The Enlightment In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Frankenstein’s creation was lost in the world with no one who could have understood him . It felt sorrowful and unfulfilled emotions as seen in this quote. Betrayal by Victor leaves a large impact the monster carried, which, turned into a monster full of hate and dissatisfaction. Victor’s creation was not a monster , but new born baby in a grown horrific body that was not to be called his own . It becomes a monster both mentally and physically, who will be feared by all . Victor not giving him the love he needed gets the monster enraged, which leads the monster to cause series of events that affects Victor unforgivably. .

In the case of Victor Frankenstein, although above it was discussed that emotion/desires may have inspired his pursuit, the actual pursuit itself was logical as revealed on page 53 ‘Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of discovery were distinct and probable’. Therefore the destruction ‘My cheek had grown pale with study and my person had become emaciated with confinement’ (Pg 55) was the direct result of a scientific Enlightenment endeavor. Frankenstein takes his pursuit to the extreme ‘the stars often disappeared in the light of morning whilst I was yet engaged in my laboratory’ and as such suffers direct physical consequences which only act to foreshadow the degrading moral consequences, death of family members, misery and lonliness to haunt him to his grave. Shelley challenges the Enlightenment ideology regarding man should pursue scientific knowledge when taken to its most extreme as it has terrible consequences on the individual.

The story of “Frankenstein”, by Mary Shelley is about a scientist Victor Frankenstein who creates a monster. “I began the creation of a human being” (Shelley 54). Frankenstein was influenced by the natural philosophers of the prior generations. Frankenstein was among the enlightenment scientists that belied that the natural world has the answers to all the mystery in the world. They conducted various studies of the natural world and humanity to understand everything about how the universe and God works. Frankenstein believed that God was the clockmaker; thus Frankenstein thought that by studying the clock, human beings would learn about the clockmaker and his intentions. Therefore, in the study of God and the universe, Frankenstein created

Philosophers and scientists alike have debated for centuries whether a person’s character is the result of nature or nurture. In the writings of Thomas Hobbes, it is expressed that humans are endowed with character from birth, and that they are innately evil in nature. John Locke’s response to this theory is that everyone is born with a tabula rasa, or blank slate, and then develops character after a series of formative experiences. The idea that true character is the result of experiences and societal interaction is a theme deeply explored throughout Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Through different interactions with the monster, Shelley attempts to express that it is because of Victor’s failings as a parent and creator, because of the

Frankenstein Quote: “Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through...A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me… I thought that if I could bestow

In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and Frankenstein’s Creation reach similar conclusions humanity by seafaring to the North Pole, delving into the dark depths of science, and observing the rejecting nature of humans. The three tragic heroes Walton, Frankenstein and the Creation are all character doubles in their initial enthusiasm for knowledge, inner dualist personalities, religiously glorified personal goals, possessive relationships and negative effects of gaining knowledge. The three character’s views of humanity are a microcosm of the culturally accepted importance of beauty, and how the culmination of knowledge can be blinding and lead to utter ruination.

Mary Shelley’s writing serves as an oracle for her many romantic beliefs. One such principle present through Shelley’s novel is the idea that mankind must refrain from the physical sciences, such as chemistry, and focus more on the natural world. The core Romantic belief is that humanity must return to nature in order to reach self actualisation. Mary Shelley conveys this belief in her novel, Frankenstein, by using the motif of vegetative cycles as a parallel to the novel’s events in order to reinforce the importance of nature and the dehumanising sciences.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is very much a commentary on the Enlightenment and its failure to tame the human condition through reason. The human condition can be defined as the unique features which mold a human being. The creature is undoubtedly a victim of this predicament. He grapples with the meaning of life, the search for gratification, the sense of curiosity, the inevitability of isolation, and the awareness of the inescapability of death. These qualities and his ceaseless stalking of his master conjure up the metaphor that he is the shadow of the Enlightenment. Indeed, the Enlightenment is represented through Frankenstein whereas the creature is the embodiment of everything it shuns. These include nature, emotion, and savagery. The two characters are understood as counterparts and yet strikingly similar at the same time. The creature is considered a monster because of his grotesque appearance. Frankenstein on the other hand is a monster of another kind: his ambition, secrecy, and selfishness alienate him from human society. He is eventually consumed by an obsessive hatred of his creation. Both characters also commit primordial crimes. Although rationality pervades through Frankenstein's endeavours, it can be argued that he becomes less human the more he tries to be God. The secret of life lies beyond an accepted boundary from which none can return. By creating life Frankenstein ironically sets the stage for his own destruction as well as that of his family. The

A heavily emphasized theme in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is science vs. nature or Destruction against creation, as in the case of Frankenstein science and destruction seemingly go hand in hand. The narrator, Victor Frankenstein, is a natural philosopher who is so fixated on the creation and destruction of life that he devotes years to discovering a way to create life in inanimate objects. Once Frankenstein accomplishes this feat, he has, in a sense, upset the balance of nature. In creating this one unnatural life, Frankenstein also destroys the lives of others. It is no coincidence that Frankenstein becomes ill as he works on creating this unnatural life.

