Mary Shelley wrote her novel in an age of tremendous scientific doubts, changes and experimentation. With the arrival of the theory of evolution 1600 years of certainty almost vanished in the Western world. Man was questioning the very existence of God. Great things were expected of the scientific world, but could man replace God? Did man have the stability and integrity to cope with the role of creator? Victor Frankenstein does not exactly create life as did Prometheus (the full title of the book is, Frankenstein the Modern Prometheus) he is supposed to have restored an assemblage of various corpses to life using electricity, ’the spark of life’. It is possible that Mary’s monster was a metaphor for the working classes, particularly the post revolutionary French plebs. who were now running the country after ousting the aristos and royalty. As a creator, Victor fails miserably, incurring the murderous wrath of his creation.
The novel’s most livid failing is the similarity of vocabulary afforded to all the major characters, especially the monster, who learns language by simply listening to words, and learns to read by looking at pages of books. We now know that both of these achievements are impossible. Some of the coincidences in the novel are quite astonishing; the monster travels from Germany to Geneva and bumps, almost literally, first into Frankenstein’s son, and then into Justine who is supposed to be searching for the boy.
Another of the novel’s shortcomings are the gratuitous, unnecessary episodes.