I'll always stay - Brigid Broden
Gothic literature had exhausted all of its issues, which had begun to seem full of clichés, when Jane Austen satirized the gender in Northanger Abbey, published in 1818, the same year that science fiction started. It began with a novel that breathed a new vibrant life in the Gothic genre, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Shelley, influenced by the readings of Darwin's theory of evolution, and the atheists ideals of her husband, Percy Blyshe Shelley, ignored completely that her work was setting a new genre in literature. The story grew out of a nightmare, when she, Percy and Lord Byron competed (possibly with the help of laudanum) in the creation of the most frightening story that could be conceived. Mary Shelley knew what mattered in such story; lots of blood, death and violence. Being a severe critic of his readings, Mary Shelley knew which ingredients would sell well in her story. Frankenstein, subtitled The Modern Prometheus in the name of the hero that made men independent of the gods by giving them fire and survival skills, also offered something new. Her story was a prediction, scientific in its moral and social vision of the causes and effects of Víctor Frankenstein's ill-fated experiment. Dr. Frankenstein is a science student obsessed with alchemical theories, theories rejected by the scientists of the time. By mixing old with new science and theories generally accepted in galvanic electricity and evolutionary ideas, he builds a body composed of dead men and makes it an entity with life. Frankenstein is the first man who plays to be God in science fiction and as the gods that disapproved Prometheus' actions, he abandons his work. He creates life for the satisfaction of achievement, but it is then when he realizes that he cannot control life, or have plans about how to care for his creation. In his desire to find the beauty of being, he faces the horrible reality of the creature; and he destroys it without words. However, the creature survives; lonely, hated and rejected by all those who only see its ugliness. He learns by trial and error as we did. He lives in icy glaciers and later on the floating ice in the Arctic; a return to the Neanderthal in the Ice Age. With acquired knowledge, he develops rage, passion and desire for revenge. It finds its creator, and kills members of his family.
Gothic literature had exhausted all of its issues, which had begun to seem full of clichés, when Jane Austen satirized the gender in Northanger Abbey, published in 1818, the same year that science fiction started. It began with a novel that breathed a new vibrant life in the Gothic genre, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Shelley, influenced by the readings of Darwin's theory of evolution, and the atheists ideals of her husband, Percy Blyshe Shelley, ignored completely that her work was setting a new genre in literature. The story grew out of a nightmare, when she, Percy and Lord Byron competed (possibly with the help of laudanum) in the creation of the most frightening story that could be conceived. Mary Shelley knew what mattered in such story; lots of blood, death and violence. Being a severe critic of his readings, Mary Shelley knew which ingredients would sell well in her story. Frankenstein, subtitled The Modern Prometheus in the name of the hero that made men independent of the gods by giving them fire and survival skills, also offered something new. Her story was a prediction, scientific in its moral and social vision of the causes and effects of Víctor Frankenstein's ill-fated experiment. Dr. Frankenstein is a science student obsessed with alchemical theories, theories rejected by the scientists of the time. By mixing old with new science and theories generally accepted in galvanic electricity and evolutionary ideas, he builds a body composed of dead men and makes it an entity with life. Frankenstein is the first man who plays to be God in science fiction and as the gods that disapproved Prometheus' actions, he abandons his work. He creates life for the satisfaction of achievement, but it is then when he realizes that he cannot control life, or have plans about how to care for his creation. In his desire to find the beauty of being, he faces the horrible reality of the creature; and he destroys it without words. However, the creature survives; lonely, hated and rejected by all those who only see its ugliness. He learns by trial and error as we did. He lives in icy glaciers and later on the floating ice in the Arctic; a return to the Neanderthal in the Ice Age. With acquired knowledge, he develops rage, passion and desire for revenge. It finds its creator, and kills members of his family.
(Franki doen't go to Hollywood or Bollywood)
Frankenstein, unable to accept the absolute responsibility of the actions resulting from his immature game to be God, is reduced to misery and suffering. His future seems so damned as his creation's. There is a deep allegory of Christ on this subject. God does not help its creation, and is forced to pay for its inactivity. The creature makes of God the image of its own suffering; both God and the new man are of a terrible nature, both commit evil actions, but we are forced to feel respect and sympathy for them; as well as their behaviour causes us shame. Frankenstein is not a good man, although it is sometimes admirable. The creature asks for a woman that Frankenstein starts to build, but that he destroys. He is incapable of being the father of a race of creatures. The destruction of its partner evokes the terrible retribution from the destroyer of gods, who had already said: "Remember, I am your creation, and should be your Adam, but instead I am the fallen angel, which you deprive of joy in the punishment of no evil. I see happiness everywhere, I am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good, misery made me enemy. Make me happy and I will be again virtuous". The answer is no. The creature loses his faith in Frankenstein, faith consisting of conditional reliance. We make our gods from the source we want.
Shelley's Shadow
Frankenstein, the novel, plays with our relationship with God; and even thus creation seeks the death of its creator. I imagined myself looking for God and attacking him, killing him, somehow punishing him for my anxieties and pain. Only through love to fellow men as human beings, we avoid selfishness and nihilism. The creature comes on Frankenstein for failing him, not giving him means of achieving its objectives. The creature is blinded by love and passion, which he can never meet. Morality, Hell has no fury like that of an outraged.
In the Scientific Age a novel had come to show the dangers
of the bad practice of science. Víctor Frankenstein is the first mad scientist in
literature. Others would follow him. The Age of Science Fiction
had begun. Many writers started speculating what scientific innovation
would become, and what its consequences would be. Cheap and
fast travel, and news of new species of flora and fauna found in exotic
and distant lands electrified the branches of the adventures of
travel, with scientists, anthropologists and explorers setting the path
to all forms of danger. The Science Fiction genre was born. Shelley gave
birth to a monster of her own wit, but one to which most of us should
learn to love.
Tr.Spa-Eng. from a review by Manuel Lamas
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