Frankenstein Flashcards
Frankenstein
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein reflects the concerns prevalent within the period of Industrial revolution and technological innovations.
Throughout her novel, Shelley challenges the championed forces of reason and science.
She highlights the dehumanising effects the Romantics feared these values would instead lead to.
Victor as an individual seduced by the powers of science and “left with a child’s blindness, added to a student’s thirst for knowledge”.
This ‘thirst’ had enslaved him and left him ‘blind’ to the effects his overreaching ambitions would have on both himself and those around him
Victor’s confession to “to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit”
Highlights both his enslavement to science and its dehumanising effects
The decline of Victor is juxtaposed against Robert Walton, the former, embodying a man corrupted by greed and the latter representing innocence, untainted by the effects of such knowledge.
- Creates a sense of foreshadowing regarding the irreversible path to devastation Walton has begun to follow.
- Through the use of juxtaposition, Shelley emphasizes the folly of valuing knowledge above morality and the consequences of such thirst.
Unlike Victor Frankenstein’s “fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature”, modern scientists and society have now directed their interest from exploring nature to creating artificial substitutes.
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Shelley’s alludes the creation of Victor to Prometheus, who like the titan, had overstepped his boundaries through his desire to achieve divine status by having a “new species bless” him “as creator and source”.
His desire mirrors the avid of interest of numerous individuals with the Industrial Revolution and the period of Enlightenment.
“Remember that I have power…You are my creator, but I am your master”.
Shelley forebodes the consequences of such egotistical desires through the creation of an ‘abomination’ which superseded the authority and power of its ‘master’,
Due to the religious influences in the novel
Victor is portrayed to retain a sense of morality and immediately regrets his actions, calling the creature a “catastrophe” in recognition that he had defied the laws of nature.
Frankenstein says at the end of Frankenstein,’ How much happier is the man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to become greater than his knowledge will allow’,
The juxtaposition of himself and many of his fellow human beings who dared not to embark on such pursuits, hits home Mary Shelley’s message.
The juxtaposition of Promethean against the realm Victor has created is highlighted through his rejection of the Monster with ‘breathless horror and disgust”, emphasizing Victor’s lack of moral responsibility
The consequences of Promethean ambition and the lack of moral responsibility is shown through the contradictory statement, “You are my creator, but I am your master,” highlighting the reversal of power between creator and creation
Victor’s egotistical desires is seen in the line, “Life and death seemed to me ideal bounds…me as its creator and source would owe their being to me”.
The biblical allusion reflects Victor abuse of controlling life in order to fulfil his ambition for glory and fame.
