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Frankenstein Context, Never Let Me Go Context, In 1803 Luigi's brother…

- - - - In 1781 Luigi Galvani found that frog’s legs twitched as if alive, when struck by a spark of electricity
        
        ‘Infused a spark of light’ refers to electrodes in Galvanism
        
        ‘A convulsive motion agitated its limbs.’
      - ‘Electricity and Galvanism’, explicitly referred to in Shelley's preface
    - - Benjamin Franklin - Kite Experiment 1752 promoted his investigations of electrical energy and theories through the famous experiment of flying a kite through a storm-threatened sky. A key attached to the kite string sparked and charged a Leyden jar, thus establishing the link between lightning and electric power. Following these experiments he invented a lightning rod.
        
        “To demonstrate, in the completest manner possible, the sameness of the electric fluid with the matter of lightning, Dr. Franklin, astonishing as it must have appeared, contrived actually to bring lightning from the heavens, by means of an electrical kite, which he raised when a storm of thunder was perceived to be coming on.”
        
        However, experts say his kite had not been struck by lightning because if it had been it would have electrocuted Franklin. Instead the kite picked up the ambient electric charge from the storm.
      - I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed. Before this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity.
    - - Exploration of the Arctic and the search for a Northwest Passage began in 1594, with Willem Barents --> then there were the famous expeditions of Henry Hudson in 1607, Vitus Bering in 1732, and James Cook in 1776 (all major attempts to find trade passages before 1817).
        
        In 1818 (same year when Frankenstein was published) the era of of Arctic exploration began with a flurry of explorations
        
        Walton's expeditions were inspired by "the accounts of the various voyages which have been made in the prospect of arriving at the North Pacific Ocean through the seas which surround the pole"
      - Walton - "I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man" - the Arctic holds the same passion for the unknown and thirst for knowledge as Victor creating the creature.
        
        Similarly to Victor, Walton also experiences a self-inducing isolation brought on by his pursuit - reflected in the Arctic's barren landscape, "scene of desolation" (Walton)
      - Walton may be seen as a reference to Sir John Barrow (1764-1848), who was convinced that a Northwest passage existed.
        
        Prior to the Franklin expedition, he had sent out 8 expeditions to the Arctic - at the age of 82, he knew that the 1845 expedition would be his last chance to find the Northwest passage. He planned, organised, outfitted and provisioned the largest, best-equipped, most technically advanced expedition of the mid 19th century in only 3 months.
      - The Northwest passage is a sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific ocean through the Arctic ocean along the northern coast of North America via waterways of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.
  - - - Although many modern historians belittle physiognomy as a pseudoscience, at the end of the eighteenth century it was not merely a popular fad but also the subject of intense academic debate about the promises it held for future progress.
      - In the 18th and 19th centuries physiognomy was proposed as a means of detecting criminal tendencies.
  - - - Infant / child mortality rates during late 17th-18th century had a serious impact on life expectancy - total of 12-13% of children would die during the first year of their lives.
    - - women found to be too "argumentative" or "radical" could face cruel and humiliating public punishments, as they were expected to act obediently and submissively.
    - - Subverting the feminine process of creating and nurturing life, essentially stealing the primary role of women at the time, “After so much time spent in painful labour.”
- - - - Both experience self-induced isolation, their desire to seek out the unknown (Arctic exploration vs creating humanity)
        
        Walton - "wafted to a land surpassing in wonders and in beauty every region hitherto discovered on the habitable globe", might resemble Vicor's "I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life"
      - Walton - "labourious voyage" and Victor - "time spent in painful labour"
      - Both have a sense of moral righteousness, seen in Walton = "the inestimable benefit which I shall confer", and Victor = "bestows" and "blessed"
  - - - The Sorrows of Young Werther
        
        Epistolary novel about a young man's extreme response to unrequited love.
        
        "The disquisitions upon death and suicide were calculated to fill me with wonder" , "I learned from Werter's imaginations despondency and gloom"
      - Paradise Lost
        
        Written in blank verse, tells the biblical tale of the Fall of Mankind – the moment when Adam and Eve were tempted by Satan to eat the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and God banished them from the Garden of Eden forever.
        
        Creature conceptualises his own suffering by identifying himself with Satan but believes he is treated unjustly as he is more like Adam
        
        “I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel”
        
        ‘Like Adam, I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in every other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect creature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his Creator; he was allowed to converse with and acquire knowledge from beings of a superior nature, but I was wretched, helpless and alone. Many times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition, for often, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter gall of envy rose within me.’
        (pg 90)
        
        ‘Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even YOU turned from me in disgust?’ God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.’ (pg 90)
        
        "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel”
        
        "Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred,”
        
        “The fallen angel becomes the malignant devil. Yet even the enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.”
      - Plutarch's Parallel Lives
        
        Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of 48 biographies of famous men, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, probably written at the beginning of the second century AD.
        
        Creature learns a sense of morality, he is a moralist who edifies the creature to no long act purely on natural drives
        
        "Plutarch taught me high thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own reflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages", "I felt the greatest ardour for virtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice"
        
        Creature learns about the construction of society and some men can have the capacity for good and some can be purely evil, all reference point for which he begins to construct an understanding of himself
- - - - eugenics lead to the forced sterilization of racially marginalised popularities, and was used as the justification for the killing of Jewish people in Nazi Germany.
        
        “Superior intelligence, superior athleticism … been with others with similar ambitions" Morningdale's experimentations sought to explore the creation of clones that were "superior" - because of scientific transgression with cloning, the possibility of clones with "superior" traits overtaking humanity shuts down Hailsham, introduces the self-interest and lack of morality of NLMG society
        
        'he’d taken his research much farther than anyone before him'
        
        James Morningdale … carried on his work in a remote part of Scotland
        
        'People did their best not to think about you. And if they did they tried to convinced themselves that you weren’t really like us'
        
        ‘But a generation of created children who’d take their place in society?'