This Dark Endeavour/Such Wicked Intent

Abstract

[...]as a response to the admittedly modem question of what Dr Frankenstein's psychological motivation is in his fanatical scientific experimentation, Oppel neglects Shelley's complex intersections between scientific rationalism and passionate idealism.4 In the process, he replaces Shelley's literary homages - to the myths of Prometheus and Pandora, and to the Book of Genesis and Milton's Paradise Lost - with his own, occasionally laborious, mythos. Despite all the many, many signs (truly, almost to an absurd degree) warning him against his pursuits - nearly murdering Elizabeth and Henry, nearly losing his own life several times, the catastrophic failure of the artificial body he creates, and even his realisation that all his creations are infused with a spirit of evil - Victor is still intent on his unnatural quest to bring Konrad back to life at the end of the text. For both long-time fans and critical readers of Frankenstein and other nineteenth-century science fiction, however, the varnish of contemporary psychology, teenagehood, and ill-defined mysticism that are made to coat Shelley's tale in both This Dark Endeavour and Such Wicked Intent are pleasant diversions, but ultimately fail to elucidate Dr Frankenstein's fascinating character.

Kenneth Oppel, This Dark Endeavour (Oxford: David Fickling Books, 2011) and Such Wicked Intent (Oxford: David Fickling Books, 2012)

'No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. [...] My temper was sometimes violent, and my passions vehement; but by some law in my temperature they were turned not towards childish pursuits but to an eager desire to learn'.1 In so few words, Mary Shelley describes the childhood of one of the most influential 'mad scientists' in literature, Victor Frankenstein, in her 1818 novel. But the question of how such a past, spent largely on the bucolic shores of Lake Neuchâtel, could lead a man to pursue obsessively the réanimation of an eight-foot-tall2 body assembled from the parts of several corpses, might understandably give one pause. It certainly gave young-adult novelist Kenneth Oppel food for thought; as he explains on his website:

Now, remember that this is a kid who goes on to dig up corpses, chop them up, sew the body parts back together, jolt them with electricity in the hopes of revivifying them, and creating life from death. Doesn't sound like a very happy youth to me. What might have happened to Victor to lead him to become the 'mad scientist' we all know?3

Oppel's duet of prequels to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or, The Modem Prometheus attempts to answer this question, by unravelling Victor Frankenstein's youth and the path by which the young man originally becomes interested in alchemy and resurrecting the dead. Oppel's Victor is obsessive, curious, and incurably love-struck, and both This Dark Endeavour and Such Wicked Intent are fine additions to the contemporary practice of reimagining canonical nineteenth-century literature for young-adult readers. However, as a response to the admittedly modem question of what Dr Frankenstein's psychological motivation is in his fanatical scientific experimentation, Oppel neglects Shelley's complex intersections between scientific rationalism and passionate idealism.4 In the process, he replaces Shelley's literary homages - to the myths of Prometheus and Pandora, and to the Book of Genesis and Milton's Paradise Lost - with his own, occasionally laborious, mythos.

In Oppel's novels, Victor Frankenstein is bom with an identical twin brother, Konrad. Konrad is a better dueller than Victor, and much more charming; charming enough, in fact, to win the heart of the twins' childhood playmate, Elizabeth Lavenza (Victor's betrothed and a pseudo-maternal figure in Shelley's text), without Victor's knowledge. Even as Konrad falls ill, Victor believes he has long come to terms with Konrad's superiority, and desperately hunts for a cure for his brother's mysterious illness. He rarely hesitates to embark on whatever dangerous expedition is required to find the ingredients of the alchemical cure for Konrad's illness, despite his own partially unrequited love for Elizabeth; Victor repeatedly considers the idea that, if Konrad were to die, he himself would certainly be able to take Konrad's place in Elizabeth's heart. Joined on this hunt by Elizabeth and a surprisingly timorous Henry Clerval, Victor journeys from a secret library deep in the bowels of the Frankenstein château to the laboratory of a nefarious alchemist in Geneva; from the top of an enormous tree growing deep in the Alpine forests to primeval (and watery) tunnels underneath Lake Neuchâtel. Oppel pays homage to Frankenstein's gothic tropes through these unearthly, almost abject environments: Victor and his friends repeatedly journey along dark and dusty passageways and secret rooms in which depraved knowledge resides, whether of an alchemical cast or the primordial and dank tunnels carved by nature.

