980 shelley, Mary
Victor can no longer act of his own free will. What
is more, he cannot be recognized as the agent of his
own will, responsible for his actions; his confessions
are dismissed as the ravings of a “deranged” man.
He is divided from his will—or, put another way, his
will is determined by another, an unauthorized proxy
whose crimes are conditioned by his own “murder-
ous,” “infernal machinations.”
Hilary Englert
ScIence and tecHnoLoGy in Frankenstein
As much as Frankenstein is clearly readable as a
supernatural tale reflecting the ghost stories Mary
Shelley read just prior to its composition, the
narrative has also been read as an exploration of
19th-century scientific advances and their implica-
tions for modern life. Prominent among the many
interpretations this text has received since its first
publication in 1818 is one that regards it as a cau-
tionary tale about the dangers of unrestrained sci-
entific investigation. Certainly the novel’s subtitle,
The Modern Prometheus, appears to underscore the
crime inherent in Victor’s usurpation of the divine
prerogative of human creation on behalf of science.
Victor himself reinforces this reading, casting his life
of questing ambition as a model not to be followed:
“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by
my example,” he urges both Walton and the reader,
“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 becomes greater than his nature will allow.” The
20th-century film adaptations that depict Victor as a
“mad scientist” both draw from and fuel this concep-
tion of the novel’s moral. And yet Victor’s unbridled
pursuit of knowledge and his violations of both the
natural and divine orders are not strictly scientific in
the modern sense. Indeed, it may be Victor’s failure
to adhere to the principles of modern science as
Shelley depicts them that lead to his ruin.
Without question, the novel contains careful
references to early 19th-century scientific devel-
opments. In her introduction to the third edition
of the novel, published in 1831, Shelley cites as
an influence discussions of “various philosophical
doctrines,” which took place between her husband
and Lord Byron and which she observed during
the period immediately prior to beginning the
manuscript. “They talked of the experiments of Dr.
[Erasmus] Darwin,” she recalls, “perhaps a corpse
would be reanimated; galvanism had given token
of such things; perhaps the component parts of a
creature might be manufactured, brought together,
and endured with vital warmth.” Informed by
these conversations, which themselves were no
doubt informed by the early 19th-century “vitalist
debates,” over the origin and nature or “principle”
of life, Shelley paints Victor as a proponent of gal-
vanism—that is, the science of generating life by
use of electrical current. While the precise process
by which Victor imbues life is not described in the
novel, his materialist propensities come into clear
focus as he describes animating the creature by
“infusing a spark of being into the lifeless thing,” a
technique presumably first suggested to him after he
and his father performed “a few experiments” involv-
ing “a small electrical machine, and . . . a kite, with
a wire and string” designed to capture and channel
lightning.
Indeed, Victor knows modern science. Once he
is installed at the university, he becomes enthralled
by the study of “the natural phaenomena that take
place every day before our eyes . . . distillation, and
the wonderful effects of steam . . . [the] airpump,”
electricity, vivisection, biology, anatomy, and chemi-
cal physiology. But how expert is his knowledge
and how orthodox his practice? Surely, his research
within these modern branches of science is far less
extensive than the study he has made of a more
primitive art in his early life: that of occult magic.
Indeed, Victor blames the disastrous course of
his life not on his pursuit of science but on his
failure to pursue modern science. Instead, he has
discovered, become captivated by, and followed the
“exploded systems” of Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus
Magnus, and Paracelsus, the medieval fathers of
alchemy—what his own father calls “sad trash” and
his university professors call “nonsense.” After hap-
pening on the works of these early thinkers, Victor
“enter[s] with the greatest diligence into the search
of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life,” and
the speaking of incantations designed to “raise[s]
ghosts or devils.” Indeed, in retrospect, he accounts
for his mistakes by noting that his family was “not