![]() ![]() The character of Victor Frankenstein preceded the emergence of the word “scientist” by over a decade, and he still shadows our cultural understanding of science and its risks. The book’s central premise-a man’s hubris leads him to turn his back on the artificial life he has created-rooted itself into the collective cultural consciousness of Europe almost as soon as it was first published in 1818. The abiding appeal of Shelley’s Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus depends on the fact that this truth applies equally to Victor Frankenstein (the self-centered proto-scientist who sacrificed everything to his intellectual curiosity), to the unnamed creature he designs who turns a quest for empathy into a serial murder spree, and to Mary Shelley herself, the brilliant young writer whose love for the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley caused her more grief and penury than most of us could bear.įrankenstein is a story about what it takes to give birth to an idea and what happens when parents and creators do not care for their progeny. Of course, ideas can also ennoble, succor, and transform the endless fecundity of human imagination gives us the resilience to cling to our ideas even when the world turns against us. Ideas can tear you up, turn you inside out, and crush your heart. If there is anything the tumultuous life and mesmerizing works of Mary Shelley have to teach us, it is that imagination has power. ![]()
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