Molly Kneeland Instructor Stephen Webb English 103 March 17, 2023 Victor Frankensteins' Fragile Masculinity In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: How it led to the downfall of all those close to him, and himself. Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a narcissistic individual, who always thinks of himself first in any actions he takes, overlooking others' perspectives and how he may affect them. This leads to disaster in every circumstance as those surrounding him always face the consequences of his actions while he faces little to no repercussions. His creation of the monster is entirely self-motivated, seeking constant validation from others and avoiding the embarrassment of his actions by not admitting fault. His aspiration to …show more content…
He expresses his insecurity through his overly ambitious task of creating life as he yearns for the credit of being god-like “ I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers” (Shelley 76) and “ I alone should be reserved to discover so astonishing a secret” (Shelley 79) which together show how Victor wants to be the one true pioneer of creating new life and on his own will complete it. Victor's scientific dominance is a reflection of the lack of praise he gets in his life from his family members for his intelligence as he rarely communicates with them. He supplements any true relationship with his ambition. Victor Frankenstein is the embodiment of the Victorian doctor archetype as described by Kohlke “dualism of both Victorian masculinity and the period more generally, vacillating between public probity and secret vice, rigid self-control and gratuitous self-gratification”(123) as he told Walton he wanted to make this discovery to improve the world while it was only for his satisfaction and ego. He disregards the dead bodies of others, using them as mere scraps in his lab to create something monstrous that destroys any living relationships in his life. Victor creates the monster with flawed ethics of stealing dead bodies showing as Kohlke states a “fundamental egocentricity to male ethics, which too readily disregard …show more content…
The concept of masculinity is traits that are conventionally associated with boys and men. These may be physiologically defined in terms of physical or biological traits, but more commonly masculinity is considered to be socially constructed and restricted by the norms applied to boys and men in a given culture. (Gabriel, 7). Mary Shelley characterizes Victor, using societal and gender norms to motivate him as a victorian doctor. His motivations lay in that of conventionality, to feel good about himself as a man because of his insecurities. He will do anything to pursue his ambition, even if it means letting his entire family down “Victor Frankenstein seen as the archetype of the scientist who sacrifices all other considerations in his quest for knowledge and power” (Higgins, 29), which is how he ends up all alone in the end, with only his creature. Mary Shelley revolutionized the gothic genre as a female author, offering new perspectives in her novel which is given thought to by Hogle “the Gothic has long confronted the cultural problem of gender distinctions, [...] and how boundaries between the genders might be questioned to undermine or reorient those structures”(10), using Victor as a character in pursuit of “masculine interests”. Overall Mary
In the novel Frankenstein, by award-winning author Mary Shelley, a young scientist named Victor Frankenstein heads off to college. After a number of years when he eventually mastered his studies, he decided to attempt to design a gory creature as an experiment, made from chemicals and various body parts that he found in a graveyard. In the story, Victor is not attentive toward his creature, and he is scared of what his monster is capable of doing. This story is often referred to as a masterpiece in literature, as the reader explores the life of Victor and his creation. Shelley's use of personification surrounding the monster in Frankenstein allows the audience to understand with his feelings of loneliness and isolation.
Yet even thus I loved them to adoration: and to save them, I resolved to dedicate myself to my most abhorred task” (Shelley 108) . Victor, as the creator, feels as if he is responsible for all the deaths the monster had caused. This also shows that Victor is willing to do anything for his family, even a task he finds intolerable. Victor Frankenstein experiences and indicates compassion for the
In mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” the morally ambiguous Victor Frankenstein plays a pivotal role that contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole- the allure of power. The moral ambiguity of the central character Victor Frankenstein is present throughout the text due to the mercurial nature of his morals and selfish tendencies. At the start of the novel victor Frankenstein is presented as an ambitious, mad scientist, in pursuit of his life goal- to create a being by giving life to an inanimate body. Following his success are a mix of oddly contradicting emotions.
Abhinav Divi Mrs. Bakkala English, 10 May 9, 2023 Gender Roles in Frankenstein Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein explores the traditional gender roles of the 18th century setting that determines the role of society depending on being a man or a woman, Shelly critiques the social and cultural norms at the time by showing the different characters and their role in society based on gender. Characters like Victor are given more freedom in accordance to their gender while characters like Elizabeth really have no say and are not really included within the storyline, examples like these are a significant driving factor in the plot of the story. In the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelly, gender roles reflect the norms of society during the 1700’s.
