Sandy, Mark. "'Dissecting Anatomy Literature': Tim Marshall, Murdering to Dissect." Romanticism On the
Net 4 (November 1996) [Date of access] <http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/marshall.html>
Copyright © Michael Eberle-Sinatra 1996-2002 - All rights reserved - ISSN 1467-1255
'Dissecting Anatomy Literature'
Tim Marshall, Murdering To Dissect: Grave-robbing, Frankenstein and The Anatomy Literature.
Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995. ISBN: 0 7190 4543 (paperback). Price:
£15.99.
Mark Sandy
A broad spectrum of academic disciplines ranging from literary, linguistic, historical, political and psychological
studies form the critical lens through which Tim Marshall views Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and its social context.
This theoretical framework draws upon Bakhtin's linguistic idea of the sign as bearer of diverse social meaning,
Foucault's Crime and Punish and, more importantly, the lesser known 'mass psychology' of Elias Canetti's Crowds and
Power. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Marshall argues, acquires an 'anatomy storyline' through the historical events
which occurred after its first publication in 1818 and surrounded its second and third editions in 1823 and 1831. These
historical events of the 1820's witnessed increasing public concern about the science of anatomy and its collusion with
grave-robbers. Pressure mounted for legislation to regulate these practices, culminating with the Burke and Hare
scandal. Marshall places Frankenstein amidst the 'medical realities of the day', pointing out that John Abernethy, a year
after its first edition, argued for the Royal College of Surgeons' "acquisition of unclaimed pauper corpses in order to
advance anatomical research". 'The Modern Prometheus', Mary Shelley's subtitle, alludes to an electrical shock
treatment for reviving patients, known as Galvanism or 'medical Prometheanism'. For Marshall, Frankenstein is a
'proleptic allegory of the 1832 political marriage between the aristocracy and the upper ranks of the middle class',
cemented in the Great Reform Bill of that year, which masked the passing of the Anatomy Act.
This study's reconstruction of events before and during the 1820's is indebted to Ruth Richardson's historical analysis in
Death, Dissection and the Destitute, emphasising the political significance of the Anatomy Act over the better known
Reform Bill. Marshall's account of the social and political climate, which produced the acts of 1832, is not centred
solely on Frankenstein, but incorporates a discussion of literary works by Blake, De Quincey, Walter Scott, Crabbe,
Dickens and Gaskell.
Victor Frankenstein's chosen career as an anatomical surgeon, Marshall reminds us, aligns him with a profession
associated with a social stigma in the public mind. For the purpose of dissection, since the 1790's, surgeons had relied
upon the gallows as a source for their corpses. The connection between hangman and surgeon was given a further
'punitive dimension' by a Parliamentary Act in 1752, which allowed the Bench, when issuing sentences for death, to
order a 'public dissection of the criminal's body in place of a gibbeting'. This background informs Walter Scott's
sympathy, in his Journal, over the Edinburgh 'bodysnatching scandal', with the commonly held belief that Dr. John
Knox, who benefited from the bodysnatchers' activities, was an "accessory to the crime of murder". The murders Burke
and Hare committed are, in Marshall's view, the 'logical conclusion' of the grave-robbing trade. A surgeon's status was
ambivalent; on one hand, he was a professional who aspired to social respectability and polite society and, on the other,
trafficked in the dark underworld of immorality, grave-robbing and even murder.
Marshall reads Knox's silent complicity with the crimes of Burke and Hare into Frankenstein, viewing Victor as
'progressively encumbered by a criminal association which he cannot, or will not, publicly declare' and unable, after the
creation, to free himself from the publicly unknown Creature. The Creature represents Victor's involvement with the
bodysnatching fraternity, because Mary Shelley's 'monster' is both a multitude of dead bodies and the murderer of
William, Clerval and Elizabeth. The Creature's choice of victim transgresses 'class boundaries' highlighting, for
Marshall, the 'social hypocrisy' of the Anatomy Act, which advocated using the bodies of the poor for dissection, as
'middle class bodies' would be the '"wrong" class of bodies for the surgeon'. Victor's inability to keep his promise of a
mate for the Creature plays out the middle class break of faith with the working class in 1832, leading to their final
betrayal by the introduction of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act.
Although Victor does not 'recognise himself as the father of the being he has created', the Creature's desire to establish
a 'relation' with him is crucial in light of the anatomy legislation of 1832. Under new regulations a pauper body could
only be buried and avoid dissection if the 'bona fide status of the relative, or relatives' could be established.
Consequently, Marshall argues that Victor's 'broken promise in effect precipitates all the bodies which compromise "the
monster" into the impending dissection category'. In this context Frankenstein's two narratorial voices of Victor and the
Creature make a different ideological 'claim' on the novel's two women. Both Elizabeth and Justine 'are the products of
an order of benevolent paternalism' and serve as a comment on the 'making-and-then-revoking of the bargain between
the two men'. Marshall offers Bakhtin's notion of the 'multi-accented' sign to justify a multi-layered meaning to both the
use of 'claim' in Frankenstein and to the 'political allegory' he attributes to the text at large.
