Dramatic change in science and its usage is omnipresent; however, this tendency to change has not always been constant. For example, it took primitive humans thousands of years to create simple tools, such as fire and the wheel. This pace sped up a bit through the Middle Ages, and increased dramatically with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, was written just as the Industrial Revolution was beginning. In the book, Shelley wrote of a science (galvanism) that, in today’s perspective, seems terribly gruesome and outdated. However, this was Shelley’s belief of the direction that science would go. Science did not take that dark turn. Instead, science evolved out of the Industrial Revolution to be beneficial to humans, and to help the progress of society.

The dark road that Shelley imagined natural philosophy (science) would go down only existed in her imagination, never in the real world. Yes, a handful of Victorian scientists did believe in galvanism (the theory that an electrical pulse can revive the dead), but it is doubtful that they envisioned a future with electrically charged corpses wandering the streets. This is what Shelley perhaps envisioned, so she made it one of the major focuses of Frankenstein. When Victor was finally finishing the creature, “he collected the instruments of life around [him], that [he] might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at [his] feet” (Shelley 51). Victor was about to perform galvanism, and shows the reader how much faith Shelley had in this odd practice. Shelley was a very Romantic author, and Romanticism deals with the beliefs and feelings of the author. Therefore, there is no doubt that Mary Shelley believed in this dark scientific future; her writing says it all.

As evidenced by the modern world around us, science came out of the Industrial Revolution to assist humans and expedite progress. Science did not take Shelley’s dark path of infusing life into corpses. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, so did the pace of developing technologies. For example, the advent of the steam engine was the push that gave factories the ability to manufacture great numbers of commodities. This momentous development, plus many more along the way, assisted and changed society into what it has become today. No matter how hard Shelley may have tried to sell the dark science of galvanism, the world would not take that turn. The concept of scientific and societal progress, which came out of the Enlightenment, would not allow it. What instead happened was progress that led to the modern creations of robots and biological clones.

Shelley’s Romantic style of writing gives good insight into what she really believed about science at the time of the publication of Frankenstein in 1818; expressing true feelings and beliefs is the basis of Romanticism. Shelley believed that science would take a seemingly backwards step into the creation of monsters by way of electricity. In reality, science and technology took a huge leap forward and allowed for progress to bring the world to what it is today.