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IV
Putting these two movements together implies a copying/redrafting process that might be crudely imaged as an inward-moving spiral. However, before arriving at any final conclusions it is necessary to consider all the content evidence in relation to all the physical and all the temporal evidence. The fact that Part Cr was drafted after all, or virtually all, of Part D does not prove that the previous material on Continental paper was written after Part D. There are, however, three additional matters of content which do further indicate that most, if not all, of Part D was written before all, or at least some very substantial portion, of the material on Continental paper.
The first of these involves the assumption that, if Part D was written first, it might well contain temporal pointing that would be disjunctive with that in the preceding material. The matter of Clerval's age is consistent with this assumption. Simply put, the chronology established in parts A through Cr puts Clerval's age at the time of Part Cr around 22, while in Part D, after the passage of two more years, his age is estimated at around 20 (instead of around 25).
When Clerval is introduced at the beginning of Last Draft Volume I, it is implied that he is the same age as Frankenstein: Clerval "compensated" for the fact that "My brothers were considerably younger than myself . . ." (p. 41; Rieger 30.25 — 26). Frankenstein is "seventeen" (p. 47; Rieger 37.9) when he goes to university; after working "hard for nearly two years" (p. 76; Rieger 52.25) he animates his creation; when he finally returns to Geneva "nearly five years" (p. 108) have passed ("nearly six years" in the 1818 edition [Rieger 69.21]) since he left, nearly "two years" (p. 113; cf. Rieger 72.11) since the monster's animation — "Five years ["Six years" (Rieger 73.10)] had elapsed — passed as a dream . . ." (p. 115), a time notation mentioned a third time on page 120 (cf. Rieger 75.27). (The three changed references to "six years" in the 1818 edition represents a rounding upwards rather than downwards; the elapsed time in both the Last Draft and the published work is actually about five and a half years.) About "two months" (p. 145; Rieger 89.20 — 21) after the wrongful execution of the servant Justine, Volume I ends with the monster about to tell his story. At this point both Frankenstein and Clerval must be at least 22.
But in Volume II Part D (which continues the monster's narrative begun in Volume II parts B and Cr), after a fourth two-year, or nearly two-year, passage of time, "two years of exile" (p. 102A; Rieger 151.15 — 16), Clerval's corpse is described by a witness as that of "a handsome young man about twenty years of age" (p. 134). If Mary was writing in the British notebook with an awareness of the previously written, careful and reiterated time specifications in the Continental notebook, she would surely have calculated that Clerval at his death would be about 25 years old. The mistake is understandable however if Mary had not yet worked out a detailed chronology for Volume I of her Last Draft because at least the extant portion of it had not yet been redrafted. In the 1818 edition, taking account of the six year absence, Clerval's estimated age at his death is corrected to "about five and twenty years" (Rieger 172.19).
A second area of content evidence conclusively demonstrates that Part Cr was written after at least the opening of Part D. The end of Part Cr overlaps (rather than underlaps) the beginning of Part D. Part D begins on page 62 as follows: "[having overcome many difficulties succeeded at length in joining her lover in his retreat cancelled] [¶] Such was the history . . ." (cf. Rieger 122.26 — 28). The sentence which is not cancelled, but which appears to have been written immediately after the cancelled fragment, corresponds exactly to the opening sentence of Chapter VII of Volume Two of the 1818 edition. A passage that constitutes a rewrite of the two cancelled lines occurs
Although it cannot be conclusively proven that most or all of the
rest of Part D, the rest of the extant material on British paper, was redrafted
before all of the extant material on Continental paper, there is a third and
final point related to content (and to the second point above) that certainly
further encourages that conclusion. I have raised the possibility that the
pagination of Part D does not continue the Volume II pagination begun by
Part B. Correspondingly, the chapterization of Part D appears not to follow
on that begun by Part B and continued by the missing long "Chapter 4." The
following diagram attempts to crudely relate the adjoining chapterizations
leading up to and away from the area of overlap between text on Continental
paper (including the concluding slip of different paper) and that on British
with the chapterization of Volume Two of the 1818 edition. The first line
represents material assumed to have been written earliest in time; the last (the
1818
text) that created latest. The broken lines represent material that can be
assumed but is not extant.
It might be common-sensically supposed from the physical evidence that Mary wrote on the Continental paper while in Switzerland and subsequently on the British paper when she was back in England. However, the evidence that Mary Shelley's allusions in her journal to "Ch. 2 [altered from 3]½" (on
One might speculate as to whether or not the five and a "half" chapters which at some point presumably preceded Part D were Last Draft chapters that corresponded to the opening chapters of the rough draft of Volume II, or were in fact an entire preceding version of Frankenstein — a version that had not been divided into two volumes. Such a version might have begun with the animation of the monster and only taken five and a "half" chapters (amounting to 61 pages) to reach the point at which Part D begins. Five and a "half" chapters does seem about right for 61 pages; 62 more pages brings the narrative to the end of Chapter 12 on page 123 (i.e., six and a "half" chapters in only slightly more pages). To understand Part D as the Last Draft continuation of an opening portion that would be discarded, could account for the apparent chapterization discrepancy between parts A to Cr and Part D. It could also account for the discrepancy between the apparent thirty-six-page manuscript gap between parts B and Cr and the only just over eight seemingly corresponding pages in Rieger's 1818 edition. If there was a one-volume version of Frankenstein, of which only Part D now survives, that version would have contained eighteen chapters, one for each year of its young author's age at the time the work was conceived and its composition begun.
