Um, the “you” in my post is uchtungbaby, of course, not APB.
No, funnier. More edgy
Son of Dex just made a mistake.
Aside from APB’s point that knowledge of electricity was a commonplace of popular culture by this time, you’re also overlooking the fact that books explaining science for ladies were a flourishing genre and had been for about a century beforehand. It was largely taken for granted that a cultured women wouldn’t read “proper” science books, but she would also be expected to take a fashionable interest in new scientific discoveries and there were plenty of authors catering to this taste. Womens’ access to scientific writing was thus usually different from mens’, but they certainly could familiarise themselves with up-to-date science.
That’s not even including those women who did explore beyond the confines of what was specifically intended for them.
Nor was Mary Godwin growing up in a household that was particularly backwards when it came to encouraging women. It’s known from one of her father’s letters that he intended her to have at least some scientific education, though exactly what form this took is not entirely certain.
Patricia Fara’s recent Pandora’s Breeches: Women, Science & Power in the Enlightenment (Pimlico, 2004) discusses the ways 18th century women could follow, and even participate in, science in some detail. Her final chapter is, funnily enough, specifically devoted to Mary Shelley and an examination of what scientific books she’d probably read and their influence on Frankenstein.
Several people have disputed this, but the fact is that it doesn’t matter: as hildea points out, the novel doesn’t mention electricity.
You might as well say that Abraham Lincoln didn’t write the Gettysburg Address because he didn’t know about nuclear weapons.
Not quite. What none of the versions of the novel mention is electricity in connection with animating the monster. (There is a 1831 preface where she retrospectively mentions that “galvanism had given token of such things” as part of a vague explanation, but that’s not in the actual story.) The subject is however mentioned as part of the general scattering about of vaguely scientific references by Frankenstein. For example, from Chapter 2:
This is from the 1831 text, rather than the 1818 original, and it’s possible that it was added then. (I don’t have a copy of the 1818 text to hand and there doesn’t appear to be a complete version of it online.)
Such references are, of course, still not evidence of a knowledge of science beyond that available to her.
The copy I have here appears to be a reprint of the 1818 edition, and that passage is identical. Not, as you say, that it matters much – that much would have been common knowledge to any literate person at the time.
In any case, she seems to have been more inspired by the work of Erasmus Darwin than Galvani –the 1831 preface you quoted mentions him at length, and the preface to the 1818 edition begins like this:
Clearly Mary (whatever her knowledge of contemporary scientific advances may have been) had no interest in writing what we would consider hard science fiction, merely in sketching in a plausible background that would remove her horror story from the realm of the supernatural.
Frankly, I’m at a loss to understand uchtungbaby’s reasoning. Surely there can very few novels whose initial impetus, inspirations, influences (both general and particular) and circumstances of writing are more fully or more popularly known. We know who wrote it, when and why she did, who she was with at the time and what they talked about. We know the places they went to that became the settings for the novel, and the dreams she had that inspired its mood and theme. All of this has been well-known for nearly 200 years, and with the help of Google, ample supporting evidence is available at the click of a mouse.
One last point: when The British Critic reviewed Frankenstein in April 1818, the reviewer clearly showed distaste that a female should have written so grisly a fantasy, but significantly failed to express any disbelief that it was possible for her to have done so.
All of this seems to me to be nothing more than a lame rehash of the dreary old anti-Shakespeare bullshit.
Well, at the very least, the dreary old anti-Shakespeare bullshit has room for interesting speculation, given the comparatively sparse details existing about Shakespeare’s life.
Even supposing that the theory that William Godwin wrote Frankenstein was worth considering (which it isn’t) the sheer density of misinformation, irrelevant argument, and good old-fashioned stick-your-fingers-in-your-ears-and-go-“Na na na I can’t hear you” to which uchtunbaby has had to resort to support it makes me wonder whether it’s worth the wear-and-tear on my fingertips to try to persuade him otherwise.
Does anyone else find it ironic that a person who wrote this sentence would also be arguing that Mary Shelley lacked the requisite scientific knowledge to have written “Frankenstein.”
At the very least, human understanding of (and experimentation with) electricity dates to the early 17th century. I think you could make the case that popular understanding of some forms of electricity dates back to Ancient Greece circa 600 BC.
Uchtung, how about a cite for either of your claims? Can you provide any evidence to support your assertion that “people thought electricity was a type of magic,” or for your claim that “some still do”?
Obviously, the brainwashing of modern feminism kicked in earlier than we all thought.
I wouldn’t discount the influence of gay science.
I would not be too sure of your source on that issue. A lot of misdirection has taken place on this issue because of the revisions of phamplet printers shortly after the great exhibition of 1851 in London.
Get your own bibliography. Earn it like the rest of us.
Read it again. Myths relating to the effects of electricity are implicit to the novel. Where do you think Holleywood got the idea from in the first place.
No?
The myths implicit in the novel are evidence of a knowledge of science beyond that available to her?
Translation: “I’m making stuff up as I go along.”
In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I’m convinced that you don’t know anything about anything. Again, I challenge you to provide a source that confirms your assertion that “[s]ome people thought that electricity was a type of magic and some still do.” Until you can do that, all you’re doing is engaging in argument by assertion, and you’re just wasting everybody’s time.
Moderator speaketh: anson2995, a gentle reminder that personal insults are not permitted in this forum, however much deserved. You may be critical of a person’s arguments; but you may not insult the person him/herself.
OK?
Welcome to the SDMB.
When asked for a citation to back up someting one claims is a fact in a post, it is generally thought of as polite to provide it.
It helps to avoid the appearance of pulling ideas out of one’s ass.
Just a suggestion.
Agreed, duly noted, and thank you.
Yes that’s right.
Oddly enough, I like the rest of you wish that Mary had developed the novel from her own inherent understanding of the world. It would fit in nicely with the revisions of feminism and gay science and might provide us all with some certainty about the genealogical contrivances advanced in relation to the novel.
The truth is that the men of both the Shelley and Godwin families were famous for their ‘hell-fire club’ type parties. It was probably during one such party that the men decided to give young Mary the kick along that she needed to rise up in status amongst the literati of her time. It must have worked because she did acquire some famous acquaintances. I suppose she would have been quite ‘chuffed’ to have had so many famous men casting praise over the novel, which for all intents and purposes, it was supposed that she had written.
Her father must have loved her very much to have foregone his own drives and ambitions in the interests of his daughter. To write a fantastic piece of fiction and then, give up the fame associated with it is a great act of love by a father for his daughter.
A close friend of the family was a lovely women called Lady Mountcashell. She knew of the harmless deception initiated by Mister Godwin and Percy Shelly. She immortalised their ‘hell-fire club’ antics in ‘Twelve cogent reasons for supposing P.B.Sh_ll_y to be the d_v_l inc_rn_t’. The absence of lettering in the title of the poem is a common hell-fire convention used to avoid litigation. Percy and William would have dragged her through the courts (just for fun!) had she mentioned either one of them directly in the poem. Nobody really knows whether Percy and William found the poem very funny, though most people who know that Mary did not really write the novel think the irony in the poem is hilarious.
If you decide to use this in your own work then a simple acknowledgement to ‘Uchtungbaby’ and the webpage that it is taken from should suffice.