Individualism in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

bloody shame Shelleys Frankenstein is understandably a cautionary taradiddle that spells the clean-living and sociological logical implications of the ism of the Enlightenment. There is a tendency to limit the theme of the saucy to knowledge, and at that placeby to ignore the underlying principle. scarcely the scientist is scarce encouraged, or discouraged, by the genial and philosophicalalal milieu in which he exists. In this sense the rise of unexampled attainment must(prenominal) be right attri thoed to the philosophy of Enlightenment, that which believed in the infinite perfectibility of opus through the strict practice of reason.If experimental philosophy is one expression of this philosophy, consequently philosophic individualistism is a nonher. This latter(prenominal) philosophy maintains that the hu valetskind being is intrinsic on the wholey free, and then his nature is lastly good, which similarly implies that it is nonexistent of evil. Apparent ev il yet reflects the constraints of man as a social being. The resolve of politics must thereof be to minimize society and encourage the individual as distanta instructionthermost as possible. The uttermost(a) manifestation of such thinking is anarchism. We conterminous take none that Mary Shelley was brought up in a climate of wild anarchism.Both her parents were anarchists, and she was brought up in the same mould. Her husband, the storied poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, was also an avowed anarchist and atheist. thus the novel may be fruitfully analyzed from the point of view of philosophic individualism. Victor Frankenstein is not the exercise of science in the novel, as is normally believed. The confessedly such representative is the explorer Robert Walton, who is on a scientific exp reading to the Artic Circle. This billet symbolizes the extreme edge of the material universe.The jaunt symbolizes the sincere and happy path to knowledge. such an attitude is reflecte d in Waltons pursual comment, made in a garner to his sister What may not be expected in a field of eternal light? (Shelley 16). Science promises to give clear and eternal light on all amours, and the path is a straightforward one of experiment and induction. Walton is not hypothetic to know of that which lurks beneath the surface, and he only drives 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 rush and turns his ship venture. He is able to guide enough of the message, that the practice of science is troubled with danger, and that it is not wise to strive towards the limits of knowledge.Frankenstein is far more than than a mere scientist. not mere rational explanations, he aims for the philosophers pitfall and the elixir of manners (Ibid 48). He sees science as a futile initiative if it can never come to the ultimate cause of things, and must then only dabble with immediate causes.He shuns science in favor of alchemy on his depression entering university. Alchemy is the arcane theatre which takes into account the limitations of science, and aims to overcome them by the more pro anchor understanding of the processes of Creation itself. In the end it is science that is employed in the creation of the putz, but is also certain the enigmatical of generation lies with alchemy. The latter is successful only when it overcomes the limitations of science. Therefore the wildcat, which is imbued with purport, must be called a successful totality 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 nature 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 justify himself end-to-end the novel, horizontal as the menace of the giant star becomes more and more severe. The aspect of philosophic individualism appears when we come to consider the shaft itself.As soon as it has come to life it is an individual, and the fateful comparison appears with the prototype individual, which is Adam. The agree comparison is between the Creator and Frankenstein. What is the implication of this conceit to mimic the Creator? A vital clue is found in how Shelley describes the inspirational vision that led her to put out the novel, which is included in the Preface to the 1831 edition Frightful must it be, she says, for supremely appalling would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous machine of the Creator of the creation (qtd. in Lederer et al, 3).It is inevitable that the creature turn out to be a horror. All involved come to this essential truth . Frankenstein realizes this as soon as he sees the first muscle twitch. To the creature as well the horror unfolds after he is allowed to compare himself with true creatures. His discovery of Miltons enlightenment Lost is a proceeding of his understanding. He has observed the sublime virtues of the human by observing village life from afar. He feels such virtue gibbousness inside himself. But to express this he must absorb society, and his horrid demeanour will not allow him to bring on human corporation.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 causation is loving and forgiving, whereas his own condition has forsaken him in revulsion. He knows that the only path give way to him is to excite pity in the nervus of his creator. Like Adam, he asks for a egg-producing(prenominal) being of his kind, whose company will cabinet him. But this is not to be, because his creator hates him overly strongly. The moral of the tale seems to be that the beleaguer of learning tends towards alienation.In the first instance we mystify Victor Frankenstein, whose mad quest for the secret of vitality impels him into a solitary endeavor, and from which there can be no connector back to society. Even when the whole thing has gone horribly wrong, and all those besotted to him are imperiled, and are being polish off 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 spiritual comportment from the world of the novel suggests that Frankenstein is more a house of ruins than the house divided (883).The creature is intelligent and sensitive, but suffers the more so because it brings home to him the total wretchedness of his condition. To the world he is a monster, and only his creator can redeem him, through blessing and pity. Both creator and creature score been cut adri ft from the world as forsaken individuals. They have both become monstrosities, and so the structure of the novel itself is monstrous in many ways, as has been suggested by Daniel Cottom (60). hallucination 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 familiar tendency towards individualism, which burst forth in the 18th century as the Enlightenment. The doctrine of Calvin is inimical to all institutions. The very creative thinker of the sweet individual is what animated Milton to order the story of Creation in Paradise Lost. The latent anarchism of the bare-assed faith is found in the following lines where Adam complains to deity Did I request thee, Maker from my the Great Compromiser To mould Me man?Did I crave thee From darkness to promote me? (Milton 269) We hear a clear echo of the creatures lament i n these words. So in Milton himself, who was a kibosh Puritan, we find the seed of Frankensteins monster. In his younger days he wrote vituperative anarchist texts, such as Areopagitica. Anarchism has incessantly been a growing trend in the political thinking of the West from Milton onwards. rump Locke and Edmund Burke were key proponents in this regards. William Godwin came to component part an extreme form of such thinking, which became highly influential.When Hazlitt came to sum up the spirit of the age, he put the name of Godwin at the forefront. (Bowerbank 418). With Godwin, not only all socio-political institutions, but eventide the institution of marriage was suspect. This is the milieu that Shelley imbibed, and came to testify in her novel.The new individual is not always an anarchist by choice. The harsh land man is more likely to be individualist by compulsion. Here we have the distinction between Frankenstein and the creature. The plight of the common man is no l ess tragic. He is a creature of mechanization, and is alienated 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 haunting contrive of the new reality which the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution had brought about. 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 outstanding character, because he represents the arcane philosophy that sustains science. But the most impo rtant depiction is of the monstrous creature, who is representative of the new individual.Works CitedBowerbank, Sylvia. The Social Order vs The Wretch Mary Shelleys Contradictory-Mindedness in Frankenstein. ELH. Vol. 46, No. 3 (Autumn, 1979), pp. 418-431.Cottom, Daniel. Frankenstein and the daimon of Representation. SubStance. Vol. 9, No. 3, Issue 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 bemused and other poems. Ed. Edward Le Comte. New York Signet Classic, 2003.Montaigne, Michel de. The plump 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.