But to return to somewhat harder evidence, what of the temporal data? There is evidence of approximately fifty Frankenstein writing days before the last week of October 1816, sufficient time to produce a preliminary draft of the novel in Switzerland and to produce on British paper the Part D "rough copy" during the first six weeks back in England (which include approximately twelve recorded writing days). It seems rather unlikely that Mary drafted Part D in the first quarter of 1817 prior to 9 April, the latest day on which she might have completed the Last Draft. There is little evidence of sustained composition during this period. The data is much more compatible with revision work.
In the light of all the content, physical, and temporal evidence there would appear to be at least two possible timetable reconstructions of the process of rough copying/redrafting based on the following two possible
The following four stages of composition, redrafting, and revision would be compatible with my second ordering:
- (1) The lost "transcript" of Mary's "waking dream" beginning: "It was on a dreary night of November". This was probably written somewhere around 22 June 1816. It may have led almost immediately to her jotting down an outline for a "short tale" (Rieger 228).
- (2) A novel-length version in preliminary rough draft or rough drafts
form. This may have been written in medias res as a continuation of
the Stage 1 "transcript" before backing up to include earlier material. It may
have been composed in the form of separately paginated segments.[24] This preliminary
263version (and perhaps the first chapter of Volume I of the Last Draft) could have been written in Switzerland between somewhere around 23 June and somewhere around 25 August 1816.
- (3) The Last Draft. It is possible that Volume I on Continental paper
and Volume II on British paper were, to some degree, written concurrently.
Possibly having written Chapter 1 of Volume I (whether in Switzerland or in
England) Mary Shelley in Bath, knowing that the following chapters
presented difficulties and would require some scientific and
philosophical reading (for her account of the monster's growing
awareness she studied Locke's An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding intensively between 18 November 1816 and 8 January
1817[25]), may well have turned to
redrafting Volume II, which begins with the impetus of the monster's
narrative, in a perhaps newly acquired British notebook. The
copying/redrafting of Volume II, or perhaps of all but the very long last
chapter of Volume II if she had
264not yet fully figured out the frame situation, could have occupied her between approximately 16 September and 24 October 1816.[26] Mary then, around 25 October, could have circled back to Volume I, picking up the narrative at the point she might have abandoned it (after Chapter 1?). She then completed Volume I and moved on, using the same Continental paper, to a revised drafting of the opening pages of Volume II (hence the first 61 pages drafted on British paper were discarded) completing Part [C] by 5 December 1816.
- (4) The revised Last Draft. The opening frame letters and all or part of the closing frame chapter and various local revisions, including the major revision Cr (and a possible [B — Cr?]), could have been made during the twenty-or-so writing days of the period January to approximately 1 April 1817.
Alternatively, my first ordering of the Last Draft parts — to my mind less likely — would involve some rejigging of stages 2 — 4 above. The preliminary drafting would need to have continued back in England until the last week or so of October. The material on Continental paper would then have been copied/redrafted during the period late October to 5 December 1816, after which, through to perhaps 10 January 1817 or some date beyond, Mary continued and concluded Volume II on the British paper (drafting the opening frame letters around the same time?). Then, at the end of March and the beginning of April 1817, she revised Part [C] as Cr (and perhaps [B — C] as [B — Cr?]). However, this second hypothetical timetable, which would have involved a substantial amount of writing over what seems to be about twenty-one days in 1817, necessitates that the ordering evidence of the Clerval variants be discounted as accidental. Likewise the anomalous reference in Part D to Clerval's corpse looking like that of a young man of about twenty. And an extra chapter, for which we have absolutely no evidence, would need to be
Both possible timetables have Mary essentially concluding the Last Draft with a revision of all, or just the last part, of the long "Chapter 4" that she had mentioned in her letter of 5 December 1816. The draft, or drafts, of that chapter are now lost except for the rewritten leaves that I have designated Part Cr. According to both timetables, the Cr rewrite would have taken place at, or around, the end of the creation of the Last Draft in 1817. But in the light of the second ordering timetable (the most probable in so far as it takes account of all the available evidence), we might now understand how it was possible that Frankenstein was, as M. K. Joseph supposes, essentially complete by late December 1816 and how it was, as Emily W. Sunstein determines, that Mary was working on a mid-point chapter around the same time. It is possible, indeed probable, that in December 1816 Mary was not faced with still having to write the last half of Frankenstein because that last half, Part D, was largely written before she wrote mid-point "Chapter 4."[4] In that case, what time Mary spent on the Last Draft from January to approximately 9 April 1817 was devoted to further revision, filling in, and patching.[28]
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