Wordsworth Summer Conference: Bruce Graver on Peggy Webling's 'Frankenstein'

Bruce Graver (Providence College) reflects on his Wordsworth Summer Conference presentation with Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum (University of Wales Trinity St David) on Peggy Webling's stage adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein.  Webling, the great-grand aunt of Greenbaum, was the first woman to adapt Frankenstein for the stage.  In this conference Q&A with Communications Fellow Amanda Blake Davis, Professor Graver reveals and considers the differences between the novel and the play.For those who were not in attendance at the first part of the Wordsworth Summer Conference at Rydal Hall in August 2018, could you describe how you first learned of Peggy Webling’s 'Frankenstein', and what provoked your interest in it?A few years ago, one of my students, Anne McCullough, was writing an undergraduate paper on the history of adaptations of Frankenstein, and in her research she read about Webling’s play, but could not find a text of the play online or in print. John Balderston’s adaptation of her play is in Steven Forry’s Hideous Progenies, and Universal Pictures purchased the rights to that play for their 1931 film. But a text representing Webling’s work alone and clearly embodying her intentions could not be found, without traveling to archives. And that she was not able to do in the course of a semester. So that’s how I heard of Webling’s play. Then in April, 2017, my wife Margaret Graver (who is a classicist and a specialist in ancient ethics) and I attended a lecture at Providence College on Plato’s Timaeus, given by her friend and colleague, David Sedley. Dorian Greenbaum, who is an historian of ancient and medieval astrology, was seated to our right, and afterwards she introduced herself, we started talking, she asked if I had heard of Peggy Webling - and I had. She then disclosed that she was Webling’s great-grand niece, and that she had typescripts of Webling’s Frankenstein plays.  I asked if she would share them, and she did. I knew that Webling had a central role in the history of Frankenstein reception, but of course I had little idea what was actually in the play, other than what is said, almost always inaccurately, in studies like Forry’s, David Skal’s, and others. So I was surprised when I read the play and found it very interesting. And since I knew the 'Franken-year' was coming in a few months, I saw an opportunity for Dorian and me to share Webling’s work with a wide audience.What attracted Webling to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and why did she feel so compelled to bring the story to life on the stage?Webling tells this story herself in an interview published shortly after her play was produced in London. 'I was walking down a street,' she recalled, 'turning over in my mind the subject for a good play, and suddenly I recalled Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s book, Frankenstein'. At first she dismissed the idea as absurd. 'But I had not walked many more steps before the idea came to me again and so I really considered whether it could be done. Before I realized it I had arrived at my doorstep and the plot and the various details were all worked out in my mind'. The interview, entitled 'Women Love Thrillers', can be found in the 27 February 1930 edition of The Daily News and Westminster Gazette, and is signed 'G. W.' The moment Webling describes must have occurred about 10 years earlier, because her letters of that period begin to mention her work on the play. The fact that she includes 'Wollstonecraft' as part of Shelley’s name may also be a clue to Webling’s understanding of the novel: it seems informed by the feminist ethics of Shelley’s mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.You discussed the differences between Mary Shelley’s novel and Webling’s stage adaptation during your presentation.  Could you describe some of these differences and how they affect the portrayal of Victor (Henry) and the Creature?First of all, there have been substantial renamings of the characters: Victor Frankenstein is renamed Henry, Henry Clerval has been renamed Victor Moritz, and Elizabeth Lavenza has been renamed Emilie. Rather than a younger brother William, there is a younger sister Katrine, and she is lame and must walk with a crutch. Henry’s father and mother have substantial roles (and his mother does not die during the play), and they have been raised in social status: they are Baron and Baroness Frankenstein, and the Baron is portrayed as a comic buffoon, just as he is in the Universal film. In the 1923 script that I spoke of at Rydal, Webling had little interest in the science that produced the creature: all that takes place off stage, and how it takes place is left completely unclear.  Nor had she much interest in scenes of horror and violence. Webling sees Frankenstein and his creature as Doppelgängers, and in her earliest script, which Forry had not seen, she has actually double-cast them. So there is no oversized deformed monster roaming the stage laying waste to innocent victims, only an exact look-alike of Henry Frankenstein himself.  There is a murder: the creature inadvertently drowns Henry’s younger sister.  