“The world was a secret to me that I longed to unlock. With these words, Victor Frankenstein, a wealthy young Swiss man, romantic, sensitive and keen on science, embarked, like a sorcerer’s apprentice, on the crazy project of giving life to an inanimate being.
This second volume, by Mary Shelley (1797-1851), from the “Masters of the Fantastic” collection, published by Le Monde, opens up, as a precursor, to the world of horror and the Gothic novel. First published in 1818 and published in French in 1821, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus embraced the myth of creation, inaugurating a genre: science fiction. But here, the dream, the quest for ideal happiness, the beauty of the altruistic feelings of its protagonist, quickly confronted with the consequences of his act, relegate science to the background.
We will never know precisely how Victor Frankenstein proceeded to compose the hybrid being to which he gives life, bringing together in a single being the scattered parts of deceased bodies. On the other hand, we will know, thanks to a learned epistolary exchange revealing the nature, the state of mind and the questions of his entourage (friends and family), the motivations and the dilemmas which inhabit the imprudent inventor, as well as the sufferings inner feelings endured by his creature.
Fascinating journey into strangeness and fear
In epic style and language that lulls the reader, Mary Shelley juxtaposes and contrasts Victor’s aspirations with the morals of progressive, liberal 19th century society. Replacing nature, evacuating beliefs and religions, Victor only wanted to serve the beauty of life. Alas, he has spawned a hideous monster which, although perfectible, will turn, through his fault, into a criminal. Crossing oceans and unknown lands, marrying the fervor of the great explorers, Frankenstein, like an idle Ulysses, will flee his conscience by tracking down the one he has made his executioner. “I almost thought it was my own vampire, my own ghost,” he says.
Thus, in this fascinating journey into the strange and the fearful, the real and the improbable, Mary Shelley explores the interiority of beings, and the obsession with death and mourning that haunts her character; his close friend, William, his sister, Justine, and his father became the victims of the bloodthirsty creature he created.
The author, from a literate background, engages here, with subtlety, in the trial of a science without conscience, delivering her implacable judgment on a “human” nature degraded by the desire for revenge. Although driven by a scientific and humanistic curiosity, Victor Frankenstein embarked on what he calls “natural philosophy” to understand the “strange system of human society”. He will in fact have opened Pandora’s box, putting his fellow human beings, and by extension humanity, in danger.
Through her story, her approach to science and human nature, Mary Shelley explores a world that belongs neither to the past nor to the present. Starting from the myth, the novelist anticipates with rare lucidity the problems posed today by genetic manipulation. And, providing speech and reasoning to Frankenstein’s monster, the visionary Briton announces in her own way the contemporary debates aroused by artificial intelligence. A classic of fantasy literature that warns against all excesses?