Ward, Lynd. Prologue heading vignette. Frankenstein; or, a Modern Prometheus. Written by Mary Shelley, Illustrated by Lynd Ward. New York, Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934. Access provided by UCLA Library Special Collections.
Last Updated March 17, 2024
Over two centuries after its initial publication, Frankenstein lives on in the cultural imagination. In writing about a creator who brought his creation to life, Mary Shelley imbued her own with an animacy that has outlived her. The 1818 novel’s afterlife is just as, if not more, culturally relevant than its original form. Take, for instance, the endless comedic invocations of the stumbling, moaning creature popularized in James Whale’s 1931 film or the steady stream of media that relies on Frankenstein’s framework to speak to a particular experience or a particular audience (e.g., the queer classic Rocky Horror Picture Show or 2024’s Lisa Frankenstein, a self-described “coming of RAGE” film seeking to entice lovers of the Tumblr “sad girl” and 1980s dark comedies like Heathers). Frankenstein has also galvanized the literary scene. In discussing the relationship between these newer works and their foundational text, it is useful to consider the term “hypertext,” which French literary theorist Gérard Genette classifies as a text that lends from and transforms the earlier text that it is “grafted” upon. In short, a hypertext is a new creation whose meaning is enhanced by its relationship with a foundational text, as opposed to the meaning created by other types of transtextual relationships, such as the relationship between a text and an inserted quotation or between chapter titles and the content that follows. As Frankenstein’s form explored structural innovation, with a narrative that unfolds in layers of epistolary and oral storytelling, it has also spurred hypertexts formally concerned with new narrative inventions. Two of these works are the wood engravings by Lynd Ward published in the 1934 illustrated edition of Frankenstein and Shelley Jackson’s hypertext novel Patchwork Girl published in 1995. (“Hypertext” here is not referencing Genette’s use of the word, but instead denotes a piece of hyperlink-filled electronic literature popular in the 1990s that challenged the formal and material aspects of the traditional novel.)
Ward, Lynd. Slipcase. Frankenstein; or, a Modern Prometheus. Written by Mary Shelley, Illustrated by Lynd Ward. New York, Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934. Access provided by UCLA Library Special Collections.
In this paper, I will seek to prove that Ward’s work in Shelley’s Frankenstein is a hypertext, even though Genette’s definition does not include visual narrative as part of hypertextuality. In fact, Genette essentially relegates illustration as having as much impact on the reading experience as a blurb, epigraph, or cover. Patchwork Girl, then, becomes a key part of my argument, as the genre-breaking multimedia work serves as a stepping stone between traditional narrative and new forms that spur different interactions between the reader and the work. While Ward’s wood engravings are part of an illustrated edition, they are not simply ornamentation for a classic of the literary canon. They are subversive in their content and their form. Moving forward, I will use “reader” to denote one reading written language and “viewer” to denote one viewing an image for clarity’s sake, but it is crucial to remember Ward’s wood engravings can be read, and that the reading experience is vital to how these two texts eclipse conventional genres while also being in dialogue with literary tradition.
Illustrated editions are typically published as fodder for—or at least end up being consumed by—collectors and the literary elite. Issued by entities like the Limited Editions Club (which Ward also worked with for a 1959 illustrated edition of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim), reprints of literary classics featuring illustrations by big names from the fine arts world dripped with exclusivity, and their high price point was based entirely on limiting access to this union of two forms of “high art,” as typically only one to two thousand copies were printed. Ward’s wood engravings, though, talk back to this idea of readership and expectations. Frankenstein was not initially received as the literary masterpiece it is recognized as today, particularly because of how the figure of the creature evoked feelings of fear, horror, and disgust in the reader’s body. Similarly to how illustrations are seen as being in conversation with the novel that surrounds them, Ward’s engravings speak to returning Frankenstein readers by focusing on the creature’s body, gratifying the voyeuristic desire of the public (i.e., what launched the onslaught of filmic and theatrical versions of Frankenstein, as they provided what Shelley’s novel did not and could not: the visual, carnal satisfaction granted by displays of the creature’s physicality, often at the expense of the eloquence and existentialism on which Shelley focused). Ward’s engravings center sensuality, with the creature’s body elongated to best highlight the curves and musculature. With this depiction, as it moves beyond the grotesque, comes an undercurrent of the erotic, and the question of sexuality and homoeroticism arises.
