The Science of Dr. Victor Frankesntein: Psuedo-science in Shelley's Frankenstein

I wrote this for an exam on the Romantic Period in British Literature for my Survey of Contemporary British Literature course at Cal State Long Beach.

The Enlightenment was a period during the eighteenth century which was marked by the dismissal of faith and spirituality. These ideals were replaced with the rationality of science and reason. People thrived on and searched for scientific explanations within nature, and held them as the closest to absolute truth they could ever come. Romanticism, the literary period which followed after the Enlightenment, found that Science did not have all the answers and that spirituality was necessary in order to find truth. In her novel, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley exemplifies the ideals of the Romantics through her character Dr. Victor Frankenstein. She, as Charles Schug writes, “tries to talk about--and thus define, to set the boundaries of, to limit--what is essentially a purely subjective creative experience and hence an ultimately indefinable, illimitable, objectively unfathomable experience” (609). Shelley creates an experience that no rational science could define or contain. Throughout the novel, Frankenstein’s science is shown to be in direct contradiction with the science of The Enlightenment, thereby giving credit to the idea that reason and rationality are not the only scientific truths.

Dr. Frankenstein begins relating his sad tale to Robert Walton by telling the story of his childhood. He makes it a point to tell Walton how he became interested in science because, “it became the torrent which, in its course...swept away all my hopes and joys” (Shelley 20). Science is the root of Frankenstein’s misery. It is the single spark that ignites the chain of events that lead to his ruin. Although critics, “have typically downplayed the importance” of Frankenstein’s early reading of Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus because “’he clearly rejects the works...in favor of men who wrote and experimented with the new science’” (Peterfreund 79), they are still important to note because they represent the spiritual side of science that Shelley was searching for. As Frankenstein states above, they are the foundation of his study in science. They also become the basis for Shelley’s narrative.

These voices of spiritual science are contrasted with voices from the Enlightenment, represented by authority figures in Frankenstein’s life. When he goes to his father to tell him of his discover of Cornelius Agrippa, his father says, “’Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this, it is sad trash’” (Shelley 20). He describes his first visit to a professor at the University who tells him that “’...every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost’” (Shelley 25). This remains consistent with the basis of scientific ideals during the Enlightenment: spirituality has no place in science. Although Frankenstein admits that “All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable” (Shelley 22), spiritual science is the foundation of his interest and study in science, as stated above. Stuart Peterfreund writes that Paracelsus especially “does not merely inform the novel’s science--or its critique of science... Rather [it] informs the protagonist of the novel’s psychological development and the novel’s narrative structure, both of which combine to offer a cultural critique...” (79). It is spiritual science which guides and develops the progression of the narrative. The narrative is completely rooted in it.

Charles Schug writes that “Shelley seeks to force the reader into participation of [her narrative]” and “[uses] narrative to establish a sense of order, of logic and rationality” (609) just as her three narrators do--especially Frankenstein. Shelley constructs a narrative that follows the rules of science; however, the “science” that she bases it on is not the science of the Enlightenment. It is the fantastical and spiritual science that Victor Frankenstein studies and uses to create the monster. It is this science that establishes the “sense of order, of logic and rationality.” It is a rationale based in the spiritual. The reader has no choice but to follow a line of logic and order based in beliefs that the science of the Enlightenment completely dismissed. One of the major themes of the novel, therefore, clearly centers around the idea that a rational science is, in fact, not rational; it requires faith in the spiritual.

Works Cited

Peterfreund, Stuart. “Composing What May Not Be ‘Sad Trash’: A Reconsideration of Mary Shelley’s Use of Paracelsus in Frankenstein.” Studies in Romanticism. 43.1 (2004): 79-92.

Schug, Charles. “The Romantic Form of Shelley’s Frankenstein.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 17.4 (1977): 607-619.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus. Classics of Horror. Ed. The Ann Arbor Media Group, LLC. Ann Arbor: Borders Classics, 2003. 3-152.