Individualism in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Mary Shelleys Frankenstein is clearly a cautionary tale that spells the honourable and sociological implications of the doctrine of the En ricketyenment. There is a tendency to limit the study of the novel to science, and thereby to ignore the underlying philosophy. But the scientist is only encouraged, or discouraged, by the social and philosophical milieu in which he exists. In this sense the rise of modern science essential be powerful attributed to the philosophy of Enlightenment, that which believed in the infinite perfectibility of soldiery through the strict form of reason.If testal philosophy is unmatched expression of this philosophy, and so philosophic individuation is a nonher. This latter philosophy maintains that the mankind being is intrinsicall(a)y free, and therefrom his disposition is ultimately good, which also implies that it is devoid of evil. Apparent evil only reflects the constraints of man as a social being. The aim of politics must because be to minimize society and encourage the individual as uttermost as possible. The fundamental manifestation of such thinking is anarchism. We next recede none that Mary Shelley was brought up in a mood of extreme anarchism.Both her parents were nihilists, and she was brought up in the same mould. Her husband, the celebrated poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was also an avowed anarchist and atheist. Therefore the novel may be fruitfully analyzed from the mind of view of philosophic individualism. Victor Frankenstein is not the representative of science in the novel, as is normally believed. The true such representative is the explorer Robert Walton, who is on a scientific expedition to the Artic Circle. This location symbolizes the extreme edge of the real(a) universe.The journey symbolizes the straightforward and happy path to distinguishledge. Such an attitude is reflected in Waltons following comment, made in a letter to his sister What may not be expected in a area of eternal ligh t? (Shelley 16). Science promises to throw clear and eternal light on all things, and the path is a straightforward one of experiment and induction. Walton is not supposed to know of that which lurks beneath the surface, and he only comes to know it through the narrated experience of Frankenstein, whom he picks up on the way.He may not understand the full implication of what Frankenstein tells him, but the implied caution is enough, so he aborts his mission and turns his ship back. He is able to absorb enough of the message, that the radiation diagram of science is fraught with danger, and that it is not wise to strive towards the limits of knowledge.Frankenstein is far to a greater extent than a mere scientist. Not mere rational explanations, he aims for the philosophers rock n roll and the elixir of life (Ibid 48). He sees science as a delusive endeavor if it move never come to the ultimate cause of things, and must then only dabble with immediate causes.He shuns science in o pt of alchemy on his first entering university. Alchemy is the arcane crystalise which takes into account the limitations of science, and aims to overcome them by the more than profound understanding of the processes of initiation itself. In the end it is science that is employed in the creation of the instrument, but is also certain the obscure of generation lies with alchemy. The latter is victorious only when it overcomes the limitations of science. Therefore the putz, which is imbued with life, must be called a successful pairing of alchemy and science.Frankenstein is in the end an alchemist. He must operate in the darkest secrecy, this being the only mode of alchemy. Concerning the arcane sciences Montaigne has observed, To go according to disposition is only to go according to our intelligence, as far as it can follow and as far as we can see what is beyond is monstrous and disordered (391). Caught up in such monstrous designs, Frankenstein cannot apologise himself throughout the novel, even as the menace of the monster becomes more and more severe. The aspect of philosophic individualism appears when we come to consider the creature itself.As soon as it has come to life it is an individual, and the inevitable comparison appears with the prototype individual, which is transport. The tally comparison is between the overlord and Frankenstein. What is the implication of this conceit to mimic the Creator? A vital clue is found in how Shelley describes the inspirational good deal that led her to write the novel, which is included in the Preface to the 1831 edition howling(a) must it be, she says, for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world (qtd. in Lederer et al, 3).It is inevitable that the creature turn out to be a horror. solely involved come to this essential truth. Frankenstein realizes this as soon as he sees the first muscle twitch. To the creature li kewise the horror unfolds after he is allowed to compare himself with true creatures. His discovery of Miltons Paradise Lost is a consummation of his understanding. He has observed the sublime virtues of the human by discover village life from afar. He feels such virtue swelling at heart himself. But to express this he must have society, and his horrid mien