| Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was the daughter
of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, the wife of Percy
Bysshe Shelley, and the author of one of the most widely read and often
redacted novels of the past two centuries.
Frankenstein;
or, the Modern Prometheus was born out of a series of conversations
she had during the summer of 1816 with Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Dr.
John Polidori. Mary cites conversations between Shelley
and Byron
about Erasmus
Darwin ("they talked about the experiments of Dr.
Darwin") and Luigi
Galvani ("perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given
token of such things") as sources for her own idea of a reanimated human
("perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought
together, and endued with vital warmth") in her introduction to the 1831
edition of the novel (first edition 1818).
When asked to explain why he has created a monstrous life form (one that would eventually destroy him), Mary's Victor Frankenstein offers an explanation based on the concept of "species." "A new species would bless me as its creator," he says to Captain Walton in the opening pages of the novel. Mary clearly sees this attempt to create life as connected to the creation of a species. Of course, Victor does not really create a new species at all; he creates a hybrid, a human being composed of the parts of other humans and other animals, since some of his raw materials come from the "slaughterhouse." Mary's creature presumably lacks a soul, at least in the minds of most of her 1818 readers. But when Victor considers the "race of demons" that might populate the world if he goes through with his plan to create a female companion for the "wretch," he clearly places monster reproductive biology at the center of his own anxieties. As readers, we may well wonder why he does not merely create a "sterile" female. We may also wonder why he created a fertile male creature in the first place. If he has the power to create life, surely he has the power to create individuals unable to reproduce. Or perhaps this textual confusion reflects 18-year-old Mary Shelley's confusions about reproductive biology--even though she had already given birth to one child that died only days after it was born. All such reproductive anxieties however, point to wider issues and questions about the problem of speciation in the Romantic era. Of course, Victor Frankenstein's creature does not bless him "as its creator." In fact, the wretch turns on the creator and destroys him--as well as everyone he loves--not because the monster is inherently evil, but because the "monster" never receives love from his creator, or even a name. The human creator Victor never shows sufficient concern for the life he has made, much less for other human (or animate) lives around him. Mary Shelley's message points toward respect for life--all life--as a crucial aspect of Romantic natural history. |
| 1818
Review of Frankenstein (from The British Critic)
Erasmus Darwin and the Frankenstein "mistake" Luigi Galvani and "Electric" Romanticism In the Poetry Lab with Dr. Frankenstein Frankenstein (Georgetown University, with film links) National Library of Medicine Frankenstein site (National Institutes of Health) |
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