by Mary Shelley
It was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.
50. The phrase “Among other questions suggested by natural objects” was suggested by Percy Shelley in the Draft but not used by Mary Shelley. Much of the preceding paragraph does not appear in the extant copy of the Draft, where a page has been torn off.
51. The word “electricity” first appeared in print in the English language in 1646, in Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica. Although some work was done in the seventeenth century by Robert Boyle and others, Benjamin Franklin’s famous kite experiment in June 1752 demonstrated that lightning was indeed electrical in nature; the Frenchman Thomas François-Dalibard had conducted a similar experiment using different materials a month earlier. Franklin also worked with Leyden jars, used for storing electricity, coining the word “battery” to describe the greater charge held when several of the glass vessels were grouped together. The Encyclopædia Britannica (3rd ed., 1797) devotes 127 pages to the history of experimentation with electricity, describing in detail experiments for the reader to conduct. The history makes clear that ongoing research into the effects of electricity on vegetation and animal life (including, of course, humans) was wide-ranging, and an entire section is devoted to the discussion of “medical electricity,” though there is no suggestion there that electricity was connected to vitality.
Certainly, the idea that electricity, or something like it, was responsible for life was in the air in the late eighteenth century. The great Scottish surgeon-anatomist John Hunter (1728–1793) wrote, in his posthumously published Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation and Gunshot Wounds (1794), “Mere composition of matter does not give life, for the dead body has all the composition it ever had; life is a property we do not understand; we can only see the necessary leading steps towards it.” John Abernethy, Hunter’s student, in his famous lecture “An Enquiry into the Probability and Rationality of Mr. Hunter’s Theory of Life,” published in 1814, wrote:
The phænomena of electricity and of life correspond. Electricity may be attached to, or inhere, in a wire; it may be suddenly dissipated, or have its powers annulled, or it may be removed by degrees or in portions, and the wire may remain less and less strongly electrified, in proportion as it is abstracted. So life inheres in vegetables and animals; it may sometimes be suddenly dissipated, or have its powers abolished, though in general it is lost by degrees, without any apparent change taking place in the structure; and in either case putrefaction begins when life terminates.
Abernethy’s views were publicly opposed by William Lawrence, the Shelleys’ friend and Percy Shelley’s physician, in numerous lectures and his book Natural History of Man (1819).
The 1930 play of Frankenstein by John L. Balderston and Garrett Fort first made explicit the idea that electricity was used to vivify the “monster” created by Victor Frankenstein, although in that play, it is combined with the “Elixir of Life,” the details of which Victor discovered in “old black letter books.” (See note 39, above.) In the earliest film, the Thomas Edison production Frankenstein (1910), Frankenstein is working with an unidentified alchemical mixture in a cauldron. Leaving the laboratory, he watches through a keyhole as the creature magically materializes, flesh appearing on bones and eyes and limbs taking shape. The iconic 1931 film by James Whale (script by Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh) drops the “Elixir” and uses electricity alone. Other films have used other methodologies—for example, in the 1973 television miniseries Frankenstein: The True Story, scripted by Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, the creature is brought to life by solar energy. In Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the creature is animated in a copper tank filled with amniotic fluid, into which electric eels are introduced through a long tube, in a scene that one critic said was “supposed to look like sexual intercourse.”
Note that Mary Shelley’s texts are vague about the means of animation. Bioelectricity—the electrical impulse that passes along nerves in living beings—was in fact not discovered until 1791, by Luigi Galvani. It is not mentioned in the 1797 Britannica. If Victor was born in 1772, as seems probable, then in 1787, when he was “about fifteen years old,” “galvanism” was a meaningless term, and its introduction into the 1831 text is anachronistic. There is no mention by Clerval of any electrical equipment in Victor’s abandoned laboratory, and it surely would have been impracticable to have used substantial electrical equipment on the remote Orkney island on which Victor claimed to have situated his second laboratory.
Portrait of Luigi Galvani, artist unknown.
An experiment of Luigi Galvani.
52. This, according to popular belief, is the same experiment conducted by Franklin in June 1752. In a letter written to Peter Collinson on October 19, 1752, Franklin described the experiment:
Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large, thin silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross, so you have the body of a kite; which being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air, like those made of paper; but this being of silk, is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder-gust without tearing. To the top of the upright stick of the cross is to be fixed a very sharp-pointed wire, rising a foot or more above the wood. To the end of the twine, next the hand, is to be tied a silk ribbon, and where the silk and twine join, a key may be fastened. This kite is to be raised when a thunder-gust appears to be coming on, and the person who holds the string must stand within a door or window, or under some cover, so that the silk ribbon may not be wet; and care must be taken that the twine does not touch the frame of the door or window. As soon as any of the thunder clouds come over the kite, the pointed wire will draw the electric fire from them, and the kite, with all the twine will be electrified, and the loose filaments of the twine will stand out every way and be attracted by an approaching finger. And when the rain has wet the kite and twine, so that it can conduct the electric fire freely, you will find it stream out plentifully from the key on the approach of your knuckle. At this key the phial may be charged; and from electric fire thus obtained, spirits may be kindled, and all the electric experiments be performed, which are usually done by the help of a rubbed glass globe or tube, and thereby the sameness of the electric matter with that of lightning completely demonstrated” (Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, appendix [New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1916]).
