“Hideous Progeny”: the myth of Frankenstein, 200 years on

Two hundred years after its publication in 1818, ‘Frankenstein’ has proved to have, in the words of Prof. Burdiel, “a monstrous ability to multiply its meanings,” and has become “one of the enduring myths of the Western world, transcending its historical era to connect with the most pressing concerns of the present.” On the occasion of its bicentenary, the historian looks in her talk at the genesis of Mary Shelley’s novel and its vast impact on contemporary culture.

The title refers to a sentence that Shelley included in the preface to the novel’s third edition, published in 1831: “And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper.” As Burdiel explains, at that point the author of ‘Frankenstein’ was already aware – given the success of the first two editions and a play based on the book that was first staged in 1823 – that “she had created a being who had escaped her control, with a monstrous, extraordinary and possibly malevolent ability to devour the name, identify and even the intentions of its author.”

The idea for ‘Frankenstein’ was born on a dark, rainy night in the summer of 1816, when Mary Shelley was just 19 years old. Lord Byron challenged her and her husband, the Romantic poet Percy B. Shelley, to write the most terrifying “ghost story” they could imagine. What none of them could have predicted was that that story would grow into one of the great icons of our time, making the leap from novel to theater and from there to the cinema, where it would inspire over 100 films. Furthermore, Prof. Burdiel remarks in an interview prior to her lecture, “the tale that became such a hit in popular culture also spread beyond its confines and is now studied in the most diverse academic programs, from the history of science to philosophy, ethics, feminist literary criticism or political history.”

The dangers of “playing God”

The great French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss once said – in a phrase Burdiel quotes in her critical edition of ‘Frankenstein’ for the publishing house Cátedra – “a myth is a lie that tells the truth.” What, then, is the truth revealed by the fable of Mary Shelley’s hideous creation? According to the historian, “the truth, or rather the at times contradictory truths that Frankenstein tells, have to do with modern man’s fears that the political, economic, technological and scientific forces summoned in the name of progress may run amok or become the opposite of what they were meant to be. Something like the dark side of good intentions.”

Today, 200 years after its birth, ‘Frankenstein’ remains the supreme metaphor for the idea of science “playing God,” an idea Shelley herself expressly acknowledges in her chosen subtitle: ‘The Modern Prometheus’. Time and again, the media turn to the Frankenstein myth to warn against the scientists who dare to manipulate life, or even to “manufacture” new organisms in their laboratories.

In recent years, the fable of the monster engendered in the lab who rebels against its creator has been repeatedly invoked to alert to the supposed danger of many milestones of modern science: from transgenic foods (styled “Frankenfoods” by ecologist organizations), the cloning of Dolly the sheep and the manufacture of synthetic DNA, to the CRISPR gene editing technique, the implanting of chips in the human brain (the “cyborg man”) or the construction of robots exceeding humans in intelligence that may someday turn on their creators.

There is no doubt that Mary Shelley was familiar with the science of her age. “We know from her diaries,” says Burdiel, “that talk of the latest scientific discoveries was common between the Shelleys and Byron and at the gatherings held in the house of Mary’s father, the philosopher William Godwin.” The idea that most fascinated and inspired her was that electricity could be the origin of life, with the power to reanimate bodies. The relationship between electricity and life was indeed intensely debated at the time by, among others, Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, and the chemist Sir Humphry Davy, who believed it was possible to bring organisms back to life by combining electricity and chemistry.

Not only that, Burdiel insists, “Shelley also knew about the work done by Frank von Frankeneau, whose name clearly inspired that of the novel’s protagonist, a German scientist investigating into the possible reanimation of biological tissue. ‘Frankenstein’, as such, is not a Gothic ghost story entirely removed from reality; it is talking about things that were actually being attempted by scientists. It is a novel immersed in the science environment of its time.”

For all these reasons, Burdiel is clear that “an essential part of the energy that exists in ‘Frankenstein’ and its power to unsettle us” stem from us reading it as a moral fable about the dangers of science, or, rather, of the reckless scientist who turns his back on his creations. But the most interesting point, for her, is that “it talks about the dangers of ‘playing God’ in every sense: the scientific, but also the political and moral.”

