Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

In the book, Frankenstein warns, “Learn from me, if not by my precepts at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town the world that he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow” (275). Something here will rub most contemporary intellectuals wrong. However, I also think that, in the character of Victor Frankenstein, Shelley presents some reasonable questions about what it is that really motivates our quest for knowledge: is it really only a reverence for truth or is it also a desire for something more grandiose?—perhaps even for immortality. Frankenstein dreams that “A new creation would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent creatures would owe their existence to me in a manner no father could claim…” (273).  What I found most fascinating about the book were those first few chapters which chronicle Frankenstein’s transition from a cynic, then a champion of then-contemporary science, its surface-level dullness notwithstanding. His conversion is interesting to watch—especially in a pivotal moment when a professor assures him that “…these philosophers whose hands appear only made to dabble in the dirt and their eyes to pore over the microscope … have indeed performed miracles” (268, emphasis mine). I appreciate the suggestion here that what motivates the scientist is in some ways what motivates the poet and priest also—a childlike affinity for things that seem “magic.”  

        I’m no expert in Freud, but I imagine he would have had some fun making sense of the story of a creature that is created, then rejected, then that dedicates his life to destroying his “father” (maybe the monster got his hands on some Sophocles at some point). I would say that the relationship between creator and creature is the compelling force of the book, right down to the final scene when a weeping monster laments “That is also my victim…in his murder my crimes are consummated” (426). The monster’s desire that Frankenstein might build him a mate, his intentions to attack his creator on his wedding night—these seem like ripe details for psychoanalytical discussion. Perhaps what’s most fascinating is that the symptoms of what Freud describes as a male-exclusive complex are so ably depicted in the imagination of a young woman well before Freud’s time. Shelley is, like her book’s eponymous scientist, almost unsettling skilled at imbuing life.

(Note: I read an 1816/1817 version unedited by Shelley’s husband. My apologies if I am ignorant of plot developments in later editions. I intend to read those too).