But that happens off-stage, and it is not described as an act of violence: the creature simply didn’t know what he was doing (this scene also occurs in the Universal film, except the victim is not Henry’s sister.) On stage the only thing he kills is a pet dove that he squeezes too tightly: again, an act of ignorance, not malevolent violence. The ending of the play is also quite different from the novel.  After the creature kills Katrine, who is the only human being who has treated him with kindness, and realizes what he has done, he runs in despair to the Jura mountains, and after a discussion with Dr. Waldman about heaven and the afterlife, the creature flings himself from a cliff, hoping to be reunited with Katrine in heaven. I noted in my lecture that Waldman’s intentions are at least ambiguous: convincing someone to commit suicide by offering a promise of heaven seems more than a little coercive, and is certainly not orthodox Christianity.During your presentation, you revealed that Webling’s stage adaptation was the first to name the Creature ‘Frankenstein’, marking a significant change from Shelley’s nameless Creature.  This seems to be a change that has been adopted by successive playwrights and film makers to such an extent that the Creature is commonly referred to as ‘Frankenstein’ within popular culture.  Could you discuss the significance of the Creature having a name, and if it is named or names itself, and why it is named ‘Frankenstein’?Webling understands the creature and his maker to be Doppelgängers. So not only does she have the creature bear his maker’s name, she also has Henry himself do the naming.  The earliest typescript, in which Henry and Frankenstein are double-cast, was never actually produced, but even in the later versions, when the two are played by different actors, Henry and Frankenstein are dressed alike and are said to resemble each other.  So Webling’s Henry understands that somehow this creature is an extension of himself - and he seems to regard the doubling as a Jekyll-and-Hyde kind of thing: in Henry’s mind, Frankenstein is his evil twin, so to speak. The problem is that Henry is assuming something that the play makes clear is not the case: Frankenstein is not inherently evil, but his social development has been severely damaged because of Henry’s mistreatment of him. And Henry treats him horribly, beating him, treating him as a slave, and refusing even to touch him, except to inflict pain.What role does language play in Webling’s adaptation, particularly in how Frankenstein uses language?Webling understands that a stage production needs to have relatively simple scenery, and she has also determined to have the play take place in a relatively short period of time.  So the complex, and rather dubious, process by which Shelley’s creature masters the language (and one is always wondering what language he is mastering: Victor, a Swiss Genevese, is fluent in at least 3 languages, the De Laceys are French, and Milton is alluded to in English) does not occur in Webling’s play.  The creature is almost inarticulate in the first act—Henry does not seem to believe he is educable.  Gradually, he picks up a few words as he learns and experiences different emotions, and Dr. Waldman, who is a major character in the play, is his primary teacher.  And Frankenstein then begins to understand abstract concepts such as beauty, as well as complex emotions such as grief (complex in the sense that one needs to love something before one can lose it and grieve).  So rather than learning through a peephole, Frankenstein is taught.  But Webling does not allow him to progress to reading, and certainly not to reading Plutarch, Milton, Volney, and Goethe.What is the significance of recovering Webling from history and reintroducing her into present-day scholarship, and how does it feel to be a part of this recovery?Peggy Webling was the first woman to adapt Frankenstein for the stage, and as a professional writer very much involved in the Women Writers’ Suffrage League, as well as being raised by a family who valued feminism and the intellect, she has a very different point of view from the men who adapted the novel both before and after her.  Her play anticipates many of the feminist readings of the novel that we are familiar with.  Her play also is the bridge, a bridge almost no one has seen, between the novel we read and the very different Universal film that we all have seen. Our students always ask us how the book became that film: and the answer is Webling. But even though James Whale adapts certain themes, scenes, and ideas from her play, he also is pushing it in different directions. It is a great pleasure to be part of this rediscovery, but I can’t begin to articulate how it must feel for Dorian Greenbaum, who realized the value of the archive she inherited, and is discovering that those who hear Webling’s story and study her work are finding it to be both interesting and valuable.Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum adds: 'I’m slightly gobsmacked, but very, very pleased and excited that people other than me and my family are interested in Peggy’s story. And I’m amazed at the serendipity that led to this - because if I had not been sitting next to Bruce and Margaret at the Timaeus lecture, none of this would have happened. So I guess we should thank Plato, too'.All images in this post are courtesy of Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum. For more information on Webling and her stage adaptation of Frankenstein, see Greenbaum's contribution to the 2018 Wordsworth Summer Conference blog here.