Mary Shelley and the Vitality Debate

This paper places Mary Shelley’s works Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus (1818), The Last Man (1826), and “The Mortal Immortal” (1833) in conversation with eighteenth century philosophers and scientists who participated in the “vitality debate” about the soul’s relationship to the body. I contend that Shelley cannot be reduced to an idealist who believed the soul was the essence of life or a materialist who thought this essence was derived from a person’s physical body. Instead, she felt that people are the sum of their parts. To augment this argument, I explore different eras from the origins of this debate, featuring the philosophies of Plato, Epicurus, and Aristotle, to contemporary authors Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins, who discuss evolution and genetics. These writers and thinkers all show that life is highly complicated and, at points, serendipitous. In this timeline, I portray how the emergence of scientific and medicinal experimentation confronted Shelley during her time. Science and medicine, coupled with personal religious doubt due to her tragic past, led Shelley to question her opinions on what it means to be human. Although Shelley’s works are fictional, she remains an enduring, radical thinker who shows how multiple factors, not appearance alone, should be the basis for judging a person. Her ability to evoke strong emotions of sympathy from her misunderstood characters makes her writing so fascinating and holds much merit when looking at broader social issues dealing with acceptance, compassion, and perceptions society has over people.