frankenstein essay

Frankenstein: Technology
In Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus, written in the
late
nineteenth century by Mary Shelley, Shelley proposes that
knowledge and its
effects can be dangerous to individuals and all of humanity.
Frankenstein was
one of our first and still is one of our best cautionary tales
about scientific
research Shelley's novel is a metaphor of the problems
technology is causing
today. Learn from me. . . at least by my example, how dangerous
is the
acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who
believes his
native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become
greater than his
nature will allow (Shelley 101)
The popular belief of how Frankenstein came to be written
derives from
Shelley herself, who explains in an introduction to the novel
that she , her
husband Percy Shelly, and Lord Byron set themselves the task of
creating ghost
stories during a short vacation at a European villa. According
to Shelley, the
short story she conceived was predicated of the notion as the
eighteenth became
the nineteenth century that electricity could be a catalyst of
life. in her
introduction she recalls the talk about Erasmus Darwin, who had

preserved a
piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary
means it began
to move with voluntary motion," (Joseph vii). The extraordinary
means forms the
basis for Frankenstein. Many people also believe that a
nightmare that Mary
Shelley had could also be partly responsible for the creation of
the novel.
At the time the novel was written, England was on the
brink of leading
the Industrial revolution in Europe. The experiments of Huntsman
(crucible
steel manufacture), Newcome (steam-powered pumps), and Cochrane
(coal tar
production) throughout the eighteenth century in England were
decisive in the
initial transformation of England into an industrialized country
(Burke 137, 173,
195). The emerging age of technology appears to have found
followers throughout
the culture and to have become firmly reinforced by the time
Frankenstein was
written. Eric Rabkin (author), says that in England early in the
eighteenth
century, "there exist a populous discourse community that
accepted the rhetoric
of science" (Rabkin 39). This rhetoric has proof extending back
to the English
Renaissance. Those sensitive to change and those prepared to

embrace a rhetoric
of change need not be scientists. While scientists address a
discourse
community of scientists, novelists address a wider discourse
community of
the literate. If we can accept the earlier argument that
science and poetry
are not ontologically antagonistic, then we might well hope to
find fictional
uses of the rhetoric of science . . . in texts scattered from
Francis Bacon's
time to the present. These uses would change as the prevailing
first principles
of the time evolved under the impact the advances brought by
science and as the
consequent needs of artist also changed . . .
In the early seventeenth century, when the prevailing
first principles
in the artist's discourse community were theological, Bacon, as
we have seen,
used the authority of theology to validate the rhetoric of
science. As science
and technology and the persuasiveness of the rhetoric of science
changed the
world and the way people viewed it, the competing authorities
changed their
balance until today the rhetoric of science is used to lend
authority to
religion (Rankin 25, 37).
Tillyard confirms the proof of science and technology as

firmly
established in Mary Shelley's lifetime by quoting a book on
Homer that
proclaimed England's arts improving and its sciences advancing.
Tillyard's
point is that "the eighteenth-century myth of freedom in England
included the
doctrine of progress" ( Tillyard 106). The doctrine of progress
is connected
with the emerging doctrine of industrialization and science. It
was this
doctrine, seemingly inside by English scholars and popular
culture, although
reflected by imagination it may have been, that it can be said to
have provided
scientific proof for Frankenstein. Rankin states that "Shelley
had written a
palpable fable and she knew that its full effect depended on
authorizing some
possibility of belief" (Rankin 42). Science provided in the
novel provided
that authority, creating a foundation story in what the English
culture current
with Mary Shelley would have taken as real world possibility. The
rhetoric of
science in fiction is not merely a modern overlay on
storytelling, nor is it
employed, except fortuitously, to convey newly discovered
information about the
world. Once upon a time fiction, which obviously is not true,

took its
authority form the Muse: at other times from the Bible. Neither
of these
sources of authority would do for Shelley, but authority has
always to be found
somewhere if we are to distinguish the lies that tell truths form
the just plain
lies (Rankin 43).
Industrialization and the development of science were a
sign that the
mind was no longer medieval as it was modern. This explains the
use by Shelley
of The Modern Prometheus, and it does not eliminate the potential
for literary
investigation. Fellman (178, 180) makes this point when he
asserts that
Frankenstein was a literary anticipation of the twentieth
century with
alienation of human beings and technologies. He asserts that
technology has led
to a culture of control of positive creative energy in favor of
technology that
developed a life of its own and that there is a parallel in
Frankenstein with
Victor's alienation and withdrawal from his family and from the
world at large.
Tillyard deals with the troubling element of moral uncertainty
certain in a
culture of scientism when he cites Percy Shelley's Prometheus
Unbound, were "the

