'Alternate Labour and Relaxation': An Introduction

If the Creature could be said to have any happy moments in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, they would clearly take place during his residency in the hovel attached to the De Laceys' cottage. The list of possible sources of this happiness would have to include what David Marshall has called the "surprising effects of sympathy." There are many indications, however, that that happiness is a result of the balance he struck in his "mode of life" between labor and leisure. Not only are the Creature's accounts of the activities of the De Laceys filled with descriptions of their labor (gathering wood and collecting milk, working in their garden) and leisure activities (playing music, reading, conversing), but he describes his own activities in terms that emphasize these activities. As the Creature explains, The allusion to Smith's economic theory, articulated both in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and in The Wealth of Nations, in which an "invisible hand" reconciles for the public good the competing agendas of separate individuals pursuing their own self-interest, is one indication that the passage aspires to engage in dialogue with ambitious social theories. Daniel Cottom reads this passage as a representation of the invisibility imposed on the laboring classes who make possible the recuperation of aggressive individualism for the public good (66-67). But the Creature's labor here is a special case because it is voluntary in the strictest sense. It is motivated by sympathy for the De Laceys and not by the demands of subsistence. Although the Creature is unseen, the De Laceys' good is secured by what Wordsworth called "the labours of benevolence"—and not by an abstracted "invisible hand." What is more, this labor is presented as part of a mutual relationship (even if the De Laceys are unaware of the part they play)—the Creature's efforts to liberate the cottagers from the necessity of laboring allow both parties to strike a productive balance of labor and leisure. But if the novel complicates the reciprocal relation of the Creature and the De Laceys, then it is even more aggressive in blurring the relation between labor and leisure. The cottagers' leisure is filled with activity: playing music, engaging in conversation, and the instruction of language. Significantly, in Frankenstein, rather than an aggregation of individual self-interest-seekers advancing the general good, here the "invisible hand" recuperates individual labor devoted to the public good for individual benefit. The Creature's gifts of leisure to the De Laceys secure him the instruction he sees as vital for his future success. Even the structure of the passage seems significant in its alternation—then blurring—of activities of labor and leisure (he watches while they work; he works so they can pursue leisure activities). Even more important than Shelley's nod to, and critique of, Adam Smith's social theory is the allusion to her father's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice in this passage. According to Godwin's examination of the relationship between labor and leisure, the Creature's life in the hovel is ideal: The claim that Shelley is attempting to embody her father's theory is made more reasonable when we consider the uses to which the Creature puts his relaxation. The "balance" of labor and leisure that I have been discussing is, actually, a challenge to the very distinction. If one element of a definition of "leisure" is the voluntary disposition of time (as opposed to carrying out someone else's directives), then the Creature's labors are as leisurely as are his enjoyments of music and studies of language. At the same time, his studies are laborious and productive, clearly under no risk of "degenerating into indolence." Just as …