Handout

Monster Makers: Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, and Dr. Moreau
Julio Jeha

1. Fear vs. Science
   1.1. Hauntings from the past vs. ghosts from the future;
   1.2. Nuclear holocaust, robots, genetically modified races;
   1.3. 19th century British novels.
2. Romantic (1798–1832) and Victorian (1837–1901) England.
3. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818, 1831), by Mary Shelley
   3.1. Greek myth: creation of human race and theft of fire;
   3.2. Prometheus: human dissatisfaction;
   3.3. Victor Frankenstein: usurper;
   3.4. Fear: unchecked science vs. beliefs, creatura vs. creator.
4. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), by R. L. Stevenson
   4.1. Dr. Jekyll vs. Mr. Hyde;
   4.2. Crime against social structure;
   4.3. Science: tolerated – acceptable standards;
   4.4. Double-faced aristocrat scientist.
5. The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), by H. G. Wells
   5.1. Moreau: moral ambiguity of modern science;
   5.2. Darwin: theory of evolution;
   5.3. Wells: moralist>science-fiction author;
   5.4. Prendick vs. Moreau: insensibility to the pain of the other;
   5.5. Imperialism: “to humanize animals.”
6. Science: pain and human anxiety – demons and monsters

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein or, The Modern Prometheus. Afterword by Harold Bloom. New York: Signet-New American Library, 1965.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror. Ed. Robert Mighall. London: Penguin, 2002. 2-70.

Wells, H. G. The Island of Dr Moreau. Ed. Steve Maclean and Patrick Parrinder. London: Penguin, 2005.