How Does Shelley Use Scientific Elements In Frankenstein

The periodical context of the novel exhibited revolutionary changes to the pre existing foundations of neoclassicism and its complementary sense of reason and enlightenment. Romanticism with its emphasis on feeling, passion, imagination and emotion was spreading malignantly. It was this concoction of imagination and passion that allowed Shelley to question the scientific endeavour and its associated consequences of the era and to challenge her audience reconsider them. I will discuss the most prominent views of the era, which were that scientists could fully account for what makes up humanity, that scientific endeavour should have free reign and that females were passive figures.

Victor Frankenstein was in awe of the mysteries of us as
As he came closer to creating life, the magnitude of his ambition increased to a point that he was able to rob graves purely for the purposes of his experiments. “A churchyard to (him) was merely the receptacle of bodies deprived of life... forced to spend days and nights in vaults and charnel-houses”. The ironic personification of the corpses with ‘forced’ and ‘deprived’ shows that Victor ironically still sees the corpses as human beings, by treating them with human qualities, but still doesn’t see that a churchyard has any spiritual significance but is rather a ‘merely’ inanimate ‘receptacle’. This shows the audience the extent to which his moral judgement is flawed, so much so that there is an ironic or paradoxical nature to it. Because his purpose for grave digging was directly linked to his scientific endeavour, it follows that his sense of morality was warped by his ambition. Mary Shelley challenges the idea of giving scientists free reign in their endeavours, by showing us that they still have human qualities such as ambition and its associated flaws and giving them an almost immortal and god like control could have drastic