Saturday, October 30, 2010

Was Mary Shelley trying to make a statement about the duality of life and death in the creation of Frankenstein?

Short answer: maybe.  The trouble is Mary isn't around to ask anymore!  That might sound like a trite answer, but it is the only one that probably is true.


Personally, I don't think Mary was trying to make a statement about anything while writing Frankenstein.  "Making a statement" about something requires a lot of forethought and the writer often wants to make the statement before coming up with the book idea.  I don't think that applies to Mary Shelly.


Think about where the book's origins lie.  You have a group of friends stranded indoors because of lousy weather.  They are sitting around talking about spooky stuff like "galvanism" (the process of making dead muscles move by jolting them with electricity) and Erasmus Darwin (whom, it was believed, had reanimated dead tissue.)  The friends decide it would be fun to hold a "contest" in which they try to write supernatural stories.


That night, Mary had a dream:



"I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world."



She went on to write Frankenstein based on this dream.  If anything, I think she was trying to show something about what happens when man plays God.


It is not impossible to say that Mary Shelly was trying to make a statement about the duality of life and death in the creation of her book, but I think that the fact that Mary was a 18 year old girl who had never really written anything before in her life points more to the fact that any "statements" Frankenstein has to make were sussed out after the fact.

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