PIECING THINGS TOGETHER

Eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley, born in 1797, penned the classic Frankenstein. A tale of horror with deep moral implications might seem heady for a teenager, but Shelley was intellectually gifted and likely influenced by her mother’s history and the significant medical/scientific developments of the time.

In 1795, Shelley’s mother attempted suicide by jumping off a bridge in London. Just prior, she expressed in a letter her hope that she would not be “snatched from the death.” A valid concern, as in the latter half of the 18th century, physicians had discovered resuscitative measures that proved successful in reviving nearly drowned people who appeared to be dead.

Alas, Shelley’s mother was rescued and revived by boatmen who found her unconscious body. Shelley’s mother lamented that she was “inhumanely brought back to life and misery.” She eventually gave birth to Shelley but died days later due to postpartum fever.  Her resuscitation and despair at being saved is a thread woven throughout Frankenstein.

In the 1780s, scientist Luigi Galvani began experimenting with electricity and attempted to reanimate animal corpses. Galvani found electrical current could cause a frog’s legs to kick and twitch, almost as if it were alive. A few years later, his nephew, Giovanni Aldini, carried on the experiment but took it a ghoulish step further.   In 1803, Aldini received permission from the Royal College of Surgeons in London to zap a freshly executed murderer, George Foster. Foster’s body convulsed, his jaw clenched, his eyes opened. To an astonished audience, it appeared he had temporarily, and agonizingly, come back to life.

Shelley’s book was not written in a vacuum. With scientific, moral, and philosophical conversations about the nature of life swirling about, Shelley contributed her own way, completing her first draft of Frankenstein in 1816.