Labora et Invenies: Uma Perspetiva Alquímica sobre Frankenstein (1818), de Mary Shelley

Abstract

It is undeniable that, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), the teachings of alchemy masters were crucial to Victor Frankenstein’s development as a natural philosopher. Nevertheless, despite having abandoned them in favor of the study of the most recent scientific theories of the time, Victor retained the same fascination for those teachings that made him wish to uncover the mysteries of Nature and reach for the impossible: to erase the barrier between life and death. Therefore, in the present essay, we intend to analyze Shelley’s work in accordance to the precepts of alchemy. Studies such as Irving H. Buchen’s, “Frankenstein and the Alchemy of Creation” (1977), and Asunción López-Varela Azcárate and Estefanía Saavedra’s, “The Metamorphosis of the Myth of Alquemy in the Romantic Imagination of Mary and Percy B. Shelley” (2017), have already delved into the topic, but our perspective innovates in the sense that it privileges alchemy’s metaphorical side, as the art of purification of the “Self” through a process of transmutation, which aims at the union of spirit and matter, light and shadow, in a Whole. Consequently, we seek to determine the way through which Victor and his creature’s transmutation occurs, as well as whether the alchemists’ goal to convert lead, or the vices and earthly passions, into gold, or virtues, is achieved. Thus, we begin by defining what alchemy is; next, we analyze its role in Shelley’s novel; and, finally, we assess the sort of transmutation that transpires in Frankenstein.