Abstract:
This Honors thesis explores the science that influenced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and later theatrical productions based on the novel, including Universal Studios' 1931 Frankenstein and 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein, as well as Tri-Star Pictures' 1994 Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It is concluded that Mary Shelley's tale, though it begun as a Gothic tale of creation and destruction, has become a fable for the modern age through its seemingly endless applications to new scientific discoveries and their effects on society. It traces major findings during the Scientific Revolution of 1600 to 1750 in the pertinent fields of anatomy, physiology, and the study of a new discovery, electricity. It also notes scientific discoveries and practices in the years before Shelley's writing of the novel. It then surveys the theories of biological determinism and degenerationism at the turn of the 20th century, as well as eugenics in the 1920s and 1930s, and examines how these theories influenced the making of the 1931 Universal Studios film. The 1935 film is examined for its echoes of society's continuing fascination with science and technology despite their potential for danger and destruction. Finally, there is a look at the 1994 film, and how its return to the novel as its source (as opposed to springing out of another film or simply being the product of the screenwriter's imagination) is particularly remarkable in this present age of seemingly daily new discoveries in the fields of medicine and genetics.
