A Marxist Look at the Ambivalence Toward Revolution in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

While Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" was written during a very revolutionary period, it is not a very reformist novel. That is to say, it does not encourage great reform from society. Instead, Shelley imparts a rather conservative viewpoint through her take on enlightenment through knowledge, science, and technology. The novel essentially expresses the idea that pursuance of enlightenment through science and technology only leads to enslavement, rather than the freedom sought in the undertaking. Her main character, Victor Frankenstein, experiences this very enslavement. Victor becomes isolated, bereft of all he loves, a slave to the very thing he thought would free him. Shelley uses this as a means of professing the evils and the consequences of turning to science and technological advancement as a means of improving the human condition.

At the same time, Shelley expresses ambivalence concerning revolution and the fear of engaging in revolution. Revolution is expressed through Victor and his eagerness to learn, to create, and to change the world. During the first couple chapters of the novels, we notice Victor's eagerness to engage in academic ventures. Books become the root of his learning, and he is eager to learn from them. "But here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more. I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple" (47). The very lack of explanation by his father as to why Agrippa was "sad trash" causes him to turn to the novel whole-heartedly, in search of what the world holds and what is possible through the powers of the knowledge and science. Most of all, Victor seeks what the world has missed, and what it needs in order to progress. This is the very heart of revolution, and its work is the creation of the daemon.

Victor himself is torn between science and the horror he slowly sees emerging because of it. "...often did my human nature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by an eagerness which perpetually increased..." (58 - 59). Victor is driven by a desire for scientific progress, and yet his "human" side loathes and fears the thought of the horrors it will unleash. Historically, the proletariat is driven toward their betterment, toward a revolution. Yet historically, this drive for progress through revolution has also led to the unleashing of an uncontrolled mass leading to violence and death.

The daemon serves as the culmination of an excessive search for progress through science and technology, a parallel to the culmination of revolution. A fear of revolution is explained through the uncontrolled daemon that roams the streets. At the end of the novel even the daemon notes "Oh, Frankenstein! Generous and self-devoted being! What does it avail that I now ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by destroying all thou lovedst..." (186). Here the daemon departs, just as the revolution departs, yet with nothing solved but the death of its creators. Victor spent all of his days enslaved by science and then its monstrous culmination.

Aside from the daemon, Shelley also hints at the dangers of entering into revolution through the isolation that Victor enters into. As Victor whole-heartedly enters into the pursuit of knowledge and natural philosophy (most specifically chemistry), he tosses aside many of the things that he used to love. He turns into a sort of mad scientist to use a cliché term. This is very clear as Victor sits on the boat and relates his story to Walton. Regretfully and melancholically he explains during a tangent on morality "If this study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed" (59). Here we see the prophesized effects of a country enthralled and immersed in the need for scientific progress, a lack of care for the human element.

By the end of the novel the reader has experienced the two sides to revolution, the drive, the sensation, the blissful thoughts of freedom; and the fear, the loathing, the regret, and the death of many of the things that were once loved. Perhaps this is why Shelley tosses away the ideology that knowledge and science with progress the human race. Perhaps this is why she professes in her novel such a fateful and disastrous ending to it all.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Boston, Mass : Bedford/ St. Martin. 2000.