Gothic Fiction: Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus
I first read Frankenstein when I was around 10 years old, and I remember being shocked that the green monster with bolts in his neck lurching around Hollywood wasn’t at all like the “monster” in Mary Shelley’s masterpiece.
The word “masterpiece” is pretty obnoxious and overloaded, but I really think Frankenstein is one of the few books I’ve read that deserves the term. It just keeps getting richer the more I’ve learned about philosophy and history.
There’s a ton of literary meat in the novel, but Shelley’s skill is that even the lofty subtitle, “the Modern Prometheus,” and allusions to Paradise Lost don’t overshadow the story. The story itself is so simple and gripping that it has evolved into a cultural staple, and we speak of Frankenstein like we speak of werewolves, demons, and ghosts (much older types of “monsters”). It’s one of the works most alluded-to in the 20th century. In spite of belonging to the Gothic genre of fiction, it’s a truly modern problem at the center of the industrial revolution era novel.
The “monster” at the center of the novel isn’t even called Frankenstein; the name refers to the doctor who creates life from a mishmash of bodies. This book is a must-read for aspiring writers or lovers of literature. It’s surprising how much this book has been mischaracterized by time.
I’d like to offer some background context for those who plan on reading the novel, or have read it but don’t know much about the cultural climate into which it was born, because knowing how the book was written enriches it more.
“The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was born to William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Her dad wrote a response to the French Revolution that promoted anarchist political philosophy called “Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness,” and her mom, no less radical, wrote the first feminist book: “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.”
At that time anarchism was apparently popular, because William Godwin’s ideas were well-received until Mary Wollstonecraft died and he wrote a candid memoir about her life that ruined both of their reputations. Society in 1798 wasn’t too keen on her illegitimate children, affairs and suicide attempts.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was raised in a climate where her parents were considered totally eccentric and amoral, and without her mother. Apparently determined to make her life even more shocking, she took up with romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
By all accounts theirs was a pretty passionately macabre love affair (after his early death at age 29 from drowning, Mary kept his actual, and in no way metaphorical, calcified heart.) Percy was married and indebted; he was also ardently atheist. His atheism led to his father's disapproval and lost him custody of his children after his wife's suicide.
Mary and Percy travelled all over Europe, where she encountered a castle called Frankenstein in Germany. The idea for her novel struck while summering in Switzerland with several romantics, including Lord Byron and John William Polidori, credited with creating the vampire genre.
Her life was total turmoil, but she was well educated in philosophy, science, and literature. Frankenstein has sometimes been called the first work of science fiction. It questions whether man is capable of “playing God” by creating life, and uses the science of time to explain Dr. Frankenstein’s creative act (he uses electricity to animate dead tissue, as experiments of the time had shown that electricity makes dead frogs move.)
The philosophical questions in the novel are still sources of academic conflict. What is a soul? How is our identity created? How do the circumstances of our creation inform our morality? Where is the division created between a creator’s intentions and a creation’s free will?
These questions were already addressed by Milton in “Paradise Lost,” which is alluded to within the novel. But the enlightenment allowed Shelley to give a science-based facelift to Prometheus and Paradise Lost.
While Frankenstein is a little scientifically vague compared to our contemporary understanding, it’s become a template for stories like “Blade Runner” and “Ghost in the Shell.” It seems that each decade gives Frankenstein an update, with better science, but centering around one conflict: Creator vs. Creation.
