Lennon Philo’s recent Miskatonic Performing Arts production of the Frankenstein story, part of what I hope is a new annual tradition of a Halloween production at the Brandon Town Hall, was a lot of fun. It also got me thinking about science, electricity and monsters. 

Everybody knows that the Frankenstein monster was brought to life by the power of electricity. In the classic scene in the 1931 movie, and in every "Frankenstein" movie since, Dr. Victor Frankenstein harnesses lightning bolts to animate the monster’s dead body. This is the source of the story’s horror.

But the novel "Frankenstein", first published in 1818, is not just a horror story. In the process of winning a private 1816 contest among friends to write the best scary story, author Mary Shelley also produced the world’s first work of science fiction. 

Not only that, the science in "Frankenstein" was cutting-edge at the time. The study of electricity was very new in 1818. "Frankenstein" is based on the most advanced speculation of the era about the power and nature of electricity.

In the 1780s, the Italian physician Luigi Galvani conducted a series of experiments in which he electrically induced muscular contractions in frog legs, including legs that were attached to lightning rods. Galvani speculated that “animal electricity” was a “vital force” deeply connected to life. He published his theory in 1791. Galvani drew some wrong conclusions, but he was onto something. We are indeed electrical creatures. As biologist and Brandon resident Dr. Gary Meffe puts it, "All vertebrates rely on ionic electrical current to function."

Galvani’s work was highly suggestive. By the end of the 1790s the word “galvanism” had been coined to describe chemically-produced electrical currents. In 1803, Galvani’s nephew Giovanni Aldini conducted a famous experiment in London in which he attached electrodes from a galvanic battery that had been invented in 1800 to the freshly executed corpse of a murderer named George Forster. Aldini succeeded in getting Forster’s arms and legs to move, his fist to clench, and his jaw and facial muscles to quiver. One eye even popped open. 

The English physician Erasmus Darwin (Charles Darwin’s grandfather) conducted other experiments that suggested to people at the time that electricity could induce life. He published these in 1803.

Mary Shelley was aware of all of that. The idea for her novel came to her after having a nightmare about a reanimated corpse after listening to her husband discuss these experiments with their friend Lord Byron. Using an electrical metaphor, she wrote that she feared the “spark of life” could be induced into the dead by a mad scientist. Out of this fear she created her story.

The evidence that "Frankenstein" was based on real science is evident throughout the book. Mary Shelley said so openly in the introduction of the 1831 edition:

“During one of these [conversations], various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being discovered and communicated…. Perhaps a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such things….”

In addition, the concern with science is embedded in the story. To indicate that fact to the reader, Shelley carefully describes Victor Frankenstein’s advanced scientific education at the “University of Ingolstadt” (a real university) in Chapter 2. There Frankenstein studies chemistry, physiology and “Natural Science,” a catch-all term that included the yet-to-be invented field of physics. In other words, he studied electricity, too. (Such an education, by the way, would have been unavailable at any American college of the time.)

Frankenstein’s goal is to understand “the principle of life.” In the book he succeeds in finding it, with dire consequences. Once he succeeds in infusing “a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet” the horror story begins.

In the end Victor Frankenstein comes to bitterly regret his arrogance, which ultimately destroys his life and kills the people he most loves. Once aspiring to be a god, in his last moments he explains that he had instead done the devil’s work: “like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.”

As Halloween approaches, keep in mind that "Frankenstein" is more than an all-time great horror story. A major reason it’s compelling is because it’s also a work rooted in and informed by science. Beyond that, it is also a serious consideration of the moral limits of scientific experimentation. And as we know all too well in the post-Covid 19 world today, that problem is with us more than ever.

Now that’s spooky. 

Happy Halloween to all the little Frankensteins out there.

PS: Please support Lennon’s future productions. Miskatonic Performing Arts is a great community resource. Kevin would like to thank Dr. Meffe and Dave Hammond, who recently retired from UVM’s physics department, for checking his science homework.