Andy Wilson

Frankenstein & Ideas of the Enlightenment

In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley explores many of the scientific

ideas of her time. During the Enlightenment, science had taken giant leaps forward due

to the insatiable inquisitiveness of many of its scientists. These scientists gave no regard

to the world around them; their only goal was to obtain knowledge through any means

possible. They felt that by peeling back a few more secrets that they would uncover the

source of life itself. Many of the ideas and that where produced during this time inspired

Shelley as she wrote Frankenstein.

Shelley may have been inspired by a friend of her father, Erasmus Darwin.

Darwin, who is also the grand father of Charles Darwin, was a well known botanist and

zoologist. He also helped form the basis for his grandsons’ the theory of evolution. On

many occasions Erasmus sent Shelley’s father letters informing him about the spontaneity

and vitality to which microscopic animals reproduced. This idea of animals making

another copy of themselves out of nothing but their own parts may have inspired her to

write a man who endeavors to create another man out nothing but raw parts.
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Shelley may have also borrowed ideas from Gorges Cuvier, the founder of

vertebrate paleontology and organismal biology. Cuvier’s study of the structure and form

of animals led him to believe that animals were functional wholes; any change in one part

would destroy the delicate balance. This means that each part of an organism, no matter

how small, bore signs of the whole. That way it was possible to reconstruct organisms

from fragmentary remains, based on rational principles. The idea of being able to

reconstruct an entire creature from similar parts may have influenced Shelley when she

wrote about where and how Frankenstein collected the parts for his monster. Even

though the monster was hideous, Shelley made him functional due to his superhuman

speed, dexterity and strength.

Physicist and inventor Luigi Galvani may have also inspired Shelley by

his experiments with electricity. Galvani, who invented the galvanic battery, found that

an electric charge applied to the spinal cord of frogs could generate muscle spasms

throughout the body. This convinced him that he was seeing the affect of “animal

electricity”, the life force within the animal. He thought of "animal electricity" as a fluid

secreted by the brain, and proposed that flow of this fluid through the nerves activated the

muscles. Since Frankenstein didn’t bring his monster to life through supernatural means

Shelley may have intended him to use something along the lines of Galvani by

reactivating the “animal electricity” in the monster.

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Another scientist who may have influenced Shelley is Jean-Baptiste

Lamarck. Lamarck was an early evolutionist who believed that a change in the

environment causes changes in the needs of organisms living in that environment, which

in turn causes changes in their behavior. Shelley may have taken this view and changed

the environment from a physical one to social one. The monster after he is first created is

benevolent but as he has encounters with society and experiences the cruelty of people

towards his gruesome features his behavior changes from benevolent to malevolent.

During the time that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein there were many

new and controversial ideas. Many of these ideas may have possibly inspired her in her

writing of Frankenstein, while others she may have altered to suit her own purpose. But

in one way or another, these ideas had some influence on Shelley because they all are

found throughout Frankenstein in one way or another.