Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Amanda from 200Books.com (now defunct) had a list of 100 books that every well-educated woman should read. While I LOVE her list, I was puzzled by her inclusion of the horror novel, Frankenstein. Her description of it as “a reminder to examine the moral issues surrounding science” grabbed my interest. This week I read the book and decided she was right to include it on her list.

With the threat of cloning hanging over us, I am extremely interested in questions that scientists don’t seem to be asking. Are we more than a conglomeration of body parts? What does it mean to be human? What makes life worth living? The way this book grapples with these questions is one of the reasons it is considered a classic.

To tell the truth, I thought the first nine chapters were average writing (Mary Shelley wrote this when she was eighteen!) I was disgusted with Dr. Frankenstein’s drive to create “life” without weighing the consequences of his actions. When the created being took its first breath, Frankenstein (the scientist’s name, not the name of the monster) was so overcome with horror that he took to bed and was sick for months. He never faced the responsibility of what he had done; he acted as if ignoring the monster would somehow make it disappear. TWO YEARS later Frankenstein meets his creation and the story takes a turn that chilled my blood.

The monster tells the doctor the incidents of his life during the preceding years, including the many times he had been rejected for his hideous appearance. He makes a heart-wrenching plea for the doctor to create another being like himself so that he can finally love and be loved in return. Astonishingly, this “subhuman” creature echoes the cry of every human heart.

I don’t want to spoil the story by telling any more. My enjoyment of the book was greatly enhanced by listening to the audio version. Because of the narrator’s superb interpretation of the monster’s thoughts and feelings, I was drawn into the emotionally-charged dialogues between “master” and created being in a way that just reading them might not have affected me. This book was written in 1818 (before science had usurped God as “all-knowing”) and shows the horrific consequences of a scientist drunk with his own power who suffers the loss of everything dear to him because of it. It is a fascinating look at science done irresponsibly.

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

Have you ever seen a TV mystery where the murder is clearly shown in the first scene and you watch the detective solve the case as the show goes on? That is how this amazing non-fiction book begins. From the very first pages of The Ghost Map we know what caused the 1854 outbreak of cholera in London, England. The next two hundred pages are dedicated to the sleuthing efforts of a young doctor and an Anglican curate who follow clues that not only solve the mystery, but help to change science forever.

Don’t read this book if you have a weak stomach. It starts with graphic descriptions of the human excrement that was piling up in 19th Century London (before sewage plants were even thought of there) which is followed by a description of Fanny Burney’s mastectomy with only a glass of wine for anesthesia (!) If you can get past that you’ll love reading about how John Snow stubbornly bucked the scientific standards of his day by going against the popular theory called “Miasma”, the idea that putrid smells were the chief cause of illness.

Johnson writes of Snow’s courage: It was, on the face of it, a staggering display of investigative work, given the manic condition of the neighborhood itself. In the twenty-four hours since he’d received Farr’s [statistics], Snow had tracked down intimate details of behavior from the surviving family and neighbors of more than seventy people. The fearlessness of the act still astonishes: as the neighborhood emptied in terror from the most savage outbreak in the city’s history, Snow spent hour after hour visiting the houses that had suffered the worst – houses that were, in fact, still under assault… Wherever cholera was present, there he was in the midst.

Although Snow was responsible for curbing the spread of disease and for ushering in a new scientific discovery, it wasn’t until many years later that he was given credit for his efforts. Johnson concludes: History has its epic thresholds where the world is transformed in a matter of minutes – a leader is assassinated, a volcano erupts, a constitution is ratified. But there are other, smaller, turning points that are no less important. A hundred disparate historical trends converge in a single, modest act. It’s not that the world is changed instantly; the change itself takes many years to become visible. But the change is no less momentous for its quiet evolution. (p. 162)

Overall this is an excellent book that presents a slice of life in 1850’s London. It is much more than a history book because it is loaded with human interest stories and accounts of scientific misconceptions and breakthroughs. (The author’s belief in the theory of Evolution comes through strongly and continuously – almost to the point of being annoying, but I would not let that keep you from reading a book that will introduce you to an amazing era in British history.) Now I plan to read some fiction based on that time period. Bleak House by Dickens was a book Johnson quoted a lot so I may try it.