Written Assignment paper 103

 Name : Anjali Madhavjibhai Rathod

Enrollment No. : 4069206420220024

Roll No. : 2

Batch : M.A. Sem. 1 (2022-24)

Subject Code & Paper No. : 22394 - Paper 103 - Literature of the Romantics

Email Address : rathodanjali20022002ui@gmail.com

Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English - Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University - Bhavnagar - 364001

               Science v/s Nature in Frankenstein

     About the Author

               

                   

                              Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley , (born August 30, 1797, London, England—died February 1, 1851, London), English Romantic novelist best known as the author of Frankenstein. The only daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, she met the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1812 and eloped with him to France in July 1814.

                     Mary Shelley’s best-known book is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, revised 1831), a text that is part Gothic novel and part philosophical novel; it is also often considered an early example of science fiction. It narrates the dreadful consequences that arise after a scientist has artificially created a human being. Frankenstein was written by a teenager named Mary Shelley when she was just 18 and it was published in 1818 when she was 20 years old . She said that she got the idea from a dream and Frankenstein was the name of a scientist , not the monster meanwhile. Frankenstein was originally slammed by critics. Frankenstein came out in 1818. It is a Gothic science fiction. 

     

                              Mary Shelley wrote several other novels, including Valperga (1823), The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner (1837); The Last Man (1826), an account of the future destruction of the human race by a plague, is often ranked as her best work. Her travel book History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817) recounts the continental tour she and Shelley took in 1814 following their elopement and then recounts their summer near Geneva in 1816.

   

      

*About to Novel :

           

       Frankenstein is a Gothic novel written by a teenager named Mary Shelley. The First film of Frankenstein was published by Thons Edition in 1910. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. 

     

      Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was 18, and the first edition was published anonymously in London on 1 January 1818, when she was 20. Her name first appeared in the second edition, which was published in Paris in 1821.

   

*Science v/s Nature in Frankenstein

      Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a gothic horror story about a young man who defies the laws of nature and creates a monster that ends up taking revenge against his creator. Thesis: Science can have a positive effect on nature but in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley demonstrates the negative effects of science on nature.

                   The novel resonates with philosophical and moral ramifications, creating a conflict between Science and Nature along with the responsibility to cultivate nature themes, the good versus evil, and the social ambition to dominate against ureaders' attention and consideration of the most sensitive issues of our time.

               Frankenstein is one of the most acclaimed and thought-provoking stories that warns about scientific research and the “abuse” of scientific processes. Shelley's novel is a metaphor for technology that can cause multiple problems in the modern world. The novel mainly revolves around the dangers associated with the acquisition of knowledge and the happiness of an uninformed or illiterate person who treats his native town as his world.

                 Science is more than facts and principles, which have been accepted on the basis of the knowledge gained by systematic studies. A scientific process is the common pathway, which is the basis for knowledge discovery. The good or bad consequences resulting from scientific knowledge are not the main concerns of scientists, despite the powerful impact of these implications.

   

    Mary Shelley's “Frankenstein” shows how knowledge discovery may influence the Earth in an adverse manner, when a scientist does not consider the aftermath of his actions.

         The novel provides hidden praise for a lack of knowledge that can lead to enjoying the simple pleasures of life, rather than indulging oneself in destructive activities with the misuse of knowledge and scientific explanations.

                 Throughout the novel, Victor constantly seeks solace through nature immediately after multiple traumatic deaths of his family members.

      The serene beauty of the natural scenery he visits often diminishes his feelings of sadness, worry, and guilt and provides him with a somewhat restored sense of hope in the world. This portrayal of nature as a source of comfort recurs commonly in the genre of Romanticism.

In contrast, the novel also incorporates Victor's immense fascination with the vast opportunities that science supplies. While studying in Ingolstadt, he obsesses over the idea of manipulating life, and isolates himself with his studies to accomplish this feat and expand humanity's power. However, as bringing the dead back to life goes against the natural flow of nature, it is a major Pandora's Box in the field of science. Because of this, nature rejects Victor and punishes him through his creation. 

      The monster harms everyone who he cares about, and although Victor finds momentary comfort from his woes through nature, nature can no longer act as a long-lasting source of protection for him. Instead, the monster often encounters and worries Victor during his nature trips and thus slowly destroys his impression of nature as a serene place of relaxation. By the end of the novel, Victor becomes so consumed by hatred for his creation that he solely wishes to hunt down the monster, no longer depending on nature nor seeking any serenity from it.

   

            Through Victor's story, Shelley may have wanted to warn us of the dangers of the vast power of science. In an era with such rapidly evolving science and technology, the advancements may come sooner than we can prepare our society to deal with the consequences. At the end of the novel, Walton decides to abandon his ambitious, yet dangerous expedition to the North Pole, reflecting on Victor's disastrous mistake of taking too big a risk for science.

                 

           Mary Shelley incessantly portrays science and nature. At first Mary Shelley illustrated the nature of life as distressing, sorrowful and frail. She does this by demonstrating illnesses, deaths and sorrow of the loved ones leaving and diseases. By doing this Mary shelly is representing life as a pathetic game, which has no other meanings than depression and grief, and how easily it could be vanished.

        * Nature and the Sublime

The tension between the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of belonging play out against the background of sublime nature. The sublime is an aesthetic, literary and philosophical concept of the Romantic period that encapsulates the experience of awe in the face of the natural world’s extreme beauty and greatness. The novel opens with Walton’s expedition to the North Pole, then moves through the mountains of Europe with the narratives of Frankenstein and the creature.

     

              As we know that Victor makes an extensive use of science and of his scientific experiments to create his monster, which then haunts him and leads to the killing of Victor’s younger brother William, Science can thus be regarded as the main motor to Victor’s self-destruction. This clearly presents science as evil and an awful thing.

                  Science was in the beginning of its tenure when Shelley wrote her story, she was explaining Victor’s interest in science and the way he wanted to use it for power to reanimate the dead.

          Victor created a creature without knowing the consequences of defying the laws of nature and he paid the price by the creature bringing revenge upon Victor. Victor stitched together a body and science was Victor’s answer after the loss of his mother.

           There are always consequences for combining science and nature but some people don’t realise it until it is too late.

         Nature is also presented as the ultimate wielder of life and death, greater even than Frankenstein and his discoveries. Nature is what ultimately kills both Frankenstein and his creature as they chase after one another further into the icy wilderness.

           

                  As science is an element of culture, Victor is associated with culture. But he represents the darker side of culture: scientism misused as fantasy. On the other hand, the creature is associated with nature. Though Victor infuses life into the monster through a scientific experiment, the monster is still a nature’s child as he is brought up in the midst of wild natural landscape. In the novel, we find that ‘male’ science (as a part of culture), in the person of Victor, penetrates “into the recesses of nature

    * Conclusion 

               To sum up, this novel Frankenstein is about the conflict between science and nature . Victor, the representative of culture, attempts to conquer nature and cross the boundaries of nature, which eventually brings about his ruin. 

          Nature is what ultimately kills both Frankenstein and his creature as they chase after one another further into the icy wilderness. The sublime uninhabited terrains, of equal beauty and terror, frame the novel’s confrontations with humanity so that they underline the vastness of the human soul.