With the Halloween season a few months old, the time has come to think about what frightening readings are binding for ourselves this year. Some of us can reach Mary Shelley Frankenstein; Or, the Modern PrometheusA story that we all think we know. But an overview of its context reveals that what is now considered a timeless classic was, in its time, a very topical novel. Presentation of the adaptation of the 1931 James Whale film, the regular horror player Edward Van Sloan describes Frankenstein As managing “the two great mysteries of creation: life and death” – which, when Shelley's novel was published more than a century earlier, were even more mysterious.
“Worried by the potential inability to distinguish between states of life and death, two doctors, William Hawes and Thomas Cogan, created the Royal Humane Society in London in 1774″, ” Writes Sharon Ruston at the Revue du Domaine Public. At the time, he was actually called the company to restore the apparently drowned people, a name that would have doubled as a mission statement. Falling in the rivers and the London canals was, it seems, a current event at that time, and few public members had swimming skills to save themselves. Thus, the members of the company decided to design methods to relaunch these “apparently drowned people”, whether their dives are accidentally or deliberately taken.
Suicon's attempt, writes Ruston, “seems to have been the mother of Mary Shelley, the feminist, Mary WOLLSTONECRAFT“, Which was later complained about how, after jumping in the Thames, she was” inhuman in life and misery “. This incident could have done his part to inspire FrankensteinAlthough the notions of relaunching the dead are in the air at the time, especially due to the attention paid to the practice of “GalvanismThis involved stimulating the muscles of dead animals and human bodies in movement using the then electricity phenomenon. In England of this historic moment, he was not entirely eccentric to believe that the dead could really be brought back to life.
You can learn more about scientific developments, social changes and human anxieties (including the possibility of being buried) which formed FrankensteinCultural flow of The Vox History club video above. In a way, it seems inevitable that someone at the beginning of the 19th century wrote on a scientist Before the letter who dares to create life from death. He was just the teenager Shelley, to whom the idea came when she was engaged in a competition with Lord Byron, the writer-Médecin John Polidori and her future husband Percy Bysshe Shelley to see who could write the most scary. Two centuries later, the story of Frankenstein May not scare us, but as Shelley said, he always has a strangely plausible way of seeming.
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Based in Seoul, Colin MArshall Written and broadcastTS on cities, language and culture. His projects include the substack newsletter Books on cities And the book The stateless city: a walk through Los Angeles from the 21st century. Follow it on the social network formerly known as Twitter in @ColinmArshall.
At Learnopoly, Finn has championed a mission to deliver unbiased, in-depth reviews of online courses that empower learners to make well-informed decisions. With over a decade of experience in financial services, he has honed his expertise in strategic partnerships and business development, cultivating both a sharp analytical perspective and a collaborative spirit. A lifelong learner, Finn’s commitment to creating a trusted guide for online education was ignited by a frustrating encounter with biased course reviews.