Dec 19, 2009

Frankenstein | Victor Frankenstein

Victor Frankenstein
There is a reason Shelley’s novel was named for its main character – Victor is the embodiment of the duality of human life, at least to Mary Shelley. A native of Geneva, Switzerland, he grows up reading ancient alchemy texts and, we can assume, fantasizing of a life of the magic of the old sciences. By the time he reaches the university at Ingolstadt, the ideas he grew up with are useless, even detrimental, to the practice of then-modern day science. Shelley uses Victor here as a symbol of the new replacing the old – there are...