From: GBurch1@aol.com
Date: Mon Feb 08 1999 - 06:57:16 MST
In a message dated 99-02-08 08:33:14 EST, Daniel Ust wrote:
> After reading _Frankenstein_ a number of years ago, and
> seeing lots of the movie adaptations (which are mostly not
> close to the book), I came to the conclusion that she was
> very antiscience and antitechnology.
Ultimately, this may well be true, but I think the wole story is a little more
complex than simply saying that she and "Frankenstein" are antiscinece and
antitechnology. Note that she says in the intoroduction to the book that the
ideas expressed there are not necessarily hers, but rather are the characters'
-- a fine distinction, but one which may be important when you consider the
second point, which is that the ultimate horror of the nameless monster is not
the monster himself, who actually becomes a refined, eloquent and sympathetic
fellow, but instead is Victor's inhumane treatment of his creation. More than
anything else, the book may be about the responsibility that creators have to
their creations, rather than being a polemic against science, technology and
"playing god", as is often expressed.
That said, there's no doubt that Shelley is at least ambivalent about the
subject matter of the book; a position that befits her position among the
leading figures of Romantic literature and original creators of the Gothic
style. Perhaps there's more than irony in the relationship of Shelley to her
mother: As Damien correctly pointed out, Mary Wollstonecraft died giving birth
to Mary Shelley, a victim of the primitive science of her day. She was unable
to pass on her own Enlightenment values to her daughter, who was left to
navigate without that guidance the turbulent times of the Napoleonic wars that
marked the end of the first Enlightenment. That missing guadance is perhaps
the ultimate source of the main theme of "Frankenstein", an absent parent.
Greg Burch <GBurch1@aol.com>----<burchg@liddellsapp.com>
Attorney ::: Director, Extropy Institute ::: Wilderness Guide
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"Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must
be driven into practice with courageous impatience."
-- Admiral Hyman G. Rickover
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