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The Role Of Electricity In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a cautionary tale of man's dangerous ambition when testing the boundaries of technology. It combines Shelley’s intuitive perception of science with the vast scientific discoveries of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, specifically the discovery of the nature of electricity. In Frankenstein, electricity serves as the technological tool which creates the monster, giving life to an assemblage of lifeless body parts. Medical experiments of the time demonstrated how a dead frog leg would jolted with the injection of electricity. This phenomenon served as a bridge between science (electricity) and nature( biology). This bridge led the character of Doctor Victor Frankenstein to fantasise about the possibilities of

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