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“blond,” “wiry,” and “heavy-set” leaped up to comparable late-to-early
ratios of 90:1, 88:1, and 80:1, respectively. These initial results suggest
that the twentieth century is much more fixated on physicality than the
nineteenth. It is a hypothesis that proves out.
While the collocates of “human” have undergone a lot of change
since the nineteenth century, the collocates of inhuman have been
more static. The top three collocates from the nineteenth century only
declined in ratios as high as 13:1, which is a low number. The collocates
that became more popular in the twentieth century had ratios over the
nineteenth century only as high as 5:1. Most of these collocates are
abstract adjectives such as “barbarous,” “unwise,” “brutal,” “monstrous,”
and “strange.” Unlike with “monster,” “man,” and “human,” these do not
divide into internal and external. Perhaps this is because “inhuman” is
usually an adjective, and is itself rather abstract.
As the abstract concept of inhumanity is certainly a concern for
Shelley (she often raises the question of who is more human in the
story—Frankenstein or his monster), an even more prominent abstract
concept is that of a creator. According to COHA results, the concept
of the word “creator” seems to encounter a paradigmatic shift over the
course of history that should surprise few modern critics, but does have
considerable bearing on modern interpretation of myth. Two prominent
collocates of “creator” are “infinite” and “human.” “Infinite” has seen the
steepest decline since the nineteenth century, with a ratio of 27:1, while
“human” has seen a slight increase of 8:1. The contexts (the actual quoted
material) listings on the COHA show that “human” here is not usually
an adjective of “creator,” but rather of “being.” However, those human
beings are being considered against a creator, or as a “creation.” While
we in the twentieth century may no longer be so heavily interested in the
“infinite” nature of our creator, it seems we are not ready to give up on
the idea of God quite yet. Certainly for “Frankenstein,” the confusion
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between creator and created is a problem presented by the text. The God
question rears its monstrous head in depictions of Victor’s inadequacies as
both a creator and a benevolent force in his creature’s life.
“Frankenstein” often grapples with theological concepts. The role
of scientist as creator was a controversial topic of Shelley’s time—many
romantics had problems with science’s purported objectivity, as well as
with its disdain for aesthetics and intuition (Ziolkowski 35). Frankenstein
is as at least as much a critique of science as it is of religion. It is possible
that Shelley, in complete accord with her times, was deliberately criticizing
science for attempting to penetrate the domain of the spiritual. In this
instance, the corpus data, at the very least, indicates that these thencommon
uses of religiously derived words mean that they were at least
subconscious influences to nineteenth century writers such as Shelley.
The last word queried in the corpus was “unnatural.” Like many
of the other words used in this analysis, the results indicated that in
the twentieth century, the most common collocates were adjectives
that described physicality. Examples of collocates which declined in
usage after the nineteenth century are “improbable,” “monstrous,”
“unreasonable,” and “cruel,” with ratios of 20:1, 20:1, 20:1, and 14:1,
respectively. Collocates that increased in the twentieth century include
“stiff,” “dirty,” “heavy,” and “alone,” with ratios of 8:1, 6:1, 6:1, and 6:1.
Like “inhuman,” “unnatural” is abstract, and similar to “inhuman,” it
is always an adjective. However, unlike “inhuman,” “unnatural” does
not have many twentieth century collocates that are also abstract ideas.
However, the nineteenth century collocates are abstract.
Difficulties arise in making assumptions about a word that is purely
an adjective based on its adjectival collocates, because those words are
not describing the adjective in question, of course, but a nearby noun.
For example, we cannot assume that people thought more abstractly in
the nineteenth century about an adjective as if it were a noun as when we
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