Gregory Maertz - Children of Prometheus - Romanticism and Its Legacy

The overall design and thematic patterns of St. Leon are replicated typologically in Frankenstein. At the center is a presentation of the “education” of the protagonist Reginald de St. Leon alternately via chivalry and alchemy. (Alchemy, it is implied, is analogous to chivalry; both are anachronistic social and scientific paradigms.) The latter is perceived initially by the protagonist as a possible vehicle by which he might simultaneously serve mankind and seek atonement for his betrayal of the chivalric code. Reginald’s travels embody an ironic inversion of the classical Bildungsreise; his education is based on disillusioning rather than edifying experiences. And, anticipating the trajectory of the Monster’s experience, rather than the popular gratitude he expects in response to his benevolent actions, suffering and destruction seem ineluctably to follow in his wake and he is rejected precisely by those whom he had intended to help. As a result, he is hunted down by such adversaries as his son Charles and his erstwhile friend, Bethlem Gabor. Reginald’s fate is shared by Victor and the Monster (who alternately serve as each other’s prey), and parallels to all three characters are found in the tragic situation of Oedipus. Sophocles’s tragedy, St. Leon, and Frankenstein are all myths of misguided benevolence in which hubristic transgression of social, religious, and epistemological boundaries is punished by exile from human society. Mary Godwin also suffers ostracism from her family following her elopement with Shelley—an intolerable act of rebellion against her father’s authority—which coincides with a new phase of authorship independent of her father’s influence. And yet her new status as an author connects her more closely than ever to her precursors Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Shelley.

Following his disillusioning experience of the brutalities of war in the Italian campaigns of French King Francis I (1494–1547), Reginald finds himself ill-equipped to function in civilian society. Precisely because he is publicly celebrated as a paragon of chivalry who no longer believes in its values, Godwin presents his fall from grace as symptomatic of a culture in decline. Thus chivalry, Edmund Burke’s shibboleth in The Reflections on the Revolution in France and Godwin’s target in Caleb Williams, is exposed as already otiose even during its supposed heyday. A living anachronism driven to gambling, Reginald forfeits his family’s honor and fortune. Flying from France in disgrace, he settles his family near Lake Geneva. The idyllic scene is reminiscent of the De Laceys’ cottage in the forest where Victor’s Monster finds refuge.

The appearance of a mysterious interloper, Zampieri, violates the intimacy of the family circle and awakens Reginald’s dormant ambition. The stranger offers to share the mystery of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir vitae but only on condition that Reginald agrees in advance not to share this secret with anyone, not even Marguerite, his high-minded wife. Her character is an idealized portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft and serves as the model for all the noble female characters in Frankenstein: Caroline, Agatha, Safie, Justine, and Victor’s cousin, childhood companion, and fiancée Elizabeth Lavenza. Reginald’s first impulse is to refuse Zampieri’s offer, insisting that his “heart was formed by nature for social ties . . . and I will not now consent to anything that shall infringe on the happiness of my soul.” (II, 7) Zampieri responds by striking at Reginald’s Achilles’ heel; as a true knight and the flower of French chivalry he desires to serve once again as an agent of justice and public welfare: “Feeble and effeminate mortal! Was ever a great discovery prosecuted, or an important benefit conferred upon the human race, by him who was incapable of standing, and thinking, and feeling, alone?” (II, 7, 8) The esoteric skills are imparted and immediately Reginald experiences a complete resurrection of his former pride and ambition. His transformation parallels Victor’s metamorphosis following the creation of his hideous offspring, but as the bearer of a monstrous secret he embarks on an odyssey “hated by mankind, hunted from the face of the earth, pursued by atrocious calumny, without country, without a roof, without a friend.” (II, 9)

While Reginald’s and Victor’s horrible inner transformation is comparable, the knowledge engendering such change in the psyche of the protagonists is different and must be distinguished. In contrast to the “new science” of natural philosophy that engenders Victor’s creative act of hubris, Godwin’s protagonist, Reginald de St. Leon, pursues the arcane arts of alchemy, but both Reginald and Victor are both afflicted by a mania for illicit knowledge that Chris Baldick has called “epistemophilia.” 7Knowledge per se is, however, not the crucial issue; it is rather the specific character of the knowledge that they seek. Awakened by the writings of Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus, alchemy is also Victor’s first intellectual passion, and he confesses to Walton that “if only he had been content to study the more rational theory of chemistry which had resulted from modern discoveries” it is possible “that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin.” The following passage, with its self-analysis and confessional tone, might just as easily have been spoken by Godwin’s protagonist:

My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality, and I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life. But the latter obtained my most undivided attention: wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render men in vulnerable to any but a violent death. 8

Masao Miyoshi observes that “in Frankenstein the main vehicle of Gothic fantasy is no longer the conventional supernatural” such as alchemy; instead, it is the “new science,” which, as a result of the protagonist’s misapplication, vitiated its claims to being “a humane pursuit by demonstrating its possible monstrous results.” Shelley reveals in her appropriation and revision of her father’s novel that “science,” the definitive Enlightenment pursuit, “can generate a totally new species of terror. If scientific man is a kind of God, his scientific method becomes a new supernaturalism, a contemporary witchdoctoring of frightening potential.” 9But clearly, what Reginald and Victor have most in common is the abuse of their respective sciences. Both novels present the distortion and perversion of procreation as a misapplication of science, old and new, and the process leading to Mary Godwin’s emergence as a novelist corresponds to Reginald’s application of alchemy and Victor’s exploitation of the “new science,” since all three processes presuppose the transgression of nature, established authority, and, ultimately, the social order.

The enormous destructive potential of Reginald and Frankenstein’s secret powers condemns them to the remorseless isolation experienced by all those who possess the Midas touch, starting with Godwin himself, whose influence as a philosopher appears under the guise of alchemy and science in both novels. 10If Reginald’s powers are shared with others the laws of nature will be violated, thus posing a threat to the whole basis of human civilization: “Exhaustless wealth, if communicated to all men, would be but an exhaustless heap of pebbles and dust; and nature will not admit her everlasting laws to be so abrogated, as they would be by rendering the whole race of sublunary man immortal.” (II, 103) In this way, Reginald’s concerns over the potential misuse of his powers anticipate Victor’s principled refusal to create a female companion for the Monster. It is important to note that altruism dominates the following passage and not, as Anne K. Mellor insists, 11fear of female sexuality or the conscious drive to “usurp” the female principle in procreation: