Galvanism and Its Influence In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
It is without much doubt that the books read by Victor Frankenstein in the novel were of the same or similar pieces that Mary had written, which when combined with Galvanism, took to the creation of the creature by way of electricity. However, we must put aside our current knowledge of electric currents, impulses, and our understanding of the nervous system in the modern era and transport to the year 1818, keeping natural philosophy still fresh in our minds. Cornelius Agrippa, the same author that Frankenstein had read in his early years, spoke of mysterious life forces in which all men were bound. Agrippa was an occult writer that expressed thoughts of magick as a form of nature’s mysterious forces not like the science known today, but as things that are manifested through the combination of certain rituals and of alchemy items. Dr. Frankenstein, at his very core, was an alchemist of some make, and although Mary had not explicitly written of Agrippa’s direct literature involvement in the creation of the creature in the novel, it can be said that she applied the readings of Cornelius’ occult works into Frankenstein.
Electricity, as introduced by Galvani, was the primary force by which the creature was animated; however, it was the ‘mysterious life forces’ of nature contained in the electricity that breathed life into the monster- the very same forces that Agrippa made direct note of in his books that Dr. Frankenstein and Shelley read. It is by this combination with magick, science, mysticism, and the alchemistic genius of exploring natural fact that the creature was born by Frankenstein’s sort of scientific wizardry. Shelley wrote this novel with the knowledge of both Galvani and Agrippa’s teachings in mind, and it came to be less some simple narrative of a mad scientist’s experiment of reanimation gone wrong, and more of the unveiling of the natural world all around us, combining both modern (for that time) and ancient methods. Ultimately, it was the combined minds and explorative conversations between Mary, Percy and Byron that cultivated the knowledge for Shelley to write the novel. Furthermore, without the understanding of these two seemingly far different approaches to deciphering how the world works, her brilliant story would have never been told.
To further explore the inspirations of Mary, a deeper look into “Renaissance magic” must be approached. The idea of necromancy, or reanimation of the deceased, has been around for nearly as long as humans have walked this earth. Centuries ago, villagers would fear the awakening of recently deceased loved ones by way of some wicked hermit’s conjuring. This same theory can be found in Cornelius Agrippa’s well known work, Three Books of Occult Philosophy. It is in Three Books of Occult Philosophy in which Agrippa gives detailed accounts of a magician conjuring spirits that are still in some state of changing and having the ability to place these spirits back into the body of any corpse of his choice.
Where the relation between Mary’s Frankenstein and Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy intertwines is through the use of alchemy and natural philosophy as a sort of conduit to ‘inspire life back into one’s fallen body.’ Whether it was through alchemy or Frankenstein’s own conduits of electricity, he was still able to ‘inspire’ the ‘mysterious life force’ to flow through the creature and thus bring about life in an inanimate object. Mary’s writing strays from giving any detailed account of one’s soul, spirit or any sense of ‘essence,’ which allows for much of the creature’s ‘birthing’ to be interpreted by occult societies. However, the accounts of metaphysical energies Agrippa describes in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy states that the ‘essence’ which ‘arrives in the body,’ is of one familiar to that of its magician. The metaphysics of this form of Renaissance magic (necromancy) was made famous by Agrippa when giving instructions for any aspiring magician to ‘awake the dead.’
While it is only speculation that Mary Shelley had came across Agrippa’s more in-depth occult works, it is highly probable she at least read the same books that Frankenstein spoke of during his youngest childhood years. Thus, it is the necessary blending of the two forces that inspired Agrippa’s account of metaphysics which inevitably led to the birth of the creature. Despite Frankenstein’s exploration of more modern scientific instruments, it is clear that natural philosophy is a considerable influential factor in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus.
Works Cited
Kurt Benesch, Magie der Renaissance (1985)
Heiser, James D., Prisci Theologi and the Hermetic Reformation in the Fifteenth Century, Repristination Press (2011)
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