Jonathan Bate "Frankenstein and the State of Nature"
** Homework Questions **
476:
What two forces were considered by late eighteenth-century
scientists as potential "keys to the secret of life itself"
(476)? How are they present in Frankenstein?
How, according to Bate, are Victor and Walton similar to
the Ancient Mariner?
477:
With which respective states of being are Victor and his
Creature identified, according to Bate?
Explain: "Science is thus set in opposition to the female
principles of maternity and natural landscape" (477).
478:
Explain: "Enlightenment proves to be endarkening" (478).
Explain: "Language, property, and institutionalization
bring about the fall from nature into history" (478).
479:
Explain: "Frankenstein's crime, committed in the isolation
of his laboratory, has been to deny the principle of
community" (479).
Explain: "The attempt to cheat death through knowledge
instead of intercourse is the novel's original sin" (479).
480:
How, according to Bate, is the Creature "the repressed
nature which returns and threatens to destroy the society that
has repressed it" (480)?
How, according to Bate, does the close of the novel present
"an image of nature's continuing power to resist the human
quest for mastery" (480)?
