Frankenstein, Fall 2003

Andy Wilson

Frankenstein & Ideas of the Enlightenment

In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley explores many of the scientific ideas of her time. During the Enlightenment, science had taken giant leaps forward due to the insatiable inquisitiveness of many of its scientists. These scientists gave no regard to the world around them; their only goal was to obtain knowledge through any means possible. They felt that by peeling back a few more secrets that they would uncover the source of life itself. Many of the ideas and that where produced during this time inspired Shelley as she wrote Frankenstein.

Shelley may have been inspired by a friend of her father, Erasmus Darwin. Darwin, who is also the grand father of Charles Darwin, was a well known botanist and zoologist. He also helped form the basis for his grandsons’ the theory of evolution. On many occasions Erasmus sent Shelley’s father letters informing him about the spontaneity and vitality to which microscopic animals reproduced. This idea of animals making another copy of themselves out of nothing but their own parts may have inspired her to write a man who endeavors to create another man out nothing but raw parts.

2

Shelley may have also borrowed ideas from Gorges Cuvier, the founder of vertebrate paleontology and organismal biology. Cuvier’s study of the structure and form of animals led him to believe that animals were functional wholes; any change in one part would destroy the delicate balance. This means that each part of an organism, no matter how small, bore signs of the whole. That way it was possible to reconstruct organisms from fragmentary remains, based on rational principles. The idea of being able to reconstruct an entire creature from similar parts may have influenced Shelley when she wrote about where and how Frankenstein collected the parts for his monster. Even though the monster was hideous, Shelley made him functional due to his superhuman speed, dexterity and strength.

Physicist and inventor Luigi Galvani may have also inspired Shelley by his experiments with electricity. Galvani, who invented the galvanic battery, found that an electric charge applied to the spinal cord of frogs could generate muscle spasms throughout the body. This convinced him that he was seeing the affect of “animal electricity”, the life force within the animal. He thought of "animal electricity" as a fluid secreted by the brain, and proposed that flow of this fluid through the nerves activated the muscles. Since Frankenstein didn’t bring his monster to life through supernatural means Shelley may have intended him to use something along the lines of Galvani by reactivating the “animal electricity” in the monster.

3

Another scientist who may have influenced Shelley is Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Lamarck was an early evolutionist who believed that a change in the environment causes changes in the needs of organisms living in that environment, which in turn causes changes in their behavior. Shelley may have taken this view and changed the environment from a physical one to social one. The monster after he is first created is benevolent but as he has encounters with society and experiences the cruelty of people towards his gruesome features his behavior changes from benevolent to malevolent.

During the time that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein there were many new and controversial ideas. Many of these ideas may have possibly inspired her in her writing of Frankenstein, while others she may have altered to suit her own purpose. But in one way or another, these ideas had some influence on Shelley because they all are found throughout Frankenstein in one way or another.