Victor's perilous journeys are all for naught, however: Konrad, despite beginning to recover after being treated with Victor's potion, suddenly dies at the end of This Dark Endeavour. Victor, wracked with guilt, vows to 'unlock [...] every secret law of this earth'5 and bring Konrad back to life. Such Wicked Intent follows Victor in his efforts to do so, as he unlocks a secret portal into the spirit world, originally discovered (or perhaps constructed) by his ancestor, Wilhelm Frankenstein. Here, Victor, Elizabeth, and Henry find instructions for creating an artificial body out of mud which Konrad may inhabit upon his resurrection. In their pursuance of the occult, Victor and Elizabeth's respective demeanours change, influenced by the malevolent machinations left behind by Wilhelm to guide the young cousins into the spirit world, and they become consumed by anger and lust. It is not until Victor, Elizabeth, and Henry nearly kill each other that Victor discovers Wilhelm Frankenstein's evil intentions in creating the portal. Victor finally destroys the artificial body and resigns himself to the loss of Konrad - that is, until he witnesses the 'astonishing power' of a lightning blast and learns of electricity, at which point Oppel's narrative ends.

One of Shelley's great strengths in Frankenstein was in conjuring a truly ambiguous character in Frankenstein's monster, one who desperately yearns for companionship and love while leaving a swath of violence, sometimes intentional, sometimes quite impulsive, in his wake. Neither Shelley's Frankenstein nor his creation is fully cognisant of the consequences of their actions until it is far too late and the damage has been done. Oppel, drawing inspiration for Victor's character from Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, similarly creates an ambiguous hero in his texts.6 Victor bears a deep but complicated love for his brother, and a sexual desire for Elizabeth that he cannot always contain, nor does he wish to. In the character of Victor, Oppel skilfully combines a desperate desire for recognition and independence with an amorous nature and an insatiable curiosity, creating a character who is simultaneously attractive and repellent, an impulsive obsessive with mostly pure intentions.

Set against Shelley's work, however, Oppel's Victor seems remarkably foolish, if not obtuse. Despite all the many, many signs (truly, almost to an absurd degree) warning him against his pursuits - nearly murdering Elizabeth and Henry, nearly losing his own life several times, the catastrophic failure of the artificial body he creates, and even his realisation that all his creations are infused with a spirit of evil - Victor is still intent on his unnatural quest to bring Konrad back to life at the end of the text. Where Shelley's Dr Frankenstein is driven by an all-consuming quest for knowledge without consideration for the moral and physical consequences of his experimentation, Oppel's Victor is guided simultaneously by an unmistakable thirst for adventure and by his obsessive, often manic love for Konrad and Elizabeth. Victor's interest in science is therefore effectively subordinate to his teenage fixations, which often read like an awkward concession to contemporary trends in pseudoerotic young adult romance literature and are a clumsy imposition when read in the context of the very novel which Oppel aims to illuminate.

Where Shelley infuses both Frankenstein and his monster with a sense of nobility, complicating her critique of scientific knowledge and intellectualism, Oppel's criticism of unrestrained scientific experimentation through Victor is heavy-handed, and too muddled with supematuralism and the occult to be truly resonant. This Dark Endeavour is the more cohesive and successful of the two novels, presenting young-adult readers with a challenging and atypical main character. For young-adult readers transitioning from other texts such as Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, and dipping their toes into the gothic for the first time, Oppel's texts are a tempting prelude to Shelley's classic work. For both long-time fans and critical readers of Frankenstein and other nineteenth-century science fiction, however, the varnish of contemporary psychology, teenagehood, and ill-defined mysticism that are made to coat Shelley's tale in both This Dark Endeavour and Such Wicked Intent are pleasant diversions, but ultimately fail to elucidate Dr Frankenstein's fascinating character.

Margot Blankier

Footnote

1 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, ed. by Martin Hindle (New York: Penguin Deluxe Editions, 2007), p. 39.

2 Shelley, p. 54.

3 Kenneth Oppel, 'Discussion Guide: This Dark Endeavour', Kenneth Oppel Official Website, 2011, <http://www.kennethoppel.ca/images/This_Dark_Endeavour_Discussion_Guide.pdf> [accessed 4 May 2014].

4 Roslynn D. Haynes, From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), p. 95.

Footnote

5 Oppel, This Dark Endeavour, p. 298.

Footnote

6 Oppel, 'Discussion Guide'.