Why did Mary Shelley revive Frankenstein with electricity?
Why did Mary Shelley revive Frankenstein with electricity?
When the famous novel Frankenstein was published in 1818, electricity was little less than a living room rarity, although there were already scientists experimenting with it looking for useful purposes.
One of these was the British Andrew Crosse, who had built a laboratory where, among other experiments, he applied electric shock to corpses in an attempt to bring them back to life after verifying that the discharges *produced spasms in their bodies. *
** A method that was nothing new **, since other scientists like Luigi Galvani had practiced it before. Fascinated by these experiments, the author of the immortal novel, Mary Shelley, wife of the poet Percy Shelley and daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, philosopher and feminist ahead of her time, decided to translate them into the novel that, with the protagonism of his humanísimo monster Frankenstein, has passed to posterity.
