Composing What May Not Be "Sad Trash": A Reconsideration of Mary Shelley's Use of Paracelsus in "Frankenstein"

Abstract

THOSE WHO HAVE ADDRESSED THE SIGNIFICANCE OF VICTOR FRANKENstein's reading in Albertus Magnus (c. 1200-1280); Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535); and Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, better and more conveniently known as Paracelsus (1493-1541), have typically downplayed importance that reading. Of Victor, Samuel Holmes Vasbinder observes, clearly rejects works Albertus Paracelsus, and Agrippa in favor men who wrote and experimented with new (1) Anne K. Mellor takes note Victor's misguided and self-taught education in theories medieval and renaissance alchemists, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus, education that brings Victor to point being suddenly forced to acknowledge ignorance these pseudo-scientists.... (2) James Rieger, writing in introduction to his 1974 edition 1818 text Shelley's novel, goes so far as to characterize scientific knowledge that Frankenstein supposedly imbibes at Ingolstadt as switched on magic, souped-up alchemy, electrification Agrippa and Paracelsus. (3) And U. C. Knoepflmacher, although not naming any actual or would-be scientists in particular, apparently concurs, stating that, Science in Frankenstein is, course, pseudo-science. (4) Generally speaking, critical commentary concerning significance Victor Frankenstein's three objects youthful quasi-scientific study has followed apparent lead novel's interior voices. Alphonse Frankenstein, Victor's father, observes Victor avidly reading Agrippa and responds cautioning, 'do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.' (15) At University Ingolstadt, M. Krempe, Victor's initial choice for mentor, upon learning that Victor has been reading three, asks incredulously, 'Have you ... really spent your time studying such nonsense?' (Frankenstein 26). M. Waldman, Victor's ultimate choice for mentor, is more charitable than other two respondents: he characterizes work Albertus, Agrippa, and Paracelsus as 'the labours men genius, however erroneously directed,' and credits those labors as 'ultimately turning to solid advantage mankind,' which has been able 'to give new names, and arrange in connected classifications, facts which they in great degree had been instruments bringing to light' (Frankenstein 28). But Waldman questions projects three even as he credits their labors, associating them implication with those 'ancient teachers this science [i.e., chemistry, who] ... promised impossibilities and performed nothing' in attempting to transmute metals and to create elixir life (Frankenstein 27). In fact, Victor attempts on his own to distance himself from Albertus, Agrippa, and Paracelsus, even before leaving home to attend university. After seeing powerful bolt lightning reduce an old and beautiful oak to a blasted stump and thin ribbands wood, Victor asks his father to explain the nature and origin thunder and lightning. Alphonse, with little help from Benjamin Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751), constructed small electrical machine, and exhibited few experiments; he made also kite, with wire and string, which drew down that fluid from clouds. Victor concludes, This last stroke completed overthrow Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus and Paracelsus, who had so long reigned lords my imagination (Frankenstein 23). Perhaps Victor overstates case. But, he adds, by some fatality did not feel inclined to commence study any modern system.... He opts out series lectures on chemistry that he has agreed to attend out respect for his father's wishes that he do so, attributing his absence from them to [s]ome accident. And when Victor begins attending, near end series, he finds discourse of potassium and boron, sulphates and oxyds, terms to which [he] could affix no idea, thoroughly incomprehensible and confesses, I became disgusted with science natural philosophy, although still read Pliny and Buffon with delight, authors, in my estimation, nearly equal interest and utility (Frankenstein 23). …