Frankenstein

So, after our discussion of Victor and our attempts to assess the morality of his decisions/actions was cut short yesterday by the beginning of the blizzard (thank you, half-mile visibility!), I've been thinking a lot about they ways that Frankenstein can serve as a cautionary tale. There's the semi-obvious (at least it feels obvious to me) issue of ART (assisted reproductive technology), which we've already discussed some in class: How far are you willing to go to have a child ("create life")? How far should people in general be allowed to go?

But there's another sticky point that Victor's actions raise: once he's created the creature (i.e., made a VERY BAD CHOICE, to use the terminology my daughter understands), what are his obligations to fix it? This dilemma is salient for mothers (I might mean those doing maternal thinking, but I definitely mean mothers) because so much of raising a child seems to be trial-and-error. How far can you backtrack? How much can you re-do? So you try one thing and it's a disaster -- how can you rectify the mistake? Is it even a mistake? Is it just an experiment that didn't work out?