The Creature's desire to have Frankenstein acknowledge him as father or to have a mate is interpreted as a bid for legal
respectability. Marshall suggests, in light of the new anatomy legislation, that the Creature's demand 'on Frankenstein
sees him trying to secure what was to become the only mechanism of escape from the dissection constituency
recognised by the new law: the claim of a relative'. Mary Shelley's Creature wants to attain a 'human identity' through a
legal recognition he is always denied and so, in Canetti's analysis, he enacts the 'arche-command' of the 'original flightcommand'. Both Frankenstein and the Creature are seen in flight during the course of the novel. Victor flees his
creation, as he is 'haunted by the association with absolutist power which the surgeons needed to expunge from their
public image'. The Creature flees, having murdered, because in a 'historical context his crimes qualify him for
dissection, were he to face the law'. Following Canetti's theory, which anticipates Foucault's account in Crime and
Punish, Marshall states that "[f]light is the final and only appeal against a death sentence".
Canetti's account of 'command' asserts that "the death threat can never be entirely eliminated from power", but that
through "social evolution...virtually nothing remains of the original threat or message to flee". The 'command' is
domesticated from a 'bestial' death threat into a 'guarantee of food', as an incentive to encourage obedience. Marshall
identifies this 'transformation' in 'the legislative move to break the association of the surgeons with the gallows'. Oliver
Twist and Frankenstein provide a commentary, for Marshall, on 'how 1832-34 is a key period in the domestication of
command', represented by a 'transition from absolutism to an early phase of a consumer-orientated society'.
Marshall closely adheres to Richardson's account of the coach scene in Oliver Twist, reading the "travellers abuse [of]
him" as symbolic of an ideological shift to helping the "'deserving poor' [which] involved the imposition of social and
political value judgements on the distribution of poor relief". By, contrast, Frankenstein's coach scene is an encounter
between 'two social equals', Frankenstein and Clerval, and is viewed as the 'ideological inverse' of Dickens's scene. A
parallel is drawn between the end of 'benevolent paternalism' with the introduction of the 1832 Anatomy Act and
Victor's ironic encounter with Clerval, who is 'a benevolent version of Frankenstein as he might have been and never
can be', after his rejection of the Creature. Consequently, Frankenstein as anatomist receives delivery of the 'corpses of
William, Clerval and Elizabeth' from the Creature.
Equally, Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, first appearing in 1841, has a 'special relationship to the changing culture' as its
story, according to Marshall, 'doubles as a representation of the two historical phases either side of the 1832, absolutism
and domestication'. The exchange between Dennis and Tappertit is a 'key detail', which compounds the executioner
with the surgeon in accordance with the 'popular perception' of surgeons. Marshall brings into play Canetti's claim that
the individual receiving a 'command' is left with a 'sting of command', which must be passed onto a 'social inferior'. In
Barnaby Rudge, Mr. Dennis is the only character to 'enjoy the executioneer's special exemption from the sting of
command', because he is 'acting under orders'. Unfortunately, Tappertit has endured twelve years of subordination
under Varden and has 'stored up command after command, order after order, without an outlet to get rid of them'.
Tappertit's abuse of his high ranking uniform symbolises his desire to ascend within the social hierarchy 'without effort
or discipline'. Migg's stays single and self-reliant, staying 'just outside the category of the improvident poor', whereas
Tappertit's involvement with the riots leads to the loss of both his legs and reduces him to "begging" Varden for relief
from "utter destitution". The 'sting of command' must either emerge through a 'passing-on mechanism', or by 'paying
back' to social superiors what has been suffered as a host of the 'sting' of their 'commands'. Tappertit can only achieve
the latter through a participation in the rioting crowd, which Marshall equates with Mary Shelley"s Creature as 'a mass
of bodies long bound over to proclaim the truth of crime and power'.
Marshall's section, entitled 'The Medical Gaze and Popular Culture', examines eighteenth century anatomical practices
and the public's widespread hostility toward the surgeons. A discussion of Hogarth's 'The Reward of Cruelty' illustrates
both the association between the surgeons and the gallows existed 'as early as the 1750's and the exclusion of the crowd
'to contest the proceedings'. Crucial to Marshall's reading of Frankenstein, at this stage, is the 'less frequent' and
superstitious performance of a' gallows wedding', involving a petition for the 'malefactor's reprieve with a promise of
marriage' from a 'wedding women dressed in white'. Such a superstition, Marshall argues, informs the Creature's
murder Elizabeth on her wedding day, which 'formalises her membership of the family'. Similarly, Justine is
condemned by the Creature's 'claim' on her as 'lover and bride', who frames her for William's murder and sends her to
the gallows.
This is followed by a further cultural and historical exploration of the early nineteenth century, giving particular
attention to the resurrectionist culture. Marshall's argument encompasses a wide range of material, including Southey's
'The Surgeon's Warning", Godwin's 'Essay on Sepulchres', Southwood Smith's 'The Use of the Dead to the the Living'
and accounts concerning Joanna Southcott's dissection. Frankenstein's 1831 edition is viewed in context with the
spread of 'burkophobia', 'cholerophobia' and Bentham's utilitarianism. Frankenstein's decision to remain silent about the
Creature is what leads to his social isolation, manifest in his fear of crowds. Marshall reads this silence as Mary
Shelley's critique of the secrecy involved in the correspondence between Bentham and Peel over the proposals for an
anatomy legislation.
Marshall is at pains to remind us that the 'metamorphosis' Frankenstein underwent over its three editions secured Mary
Shelley's novel a place amongst 'public discourse in the late 1820's' and that the novel can be 'read as such'. Murdering
To Dissect's interpretation is often illuminating about the 'script which history put into the tale of Frankenstein'. Yet
this kind of approach has tendencies to privilege history and culture over literature, valuing literary works for what a
critical 'autopsy' might reveal about contemporary social, political, and cultural issues of the day. Marshall places
Frankenstein under the gaze of 'public discourse' to perform a dissection of its textual body.
Mark Sandy
University of Durham