Open AccessMary Shelley’s Frankenstein As A Text About Nature and Culture
Author(s) -
Kunal Debnath
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
smart moves journal ijellh
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2582-4406
pISSN - 2582-3574
DOI - 10.24113/ijellh.v7i9.9735
Subject(s) - monster , fantasy , scientism , natural (archaeology) , philosophy , art , dichotomy , psychoanalysis , art history , literature , aesthetics , history , epistemology , psychology , archaeology
In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein (1818), we find several dichotomies: culture/nature, self/other, ego/id, male/female et cetera. In the novel, Victor is a scientist who wants to inject life into inanimate objects and thereby become a creator, a god. As science is an element of culture, Victor is associated with culture. But he represents the darker side of culture: scientism misused as fantasy. On the other hand, the creature is associated with nature. Though Victor infuses life into the monster through a scientific experiment, the monster is still a nature’s child as he is brought up in the midst of wild natural landscape. In the novel, we find that ‘male’ science (as a part of culture), in the person of Victor, penetrates “into the recesses of nature” (Shelley, 1818).