Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Guillotine, and Modern Ontological Anxiety

Text Matters, Volume 6, Number 6, 2016 DOI: 10.1515/texmat-2016-0003Kristen LaceeldTexas Christian UniversityThis essay begins by examining the rhetorical signicance of the guillotine, an important symbol during the Romantic Period. Laceeld argues that the guillotine symbolized arange of modern ontological juxtapositions and antinomies during the period. Moreover, she argues that the guillotine inuenced Mary Shelleys novel Frankenstein through Giovanni Aldini, ascientist who experimented on guillotined corpses during the French Revolution and inspired Shelleys characterization of Victor Frankenstein. Given the importance of the guillotine as apowerful metaphor for anxieties emergent during this period, Laceeld employs it as aclue signaling alabyrinth of modern meanings embedded in Shelleys novel, as well as the lms they anticipated. In particular, Laceeld analyzes the signicance of the guillotine slice itselfthe uneasy, indeterminate line that simultaneously separates and joins categories such as life/death, mind/body, spirit/matter, and nature/technology.Laceelds interdisciplinary analysis analyzes motifs of decapitation/ dismemberment in Frankenstein and then moves into adiscussion of the novels exploration of the ontological categories specied above. For example, Frankensteins Creature, as akind of cyborg, exists on the contested theoretical slice within anumber of antinomies: nature/tech, human/ inhuman (alive/dead), matter/spirit, etc. These are interesting juxtapositions that point to tensions within each set of categories, and Laceeld discusses the relevance of such dichotomies for questions of modernity posed by materialist theory and technological innovation. Additionally, she incorporates adiscussion of lms that fuse Shelleys themes with appeals to twentieth-century and post-millennium audiences.Mary Shelleys Frankenstein, the Guillotine, and Modern Ontological AnxietyA B S T R A C TKristen Laceeld Frankenstein scholarship commonly acknowledges the novels origins in the creative synergy surrounding Mary Shelley during the summer of 1816 in Geneva. Shelley writes of the conversationsmany and longshe witnessed between her husband and Byron concerning the nature of life and consciousness (27). Mary Shelleys retrospective introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein notes that her circle was particularly fascinated by galvanism: she writes that Percy and Byron often pondered the possibility that perhaps acorpse would be reanimated, since galvanism had given token of such things (65). The theory of galvanism was developed by Luigi Galvani, an Italian physicist and physician who had attained widespread fame in Europe for his experiments in what he termed animal electricity. Galvanis experiments demonstrated a connection between electricity and the nervous systems response, suggesting that the animating life force of human existence might be aphysical phenomenon rather than aspiritual one. For this reason, galvanism was aashpoint of controversy between its proponents and religious leaders of the period.1Scholars often acknowledge Galvani as an important source for Frank-enstein but neglect to credit his nephew and successor Giovanni Aldini, who was better known to the British public than his uncle due to his uency in English and his notorious experiments on the dead (his uncle had merely experimented on animals). Aldini travelled throughout Europe conducting sensationalized public experiments on corpses, and these experiments were covered widely in newspaper reports (Gay 3052). He rst achieved notoriety during the French Revolution for frequenting guillotine executions and experimenting with the severed heads of the condemned: he tested the heads post-execution for facial expressions and other signs of residual life, and he also attempted to re-animate them with electricity. Like Victor Frankensteins use of corpses for scientic research in Frankenstein, Aldini searched for the key to life in his experiments on the dead. …