An analysis of mad scientist narratives in nineteenth-century british literature

Since very early ages, literature has been closely intertwined with science and technology. One of the outcomes of this interaction is the fictional mad scientist figure who represents the dangers inherent in scientific knowledge. Although the modern form of this trope emerged in Britain in the nineteenth century, its roots can be found in the literature of earlier ages. Alchemists were the antagonists in literary works for many ages as a result of their controversial practices that aimed to manipulate nature and obtain the formula of immortality. After the early modern era, natural philosophers who focused on experimenting began to take place in literature, but they were also mocked because their experiments were seen futile just as those of the alchemists. In the nineteenth century, new sciences and technologies brought with them new anxieties, especially the worry of going too far and upsetting the balance between science and religion (or ethics). As scientific knowledge became more extensive and the figure of the scientist turned into a more threatening figure, nineteenth-century British authors responded with borrowing some of the features of evil alchemist or natural philosopher narratives and creating a modern mad scientist figure in order to voice the concerns of their age. In the light of these, this thesis examines Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818), Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), H.G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) and The Invisible Man (1897) as the founding texts of the long tradition of mad scientist narratives. It asserts that these novels can be analysed in two main contexts: firstly, they are affected by the science and literature of the pre-Enlightenment era (encompassing Middle Ages and Renaissance period), and secondly, by post-revolutionary period, encompassing the late-eighteenth century and all of the nineteenth century. As a result, it is argued that the nineteenth-century mad scientist is a reconstruction of the old trope of the alchemist; however, it is also a novel figure, a modernized and secularized version of a timeless archetype that embodies the fear that too much knowledge and the power of transforming elements could result in disaster.