Funny Frankenstein Bust

Funny Frankenstein Bust   Shelley and the birth of biological science Shelley’s Frankenstein is a monumental work that marked a major shift in literature and culture. The work was born from a dream of Shelley’s that showed an experimenter generating a living and sentient being from inanimate matter: “…I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together… Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator… His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from… [that] which had received such imperfect animation” (Shelley 168). Forming the basis for Victor’s animation of a creature from lifeless flesh, the dream also highlights a science that was only nascent during Shelley’s period: a science concerned with the elucidation and manipulation of the fundamental elements of life. Shelley interestingly describes the work conducted in her dream as “unhallowed” and as mocking nature, relating to the traditional notion that Victor Frankenstein, and those life manipulators like him, defy nature through their scientific hubris. Among the most terrifying aspects of such a science, as it is articulated within the 1831 introduction to the novel, is the flawed human imitation of nature. The dangers of such an imitation, as described by past literary critics, is reflected in Victor Frankenstein’s “unnatural” paternal birth of the monster. Reared without a mother, and with an absent father, Frankenstein’s monster’s development leads to immense suffering for Victor, the monster, and others.   Biology as a distinct science arose in the early 1800s and near the publication date of Frankenstein. This was a science whose distinction was its focus upon resolving the mysteries of life. Earlier biological investigations, such as those of Darwin and Galvani, sought to determine the nature and cause of life, and had informed the science depicted in Frankenstein.    Bu