There’s a popular belief that Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is a warning about science “going too far”. But she actually presents Victor Frankenstein as something of a pseudo-scientist, at least when left to his own devices. In his resting state, or when working in isolation, Victor Frankenstein is a romantic more inclined to enjoy nature than to study it, and disinclined to the unglamorous work that scientists must do. Mary Shelley seems to be saying that maybe there’s a problem with the kind of romantic sensibilities that were becoming popular in her time; with the kind of men who could feel awe for nature but stop short of studying it; who work hard only so long as they are discovering what they want to find.
Victor Frankenstein spends his youth studying no works of modern science; instead he falls in love with works from centuries past; he finds these works more attractive, in their study of alchemy and inquiries into immortality.
To his credit, he begins to see that these authors are scientifically antiquated, even before he gets to university. He stops reading them when he discovers that what they knew about electricity is useless compared to modern theory – but rather than correcting his course he despairs that anything can be known, and retreats temporarily into the seeming security of mathematics. Consequently, when he gets to university his knowledge of natural science is still pathetically narrow and outdated, as his professors tell him:
M. Krempe, professor of natural philosophy [...] asked me several questions concerning my progress in the different branches of science appertaining to natural philosophy. I replied carelessly, and partly in contempt, mentioned the names of my alchemists as the principal authors I had studied. The professor stared. “Have you,” he said, “really spent your time in studying such nonsense?”
I replied in the affirmative. “Every minute,” continued M. Krempe with warmth, “every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names. Good God! In what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as musty as they are ancient? I little expected, in this enlightened and scientific age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew.”
After he brings his monster to life and abandons his scientific studies, he retreats completely into romanticism and aversion to real study. He joins his best friend’s interest in learning new languages, a legitimate pursuit, but for him it’s a good place to hide from himself, his creature, and his responsibilities:
Idleness had ever been irksome to me, and now that I wished to fly from reflection, and hated my former studies, I felt great relief in being the fellow-pupil with my friend, and found not only instruction but consolation in the works of the orientalists. I did not, like him, attempt a critical knowledge of their dialects, for I did not contemplate making any other use of them than temporary amusement. I read merely to understand their meaning, and they well repaid my labours. Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating, to a degree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country. When you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and a garden of roses,—in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart. How different from the manly and heroical poetry of Greece and Rome!
While he had been working on his project of animating human remains and turning them into a single human being, Victor Frankenstein did come to loathe the work, and he pushed through his disgust long enough to create the creature. Up to a point, he endures unpleasant work. But his disgust seems to be less about moral scruples than sensory revulsion; he sees an ugly mass of flesh and, when it begins speaking, regards it as no more than an ugly lump with a moving mouth. He continues, in short, to be dominated by his own senses, his own desires, and abandons the creature as soon as he possibly can, along with abandoning all scientific work.
Certainly Mary Shelley is arguing that scientists should be humane; that is what most of us assume to be the central moral of “Frankenstein.” What I found most surprising, what I didn’t remember from my first reading of this novel 32 years ago, is that she’s presenting this scientist not as too “cold” or “cerebral” or “rational”, but as the very opposite of these things. He’s very human, in the emotional sense. He loves beauty; he loves the natural world for its beauty. Mary Shelley presents him pointedly as depending on the beauties of nature to lift him out of depression. But when it is gloomy outdoors, or he finds something in his own lab ugly or unpleasant, it becomes useless to him. He doesn’t abandon his creature due to an unfeeling ambition for scientifical goals. He’s got nothing but feeling. That’s the problem.
In all of this, I think that Mary Shelley anticipated some of the pseudo-science we see today: a distaste for unglamorous, a-b-c study; a retreat into romantic notions like astrology, or the illusory self-empowerment of cynical conspiracy theories; a satisfaction with mere thinking and questioning, with little inclination or even ability to test these ideas. Most of us, myself included, when presented with two clashing ideas will go with the one that comes from the source we trust. And this is fine as far as it goes; analyzing sources is necessary for good science or any form of truth; but it hardly takes us very far; and if it’s our only step, it can easily be dominated by our feelings and lead us into insularity.
But more than ever we have the problem of how to communicate with those who hold hostile views of science and have gone down the rabbit hole into such insularity. Outright dismissal seems often to make things worse, and Mary Shelley has some great insights here, in a passage in which Victor relates how he came to love alchemy and esotericism:
When I was thirteen years of age we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon; the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate and the wonderful facts which he relates soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book and said, “Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.”
If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest avidity.
Mary Shelley seems to be saying that for all of his tragic and destructive flaws, the people around Victor Frankenstein did lose an opportunity to help him course-correct when he was very young and badly needed such guidance.
This does not lift the horrible events of his story off his shoulders, but it’s worth thinking about, for all of who wish somehow to see the truth spread more widely.
I have never read Frankenstein. The nearest I ever got to it was an excellent BBC radio dramatisation in which the focus was the monster’s loneliness. Is your feeling that Mary Shelley is not doing what Goethe did in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and so is not Romantic in that regard?
Thank you, Stephen, I don’t know — Goethe is still on my never-read list!
I don’t know enough about the connections between the English and the German romantics to know whether the Shelleys and their circle knew Goethe, Schelling etc. I have read Goethe’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in which the hapless apprentice unleashes powers way beyond his ability to control out of thoughtless hubris, simply because he can. Walt Disney retold the story in Fantasia to Paul Dukas’s wonderful tone poem but he makes us laugh instead of Goethe’s chill warning in the original poem. Goethe was thinking of the scientific revolution of his own time. Did the Shelleys know about this?
Good questions, and I plan to read Goethe in the near future. I will say that Frankenstein’s creature, when he learns to read, delves into three works: Plutarch’s Lives, Paradise Lost, and Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Werter.” He’s deeply affected by all; he sympathizes and identifies with Werter, but he has an intellectual ability to stand back and say that the work presents complex questions, and that he himself is both like and unlike the characters presented. That’s one thing that stands out for me, re-reading Frankenstein: the creature is a passionate reader and an intellectual critic!