Mary Shelley: Final Thesis

To read the book, click here.

I have found a lot of interpretations for this book that say that this book is a warning against pursuing science with too much ambition, leaving behind religious morality and restriction. This theory fits in very well with the time when the book was written. But we also know that Mary Shelley was an atheist. My reading gave me a different, in fact opposite look at the book. To see why I see Frankenstein as an atheist reading - one that separates morality from religion, read below.

Experts interpret the dangers of scientific pursuit depicted in Frankenstein as a warning against putting science ahead of Christian morality. I put forth the opposite hypothesis – that Mary Shelley, an atheist, questions if morality is tied to dogmatic religious beliefs as was believed in Victorian times. By placing the knowledge of his Creator’s existence in the mind of the creature, Shelley ensures a struggle for reconciliation of the Creature’s perception of himself with his desire of divine acceptance and approval.

Although rife with biblical allusions of ‘creation’ and ‘being outcast’, the secular theme continues to throw light on the contrast. In the Bible, Adam causes his own fate by sinning. Victor however spurns his creation because of his grotesqueness. This allegory is set up at the epigraph from ‘Paradise Lost’, and the creature becomes violent and seeks revenge only after repeated rejection from his Creator and his Creator’s peers. Another biblical allusion is when like the Prodigal son, the monster is reduced to sleeping with pigs like an animal. But he too refuses to eat the pigs – not for religious reasons like the Prodigal son, but for moral reasons.

The creature learns through human standards of ‘pleasure and pain’, and doesn't need the ‘Word of God’ or Commandments to know right from wrong. He learns by reading; watching the Cottagers – idealizing their interactions and emotions, yet unsure of his place among them – not because he was isolated, but because they could function in the world of his God. Here again, there is an allusion to the tale of Cain and Abel. The creature is shunned and cast off by humanity, like Cain, and is a victim of desire like Abel – Victor’s dangerous desire of knowledge.

By making it evident that the creature can learn virtuous behaviour without divine proclamation, Shelley tries to eliminate the need for God from the attainment of self-realization.