The question of how to interpret dreams within a novel is one of the most controversial questions in all of literary criticism. The natural tendency might be to analyze them as if they were real dreams, which carries the implicit assumption that the authors are capable of writing the same type of dreams that our minds physiologically produce. Of course, the popular Freudian mode of interpretation owes much to the act of reading, imbued as it is with notions of symbolism and representation. We are therefore left with little solid ground to stand on, confident only in our impression that literary dreams must mean something, since they were intentionally conceived by conscious authors. Frankenstein's most famous scene, in which Victor escapes from his newborn child in his bed, ends with a particularly mysterious dream sequence in which his beloved Elizabeth transforms into the rotting corpse of his mother. Seemingly architected with an eye toward the graphic morphing technology of modern computers, the scene gained much of its current intrigue from the Freudian revolution of the early 20th century. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay. Yet Dr. Jonathan Glance rejects psychoanalysis as a useful tool for interpreting dreams in a pre-Freudian text, choosing instead to examine the ideas of that era. predominant conception of dreams as clues to their true purpose in Frankenstein. Unfortunately, while Freud's explanation applies to both real and literary dreams, Dr. Glance argues that the Victorian associationist paradigm that locates the root of dreams in the day's activities and the state of the body when falling asleep does not take into account the intentional manipulation of a dream. character's thoughts within a narrative. Instead, he claims that 19th-century authors used dreams to foreshadow future plot twists, offering a warning generally unheeded by the protagonist. While this explains the hallucinations of Victor sleeping after animating the creature, since that act of creation will ultimately lead to Elizabeth following her mother-in-law to the grave, Dr. Glance himself admits that such a reading "may seem reductive." He nevertheless continues to defend his point of view, but a thorough critic must not be satisfied with this excessive simplification. We must in fact explore the possibility, the certainty, that Shelley has more than one reason for the grotesque scene that Victor imagines in his sleep. The publication date of Frankenstein should not dissuade us from a psychoanalytic interpretation of its events; after all, Freud uses ETA Hoffmann's "The Sandman" (1817) as the first example of a mystery text, even though Hoffman died 55 years before the word "psychoanalysis" entered the lexicon. Perhaps unable to articulate their own reasoning, 19th-century writers could still associate a character's thoughts with his or her psyche. To undermine Dr. Glance's argument, we need only turn the page of Shelley's text and glimpse undeniable evidence that she imbues dreams with more than just premonitions. . After abandoning Ginevra in search of his creature, Victor endures his solitary travels only through dreams of escape: "in my sleep I saw my friends, my wife and my beloved country; once again I saw the benevolent face of my father , I heard the silver tones of my Elizabeth's voice, and saw Clerval enjoying health and youth" (213). Clearly these images do not refer to anything in the future of the novel. (We might assume thatreveal Victor's future celestial existence, where he would be reunited with his loved ones, but an honest critic should not assume events that are not included in the text itself.) The very presence of these non-prophetic dreams casts doubt on the one-dimensional interpretation of Dr. Glance of the first sequence, requiring a more nuanced reading. Indeed, although a pre-Freudian author might not create dreams that fit perfectly into a psychoanalytic approach, Shelley is perfectly capable of building a symbolic connection between the dream scenes and the broader trajectory of the novel. Both dreams portray Victor's deceased loved ones, but while the later dream focuses on the previous existences of the elder Frankenstein, Elizabeth, and Clerval, the former depicts Victor's mother in her current state as a corpse. In a sense, we might say that this move away from the physical reality of death reflects Victor's growing detachment from his previous endeavors. Rather than imagine his deceased relatives as actual corpses, as the raw material for a scientific experiment gone awry, he instead uses them as objects of nostalgia to distract himself from the hideous creature. Despite this apparent divergence, however, both dreams indicate the same thing. feature: Victor's inability to face reality. At his first sight of the creature, Victor feels no pride but only abject horror, and he willingly submits to his weariness, "striving to seek some moment of oblivion" (49). Although the resulting dream scene seems repugnant, it represents Victor's attempt to reassert the supremacy of death by replacing the animate tissue in his laboratory with the still-lifeless mother of his memory. The bond between young Elizabeth and Caroline Beaufort's corpse reinforces the inevitability of human decay, a process that Frankenstein has thus far sought to reverse only to find a