to Wilkie collins's the Woman in White, to george eliot's Daniel Deronda, frankenstein's model of protagonism is a useful exemplar: shelley's novel shows not only how seemingly minor characters may become narratively full and consequential, but also how an autodiegetic narrator like the creature may reflexively signal his own depth of consciousness by depicting the complex interiority of other characters.3 i am proposing that frankenstein's formal whole implicitly encourages its audience to evaluate each of its three narrators upon their practice of protagonism. The creature stands out because his narrative frame best demonstrates...