It's alive!

Chemistry professor David Lynn co-wrote a chapter called “What Would Mary Shelley Say Today?” with Jay Goodwin, from the MacArthur Foundation. An excerpt:

Shelley’s description of the scientist Victor Frankenstein, raising mortuaries and slaughterhouses for the materials for his Creature, conjures up graphic social images. A creature stitched from parts of multiple human and possibly animal parts, a patchwork quilt of skin, organs, and limbs most assuredly would have appeared uniquely grotesque to the naïve eye and repulsed even its creator.

We can see the faint echoes of this hybrid creature foreshadowing the emergent work in human/animal chimeric biology in present times, which is often branded as “Frankensteinian” in its pursuit and ethical implications.

Shelley also wove in origins-of-life themes, how to bring about life from inanimate matter, and the synthesis of a whole being by analogy, using component parts from different sources. These themes re-emerge today in the disciplines of systems and synthetic biology. While chemistry and electricity are both critical determinants of the genesis, function and reproduction of living matter, they in turn depend on the fundamental blueprints for life, ensconced at the molecular level, that underlie the central dogma of molecular biology.

Emeritus professor of physics Sidney Perkowitz wrote a chapter called "Frankenstein and Synthetic Life: Fiction, Science and Ethics." An excerpt:

In reality, making synthetic life is both science and fiction and even science and myth, with roots far older than this century or the 19th, when Shelley wrote. She understood this, for the full title of her story is “Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus.” In Greek mythology, Prometheus was a Titan, one of the powerful divinities who preceded Zeus and the other Olympian gods. In some versions of the myth Prometheus creates mankind, and in all versions he steals fire from the Olympians for the benefit of humanity. These actions angered Zeus, who punished Prometheus by sentencing him to eternal torment.

In Mary Shelley’s novel, Victor Frankenstein creates a living being with the hope of creating a superior version of humanity, but like Prometheus, he pays a price for his aspirations. Stories like these raise timeless issues and express significant truths. At the deepest level, they reflect our own feelings about life and death. Furthermore, they present the long-standing moral questions that synthetic life would raise. A modern scientist could still share the same goals and fears as Victor Frankenstein, but with one great difference: Now we truly have the scientific tools to modify and perhaps even create living beings.

Steven J. Kraftchick, a professor at Candler School of Theology, wrote a chapter called "Who is a Monster, When?" An excerpt:

The English term “monster” (by way of French) likely derives from the Latin words montrare “to demonstrate” and monere “to warn.” In effect,“monsters” demonstrate or warn; their presence attempts to make “something” evident. But of course, this raises the question of what, exactly that “something” is. And, once we are here, we see that “monsters” demonstrate only that they are phenomena that press the limits of the ordinary, expanding or contracting the usual and normal to a point of individual and social discomfort or rupture.

“Monsters” reveal not themselves but the limits of the ordinary and acceptable, as well as our inability to comprehend things that seem strange, unfamiliar, and discordant. We freely use the term “monster” in all sorts of settings: a monster deal at a store, a monstrous child, a monster truck, a monstrous ego, etc., thinking that we have identified an object or event, when, in actuality, we have simply pointed to its resistance to identification. Barbara Freeman suggests that this is what the monstrous does to all our attempts to define such terms, because by its very nature monstrosity defies definition, and the very attempt to do so demonstrates the limits of our language and our capacities to know and categorize ourselves and our surroundings.

English professor Laura Otis' chapter is called "Frankenstein: Representing the Emotions of Unwanted Creatures." An excerpt:

Mary Shelley’s novel, “Frankenstein,” depicts the emotions of an unwanted being in a way that can inform scientists and that few writers have matched. Accused of murder and bullied by her confessor, Shelley’s character Justine laments, “I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was.” Like Justine, scientist Victor Frankenstein’s abandoned creature sees himself as a monster — almost. One of the commonest words in Shelley’s text is “wretch,” used both by Frankenstein for the creature he has made and by the creature for himself. This double-edged word means both a “despicable person” and a “miserable person,” suggesting a vicious cycle. “All men hate the wretched,” says the creature, who feels wretched because he is unwanted and is unwanted because he is wretched.

The pain, gall, ice, fire and whirlwinds that represent his emotions reveal the forces acting on him, but also his fierce will to live. Shelley’s “Frankenstein” stands out among literary works for its sympathetic depiction of an unwanted being. Even though the creature’s rage and hatred lead to murder, Shelley represents his emotions as the products of natural and social forces that could work similarly on any deserted human being.

English professor Catherine Ross Nickerson's chapter is entitled "Hideous Progeny: Telling a Tale of Monsters in 'Frankenstein.'" An excerpt:

This book about unhallowed beginnings has its own famous origin story. Mary Shelley wrote the original version of the tale as an entertainment for a circle of artists and writers, including Lord Byron and her husband, Percy Shelley, on vacation in Italy in the summer of 1816. They were staying together in a large house, and it rained a great deal. To entertain themselves, they started reading ghost stories aloud in the evenings, and when they ran out of published stories, they proposed writing their own. Shelley’s first version of the story was created there, as a tale to be read aloud in a single evening.

She continued to work on it, expanding it into a novel over the next two years, and publishing it in 1818. Shelley revised it significantly for a new edition in 1831, adding an introduction that sheds light on her own understanding of the novel. The introduction also discusses her intellectual history and background. She was the daughter of two intellectual radicals, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, both of whom were involved in revolutionary movements in the late 18th century. The way that they had grappled with the troubling characteristics of British social order in the period — the sexism, the racism, the disenfranchisement of the middle and lower class — clearly influenced Shelley and shaped the narrative of “Frankenstein.”