miserable alternative. He immediately awakens to avoid the original situation, but must face his creature once again; thus Victor finds himself at a dead end, faced with the opposite but equally intolerable options of final death and abject resuscitation. Unable to bear these two possibilities, Vittorio can do nothing but flee in horror and "take refuge in the courtyard where I remained for the rest of the night" (49). It is significant that, in the aftermath of his miserable creation, Victor spends hours in an in-between space located both inside and outside the confines of the house. Indeed, this setting mirrors his current psychological state, caught between two unbearable perceptions of the world: the mental image of man's inevitable mortality and the external reality of a vile living corpse. Likewise, Victor admits that his later dreams serve to counteract the loneliness of his isolated quest: My life, as it thus passed, was truly hateful to me, and only during sleep could I taste joy. O blessed sleep! Often, when I was most unhappy, I sank into repose, and my dreams lulled me into ecstasy. The spirits who guarded me had provided me with these moments, or rather hours, of happiness so that I could maintain the strength to complete my pilgrimage. Deprived of this respite, I should have sunk into my difficulties. (213) Cleverly, Victor has found a new way to avoid thoughts of both mortality and resuscitation, instead imagining those he knows to have died in their previous state. Sleep thus becomes a true relief, rather than a secondary source of horror. However, this does not represent a fundamental shift in his character, but simply the next step in his rejection of the harsh reality he sees around him. Having only achievedisolation both in the natural order and through its scientific subversion, he withdraws as much as possible from his external life into the sanctuary of his own reminiscences, even going so far as to "persuade himself that they still lived" (213). This language of self-deception brings to mind the words Victor uses earlier to describe his initial disbelief at his mother's death: "So much time passes before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence seemed like a part of ours could have disappeared forever" (33, emphasis added). Undeniably, just as the young Frankenstein must try to convince himself that his consolidated reality no longer exists and, consequently, that death cannot effectively be defeated , so even the world-weary must try to convince themselves that death cannot actually be defeated. The version imagines that his friends are still alive, that he has not fathered a murderer. So these dreams leave Victor unmotivated in his revenge, as they allow him to forget the cause but just as Victor, the sad creator, must wake up to the awareness of his creature's face, he now cannot forget his quest for more than a single night of sleep. This is not to say that the two dreams play an identical role in Frankenstein, that our reading would not benefit from an analysis of the important distinctions between them. Rather, we must pay particular attention to the key points of the deviation, specifically the inclusion of two characters in the first dream who are ignored in the second: Victor's mother and Victor himself. In the initial nightmare, Victor plays an active role: Happy and surprised, I hugged Elizabeth, but as soon as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became bruised the color of death; her features seemed to change, and I thought I was holding the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud wrapped its body, and I saw the worms crawling between the folds of the flannel. (49)With the dream at the end of the novel, however, he has become a simple observer, using only the verbs "seen", "heard" and "watched"; his only mention of "enjoying reality in their arms" is simply a figurative representation of their presence in his mind. The diminution of Victor's subjectivity in his dreams indicates not only that he is consistent in his refusal to accept reality, as I have argued, but that his detachment from the world around him actually grows as the creature causes more and more devastation in the his life. he is horrified by the initial sight of his creation, he has not yet recognized the full implications of his experiment. His dream thus maintains some foundation in the reality that once existed, in the previous inflexibility of death. The dream Victor appears to produce the corpse through his actions, suggesting that the waking Victor still feels he has the ability to undo what he has done, to tear up his notes and restore the previous laws of human experience. Unfortunately, Shelley provides clear evidence that, even now, such a regression would disgust Victor as much as the sight of a reanimated corpse: "I awoke from sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth chattered, and every limb had convulsions." In this way, Victor's narrative moves from a grotesque vision of his mother's corpse to an equally ugly description of his own body, and then arrives at the image of the creature's disgusting face, connecting his obsession with defeating death to the constant awareness of one's physical state. As he makes grand declarations about his ambition to save all humanity from mortality, pointing to his mother's death.