Frankenstein: A Modern Myth

Myths contribute to and express the systems of thought and values of a culture. In this sense, a “myth” can be any story which catches the imagination of a culture, and takes on a defining role for that culture. A myth gives us a vocabulary and a set of images for defining, imagining, and representing our relationship to the spiritual realm; to the material world; or to each other.

Frankenstein is in conversation with many earlier myths: Prometheus Genesis / Paradise Lost Faust The “mythology” of Enlightenment: the inevitability of progress the civilizing and uplifting power of knowledge the equality of all men the universal power of sympathy

Prometheus the heroic scientist; the poet; the striver after knowledge

Prometheus the heroic scientist; the poet; the striver after knowledge

“One day, as I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been left by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the warmth I experienced from it. In my joy I thrust my hand into the live embers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain. How strange, I thought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects!” (p )

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me Man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me? —Paradise Lost, X,

Paradise Lost creator and creature; the problem of evil; forbidden knowledge Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me Man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me? —Paradise Lost, X,

“I read it as a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting. I often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me, to my own. Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature, but I was wretched, helpless, and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.” (p. 125)

“Some softened feelings stole into my heart and dared to whisper paradisical dreams of love and joy; but the apple was already eaten, and the angel’s arm bared to drive me from all hope.”

“All my speculations and hopes are as nothing, and like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.”

What about Eve?

“You must create a female for me with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do, and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede.” (p. 140)

“She might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness … she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. … Even if they were to leave Europe and inhabit the deserts of the new world, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the daemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth.” “Now, for the first time, the wickedness of my promise burst upon me … trembling with passion, [I] tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged.”

In what sense can we call Frankenstein a “modern myth”? What is modern about it?

Sympathy John Ruskin: “The imaginative understanding of the natures of others, and the power of putting ourselves in their place … is the faculty on which virtue depends.” Ruskin derived his ideas of sympathy from an 18 th -century British school of moral philosophy that referred ethics to feelings. This basing of ethics on sympathy eventually caused fundamental changes in politics, culture, religion, and ideas about human nature.

Myths shape us, but we also shape them. They speak to our need for stories and images with which to imagine and represent our experience. Myth is thus a means by which a culture constitutes reality itself. Think about your own encounters with the myth of Frankenstein. How does that myth, that defining story, shape our understanding of scientific progress today? How does it help us to articulate the nature and limits of the human? What does the popular culture image of Frankenstein borrow from the novel, and what does it leave out – and why?