poet asks by what means liberty, once lost, can be regained." The
answer is hope,
forgiveness, defiance of absolute power, love, endurance,
steadfastness. In
this passage Shelley descends from his ecstatic vision of a
redeemed universe to
the sober thought that a happy state of things on earth is liable
to mutability
(Tillyard 120).
There is uneasiness in the vision of the world could be
improved by
scientific or at least technical progress. The consequence of
technological
action on this view is emotional and psychological on the part of
human beings
connected with it. In this regard (Brooks 592-4) suggests that
in the novel,
the monster's comportment makes it impossible for him to access
human
interaction; only his ability to speak and communicate offers any
opportunity
for interaction. Indeed, the monster's ability to communicate
offers suspense
and pathos, particularly when he demands that Victor create a
mate for him: You
have destroyed the work which you began: what is it that you
intend? Do you
dare to break your promise? I have endured toil and misery: I
left Switzerland
with you: I crept along the shores of the Rhine, among its willow

islands, and
over the heaths of England, and among the deserts of Scotland. I
have endured
incalculable fatigue, and cold, and hunger; do you dare destroy
my hopes?
Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create
another like
yourself, equal in deformity and wickedness (Shelley 167).
This goes to the issue of the scientist as villain, as
Issac Asimov puts
it. Asimov says that Victor Frankenstein is the prototype of the
mad scientist
who invades on those things not meant for man to know, because ,
presumably they
are reserved for God alone.
What lies behind Victor Frankenstein's scientific
projects is obviously
an attempt to gain power. Victor is inspired by the new
scientists who acquired
new and almost unlimited power. Frankenstein has sought this
unlimited power to
the extent of taking the place of God in reaction to his
creation. In doing so,
Frankenstein has not only disrupted nature, but seized the power
of reproduction
in order to become acknowledged. This ambition is very close to
capitalism (to
exploit natures resources for both commercial profit and
political control).
This is a goal of what many of todays scientist are out to

accomplish.
" Frankenstein, Asimov remarks "dared usurp what was
considered the divine
choice of giving life and . . . paid dearly in consequence"
(Asimov 66). The
subtle irony of the book is of course that Frankenstein is not
portrayed as a
villainous character. he is actually, a tragic hero: he meant
well" (Asimov
66). The moral dilemma created by progress that outgrows its
creator and
develops as it were a life of its own is identified in
Frankenstein. Robert
Spector sees this as a concern of Shelley's. Frankenstein (1818),
which has
long enjoyed a reputation as a monster story, was a warning
against man's
domination by the machines he was creating. The evil is not
inherent in the
monster, but is a result of the attitude toward it. For Mary
Shelley, imbued
with the ideas of progress and the perfectibility of man, the
danger lay in a
lack of proper feeling, a failing of charity and understanding.
Her long
passages describing the education of the monster have often been
criticized as
sentimental nonsense, but they were essential to her point of
view. If what the
monster learns about humanitarian principles comes only from

book, it merely
increased his wrath to discover their perversion in practice. .
. . (Spector
10)
Shelley questioned the morals of the advancing
technologies. She saw
the consequences that all the advances might cause. On this
view, the novel is
a cautionary tale about what is to come. Shelley's tale of
horror is a
profound insight of the consequences of morally insensitive
scientific and
technological research.
Works Cited
Asimov, Isaac. "The Scientist as Villian." Asimov on Science
Fiction. New
York: Granada, 1983. 65-68.
Brooks, Peter. "Godlike Science/ Unhallowed Arts: Language and
Monstrosity in
Frankenstein." New Literary History (Spring 1978) 591-605
Fellman, Gordon. "The Truths of Frankenstein: Technologism and
Images of
Destruction." Psychohistory Review 19 (1991): 177231.
Joseph, M.K. Introduction. Frankenstein or The Modern
Prometheus, by Mary
Shelley. Ed. M.K. Joseph. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969. i-xx.
Rabkin, Eric S. "The Rhetoric of Science in Fiction. " Critical
Encounters II:
Writers and Themes in Science Fiction. Ed. Tom Staicar. New
York:

Ungar, 1982. 23-43
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. Ed. M.K.
Joseph.
Oxford: Oxford Up, 1969.
Spector, Robert Donald. Introduction. Seven Masterpieces of
Gothic Horror.
New York: Bantam, 1963. 1-12.
Tillyard, E.M.W. Myth and the English Mind. New York: Collier
Books, 1961.