During the Victorian era, roughly the second half of the 1800s, the world was forever changed by the effects of the Industrial Revolution. The widespread use of machines and factories significantly altered the way in which people lived their lives and thought about their world. “By the beginning of the Victorian period, the Industrial Revolution … had created profound economic and social changes, including a mass migration of workers to industrial towns, where they lived in new urban slums” (“The Victorian Age”, 2007). Achievements of technology and machinery inspired a great deal of new scientific debate in all areas of life. Charles Darwin’s recently published Theory of Evolution caused people to question the assertions of the Bible itself (Landow, 2006). An increasingly educated public added ever more voices to these debates, which was helped by the growth in newspaper and other periodical publications. These were made possible as a result of the introduction and increased production of the printing press. Literature in all its forms made it possible for every educated individual in the country, no matter how far out in the rural areas, to learn about and contribute to the widespread discussions that were taking place regarding the major political and social issues of the time. This did not occur simply in the realm of the non-fiction news articles but also happened within the pages of the increasingly popular fiction novels being produced. “The Victorian novel, with its emphasis on the realistic portrayal of social life, represented many Victorian issues in the stories of its characters” (“The Victorian Age”, 2007). One of the biggest questions of the time concerned itself with the role of the scientist and his potential scheme to claim the position of God. This is one of the primary questions dealt with in Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein in which Dr. Frankenstein can be seen to take on the role of God in his creation of the monster as the ‘new’ Adam.
Victor Frankenstein, the main character of the story, intentionally adopts the position of God in his attempt to overcome the forces of life and death and place them directly in the hands of man. His goal is not simply to understand how life comes to be but to overcome the natural forces of death in order to more fully serve his own individual needs. His intention is to reanimate already dead tissue in order to create a new life based on Frankenstein’s terms rather than God’s. While Shelley discounts the science of the past as being unproductive and unimaginative, she illustrates that the science of the future will manage to break through these boundaries. “The ancient teachers of this science,’ said he [Frankenstein’s first professor], ‘promised impossibilities, and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera” (Shelley, 1993: 40). However, she suggests through Victor’s experience that there is an upper end to how far science should strive. “Victor Frankenstein, the ‘modern Prometheus’ seeks to attain the knowledge of the Gods, to enter the sphere of the creator rather than the created” (Bushi, 2002). Throughout the story, Shelley illustrates how science has reached a point where God is no longer necessary or used as a staying power for the investigations of its practitioners.
As he participates in his scientific studies, Frankenstein continued to imagine himself as creating a better human than the one created by God, deliberately taking on the role of God himself and deliberately pursuing the creation of a ‘new’ Adam better than the one God created. In doing so, Victor is certain that he can manipulate the powers of nature established by God as a means of enforcing the better, stronger and more efficient powers of man. “The comment that seems evident in Frankenstein is that God has abandoned Man; the progression of history sees Man abandon God in the Victorian era” (Bushi, 2002). Frankenstein never thinks of himself as moving against religion in his scientific pursuit of the ideal man, yet his assumption that man as God created him was imperfect and inefficient is, in itself, a denial of the concept of God as an all-perfect being. In spite of his knowledge that he is manipulating the laws of nature, Frankenstein continues to develop the creature he started, imagining it to be a beautiful thing that will remain forever devoted to him, just as Genesis illustrates God imagining his ultimate creature, Adam. However, Frankenstein’s accomplishment of Godlike creation turns out to be something hideous, capable of inspiring terror upon first sight and Victor cruelly banishes it from his sight without a single thought for its welfare. “Shelley underscores the self-centeredness of those who have power like Victor Frankenstein … He’s narcissistic, he’s really hungry for self-aggrandizement” (Bennett cited in Pamintuan, 2002). In many ways, this action reflects the contemporary concept of God as having turned his back on mankind, cutting it loose to discover on its own the terrors of science and creation while it also criticizes man for his arrogance in assuming God is no longer necessary in the modern world.
