Ethical Arguments in Frankenstein

The story behind the creation of Mary Shelley's classic Frankenstein is as legendary as the story itself; Shelly, along with her then fiance and later husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, was on a vacation in Switzerland with Lord Byron and other guests. One night they held a contest amongst themselves to see who could write the scariest horror story. Shelley drew her inspiration on a nightmare she had of a man kneeling beside a monstrosity he had created. From this vivid image Shelley integrated her own distrust of advances in modern science.

She believed that man was never intended to "play God", or to try to overextend his mortality by using science to develop his own divinity. Observing fantastical technological achievements and developing a sense of suspicion about the ethics and responsibility involved is still a source of society's struggles. As cloning and medical experimentation become commonplace, questions regarding the necessity or right to perform said experiments also arise. Frankenstein is more than a horror classic; it is a commentary on the ethics of science and technology.

Mary Shelley was a member of the Romantic Movement, an artistic and intellectual group that included her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. The Romantics placed an emphasis on natural beauty in their works in contrast to the mechanical creations prominent in the Industrial Revolution. As the implementation of new-found technology brought forth an appreciation for a sense of capitalism and wealth, it also brought forth a reaction to these trends, namely the origins of organized labor and socialist tendencies. A single machine worked by a solitary worker could replace several, and this led to the Luddite movement, a group of workers named after a mythological man named Ned Ludd.