This document summarizes the views of several literary critics on key aspects of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The critics note that the novel replaces the individual voice of Victor Frankenstein with a network of voices that create questions of narrative authority. Additionally, the complex structure utilizing multiple narrators functions as a distancing device and makes it impossible to determine the reliability of any single narrator. The epistolary style and framing device of Robert Walton's story add realism and credibility while buffering the horror of Frankenstein's tale. Mary Shelley was also the first to invite sympathy for the monster by allowing him to speak for himself.

1. Critics
• Frankenstein shows the limits of individuality
by replacing the individual voice with a
network of voices. “In spite of its
title, Frankenstein refuses to be solely Victor
Frankenstein’s story”.
• It also provides “questions of narrative
authority”.
• Mary Favret

2. Critics
• “The complex structure of the novel, the
multiple voices-within-voices that filter the
action, although an integral part of the
„story‟ function at times almost as an
estrangement or distancing device”
• Karen Ann Hohne

3. Critics
• “Shelley creates a situation in which it
becomes impossible to know the reliability of
a given narrator”.
• Michael Garner

4. Critics
• Shelley adds realism through the use of
epistolary style
• “Mary Shelley’s device of the frame-story of
the explorer… adds credibility to [the] internal
voices”
• Jason Marc Harris
• The framing device buffers “Frankenstein’s
horror story with Walton’s relative normalcy”.
• Susan Sniader Lanser

5. Critics
• In Gothic literature, Shelley is “the first to
invite sympathy for the monster, to allow him
to speak and explain the origins of his
monstrous behaviour”
• David Punter