Indeed, no character in the book is untouched by ambition, weather it be someone else’s or their own. In the opening pages of the novel, it is clear that even Walton is guilty of seeking nothing less than personal glory. Walton has traveled from England to St. Petersburg to sail northward into uncharted regions. In his seemingly pure search for knowledge and understanding of what lies untouched and undiscovered, he falls victim to the sin of excessive pride. At first he says, “You cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind, to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite” (Shelley 8). However, along with the knowledge he hopes to gain, he is really seeking personal prominence, the distinction of being different from all mankind. As seen in epics such as Gilgamesh and Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey, excessive pride and ambition often lead to the downfall of the hero. In Frankenstein, Walton’s ambition results in a painful sense of isolation. He tells Margaret, “I have no friend…I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me…”(Shelley 10). When he encounters Frankenstein in the arctic, Walton has reached the epitome of isolation. Alone in the vast sheets of ice, Frankenstein warns Walton of the dangers that come with the search for knowledge and power. Finally understanding, Walton pulls back from his treacherous mission, having learned from Frankenstein’s example how destructive the drive for knowledge can be. Other characters are also effected by levels of education, though not to the same extent as Frankenstein and Walton. The monster was educated in the “godlike science”(83) of language, and “he increased his knowledge (and his sorrow) by reading Volney, Milton, Plutarch, Goethe, and Victor’s journal”(Buss 134). It is not until he becomes better educated and acquainted with the ways of the human world that he realizes his true hideousness and starts his killing campaign.
While Mary Shelley may have fully explored the idea of destruction by knowledge, it is by no means an original idea. Not only is it present in historical writings, but it is a prevalent theme in the writings of her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and it draws on some ideas of her father’s. “It is not surprising that Mary should be excited by a scientific and rational theme; throughout Frankenstein, her father, Godwin’s voice is never far off” (Spark 132). Interestingly, a book based on such an intellectual theme ends in horror and tragedy. Also, “in Godwin’s St. Leon, the protagonist is depicted as having gained access to the secret of immorality, to ‘the elixir vitae,’ a striking analogue to Frankenstein’s pursuit after, and discovery of, the secret of life” (Walling 49-50). In Godwin’s novel, once the elixir has been taken, St. Leon realizes, again far too late, that he is alone, and the knowledge of the elixir that he thought would bring him great happiness, actually brought about pain and sadness. The novel by Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication for the Rights of Women, also deals with the question of education. “Mary Shelley could not have failed to notice that her mother’s overly didactic and argumentative Vindication…addressed the same issues that Mary Shelley herself was addressing in Frankenstein…. Education pursued to an extreme was the cause or at least the occasion of moral disaster in both of these works” (Buss 133). There are differences however, such as Shelley’s seemingly better grasp of mythology, but the parallels are evident. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley fused three themes from western myths about the dangers of knowledge that were produced in such a way as to reflect her mother’s teachings. These themes are presented in Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley: Writing Lives, where it states
- Eve ate of the apple first, but somehow forsook her intellectual primogeniture;
- Prometheus brought the sorrow of knowledge into the world, as did his brother Epimetheus, who also brought the evils of Pandora’s box;
- The circular, androgynous, and primal being form Aristophanes’ myth in the Symposium presumed so much that s/he fell into distinct genders (“we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up,” Victor explained in the 1831 revised edition of Frankenstein [16;FMP 187]) (133-134).
On this level, Mary Shelley addresses larger issues than her mother did while still emphasizing the theme of education and its dangers and limits in her novel. It might be too forward to say that Shelley consciously used her mother’s writings for inspiration of theme in Frankenstein, but it will probably suffice to say that at least subconsciously Shelley drew from the work of her mother.
Knowledge leads to ambition, and ambition leads to a fall. That is the main theme in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. One critic, William A. Walling says, “On one level, the twenty-four chapters of Frankenstein’s narrative can be taken as an extended homily on the dangers of ambition”(37). Although the character’s motives for pursuing knowledge may have been pure, the result is always isolation, loneliness, and destruction. Thus, at the heart of Frankenstein exists a cry for genuine fellowship, but that cry is encased in a form “doomed to assert repeatedly the murderous autonomy of excessive ambition” (Walling 40).
Works Cited
Buss, Helen M., and D.L. Macdonald, and Anne McWhir, eds. Mary Wollstonecraft
and Mary Shelley: Writing Lives. Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996.
Spark, Muriel. Child of Light: A Reassessment of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. London:
Tower Bridge Publications Limited, 1951
Walling, William A.. Marry Shelley. Jackson: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972.
