Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism: Alan Rauch (essay date 1995)

New perspectives on Frankenstein are hard to come by. Recent scholarship has provided a wide variety of insights into the novel, making it a central text in feminist studies, the history of the novel, psychoanalytical criticism, and, of course, the impact of science on the novel.2 For reasons that aren't entirely clear, however, the issue of the nature of knowledge—as a cultural artifact—has not been rigorously pursued. Part of the problem may well be that while Shelley3 explores Frankenstein's character, she is deliberately unspecific about the details of his scientific work. Aside from passing references to his techniques and to his instruments, there is little in the novel that actually describes Frankenstein's scientific activity, much less his scientific context. Moreover, the narrative structure of the novel renders the creature a fait accompli—large, apparently ugly, and periodically violent—thereby obscuring its ontological design and development.