Creating Frankenstein Jeremy Kessler - The New Atlantis

Creating FRANKENSTEINRomantics saw in the sublimity ofnature—its deadliness to the humanand its expressiveness of man’s mostpotent inner life. This dark doublenesswas manifested in the imagethat appeared to Mary one sleeplessnight:I saw the pale student of unhallowedarts kneeling beside thething he had put together. I sawthe hideous phantasm of a manstretched out, and then, on theworking of some powerful engine,show signs of life, and stir with anuneasy, half vital motion. Frightfulmust it be; for supremely frightfulwould be the effect of any humanendeavour to mock the stupendousmechanism of the Creator ofthe world.One of the more important storiesHitchcock tells in her Cultural Historyis the evolution of Frankensteinfrom a somewhat befuddled andconscience-stricken experimentalistto the now-familiar image of a wildeyedBabel-builder, featured in countlessmoralistic retellings of the tale.As Hitchcock shows, Mary Shelleydid not originally pen a story tocondemn the excesses of human creativityand ambition. Six years beforeVictoria’s coronation, Shelley’s 1831rewrite reflected changing publicmores—the hubris of the creator isplayed up and the potential goodnessof his creation played down.But not simply public mores: thelater version of the tale may alsoreflect Shelley’s own perspectivechanging with age, as many of theRomantics became more conservativeas the years passed. Mary, Percy,and their friends were all studentagedor not much older at the timeof their ghost-story summer, just likethe figure in Mary’s vision. Theiryouth is too little remarked uponby Hitchcock. Sitting around thechateau, conjuring spooks, arguingabout the origins of life, creating lifein the upstairs bedrooms—thus theyfilled their protracted, sophomoricdays. Just as much as Frankenstein,they, artists all, were after new creations.Still, the earlier Frankenstein doescontain the anxieties about humancreators and their creations thatwould come to characterize the modernera’s mad scientist story. Madscience is a modern satire of reason.In the mad scientist, Western culturewatches the paragon of rationalitygrow drunk on its own technicalprowess. But the mad scientist is nota wholly novel figure: as Frankensteinand its own creation story suggests,the mad scientist is an updated avatarof the classic enemy of reason: thepoet, that creator of new worlds whorejects any limit not set by his ownwill.While Victor Frankenstein allowedMary Shelley to explore the problemof the human creator, whether scientistor poet, his monster exemplifiedthe experience of being created; ofbeing alienated from one’s origins inSummer 2009 ~ 85Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. See www.TheNewAtlantis.com for more information.