Out of darkness, came light. Out of irrationality, came
rationality. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
charts the transition from Enlightenment ideals to the Romanticist school of
thought. This harrowing tale recounts the experiences of Victor Frankenstein as
he sets out to do what no other scientist has done before: create life. As
piecemeal as Frankenstein’s monster, this tale stitches together varying
perspectives to detail Victor’s journey of creating and confronting his demonic
masterpiece. Grounded in the scientific
method, Frankenstein’s approach to his work is certainly rational. However, his
passionate urges and powerful obsessions ultimately reveal that his motives are
highly romantic.
Frankenstein’s monster hesitates little to bite the hand
that feeds him. His loneliness and hatred for his creator instigate him to
murder Victor’s close friends and family. In a quest to avenge the deaths of
his loved ones, Victor sets out to find the monster and kill him, laying the groundwork for his own certain doom. Some may speculate that Victor’s death is
emblematic of the fall of reason in an emotionally charged world. However, it
is not reason that guides Frankenstein to create the monster in the first
place. Sure, his approach is logical and scientific, but his motive to create
life aligns with the Romantic school of thought. That is, his desires are fed
by passion rather than reason. So, Victor’s ultimate fall is not a
“condemnation of Rationalism,” rather, it is simply a signal of the Romanticist
strength. Shelley did not intend to demean Enlightenment ideals; instead, she
wanted to delineate the comparative magnitude of passion. The monster, by
extension, is born from emotion. It is no surprise then, that the monster
himself sees the world through a Romantic lens. He simply wants to break free
of the isolation that perpetuates his loneliness and his sadness.
Lastly, Frankenstein is
novel not because the monster makes a nice Halloween prop. Victor Frankenstein,
in his creation of the monster, is ultimately invested in the truth of life. This
novel is timeless because we are an information-thirsty society. All of us are
driven by the passion for knowledge. Social media and news represent the convergence
of information, all that we seek in our modern era. The monster is Frankenstein’s
vindication of his quest for knowledge in the natural sciences and in life. As
humans, we think we are better off by knowing more. The true horror of Frankenstein, and the reason why it resonates loudly in modern culture, is because this novel perverts
our mission to know by portraying the harms of seeking truth when unfounded by
rationality.
Your "shameless advertising" worked! I really love your analysis here, I had never looked at Frankenstein as embodying Romanticism. I think most of us were too busy condemning Victor's reckless decision to create the monster to realize that it was just that: reckless and emotional. Your analysis in a way re-humanizes Victor, at least when I read it, by reminding us that he had his own struggles that he was dealing with (like the death of his mother), rather than simply being a crazed scientist trying to reach the top of his field. Do you think Victor's family and friends represent Rationalism because of their normal and rational way of handling situations, making their deaths symbolic of the "death" of rationalism in favor of romanticism? Overall, great post!
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