If you thought that you had daddy issues, then you haven’t read Frankenstein. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, is about a man named Victor Frankenstein, who defies the laws of nature by creating a freaky being made from science. This being, The Creature, grows up around and observes humanity. It’s education consists only from what it encounters, given by nature. Ultimately, The Creature is rejected by humanity, and he reacts by seeking revenge upon Victor, killing his friends, family, and finally Victor. The chronicles of The Creature and Victor are used by Shelly to express various aspects of her life and the time period she lived in. In Frankenstein, Shelley highlights the issues of: miscarriages, nature vs. nurture, and the roles of women …show more content…
Although The Creature was technically born, Frankenstein wanted nothing to do with the baby before its “life” had truly begun (gaining knowledge/experiences). The Creature itself had even said: “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.”(Shelley 208). When Victor destroys the female companion, this also can be seen as a literal abortion in the text, as he is ending the life of the female companion before she is even brought to life (born). Victor also conducts a figurative abortion with his previous lifestyle after he commits himself to create a being from galvanism: “I at once gave up my former occupations; set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation; and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science, which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge” (Shelley 27). Mary Shelley might be highlighting the issue of abortion along with miscarriages to express how much sorrow she felt from her first miscarriage (as The Creature brings sorrow to Victor, its mother/father). Another concept that Mary Shelley might have implemented into Frankenstein could be the idea of Nature vs. Nurture, or …show more content…
One character, Justine, is very passive and used as a device to make Victor feel guilty for creating The Creature; as her major contribution to the plot was The Creature framing her for her brothers death and shortly after, being sentenced to death. Another female character, Safie, is used to teach The Creature how to speak: “My days were spent in close attention…and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian…I could imitate almost every word that was spoken…I also learned the science of letters” (Shelley 106). Even the most prominent female character in the book, Frankenstein's lover and wife, Elizabeth, is killed by The Creature on their wedding night, in order to again make Victor regret creating The Creature, and eventually die of his unhappiness. Mary Shelley's depiction of women might be her indicating the roles of women at the time as inferior, a similar thesis brought about by Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication on the Rights of Women. Wollstonecraft had said, “...a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore, and that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes…’(Wollstonecraft, 1). Between Shelley and
In James Davis’ literary essay “Frankenstein and the Subversion of the Masculine Voice,” he discusses the oppression of women and the minor roles of females in Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein. With a feminist perspective, Davis claims, “He [Victor Frankenstein] oppresses female generation of life and of text; he rends apart both the physical and the rhetorical ‘form’ of female creativity. In fact, all three male narrators attempt to subvert the feminine voice, even in those brief moments when they tell the women’s stories” (307). Throughout his essay, Davis demonstrates the underlying message of Shelly’s subversion towards men and the social consequences of misogyny. Davis draws parallels between the three men, Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and Victor’s creation, Frankenstein, in which they
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a gothic novel that tells the story of scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and his obsession with creating human life. This leads him to creating a gruesome monster made of body-parts stolen from grave yards, whom upon discovering his hideousness, the monster seeks revenge against his creator, causing Victor to regret the creation of his monster for the rest of his life. Shelley uses the literary elements of personification, imagery, and similes to give a vivid sense and visualization of Victor Frankenstein’s thoughts and feelings as well as to allow us to delve deeper into the monster’s actions and emotions. Throughout the novel, Shelley uses personification of various forces and objects to reflect the effect in Victor’s actions.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein’s creation is at the heart of the plot being the cause of every event and proves to be the most morally ambiguous character in the novel. The creature’s moral ambiguity, especially in regards to social interaction, works towards revealing the meaning of the work as a whole that without proper guidance, we are prone to imperfection. The creature’s behavior throughout the novel is erratic and unpredictable. With absolutely no instruction or education from his creator, he runs into the wild blind to what he may encounter and how to go about those things. Therefore, his morals are purely instinctual and misguided.
When Victor creates the creature he also abandons it. Once Frankenstein’s creature begins to murder off his family thus he begins’ to realize the importance of family. Caroline’s death contributes to Victor’s isolated nature.
Jacob Opalka Mrs. Ramey 4 April 2016 English 12 CP Victor Frankenstein: a Deadbeat Father Figure (Rough Draft) One out of every three children living in America lives without a father figure in his/her lives. Children growing up without a father figure can develop emotional and/or behavioral problems. In some cases, these children even become aggressive and get into trouble with the law (“Statistics on the Father Absence” n.p.). Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, occurs in Geneva and Ingolstadt, and portrays Victor Frankenstein as a deadbeat father figure to his creation because he does not take responsibility for him, and he must ultimately deal with the consequences of his creature.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein examines how the presence of a mother, negatively or positively, affects the development of a child. Victor’s mother, Caroline Frankenstein, dies while Victor is still a young man (he is about 17 years old), breaking their relationship between mother and son. Because Victor loses his bond with his mother, he is unable to act as a mother would when he creates his creature. Caroline Frankenstein’s absence in Victor’s life creates a disunion between the mother and child bond, which is evident in Victor’s creation and his fragmented relationship with the creature. Caroline Frankenstein, Victor’s mother, portrayed a traditional mother in the Frankenstein household, until her death.