One of the most overtly homoerotic plates in the 1934 edition, a full-frontal view of the creature as he stands at the edge of Victor’s bed, is also a prime example of how Ward’s engravings transcend mere image and become hypertext through their framing. The plate frames the creature in a particular way—naked, towering—and so frames the creature’s body as imposing, since readers expect the creature to be a site of fear and awe. But framing is also at work in the sense of the literary framing device, as viewers are seemingly viewing the creature through Victor’s eyes. There is no visual evidence of Victor in the frame, though, and so viewers are left to contemplate what his absence means, especially in the face of their own desire for the creature’s body. This ambiguity of perspective is a particularly rich site for analyzing how Ward’s work speaks to readers’ voyeuristic expectations by creating a reading experience that makes readers aware of what they are reading. Moreover, the literal frame—the rough edge—of the plate calls attention to the book’s materiality, as readers are forced to consider the material dimension of the image they are consuming, further drawing attention to the realm of the physical and the world outside of Shelley’s novel.
Ward, Lynd. Plate opposite of p. 54. Frankenstein; or, a Modern Prometheus. Written by Mary Shelley, Illustrated by Lynd Ward. New York, Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934. Access provided by Library Special Collections.
Patchwork Girl is similarly engaged with self-awareness and metacommentary on the form and content of the hypertext novel. Eun Kyung Min’s “Reframing Frankenstein: A Narratological Study of Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl” is a key touchstone for my paper, as it opens up one angle into how Patchwork Girl functions. For those unfamiliar with Patchwork Girl, I recommend reading pages 62-68 of her article for a breakdown of the initial reading experience. The novel, written “by Mary/Shelley, & Herself,” is split into five parts: a graveyard, a journal, a quilt, a story, and broken accents. Each is accompanied by a preceding image. With one exception, these images are variations on the image paired with the title page: “her.” These “hercuts” show the body of her, the patchwork girl, in pieces, sliced and rearranged. She is also unclothed, and so her constant dis- and re-assembly challenges the traditional male gaze upon the female body—not to mention how the girl’s existence fundamentally challenges conceptions of biological sex. These images of “her” complicate our encounters with the patchwork girl’s body, just as the lesbian love affair that occurs between the girl and her creator, Mary Shelley, complicates the relationship between creator and creation. Mary Shelley and the patchwork girl’s encounters are a central part of Patchwork Girl’s narrative, but its form is also complicated in its interconnected webs and rabbit holes of hypertext. The two sections “journal” and “story” are narrated by Mary Shelley and the girl, respectively, and have dizzying points of intersection and divergence.
Jackson, Shelley. “her.” Patchwork Girl; or, a Modern Monster. Eastgate Systems, 1995.
To Min, Patchwork Girl uses framing devices, such as the various narrators and fragmented-yet-connected hypertext windows, as a reference to and movement beyond the framing devices Shelley uses in Frankenstein—making frames a key way Patchwork Girl is a hypertext, as it builds off of its hypotext to create something new. And Patchwork Girl is strikingly new, making its status as a hypertext feel more plausible than Ward’s engravings, which, as illustrations, fall more neatly in novelistic tradition. However, I would like to argue that they are both hypertexts in their own right, particularly in how they use framing devices to transform the hypotext and create innovative and reflective reading experiences, as evidenced in this essay by how they frame the relationships between creator (Ward’s Victor Frankenstein and Jackson’s Mary Shelley) and creation (the creature and the patchwork girl) as queer relationships fixated on ****the body of the creation.
Though Jackson’s work is a hypertext novel in the electronic sense, it is also, according to French literary theorist Gérard Genette, a hypertext interacting with its hypotext, Frankenstein. To Genette, hypertextuality is “any relationship uniting a text B (which I shall call the hypertext) to an earlier text A (I shall, of course, call it the hypotext), upon which it is grafted in a manner that is not that of commentary” (Genette 5, emphasis original). “Commentary,” here, indicates a lack of transformation; commentary adds onto the existing conversation, whereas a hypertext transforms the hypotext into something new and distinct. He dissects his ideas on hypertextuality in his 1982 book fittingly titled Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree.
Hypertextuality is Genette’s fifth, most complex, and most cumulative relationship under the umbrella of transtextuality, which he defines as “the textual transcendence of text” or “‘all that sets the text in a relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts’” (Palimpsests 1). As Genette considers illustration as the second type (i.e., the second least complicated) of transtextual relationship, paratext, my inclusion of Ward’s illustrations push my use of these terms beyond Genette’s original definitions.