53. This and the previous sentence are additions made principally by Percy Shelley.
54. Although potash, an alkaline salt containing potassium, was distinguished from the natural alkaline compound, popularly called soda, as early as 1702 by Georg Ernst Stahl, definite experimental proof of the differences between the two caustic substances was not found until 1735, by Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau. However, the exact chemical nature of these sodium and potassium compounds was not known, and Antoine Lavoisier’s definitive list of simple substances, Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elementary Treatise of Chemistry), published in 1789, did not include potassium. Potassium was not isolated as a metal (and a distinct element) until Sir Humphry Davy used electrolysis in 1807 to refine it. Later that year, Davy also isolated sodium, using the same technique. His discovery of these new “simple substances” (in Lavoisier’s terminology) electrified the European scientific community, though the admission that they were elements was slow in coming. It seems unlikely that the professor whose lecture Victor attended would have had much to say about potassium, other than noting its mysterious nature.
However, Percy Shelley, who had an intense interest in science, would certainly have been fascinated by the discovery of potassium, and Mary Shelley recorded in her journal (October 1816) that she was reading Sir Humphry Davy’s “Chemistry.” None of Davy’s books bears that specific title, and while the identification is speculative, the text to which she re
fers is probably his A Discourse, Introductory to A Course of Lectures on Chemistry, the transcription of a lecture presented at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in January 1802 that not only includes many of the scientific ideas reflected in Frankenstein but also shares some of Victor’s optimism about what science can achieve. See Laura Crouch’s essay “Davy’s A Discourse, Introductory to A Course of Lectures on Chemistry: A Possible Scientific Source of Frankenstein,” Keats-Shelley Journal 27 (1978), 35–44. Davy, who is responsible for having discovered the effect on humans of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, was appointed laboratory director and professor of chemistry of the Royal Institution in 1801, two years after its establishment in London at 21 Albemarle Street, also its present-day location. The organization is today styled the “Royal Institution” or “RI.”
55. By the time of this lecture, around 1788–89, boric acid was a well-known naturally occurring medicinal compound, known as sal sedativum, found in hot springs (it was first observed in 1777). Boron itself was as unknown at this time as potassium, except in compounds. It was isolated in 1808 by Sir Humphry Davy, again using electrolysis and, later, potassium to separate it from boric acid. As had been the case with potassium, its recognition as an element was delayed. Again, one wonders what the professor might have said about the substance.
56. “Sulphates,” or sulfates, are molecules combining sulfur and oxygen, and the transparent crystals of “vitriol salts,” sulfate compounds derived from sulfuric acid, were well-known to alchemists.
57. Oxyds or oxides are molecules containing at least one atom of oxygen as well as one atom of another element. For example, water (H2O) is an oxide; the most prevalent oxide is carbon dioxide (CO2). Oxygen itself was not isolated until 1773–74, by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Joseph Priestley, and Lavoisier, each working independently. Although carbon dioxide and other oxides, both minerals and gases, had been identified earlier, the modern idea of molecules was not really established until Lavoisier’s Elementary Treatise in 1789.
Sir Humphry Davy, by Thomas Phillips (date unknown).
58. Gaius Plinius Secundus, popularly known as Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) was the author of the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia. The work was critically important to the development of the science of chemistry, containing a detailed account of Roman knowledge of metallurgy and mineralogy. It was widely published, though by the late eighteenth century, the science was largely obsolete.
Pliny the Elder.
59. Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), was a French naturalist, certainly the most important of the second half of the eighteenth century. His influence and work are summed up by Ernst Mayr, one of the twentieth century’s leading evolutionary biologists and winner of the Crafoord Prize, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences:
He was not an evolutionary biologist, yet he was the father of evolutionism. He was the first person to discuss a large number of evolutionary problems, problems that before Buffon had not been raised by anybody.... he brought them to the attention of the scientific world.
Except for Aristotle and Darwin, no other student of organisms [whole animals and plants] has had as far-reaching an influence.
