Book Review: The Lady And Her Monsters

[extropianzealot]

A Note On Reviews

Before we begin it may help if I explain my perspective on reviewing books. Realistically, the main bottleneck in book reading is time. I do not necessarily expect to live very long, largely because I'm not sure I expect our civilizations to live very long. There are far too many threats to our continued survival as a species for me to list in a brief aside. However, taking it as a given that we'll only live somewhere in range of a normal human lifespan there's not all that much time for reading books. Facing this grim reality I try to only read the minority of books that are worth the time I spend on them. I rate books with respect to how well they rewarded my time expenditure.

My Rating Scale

5: Life changing, a gem of a work that either hugely changes my perspective or informs my decisions

4: A good investment, delivers strong value for time spent.

3: Fair trade. A work worth approximately the time I put into reading it.

2: On reflection, I would prefer to have the time I spent reading this back.

1: Garbage, with little to recommend it.

This naturally leads to a few consistent preferences. I tend to favor books that are short and novel.

Now for our feature presentation..

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The Lady And Her Monsters

Overview

The Lady And Her Monsters tells the tale of Frankenstein's authorship. Frankenstein is of some interest to me because it's often credited as the first work of Science Fiction. More than that, it's a founding work which takes on themes of reanimation and the limits of man's creative abilities directly. The Lady... is not however exclusively focused on Frankenstein's author Mary Shelley, but rather spends most of its time on the 18th and early 19th century scientific personalities and theories which inspired her. These are the titular monsters that form the backdrop of Frankenstein's narrative. Clocking in at a not-too-long 269 pages of not too densely packed text, it is tempting to give this book a four. However I found the portions about Shelley herself sufficiently drama-laden and offputting to knock this book down from a solid 4 to a 3.5. I can hardly fault the author for discussing her when she's the principal character, but The Lady is simply not as interesting as her inspirations.

My Rating: 3.5, somewhere between a fair trade and a good investment

So What Does An 18th Century Transhumanist Look Like, Anyway?

Roseanne Montillo opens her book on Frankenstein with the tale of Luigi Galvani, a thematic choice that fits in more than just the obvious ways. Sure it is Luigi's famous discovery that lightning can resurrect a frogs legs which sets the stage for that equally famous scene of Victor Frankenstein awakening his monster with a bolt of blue; but the relation goes deeper than that. It is Galvani's notion of the vital force that awakens in many of that era's intellectuals serious thoughts toward reanimation. This philosophical theme is what later keeps Mary Shelley and her traveling companions awake into the night discussing the possibility of creating man from his component parts. These discussions eventually spur them to hold a ghost story competition in which Shelley's famous novel spills onto the page.

Galvanism and related ideas form one of the core organizing pillars around which The Lady And Her Monsters constructs its narrative. This narrative surveys a wide cast of characters, too many to really do them all justice. However one man that drives the first act is Giovanni Aldini. Nephew of Luigi Galvani, he performs experiments in animal electricity in an attempt to prove that the dead can be reawakened. His quest to find a fresh corpse to revive from death is described in some detail, including his employment of the Royal Humane Society to find the proper candidate. The tale of reanimation is necessarily also a tale of death, and its common disturbance in the 18th century. British doctors, desiring cadavers to use in their medical experiments and lectures had turned to criminal gangs that stole corpses from graveyards. These resurrection men, as they were known, were ruthless in their pursuit of bodies. The problem became so bad that various devices were hatched to thwart thieves from stealing corpses. Everything from sturdier coffins to iron cages places around burial receptacles to lining coffins with quicklime or gunpowder. In Italy law enforcement was more permissive, and many a surgeon was embarrassingly found with corpses or the remains of what used to be a corpse in their possession. Galvanists interested in using electricity for reanimation naturally shared this hunger for high quality corpses with physicians colleges. The duality of the subject gives The Lady And Her Monsters a macabre tone to the narrative, with death lurking behind every corner.

"I Am Raising The Devil"

Another core organizing pillar is the conflict between science and religion. The 18th century is a time of transition, the church has lost its control over public discourse but widespread serious belief in Christian notions of holiness and the Satanic remain. Scientific personalities often stood at the center of speculation about their relationship with demons. The Galvanists that Frankenstein tries to capture in print were especially notorious, given the threat their goal posed to the Christian worldview of a god given soul.

Was man a creature created by a God who dished out values and properties according to his fancies? Or was man a machine powered by an internal galvanic fluid, which in turn could be sparked alive by a rush of electricity? Did man possess a soul endowed by God? Or was he merely a soulless automaton?