“The science of today is the technology of tomorrow.” So says Edward Teller, echoing his thoughts as a noted physicist that science isn’t just the future, but indeed what creates the future. But what about Mary Shelley? A noted romanticist, Mary Shelley’s views may have been a bit different from those of Teller. In fact, Mary Shelley’s first novel, Frankenstein, might just be the best example of her thoughts on the matter. Throughout the novel, Shelley emphasizes the importance of scientific responsibility, and is clearly against science playing the role of God. However, this is not for any real religious purpose. Instead, Shelley uses science to express gradual degradation of what she had viewed as the natural world that that she had treasured during her time period, and the gradual destruction of natural beauty in the world, using the novel and its characters to support her demonization of science in favor of a more natural world. The terror of the scientific creation of Frakenstein contrasted with the serenity of the natural world as portrayed in the novel Frankenstein give the novel a clearly romantic message that preaches about the importance of the Earth’s natural aspect.

At the time, people obsessed with the idea of advanced “scientific discovery” and a reputation for revolutionary achievements, but Frankenstein takes this idea beyond reason. Frankenstein is effected by the epidemic of experimental ambition, and he isolates himself from ‘the rest of mankind.” So, naturally, amidst his eagerness to create life, Frankenstein admits that no one except for the people who have experienced it “can conceive of the enticements of science,” and in other fields, “you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder” (30). In other words, Frankenstein believes that the science world offers more open-ended and compelling research opportunities because, in other studies, “there is nothing more to know.” Therefore, people who study math and science continue to innovate and discover information from the universe. In similar form, Frankenstein realizes that he wants to research and experiment, he wants to create and understand “the metaphysical, or, in its highest sense, the physical secrets” of our universe (313). Frankenstein is an aspiring scientist who admires others before him; he believes that other scientists would “penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places” that they would “ascend into the heavens” and discover how the body works, how “the blood circulates, and the nature

The gothic novel, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley analyzes the role of progress within the context of the rugged age in which she has been brought up. Shelley emphasizes the ethical and religious connections that one may experience in correspondence to science. Her invention of Frankenstein and his harrowing attempts to expose science serve to stress the dangers of man’s unrestrained thirst for knowledge. Whilst a simple understanding of the novel reveals a man who sees a science in absence of morality, a deeper, more complex understanding of the novel reveals a much more indistinct contradiction between the many aspects of science and the underlying success within the role of progress. Shortly after Frankenstein uncloaks new advancements in science

However, his approval and pursuit of scientific knowledge ultimately brings him to a loss of touch with humanity, shame, misfortune and confusion from his obsession over creating “life”. Shelley uses Frankenstein’s misfortune as scientist to foreshadow the inevitable downfall of the Enlightenment movement’s scientific pursuit of understanding the natural world. It is noted how Frankenstein only gains solace and calamity from his observations and descriptions of the beauties of nature as well as his childhood memories. He once states:

Humanity has struggled with the ideas of life and death, and natural human ambition has led scientific thought to discover mysteries that only a God may know. Mary Shelley initially left Frankenstein as a ghastly tale that reflected the tragic events of her own life. However, little did she know that her own monster, her novel, would outgrow her by becoming a shocking cultural offense in her day and an icon in modern society. Despite initial criticism, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein utilizes imagery, figurative language, and diction to demonstrate that human ambition may lead to self-destruction and inevitable consequences, while also showing that an obsessive pursuit of knowledge will lead to decay.

In his Discourse, Erasmus Darwin explains that the sublimity of imagination can cause science to become lost “concerning unknown agencies” through the attempt to “determin[e] the general laws” by which the minute phenomena of scientific discovery are “governed” (Shelley 273). This loss of essential mechanical details in the pursuit of sublime questions and idealistic scientific goals is an impossible problem: thus, Darwin suggests, the ambition of man remains to determine the answers to those idealistic queries. But as we see in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the pursuit of these ideals is not always effective, and not always just. In Frankenstein, the eponymous character follows the principles of natural philosophy, claiming that it is this