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Science And Science Fiction In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

2057 Words9 Pages
Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1816 while she was in Geneva with her husband and her other friends and they decided to write ghost stories for their amusements. This novel lies between different genres and communicate issues regarding the apprehensions of new emerging science, excessive rationality and mechanism. To begin with the generic concern of the novel, it can be seen a typical of romantic era where notion of aesthetic and imagination were dominant, imagination contrasted itself with rationalism of enlightenment, reason being replaced by irrationalism. Frankenstein has been read as a science fiction too. Science fiction is a form of fiction that principally deals with impact of actual or imagined science upon individual or society as a whole. Much of the fiction which is characterized as science fiction is horrific, born out of fear or even depicts hatred towards scientific view of the world. This genre formally emerged in west during the transformation caused by industrial revolution which caused marked levels of anxiety and made writers, artists etc. apprehensive about the prospects of future, the impact that this emerging age of machines and technology will have. Science fiction became a medium to disclose the utopian aspirations, political agitations etc. every possible impact that these changes would bring.
Mary Shelley through her novel presents a critique of science of her day. Frankenstein can be seen as a novel of resurrection as the idea of a dead man
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