He brought the idea of evolution into the realm of science. He developed a concept of the “unity of type,” a precursor of comparative anatomy. More than anyone else, he was responsible for the acceptance of a long-time scale for the history of the earth. He was one of the first to imply that you get inheritance from your parents, in a description based on similarities between elephants and mammoths. And yet, he hindered evolution by his frequent endorsement of the immutability of species. He provided a criterion of species, fertility among members of a species that was thought impregnable. (The Growth of Biological Thought [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981])
60. “The mathematics” in the late eighteenth century encompassed many branches of study, including geometry, arithmetic, navigation, astronomy, and optics. In the previous century, planetary motion was intensely studied, and Newton and Leibniz had invented calculus to describe it. Descartes had created a means of graphing the orbits of planetary bodies, and Pascal and Fermat had begun applying mathematics to gambling and probability. The leading eighteenth-century mathematician was probably Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), whose principal fields of work were calculus and complex analysis as well as topology and combinatorics. Although Euler was Swiss and so would have attracted Victor’s attention, he lived most of his life in Berlin and Russia. Euler was incredibly prolific, however, with his collected works extending to eighty volumes in some printings, and his work so impressed the mathematician Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace, that he often declaimed, “Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all.” Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813) developed number theory, differential calculus, and the calculus of variations, and Laplace (1749–1827) laid down the foundations of statistics and moved celestial mechanics to a science based on calculus.
CHAPTER II.
WHEN I HAD attained the age of seventeen, my parents resolved that I should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt.1 I had hitherto attended the schools of Geneva; but my father thought it necessary for the completion of my education, that I should be made acquainted with other customs than those of my native country.2 My departure was therefore fixed at an early date; but, before the day resolved upon could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurred—an omen, as it were, of my future misery.
Elizabeth had caught the scarlet fever;3 but her illness was not severe, and she quickly recovered. During her confinement, many arguments had been urged to persuade my mother to refrain from attending upon her. She had, at first, yielded to our entreaties; but when she heard that her favourite was recovering, she could no longer debar herself from her society, and entered her chamber long before the danger of infection was past.4 The consequences of this imprudence were fatal. On the third day my mother sickened; her fever was very malignant, and the looks of her attendants prognosticated the worst event. On her death-bed the fortitude and benignity of this admirable5 woman did not desert her. She joined the hands of Elizabeth and myself: “My children,” she said, “my firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father. Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to your younger cousins.6 Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not hard to quit you all? But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death, and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world.”
Map of Ingolstadt, ca. 1700.
She died calmly; and her countenance expressed affection even in death. I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she, whom we saw every day, and whose very existence appeared a part of our own, can have departed for ever—that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished, and the sound of a voice so familiar, and dear to the ear, can be hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connexion; and why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished. My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the rest,7 and learn to think ourselves fortunate, whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized.
My journey to8 Ingolstadt, which had been deferred by these events, was now again determined upon. I obtained from my father a respite of some weeks. This period was spent sadly; my mother’s death, and my sp
eedy departure, depressed our spirits; but Elizabeth endeavoured to renew the spirit of cheerfulness in our little society.9 Since the death of her aunt, her mind had acquired new firmness and vigour. She determined to fulfil her duties with the greatest exactness; and she felt that that most imperious duty, of rendering her uncle and cousins happy, had devolved upon her. She consoled me, amused her uncle, instructed my brothers; and I never beheld her so enchanting as at this time, when she was continually endeavouring to contribute to the happiness of others, entirely forgetful of herself.
The death of Caroline Frankenstein? (The Dying Mother by English engraver Thomas Allom, early nineteenth century.)
The day of my departure at length arrived.10 I had taken leave of all my friends, excepting Clerval, who spent the last evening with us. He bitterly lamented that he was unable to accompany me: but his father could not be persuaded to part with him, intending that he should become a partner with him in business,11 in compliance with his favourite theory, that learning was superfluous in the commerce of ordinary life. Henry had a refined mind; he had no desire to be idle, and was well pleased to become his father’s partner, but he believed that a man might be a very good trader, and yet possess a cultivated understanding.12
We sat late, listening to his complaints, and making many little arrangements for the future. The next morning early I departed. Tears gushed from the eyes of Elizabeth; they proceeded partly from sorrow at my departure, and partly because she reflected that the same journey was to have taken place three months before, when a mother’s blessing would have accompanied me.
I threw myself into the chaise13 that was to convey me away, and indulged in the most melancholy reflections. I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavouring to bestow mutual pleasure, I was now alone. In the university, whither I was going, I must form my own friends, and be my own protector. My life had hitherto been remarkably secluded and domestic; and this had given me invincible repugnance to new countenances. I loved my brothers, Elizabeth, and Clerval; these were “old familiar faces;”14 but I believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers. Such were my reflections as I commenced my journey; but as I proceeded, my spirits and hopes rose. I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge. I had often, when at home, thought it hard to remain during my youth cooped up in one place, and had longed to enter the world, and take my station among other human beings. Now my desires were complied with, and it would, indeed, have been folly to repent.