The “monsters” of “social engineering”

Burdiel also reminds us that Mary Shelley was the daughter of two of the great revolutionary thinkers of the age. William Godwin was a radical philosopher who championed a bizarre social engineering project in his best known work, ‘An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice’ (1793). “He was a Utopian who postulated a perfect world with no war or inequality, a kind of pre-Marxist Utopian socialism. He even went as far as to suppose that in this perfect world there would be no feelings, because where there are feelings there are disputes,” the historian adds.

Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was the first great feminist figure of the English-speaking world, author of ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’ (1792). “Shelley never knew her,” Burdiel relates, “because she died giving birth to her daughter, but she declared the presence and echo of her dead mother, her thought and her life, accompanied her at all times, in ways that were not always positive or easy to bear.” As part of her feminist thinking, Wollstonecraft looked at the issue of feelings from a different angle to her husband, arguing that love could potentially be a trap for women. “She didn’t say they should stop loving, but that they should study how to free themselves from ideas about love and desire that could end up enslaving them. It was important to reexamine how feelings are constructed, and whether learned feelings might lead to subordination and submission,” the historian explains.

In a certain sense, says Burdiel, ‘Frankenstein’ can be read as Mary Shelley’s distrust of “social engineering” and the “cold Utopias” her parents defended, since her own experience was that “‘the sleep of reason produces monsters’ not only when it is sleeping, leaving anti-enlightenment prejudices to be aired at will, but also when sleepless reason thinks it can create a perfect future, a blessed humanity, an end to history, a final solution…” In this respect, the historian believes that much of the iconic power of the Frankenstein myth stems from the fact that “it connects the unease or disquiet felt by modern man, who fears that the forces mobilized to secure progress could turn against their creators, intent on their search for the perfect society.”

Burdiel is at pains to explain that “this is not a defense of a reactionary view of progress, but a discussion about the moral dilemmas and questions that it brings with it, and about perfectionist Utopias. Mary Shelley reflects on what Isaiah Berlin, paraphrasing Kant, called ‘the crooked timber of humanity’. That is what makes her so radically Romantic, and so modern.”

A Romantic novel about identity

We should also remember, the historian adds, that ‘Frankenstein” was written at the height of the Romantic movement, and that Mary was influenced by one of its greatest exponents, her husband Percy B. Shelley. “The social engineering advocated by Mary’s parents, a typical product of the pre-revolutionary Enlightenment, was questioned by a Romantic generation that had seen the monsters engendered by the French Revolution,” she explains. “The idea that there could be a perfect society or a final solution, which in her parents’ views would arise from the eradication of feelings, is the opposite of the intensification and glorification of feelings upheld by the Romantics of Shelley’s generation, who saw them as a source of freedom and rebellion.” From this standpoint, the historian continues, “‘Frankenstein’ has been wrongly classed as a Gothic novel. I believe the opposite is true; that it is clearly a Romantic novel, and one of the greatest.”

The influence of Romanticism is present in another of the novel’s great themes: the construction of identity, of what we are, and how it is other people’s gaze that determines our self-image. “‘Frankenstein’ reflects the Romantic idea that human beings are constructed through their relations with others. The monster does not know he is a monster. He realizes that others reject him, but it is not until he sees his reflection in a pond that he acknowledges himself to be the monster they see him as. He acknowledges his identity because it has been impressed upon him by people’s rejection,” Burdiel insists. “The novel, as such, proposes a reflection on how identities are created, and, above all, how we decide that someone is monstrous and thereby oblige him to become that monster. The creature is good and virtuous, it is the rejection he suffers that makes him a monster. In this sense, ‘Frankenstein’ explores the relationship between the I and the other in the construction of identity, one of the classic concerns of Romanticism.”

For these reasons, Burdiel contends, over and above its warnings about the dangers of science or “irresponsible” social engineering, “this ghost story had and still has elements of a spine-chilling journey to one’s own identity as the source (or otherwise) of all disquiet, of all horror. It is a reflection on how monsters are made on the fine line that separates normal or ordinary from extraordinary or hideous. A reflection on who defines what is normal or hideous, on what basis and what authority, and the effects that it can have.”