Frankenstein and the Reprobate's Conscience

Abstract

O Conscience! into what abyss of fears And horrors hast thou driven me; out of which I find no way, from deep to deeper plunged! (John Milton, Paradise Lost, 10.842-44) The status of Frankenstein as one of most popular horror stories of modern era has little to do with kinds of horrors to which Milton's Adam is alluding. The horrors of conscience derive from an age preceding that in which novel was written and relatively little interest has been shown in pre-history of work whose powerful prognostic resonances have commanded so much attention. When in his Preface to Grace Abounding Bunyan exhorts his children to remember your terrors of conscience, and fear of death and hell,(1) he evokes anxieties of moral culture that is remote from most twentieth-century readers. Frankenstein's imaginings, busy in scenes of evil and despair,(2) more readily evoke external threat posed by monster than such horrors as this: Thought calleth to Fear; Fear whistleth to Horrour; Horrour beckoneth to Despair, and saith, Come and help to torment this sinner. One saith, that she cometh from this sin, and another saith, that she cometh from that sin: so he goeth through thousand deaths, and cannot die. Irons are laid upon his body like prisoner. All his lights are put out at once; he hath no soul fit to be comforted.(3) In spite of Gothic images they once generated from pulpits of England, inner struggles of Puritan consciousness have come to seem esoteric compared with horrors raised out there in world by scientist recklessly driving to change course of nature. Frankenstein sets imagination working amidst fearful prospects conjured up by scientific experiment. Mary Shelley's own prefigurative imaginings were inspired by galvanic experiments in post-mortem reanimation. In March 1997, when Edinburgh team who created Dolly, cloned sheep, announced success of their experiment, front page tabloid headline speculated Could We Now Raise Dead?,(4) and Ian Wilmut as head of research team was obliged to make reassuring statement that they were Frankenstein-type people.(5) The public debate on cloning continues to be littered with references to Frankenstein. Since its first publication, Mary Shelley's story has been taken variously to illustrate issues surrounding Anatomy Act of 1832, invention of robot, invention of atomic bomb, potentialities of cyborg, and genetic engineering.(6) The novel has been an important focus for feminist critiques of science and has been read as damning indictment of heady ambitions of masculine Romanticism. Evelyn Fox Keller writes that a number of increasingly sophisticated literary analyses in last few years have demonstrated that plot of Frankenstein is considerably more complex than we had earlier thought; major point, however, remains quite simple. Frankenstein is story first and foremost about consequences of male ambitions to co-opt procreative function.(7) The comment implies that the major point is something approximating an established fact. Recent feminist analyses of novel, in spite of their sophistication, leave unquestioned long standing popular assumption that it is essentially narrative written against presumptuous spirit of Modern Prometheus and that, as Marie Mulvey Roberts puts it, monster is the hideous progeny of darkness of science.(8) What Isaac Asimov termed the Frankenstein complex(9)-the overreacher's conviction that his creation will turn on him and exact retribution for his contravention of natural law-is always fashionable, in sense that it can be fashioned and refashioned to suit changing cultural anxieties. Whether or not Frankenstein was written as cautionary tale, this is undoubtedly status it has acquired in popular culture, scientific debate and feminist critique. …