He says paratexts—including titles, subtitles, prefaces, forewards, epigraphs, marginal notes, blurbs, book covers, dust jackets, and more—“provide the text with a (variable) setting and sometimes a commentary, official or not, which even the purists among readers, those least inclined to external erudition, cannot always disregard as easily as they would like and as they claim to do” (Palimpsests 3). In a later book devoted to paratext, called Paratext, Genette confesses to not devoting any of Paratexts’ pages to discussing three types of paratexts, including “the immense continent” of illustration. He acknowledges its long history and “its value as commentary”—commentary being defined by Genette as metatextuality, the third level of transtextual relationship (Palimpsests 4)—concluding that analyzing illustration’s role in transtextuality “exceeds the means of a plain ‘literary person’” (Paratexts 406). While writing about illustration at the same level as Genette would require an intense historical and practical fine arts background, such limiting language on readership further promotes the idea that illustrated editions are for the upper echelons of literate society, even though illustration, as a visual medium, initially provides more access than the written word considering its transcendence of language. One does not have to know English or be familiar with Shelley’s early nineteenth century literary style in order to read Ward’s illustrations. Moreover, Ward built his career as a creator of wordless novels, and so his work contains a narrative dimension that can stand alone from written language. His visual language invites readers of all backgrounds to engage critically with his work, regardless of status or background.
Ward, Lynd. Cover. Frankenstein; or, a Modern Prometheus. Written by Mary Shelley, Illustrated by Lynd Ward. New York, Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, 1934. Access provided by UCLA Library Special Collections.
The “Hypertext” Novel
In terms of the hypertext novel, the term “hypertext” refers to “a way of joining a word or image to another page, document, etc. on the internet or in another computer program so that you can move from one to the other easily” (Merriam Webster). This navigation occurs primarily through clicking hyperlinks, or web addresses attached to words and images. This is a fairly simple concept for our technological modern world, and we are accustomed to seeing hyperlinks in our emails, Instagram stories, and online news articles. But back in 1987, with the launch of Massachusetts developer Eastgate Systems’ new software, Storyspace, hypertext was revolutionizing the novel (Barnet).
This is how Jackson’s Patchwork Girl, created in Storyspace, works. One navigates the novel primarily by clicking. The right side of the screen resembles a page. These hypertext “pages” are referred to as lexia, and can display text or visuals. One can click anywhere in that lexia’s space or on the occasional text highlighted in blue (the hue invoking the popular way to display hyperlinked text) to move through the novel. On the left side of the screen is a visual map of how these lexia are connected. It appears in flowchart form, with clicks within a lexia typically corresponding to the path of arrows drawn on the left side of the screen. Often, though, this flow is disrupted when, inevitably, clicking on a lexia opens up an entirely new flowchart and many new lexia to be explored. It is incredibly disorienting, as the reader has no sense of where they are in the text. “How much of the narrative is left?,” the reader wonders. “Will I get to open all the sections of this flowchart, or will I be redirected away completely, having to retrace my steps after the seemingly arbitrary moment the text boots me back to the “outline” screen?”
Jackson, Shelley. “outline.” Patchwork Girl; or, a Modern Monster. Eastgate Systems, 1995.
Patchwork Girl makes many a meta reference to this alienation from the reading experience. One would think readers would be more in control of how the text is consumed, considering one can skip the page clicking on the right and go straight for skipping around on the flow chart. Clicking on pages feels more familiar, like flipping pages in the traditional book container. The hand’s mechanism is just slightly different, and the effect is two dimensional. Patchwork Girl narrates this readerly frustration from the perspective of an ambiguous writer:
“Assembling these patched words in an electronic space, I feel half-blind, as if the entire text is within reach, but because of some myopic condition I am only familiar with from dreams, I can see only that part most immediately before me, and have no sense of how that part relates to the rest. When I open a book I know where I am, which is restful. My reading is spatial and even volumetric. I tell myself, I am a third of the way down through a rectangular solid, I am a quarter of the way down the page, I am here on the page, here on this line, here, here, here. But where am I now? I am in a here and a present moment that has no history and no expectations for the future.” (body of text/this writing)
The text does not make it explicit who exactly is speaking, but it can be read as an authorial voice as well as a readerly one. Since this lexia, titled “this writing,” is concerned with “assembling” the text, it draws parallels to the traditional “spatial and even volumetric” reading experience for the reader to understand the trickiness of working with hypertext. “this writing” therefore speaks to Jackson’s creation of Patchwork Girl, our reading experience of it, and, toward the end of the passage, to the patchwork girl’s long life beyond her moment of creation. Also spoken in the first person, the second paragraph collapses the body of the patchwork girl and the “body of text” that is Patchwork Girl—as one reads the “body of text,” one reads the body of the girl, her fragmented history and multiplicity represented by the structure of the novel:
“Or, rather, history is only a haphazard hopscotch through other present moments. How I got from one to the other is unclear. Though I could list my past moments, they would remain discrete (and recombinant in potential if not in fact), hence without shape, without end, without story. Or with as many stories as I care to put together.” (body of text/this writing)
To be a reader of this text is most likely to always be alienated from it. It is a “hopscotch” through different sections, different times, and different speakers that keeps expanding without a clear path or clear ending. While modern readers might be more accustomed to reading long-form content on devices now than in the 1990s, those more recent texts still mimic familiar aspects of physical books, like page counts or even page-flipping animations. There is an active pandering to readers, whereas Jackson’s work gives the impression that it is actively against performances of reader comfort.
