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AN EVALUATION OF FRANKENSTEINS CRITIQUES

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AN EVALUATION OF FRANKENSTEINS CRITIQUES

An Evaluation of Frankensteins Critiques

The first review we discuss is one by Walter Scott (1771-1832) from Edinburgh,
Scotland. Scott was a Scottish author, Novelist, historian, poet among other things. Scholars
of literature have widely considered him a practitioner and the inventor of the historical
novel. Originally, Scott was a legal practitioner who having apprenticed his father became a
solicitor. At the time he was in high school however, he took grammar classes at Kelso which
later proved his study of law all the same desultory as he soon ventured into the study of
foreign languages such as Italian, French and German. He is credited with having restored
some of the orally corrupted versions of Scottish poems some of which resulted into
extraordinary romantic poems. Some of his works include Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,
The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, The Lady of the Lake et cetera.
Scott starts by identifying Frankenstein as a romantic fictional novel and his attention
is immediately drawn to the peculiarity of the characters more succinctly than it is to the
production or literary skills evident in the text. He appreciated the authors effort to go
beyond the then normal range of imagination to personify characters that are not only
inanimate or but also mythical and non-existent. Scotts critique of the Shelly Magdalene
text seems to be significantly fettered by his religious faith, his vast understanding of
contemporary fiction and his experience as a writer. He is poised towards believing that the
novel couldnt have come at a better time. In his assessment, the novel reflects the then
treacherous political environment that inhabited wars, revolutions and fights for freedom.
He also expresses some discomfort with the extreme levels of fiction which he
acclaims is beyond human imagination which makes it all the more difficult for humanity to
relate with it. He avers that the use of supernatural characters in fictional works is acceptable
where the laws of nature are altered to a certain extent to bring out a certain point. In this

AN EVALUATION OF FRANKENSTEINS CRITIQUES

novel however, he argues that this was done to attain the pampering of imagination with
wonders. In this instance therefore, the pleasure derived from entertaining oneself to the art
of Frankenstein becomes secondary to that which is extracted from observing how mortals
would be affected by the events or circumstances represented in the text (Tweg & Edwards,
2009).
Scott resent the idea propounded by Shelly Magdalene in the novel that a man can
take the role of the creator. Scott considers this blasphemy of the highest degree and
consequently renounces the representations in the novel for having a sinful background. He
says that it left him painfully bewildered and even wondered why the production was created
in the first place because to him it served no purpose. Scott is open to the idea that literary
works and other works of art serve a more important function than entertainment of the
audience. This function is the shaping of the community in a certain way which must be for
the benefit thereof. In the absence of this benefit of being shaped, the production serves no
purpose (Scott, 1818).

AN EVALUATION OF FRANKENSTEINS CRITIQUES

Works Cited
Scott, W. (1818, March). Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine 2 (March 1818): 613-20by
Walter Scott. Retrieved August 30, 2016, from Romantic Circles:
http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/chronologies/mschronology/reviews/bemrev.html
Tweg, S., & Edwards, K. (2009). Frankenstein; Mary Shelly. ABN 57 005 102 983.
Elsternwick, Elsternwick VIC 3185, Australia: Insight Publications Pty Ltd.