Frankenstein's Reader as Judge and Confidant

Abstract

This article examines the tension between two modes of listening presented in <i>Frankenstein</i>. Characters sometimes receive others’ stories as a confidant responsible to the storyteller and sometimes as a judge responsible to a predetermined ethical norm. Drawing on the ideas of Emmanuel Lévinas, the article shows how these two forms of listening correspond to two ethical models – the ethics arising from the face-to-face encounter and the ethics arising from an imagined totality of ethical norms. Each of these ethical modes is evoked by the act of reading as readers are positioned by the text as both second-person addressee (the “you” to whom the novel seems to speak) and third-person judge (a he or she with no relation to the text). Although these two ethical modes are present in all acts of novel reading, <i>Frankenstein</i> dramatizes the tension between them by contrasting intimate listening scenes with institutionalized scenes, affirmative acts of listening and dismissive acts of listening, written stories as evidence and spoken stories as the conduit of friendship. Comparing the novel’s multiple representations of characters receiving another’s story, the article explores the novel’s emphasis on being heard as a central part of being human.