Wood Engraving
American wood engraver Lynd Ward, who lived from 1905 to 1985, is most often recognized for his wordless novels—his first and most popular, Gods’ Man (1929), was notably listed in Susan Sontag’s fourth note, “Random examples of items which are part of the canon of camp,” in her 1964 “Notes on ‘Camp’” (Sontag 6). For the most part, this blip in Sontag’s enduringly relevant piece is how Ward’s work has lived on, despite all the commercial success Gods’ Man enjoyed even as the stock market crashed the same week of its release (Ward 24). In 2015, David Ball ****noted that “Lynd Ward” received four hits in the MLA bibliography (Ball 128). Nearly a decade later, at the time of writing this essay in January 2024, there are twenty hits, with half of those being written by four authors. My emphasis on and integration of Patchwork Girl into my scholarly framework is partly due to the quiet academic conversation around Ward’s work, as the scholars of Patchwork Girl, as well as the text itself, developed a toolkit for new media hypertexts that is helpful for a hypertext reading that goes beyond Genette’s focus on literary convention.
In his 1974 ****book Storyteller Without Words: The Wood Engravings of Lynd Ward, Ward walks readers through each of his major projects as well as his thoughts on artistic production and the complex love Ward feels for his craft. In the first chapter, “The Way of Wood Engraving,” Ward writes about his route to becoming an artist as well as the two “ways of working” with woodblocks. The first is the woodcut. This term, as Ward says, is often the catchall for all woodblock work, but “woodcut” indicates work made from a plank with flat, parallel grain. The tools, a knife and gouges, cut with the grain to produce the image. Wood engraving, then, is the second type. The plank is different—sliced “directly across its grain, just as you cut a loaf of bread into slices.” This allows the tool of choice, a graver, to engrave the plank from any direction, as there is no grain to affect how the tool glides (Ward 12).
Wood engraving allows Ward to build a kinship with his medium. Prior to the eighteenth century, though, wood engraving was not a known technique. Moreover, following the fifteenth-century invention of the printing press, creating woodcut prints was often a two-person process because the fast-paced publishing industry needed illustrations quickly (Ward 277). To meet this demand, there were people who designed the woodcut and people who cut that design, and, according to Ward, therefore “were in no sense creators themselves.” While Ward’s bias is strongly influencing his narration of history here, it is relevant to my later discussion of the Frankenstein engravings to see past his tone and note how much he values a tactile relationship with the woodblock:
It was an unknown eighteenth-century Parisian artist who developed wood engraving, Ward tells us, and therefore restored “a genuinely creative relationship between the artist and the woodblock” (Ward 278). The creative relationship Ward has cultivated is indeed entirely dependent on contact. His woodblock “develops its image by bringing details out of darkness into the light… In a sense, what is happening is already there in the darkness, and cutting the block involves letting only enough light into the field of vision to reveal what is going on” (Ward 22). His woodblock is animate; it is the artist’s “antagonist” (Ward 15), and “the print will speak with whatever voice it has been given” (Ward 310). There is a physical and a mental component, always, for Ward. This is why he considers graphic artists that work with their materials to be superior, because “the mind and hand work together” to complete the image. An artist’s physical limitations and skill level are in direct conversation with what the mind can conceive of creating (Ward 308). The engraving process is also a battle of “sheer physical force” (Ward 16) and a “battle of wills” (Ward 15) between artist and woodblock. For Ward, then, there is profound intimacy in wood engraving:
Ward’s characterization of his (in)animate counterpart in wood engraving as an antagonist/lover is key to approaching his illustrations for Frankenstein—the ultimate battle between creator and creation that has sparked endless queer readings and adaptations—through the lens of materiality. Ward reframes Frankenstein, then, through the literal frame of the woodblock.