Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus can be interpreted as a chilling warning of the dangers of scientific overreaching and ambition. Mary Shelley was already aware of the works of scientists such as Erasmus Darwin and was being influenced by writers such as Byron when, at “the age of nineteen, she achieved the quietly astonishing feat of looking beyond them and creating a lasting symbol of the perils of scientific Prometheanism” (Joseph, 1998, p, xiii). The fact that Shelley parallels her story of Frankenstein with the myth of Prometheus is interesting and gives an immediate insight into the extent of criticism she bestows on Victor Frankenstein’s scientific ambition. In one version of the Prometheus myth (Prometheus Pyprphoros) he brought down fire from the sun to succour mankind, and was then punished by being chained up with an eagle feasting on his liver in a perpetual cycle. In another version (Prometheus Plasticator) he animated a man from clay in an act of usurping God. The undoing of Frankenstein can be taken as a metaphor for either version and is key to understanding that as Shelley orchestrates Victor’s downfall she is presenting his actions as a warning of what horrors blind scientific ambition can wreak upon mankind.

Many people who have done despicable deeds in history would seek to blame, or at least offer by way of explanation, terrible things that may have occurred in their childhoods. Shelley is sure in the case of Frankenstein to spell out clearly that this is not applicable in this case. As Victor himself explains to Robert Walton, “No human being could have possessed a happier childhood than myself. My parents were possessed with the very spirit of kindness and indulgence” (Shelley, 1998, p...

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...s father’s dismissal of his study into the alchemists that spurred him on, in Walton’s case he went against his father’s “dying injunction” (Shelley, 1998, p, 17) by going to sea. It is also true to say that “Walton is a solitary like Frankenstein and his obsession with the pole answers to Frankenstein’s obsession with life” (Joseph, 1998, p, ix).

By bringing these two men together and using the story of one in order to save the other, the author is showing us there is perhaps hope for the future and it is still possible for man to save himself from his own ambition. “Through the work of Victor Frankenstein, Mary Shelly mounts a powerful critique of the early scientific revolution: of scientific thinking as such, of the psychology of the modern scientist, and of the commitment of science to discover the “objective” truth, whatever the consequences” (Mellor)