"Inhumanly brought back to life and misery": Mary Wollstonecraft, Frankenstein, and the Royal Humane Society.
While thorough investigation of many aspects of contemporary scientific developments and Mary Shelley's personal history have provided illuminating contexts for the study of Frankenstein, the activities of the Royal Humane Society, and other bodies and individuals who pioneered and publicized resuscitation techniques, have been comparatively neglected. Here we find a richly documented, highly conspicuous area of scientific endeavour, which generated much excitement in life and literature from the last quarter of the eighteenth century onwards. There are three major points of contact with Frankenstein: Victor Frankenstein's revival of dead tissue to make his creature; the frequent occurrences of unconsciousness and asphyxia, both in the novel and in Mary Shelley's family during the period leading up to its composition, and the widely differing degrees of competence and success with which they are treated; and the possibility that resuscitative techniques were used to revive Mary Shelley's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, after a suicide attempt. The impact on Frankenstein of Mary Shelley's lifelong distress at the role she played in bringing about her mother's death in childbirth has been thoroughly canvassed by other critics, notably Anne Mellor, but the thought that Mary Shelley, who was herself conceived after her mother's second suicide attempt, might be, in a sense, a child of the dead adds a further turn to the Gothic screw. This study traces a hitherto unexplored intersection between Mary Shelley's first novel and her family history, as well as showing how it launches a formidable attack on the shady ethics and inconsiderate arrogance of some early resuscitators.
Williams
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D006666:History of Medicine; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D008091:Literature / Q000266:history; D012151:Resuscitation / Q000193:education / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D012586:Science / Q000193:education / Q000266:history; D012958:Societies, Scientific / Q000266:history; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000208:ethnology