In much the same way that Frankenstein can be seen to adopt the position of God, the creature he makes can be seen in terms of Adam, God’s first man. While he is not pretty to look at, the monster is obviously ‘born’ with a very gentle spirit and awakens to himself in an Eden-like garden wherein almost all of his needs are met by the wilderness that surrounds him. As he becomes more and more aware of his surroundings, Shelley inserts Lockean philosophy regarding the development of the individual as the monster is demonstrated to have a blank soul, the tabula rasa, that must depend on his environment to learn what he needs to know. “Like most contemporary Lockean philosophers, she [Shelley] asserts that circumstances activate and direct an individual’s capacity for imaginative activity; the inclination or predilection thus formed then constitutes the basis of identity” (Poovey, 1984: 253). Like Adam, the one thing this wilderness doesn’t provide him with, though, is companionship which he discovers, after being violently chased from the first village he comes to, is unavailable to him because of the combination of his looks and his lack of knowledge. Using true ingenuity, he determines to hide outside the DeLacey home and learn the art of communication with fellow creatures walking the planet. The monster’s gentle nature is illustrated to a great degree as he describes to Frankenstein his thoughts as the spring warmed the earth during his stay outside the De Lacey home. He tells Frankenstein “my spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the past was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the future gilded by bright rays of hope and anticipations of joy” (Shelley, 1993: 119). However, observation from afar was not enough to ease the monster’s isolation and he attempted to join the family in the only way he knew how, by making his presence known and discovering, again, that his appearance will prevent any kind of intelligent association.
In the progression of the monster through the story, one can trace an analogy with the progression of mankind after having left the Garden of Eden. After he is chased from the loving and patient home of the DeLaceys, the monster becomes obsessed with thoughts of revenge against his creator, yet he is unable to reach him and manages instead to again find respite in the solitude of nature. “The day, which was one of the first of spring, cheered even me by the loveliness of its sunshine and the balminess of the air. I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them; and, forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy” (Shelley, 1993: 148). However, even in these silent places, the monster is unable to avoid the negative elements of life as he is injured while attempting to save a woman from being drowned by the rushing waters of a spring-fed stream. With his final hope for happiness thwarted in his creator’s refusal to create a companion for him, the monster dedicates himself completely to that creator’s destruction. In the end, the creature tells Walton, ”I had cast off all feeling, subdued all anguish, to riot in the excess of my despair. Evil thenceforth became my good. Urged thus far, I had no choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly chosen” (Shelley, 1993: 239). In making this analogy, Shelley both justifies man’s refusal of God as an act of retribution against God’s seemingly turning his back on man as well as criticizes man for his own folly in assuming he could make such a refusal without paying a heavy price of his own.
With the advancement of the Industrial Revolution, mankind believed all things were possible and God was no longer necessary as a stabilizing influence in their lives. “The positivism of Auguste Comte proudly proclaimed the intention of science to invade all the dark areas of human knowledge and enlight a new man into an era free from religious obscurantism” (“The Myth of Frankenstein”, 2004). This is the sort of scientific attitude Shelley addressed in her novel as she places Frankenstein in the position of God and his creation in the position of Adam. However, rather than simply being a criticism of science, “Mary Shelley used science as a metaphor for any kind of irresponsible action and what she really was concerned with was the politics of the era” (Pamintuan, 2002). In her portrayal of the destruction of both science and creation, Shelley brings forward the importance of responsibility in science and the need for spiritual caution in developing new ideas. The concept she introduced into the general discussion of taking things too far, losing control of the situation because of trying to push too many boundaries all at once, has been applied to everything from science to religious doctrines to political policy in the years since the book was written.
Works Cited
- Bushi, Ruth. “The Author is Become a Creator-God: The Deification of Creativity in Relation to Frankenstein.” Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. (2002).
- Landow, George. “Charles Darwin.” The Victorian Web. (2006). Web.
- “Myth of Frankenstein.” Five Minutes to Midnight. (2004).
- Pamintuan, Tina. “’It’s Alive’: Frankenstein’s Monster and Modern Science.” Humanities. Vol. 23, N. 5, (2002).
- Poovey, Mary. “’My Hideous Progeny’: The Lady and the Monster.” From The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
- Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993.
- “(The) Victorian Age.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2007.