Domesticity, morality, and reproduction work come together in Frankenstein to illustrate the mounting anxiety felt by Shelley and others writing at the cusp of the Industrial Revolution about a new way of life, guided by science, that threatened older social and moral orders. As her novel demonstrates, Shelley was concerned that without the checks and balances of domestic morality, science could be used to usurp women's role in the reproductive process and to create unimaginable abortions of nature. Victor's simultaneous rejection of the domestic sphere and circumvention of sexual reproduction serves to undermine women's social roles in two important ways: by denying their contributions to the reproduction of the human race and by erasing their status as educators in the home. It is not just that Shelley helped create science fiction as a genre, then, but that she also created it as a literary form with the potential for strong social and scientific critique.