will not allow him to have human company.He is truly alone, and then he discovers the parallel to his own situation in the plight of Adam when alone in Eden. The difference is that Adams creator is love and forgiving, whereas his own creator has forsaken him in revulsion. He knows that the only path pass around to him is to excite pity in the heart of his creator. Like Adam, he asks for a female being of his kind, whose company will console him. But this is not to be, because his creator hates him too strongly. The moral of the tale seems to be that the overreach of reading tends towards alienation.In the first instance we have Victor Frankenstein, whose mad quest for the secret of vitality impels him into a solitary endeavor, and from which there can be no link back to society. Even when the whole thing has gone terribly wrong, and all those close to him are imperiled, and are being murdered one by one, he cannot explain what is intrinsically a secret. The creature too is no less a catastrophe. As Paul Sherwin notes, The evacuation of the spectral presence from the world of the novel suggests that Frankenstein is more a business firm of ruins than the house divided (883).The creature is intelligent and sensitive, but suffers the more so because it brings pedestal to him the total wretchedness of his condition. To the world he is a monster, and only his creator can redeem him, through compassion and pity. Both creator and creature have been cut adrift from the world as forsaken individuals. They have both(prenominal) become monstrosities, and indeed the structure of the novel itself is monstrous in numerous ways, as has been suggested by Daniel Cottom (60). Alienation is shown to be the product of Enlightenment philosophy and the Industrial Revolution.The process of individuation in the West can be traced back to the Protestant Reformation. Calvinism and Puritanism only masked the inner tendency towards individualism, which burst forth in the 18th century as the Enlightenment. The doctrine of Calvin is unfriendly to all institutions. The very idea of the new individual is what animated Milton to revision the story of Creation in Paradise Lost. The latent anarchism of the new opinion is found in the following lines where Adam complains to God Did I predication thee, Maker from my clay To mould Me man?Did I solicit thee From shadow to promote me? (Milton 269) We hear a clear echo of the creatures lament in these words. So in Milton himself, who was a staunch Puritan, we find the seed of Frankensteins monster. In his younger days he wrote scathing anarchist texts, such as Areopagitica. Anarchism has always been a growing trend in the political thinking of the West from Milton onwards. John Locke and Edmund Burke were key proponents in this regards. William Godwin came to give tongue to an extreme form of such thinking, which became extremely influential.When Hazlitt came to sum up the sprightliness of the age, he put the name of Godwin at the forefront. (Bowerbank 418). With Godwin, not only all socio-political institutions, but even the institution of marriage was suspect. This is the milieu that Shelley imbibed, and came to depict in her novel.The new individual is not always an anarchist by choice. The putting green man is more likely to be individualist by compulsion. present we have the distinction between Frankenstein and the creature. The plight of the common man is no less tragic. He is a creature of mechanization, and is disaffect from all that surrounds him.Frankensteins creature is symbolic of the new individual. It can only appeal to its creator, and is therefore doomed to live with mechanization. In this way Shelley paints for us a unyielding picture of the new reality which the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution had brought or so. In conclusion, Mary Shelleys novel Frankenstein is a cautionary tale about respecting the limits of science, but at an even more profound level it depicts the alienated individual of modern industrial society. Shelley was brought up in a climate of intense individualism.Her parents were anarchists, as was her husband, and she kept regular company with poets and artists who lived and thought in this mode. In the novel, Robert Walton is representative of science, but Victor Frankenstein is a far more key character, because he represents the arcane philosophy that sustains science. But the most important depiction is of the monstrous creature, who is representative of the new individual.Works CitedBowerbank, Sylvia. The Social Order vs The wretch Mary Shelleys Contradic tory-Mindedness in Frankenstein. ELH. Vol. 46, No. 3 (Autumn, 1979), pp. 418-431.Cottom, Daniel. Frankenstein and the Monster of Representation. SubStance. Vol. 9, No. 3, bed 28 (1980), pp. 60-71.Lederer, Susan E Elizabeth Fee, Patricia Tuohy. Frankenstein Penetrating the Secrets of Nature. Rutgers University Press, 2002.Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York Collectors Library, 2004.Milton, John. Paradise lost and some other poems. Ed. Edward Le Comte. New York Signet Classic, 2003.Montaigne, Michel de. The Complete Essays of Montaigne. Ed. Donald Murdoch Frame. Stanford University Press, 1965.Sherwin, Paul. Frankenstein Creation as Catastrophe. PMLA. Vol. 96, No. 5 (Oct. , 1981), pp. 883-903.