Paranoia In Frankenstein

Paranoia struck the Victorian Era, with fear of the unknown and imminent change penetrating the literature of the period. This is demonstrated in Robert Louis Stevenson’s, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s, Frankenstein, which depict gothic manifestations that threaten polite society, propagating uncertainty, and circulating an air of obscurity over an entire era. These imposing forces, in the metaphorical form of Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein’s monster, left the Victorians to face the responsibility of sorting through new controversial and revolutionary theories and concepts. These monstrous apparitions did not simply exist to incite terror, but their creation and journeys are symbolic of the

Jekyll, Victor seeks to obliterate partition of the human existence, and what society thinks is feasible. Both successful creations embody the dread of both death and it’s reversal as well as the transfiguration of the human form. While these symbols may seem to be exaggerated forms of actual scientific probability during the period, advanced new idea regarding the human form and the finality of death were being brought to public attention. In 1815, I scientist named James Curry published a book, Observations on Apparent Death, explored the difference between immanent death, absolute death, and the phases in between, such as coma, with the end game being how to learn how to save a person by moving them from one phase to another, all of which would be entirely radical to the average individual living in the Victorian age. Curry rejoices over the “happy discovery of an essential difference between absolute and apparent death…” and he goes in to discuss cases “wherein the suspension, as well as the recovery of life had occurred spontaneously”(Curry ii). The more contemporary theories regarding science didn’t simply signal a change of Victorian perception, but began to menace the religious faith it’s innovations began

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that depict religion in a more thematically controversial way to reveal the effects of crumbling modern theories regarding mans existence. References to religion and the Bible are prevalent throughout The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein, but not in the most traditionally reverent ways. As the monster struggles with rejection he reflects, “ Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence… Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition for …when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me” (Shelley 98). He, like many other literary figures, is stuck between the pull of good verses evil, but appears to choose the side of evil by relating himself to the Satan of Milton’s Paradise Lost, by declaring “I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me, and finding myself sympathized with, wished to tear the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down an enjoyed the ruin”(Shelley 104). While the monster later regrets many of his choices, for much of the novel he is a figure fighting against his creator, a symbol for the movement away from God. References to religion in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein are