Cast into a world replete with bewildering innovation, Mary Shelley, at the mere age of nineteen, defied seemingly impenetrable gender conventions of nineteenth century England through her enticingly horrifying composition of Frankenstein, eternally convoluting the ethics of invention. A Romantic at heart, Shelley, through her intricate elaboration of Victor Frankenstein and his creation as well as scenery, expounds upon the deleterious outcomes associated with the distancing of oneself from the natural world as a mirror to the ideals expressed in Volney’s Ruins of Empires, in order to reveal the calamity innately bestowed in the dawn of industrialization. Inventions both derive from and spur societal change. In the case of the 1790 Industrial
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The rich, “will feed on their increase, be clothed in their skins, and live exempt from the fatigues of the day and solicitude for the morrow” (Volney). Although Volney scrutinizes the malicious indolence of the upper class, Shelley, in a similar way, berates those responsible for such advancements in her development of the vapidly narcissistic character of Victor Frankenstein. Under the impression that he is the only person capable of instilling life in something inanimate, Victor vicariously discounts all preexisting ethics as he uncouthly garners, assembles, and enlivens the appendages and organs of the deceased to form a being of unprecedented form. Not only is this a monstrosity of morality, but in livening the lifeless, Victor violates the universal law of nature that everything that lives must die, thereby in sustaining life, Victor ironically commences his personal destruction. After the creature’s invigoration, Victor, petrified by the being that was once the sole source of his pride, cowardly absconds from his lab leaving his physically matured yet entirely aloof creation to the callousness of man, subsequently reigning havoc both on Victor’s existence and humanity. In portraying Victor’s cowardice and
The rich, “will feed on their increase, be clothed in their skins, and live exempt from the fatigues of the day and solicitude for the morrow” (Volney). Although Volney scrutinizes the malicious indolence of the upper class, Shelley, in a similar way, berates those responsible for such advancements in her development of the vapidly narcissistic character of Victor Frankenstein. Under the impression that he is the only person capable of instilling life in something inanimate, Victor vicariously discounts all preexisting ethics as he uncouthly garners, assembles, and enlivens the appendages and organs of the deceased to form a being of unprecedented form. Not only is this a monstrosity of morality, but in livening the lifeless, Victor violates the universal law of nature that everything that lives must die, thereby in sustaining life, Victor ironically commences his personal destruction. After the creature’s invigoration, Victor, petrified by the being that was once the sole source of his pride, cowardly absconds from his lab leaving his physically matured yet entirely aloof creation to the callousness of man, subsequently reigning havoc both on Victor’s existence and humanity. In portraying Victor’s cowardice and