Two hundred years ago, on 1 January 1818, the novel Frankenstein was first published. The author was a young English woman, Mary Shelley. She had come up with the idea for the novel two years previously, when she was 18 years old and spending the summer in Switzerland with some friends. The weather was unusually cold and miserable because of an extraordinary event: half a world away, in Indonesia, the volcano Tambora had erupted. It was the largest volcanic eruption in human history. The ash and gas spewed by the volcano blocked the sun’s rays and cooled temperatures around the globe. Mary and her friends found the weather that year, which came to be known as ‘the year without summer’, to be perfect for sitting indoors and reading ghost stories. They even decided that each of them should write one. For days Mary didn’t know what to write about. Then, one night, a vision struck her imagination: in it she saw a crazy scientist giving life to a monstrous creature. Mary’s vision became the novel Frankenstein.  

Monster literature

In the novel, the scientist Victor Frankenstein is obsessed by the idea of creating life. He builds a human-like creature, but becomes horrified by it. The creature, rejected by his creator, turns against him. The two engage in a battle to the death. Frankenstein was one of the first horror novels in history. It became the starting point of a specific horror genre: monster literature. The creature in Frankenstein is the first in a series of ‘monsters’ that populated 19^th century British literature and that are still incredibly famous today. Here are two examples: Dracula, invented by Bram Stoker and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, by Robert Luis Stevenson. Another monster that was directly inspired by Frankenstein’s creature was the Mummy. After reading Shelley’s novel, another very young lady, Jane C. Loudon, wrote the novel The Mummy! Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century. Like Frankenstein before it, The Mummy contained not only elements of horror, but also of another genre: science fiction.  

Science fiction

Frankenstein is also widely considered to be the first science fiction novel. Although Shelley makes reference to ancient stories such as Greek myths (the subtitle of her novel is The Modern Prometheus), her protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, is a scientist, not a god or a classical hero. Victor is the first ‘mad scientist’ – a staple of science fiction – who uses the powers of science and technology to complete his overly ambitious and dangerous experiments. Frankenstein’s monster himself is the first of a long line of artificial creatures in science fiction; he is the forefather of modern robots, cyborgs and androids. Like monster literature, science fiction also found fertile ground in 19^th century Britain. One of the most important authors of the genre was British writer H. G. Wells who penned such classics as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds.  

Popular literature with a message

Although today Frankenstein’s monster is one of the most recognizable figures of popular culture, one must not forget that Shelley’s novel was not just a genre novel. Like many other horror and science fiction works, it offers a deep reflection on culture and progress. When Frankenstein was written, science and technology were advancing quickly and many believed that soon anything would be possible. This, though, was also raising many fears, because progress without a moral direction can be dangerous and destructive. Frankenstein encapsulates these aspirations and fears: Victor uses science and technology to play god, but ends up creating a creature he fails to control and who turns against him. Frankenstein also suggests that the monster in the story might be Victor, because of his reckless ambition and his irresponsible actions. The endurance of Frankenstein, as well as that of the genres it helped create, lies in the successful use of adventurous thrills to convey a deep moral message.  

(Carlo Dellonte)
(Image credits: Wikimedia Commons)