For members of the Church, this last idea was abhorrent. If people came to believe that man was soulless, God would be taken out of the equation. But for some members of the scientific community, not to mention owners of industries, the idea of soulless humans had merit: after all, if the dead could reawaken, or even better, be created entirely anew, then potentially a new race could be unleashed and commanded as one pleased.

This theme appears so often in fact that it would probably be easiest to just list the named examples given.

Philippus von Hohenheim - Better known as Paracelsus, this 16th century alchemist was thought to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for forbidden knowledge. Among it the recipe for creating new intelligent life in the form of a homunculus. The homunculus was like the mythic Jewish golem, a little man that served its creator in menial tasks. While we can be quite sure that Philippus never created intelligent life with the recipe he provides us, tales of his success at the task floated from village to village through which he passed. Like most such tales of extraordinary acts, the reader is advised to apply a small salt shaker to what they read.

Cornelius Agrippa - 16th century physician who published a book on the occult, De occulta philosophia, libri tres. His investigations brought him into conflict with the Inquisition. One legend which is related to the reader concerns his black dog. It is said that on his deathbed Cornelius released his faithful companion into the countryside, where it became a bad omen for peasants to encounter.

Johann Konrad Dippel - 17th & 18th century alchemist who found his start with the theological branches of chemistry. His uncharismatic disposition made him many enemies such that he was involved in several duels. Rumors followed him, including accusation of body snatching for his alchemical experiments. The peasantry came to believe that he had brewed the legendary philosophers stone, and was using gold produced by it to buy up property. He is said to have lost the recipe in a house fire which destroyed his lab. Local clergy were offended by his pursuit of the elixir of life and many thought him a minion of the devil. Perhaps his most lasting contribution is Dippel's Oil, a noxious brew made from crushed bones thought to cure many diseases. (And oddly enough according to wikipedia, later used as a chemical weapon during the second world war).

James Lind - 18th century physician and alchemist well known for pranks. His neighbors believed that his science experiments were poisoning them through the occult arts. Lind's laboratory was the chaotic model for our modern conception of a mad scientists dwelling. A "cornucopia of galvanic batteries, metal probes, surgical instruments, dead frogs, scalpels, bubbling vials, gases, and poisons".

Percy Shelley - Percy is the primary focus of this part of the narrative, as he's Mary Shelley's husband and the person that taught her the alchemical concepts she used to write Frankenstein. A wild youth that set up a laboratory much like Lind's in his Oxford dorm room, Shelley's confrontation with religious authority is of less consequence but perhaps even more drama than the previous examples. Montillo writes:

While on a nightly round Mr. Bethell heard peculiar noises coming from behind Shelley's locked doors. Curious, he became convinced that Shelley was engaging in "nefarious scientific pursuits," which of course he intended to put a halt to. He marched into the room, where Shelley was engulfed in a leaping "blue-flame". Stunned, Bethell asked what he was doing, and Shelley replied, "I am raising the devil." On hearing this, the tutor approached the galvanic battery and placed his hands above it. He received a nasty electrical discharge that sent him flying across the room.

As you can imagine, Shelley shared Lind's taste for the mischievous and prankish. He was eventually expelled from Oxford for publishing a pamphlet on atheism, so we can only imagine he had no illusions about his ability to call on Satan. Shelley was one of the Galvanists that read and discussed reanimation with avid interest. This alchemist-poet was also well known for his ghost stories and fantastic tales, many of which were put to paper and brought him great acclaim.

These proto-transhumanist biographies form a significant amount of the material in The Lady And Her Monsters, the rest of which is mostly about the life of Mary Shelley and her personal circle of friends. Since the primary value of the work to me was these biographies and the associated history, I will decline not to comment too much on Montillo's treatment of Mary Shelley. It is woven fairly well into the narrative, sort of alternating between Mary's life and the real science that fleshes out and gives context to her experiences.

Conclusion

The Lady And Her Monsters is a fairly solid history. It is interesting to consider that many of the conversations we're having now around genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, and other modern concerns have already been had by a very different generation of thinkers. Roseanne Montillo does a fantastic job of illustrating the world of 18th century Europe. She quotes liberally from primary sources and I have no doubt that this book represents an incredible amount of reading and research. It would probably be of interest to the reader. If I wanted to learn more about these subjects, Montillo has done a good enough job that I would probably resort to primary source material myself for a better understanding. For a book I picked up as a rare casual Halloween for-fun item I'm impressed with how little I regret the time spent.

Comments

[contrarianarchon]

Looks good!