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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: .,
The Body in Romantic Literature
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In 1818, Mary Shelley, the 20year-old daughter of the feminist
Mary Wollstonecraft and the wife
of the poet Percy Shelley, published a novel, Frankenstein: 01;
Tbe jModem Prometheus, that became a literary sensation in contemporary England and has inspired books and films down to
the present day. The depiction
of the human body in the novel
reflects the attitude of romantic
writers toward nineteenth-century
science.
The novel tells the story of an
idealistic Swiss scientist, Victor
Frankenstein, who discovers the
secret of giving life to inanimate
matter. Using his knowledge of
chemistry, anatomy, and physiology, Frankenstein pieces together
bones and flesh from corpses to
construct the frame of a human
being, which he then infuses with
life. The creature turns out to be a
freak of nature: a gigantic, ugly,
and deformed monster with watery
eyes, yellow shriveled skin, and
straight black lips. Frankenstein is
horrified by what he has wrought,
and his rejection leads the monster
to turn on his creator, eventually
killing his brother, his friend, and
his wife on their wedding night.
Frankenstein pursues the creature
to the Arctic region, but the monster brings about Frankenstein's
death. Filled with self-loathing for
having murdered "the lovely and
the helpless," the monster declares
that Frankenstein will be his last
victim and sets off to throw himself
on his own funeral pyre.
The body of the monster created by Frankenstein is unnatural
in the manner of creation, its size,
its features, and its preternatural
strength. The depiction of monstrous creatures in literature was
common during the early modern
period, as a way of indicating
supernatural intervention in the
world. Shelley's depiction of this
monster, which reflects the preoccupation of romantic literature
with the exotic and the mysterious, differs from that older tradition in that it identifies modem
science, not supernatural forces,
as the source of the monster's
abnormality. In trying to unite the
body and the soul, Frankenstein
produced a creature he called a
daemon, a body inhabited by an
evil spirit who commits multiple
murders. Science had produced a
moral and a physical aberration.
One of the important theological questions in the
history of Christianity
has been whether an
evil spirit or demon can
inhabit or possess a
human body. Shelley
was preoccupied by
this issue, as evidenced
by Victor Frankenstein's
deep interest in the
figure of Satan in the
novel. Frankenstein's
monster was a demonic
figure, but unlike the
Satan of the Bible, he
was the product of
science and its attempt
to control nature. The
real monster becomes
science itself, whose
power nineteenthcentury intellectuals
Depiction of the Monster
Created by Victor Frankenstein
The creation of the monster in Mary Shelley'snovel embodied
a critique of scientific rationalism.
desired but at the same time
feared.
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Mary Shelley, like many rom':''''J
life force With which human Ik- "
ings should be in harmony. Thc
novel
reinforces
~c writers,
~oug~tthisoftheme
natureb,'a.<~ ,
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showing how a human being's
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nature's revenge. Frankensteffi'~
loss of physical and mental ht-"~~
the thwarting of his ability to hI'
attempt to
control
natureandleac±,,-,
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"",:
children
with
his wife,
h.i£;-~':,',
,
eventual death are all penaltie.< i~
his violation of nature.
For Discussion
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How does Frankenstein reflect the
themes of romanticism and in par:,:3
lar its critique of scientific rationaHo--