In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein creates an intelligent monster with no name. The creature is thrust into the world to fend for itself when Victor leaves it alone in his lab. The creature has childlike tendencies because he has recently been “born”. If the creature is viewed as a child, then Victor is essentially his father. There are many times in the book where the author elluded to Victor and the creature being like father and son.
Interestingly enough, the novel resembles Shelley’s own life and can be interpreted as a reflection of her perception of families. Shelley shares many of the same characteristics with most of her characters. As the main character in the novel, Frankenstein’s creature is depicted as “a motherless orphan” who had an “unnatural birth” (Griffith). This correlates with Shelley’s own childhood as she was raised without a mother and her birth was in some ways “unnatural” as mothers are not naturally made to die during childbirth.
But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death, and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world”(24). Victor shows the strong love of family in his childhood “No human being could have passed a happier childhood than [me]. My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence” (Shelley,40), he raised with excellent conditions and with parents who loved their children, but we do not see that Victor gives this love to his creature and ignored him, notwithstanding the fact that the two figures shared many characteristics. As a result of Frankenstein 's darkness and ignorance toward his creature, he refused to accept the monster because of his physical appearance and Frankenstein sees the creature as if he were the monster when the creature
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein follows Robert Walton’s letters to his sister and how he comes across Victor Frankenstein, a man on a journey to bring a dead body back to life, and then his guilt from generating a strange, abnormal creature. When the monster realizes how he came into the world and is rejected by mankind, he seeks revenge on his creator’s family to avenge his desolation. The literary devices strewn throughout the text allow the reader to comprehend the thoughts and emotions of the characters and gain a deeper understanding of what is taking place. In the gothic novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, rhetorical questions, similes, and imagery are exploited to give the text meaning for the reader. Foremost, Shelley utilizes a rhetorical
In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein's scientific mind helped him to create a living creature by sewing together and reanimating parts of previously dead human, But because of how the creature looked he rejected it when he succeeded at bringing it to life. The creature grew up without any parental affection or guidance. Growing up like this can cause major emotional complications later in life. Through the actions of murdering Victor’s family and loved ones the creature shows his desire for revenge against Victor for abandoning him. At the end of the book the creature has come face to face the death of his creator, instead of feeling rejoice for the death of the man he tortured and hunted down, he feels sorrow and
From Son to Satan: Parenting in the 17th century Often in a novel, an author will make the relationship between a parental figure and a child be one of conflict to emphasize their relationship to each other. However, in the 1818 Gothic Romantic novel Frankenstein, author Mary Shelley uses the father and son relationship between scientist Victor Frankenstein and the creature as a tool to demonstrate that one must take responsibility for their actions and that monsters are not born monsters visualized through Victor’s abandonment of the creature, the monsters reaction to being shunned and Victor’s failure to comply with the creatures request to create a partner. The inception of the conflict between the two characters began when Victor became
Beginning with Victor abandoning the creature at birth, the series of revenge and hatred-filled events begin to occur as both attempt to find justice and retribution. The creature stole the lives of everyone beloved by Victor, and Victor stole the monster’s chance at happiness by abandoning him. As the characters continuously harm each other, their isolation increases as well as their sanity. In the end, numerous family members perish, Victor Frankenstein dies of physical exhaustion, and the creature conveys his desire to
The fictional horror novel of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is driven by the accentuation of humanity’s flaws. Even at the very mention of her work an archetypal monster fills one’s imagination, coupled with visions of a crazed scientist to boot. Opening her novel with Robert Walton, the conduit of the story, he also serves as a character to parallel the protagonist’s in many ways. As the ‘protagonist’ of the story, Victor Frankenstein, takes on the mantle of the deluded scientist, his nameless creation becomes the embodiment of a truly abandoned child – one left to fend for itself against the harsh reality posed by society. On the other hand, Walton also serves as a foil to Victor – he is not compulsive enough to risk what would be almost
Shelly was influenced by radical ideas from her parents , Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and William Godwin who advocated anarchism(Johnstone). Frankenstein is an evidence of the effects of Wollstonecraft and Godwin that depicts her radical thoughts. The ruin of Victor Frankenstein, who creates Creature, shows the rebellion towards the patriarchy that resists women’s expression and compelling of childbirth to women(Fiona). She described the horrific result of the patriarchal desire of the men who created the generation by erasing the existence of