Tashea Williams Dr. Bard British Literature 17 April 2023 The Monstrosity of Neglect: The True Tragedy of Frankenstein Before the now infamous monster featured in gothic novelist Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus infiltrated popular culture, he was not a groaning, brain-dead zombie. Rather, in the beginning pages of Shelley’s novel, he is an intelligent, articulate, and sensitive character before he succumbs to mental degradation.
Victor states, “My limbs now tremble and my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost frantic, impulse urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit… and I shunned my fellow-creatures as if I had been guilty of a crime” (Shelley 40). This shows that Victor was once an innocent youth fascinated by the science of nature and then turned into a disillusioned, guilt-ridden man determined to destroy what he has created. Paul Sherwin demonstrates that, “for Frankenstein, who is dubiously in love with his own polymorphously disastrous history, the fateful event to which every other catastrophe is prelude or postscript is the creation” (Sherwin 883). Victor represses his needs to sleep, eat, and have any contact with his family and friends to follow this one ambition. The monster and Victor have all experienced the affects of self-centeredness.
All things considered, Frankenstein is a cautionary tale on the dangers of irresponsibility, Victor being matriarch. Victor exhibits his irresponsibility many times throughout the novel. His first instance of irresponsibility is shown after bring the creature to life, now only realizing: “…the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (59). As the result of his obsession with creating a stopped to death, he fails to realize the magnitude of what he is doing; creating a new life. However, he realizes the extent of his actions only when the creature is given life.
But how, when Victor fails to take responsibility and continuously runs away from his problems, while his father was a constant figure in his life? Victor abandons his creation, and in turn, leaves the monster to wander the countryside with no knowledge of the world. The monster becomes an outcast and unstable because he is “a person who lack[s] a moral upbringing and ties to family or community” (Foht 85). Similarly, Victor’s father insists that Victor leave for Ingolstadt–only just after Victor’s own mother passed away–and take on a new, strange country with no one to guide him. This abandonment leaves Victor confused and insecure in unfamiliar surroundings, but alone with reckless yearning and
The gothic fiction novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley centralizes on humanity and the qualifications that make someone human. The content of the novel Frankenstein depicts a monster displaying human traits that his creator Victor does not possess: empathy, a need for companionship, and a will to learn and fit in. Throughout the novel Shelley emphasizes empathy as a critical humanistic trait. The monster displays his ability to empathize with people even though they are strangers. On the other hand Victor, fails to show empathy throughout the novel even when it relates to his own family and friends.
Shelley utilizes her character’s history and experiences to portray the notion of multiple facets regarding a bountiful number of singular events spanning upon a multitude of years. To discern the differing viewpoints, we must first comprehend Shelley’s characters as well as their experiences and reactions to the world around them. Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist, plays the lead of this tragedy and shall be the primary focus. Victor’s life was initially a pleasant one with little in the form of hardship until his early adolescence where he departed to a university to further expand his
In her romantic novel, Mary Shelley introduces Victor Frankenstein, an ambitious and young natural philosopher, and calls into question the wisdom of creating a complex being with equally complex feelings. After two years of painstaking work, Frankenstein completes his creation, but is quickly repulsed by it and represses the idea of his imminent return. With the early abandonment of his creator, the creature is left on his own and develops his sense of morality and ethics— his superego—by observing an oblivious family. In Frankenstein, Shelley uses the De Lacey family to characterize the creature and mold his personality from one of compassion to one bent on revenge, leading to a schism between creation and creator.
Suggesting that women are not merely passive companions to men, but instead have a centralised role in contributing to the security of the established societal structure. The self-centred voice of Victor Frankenstein and the discourse of feminine exclusion within society conveyed through the character of the creature, can represent Shelley’s relationship with the patriarchal culture she was raised in, but also the progressive feminist familial atmosphere in which she had the privilege of growing up. Mary Shelley developed Frankenstein during the rise of the ‘Age of Enlightenment,’ in which many had emphasised the importance of science and medicine. Historically known as a male-dominated field, Shelley does not insert female characters into scientific character roles, instead leaving their presences purely passive, barely featuring strong, independent female characters and those who are present ironically die by the novel’s culmination. Juxtaposed by the male characters who showcase an obsessive single-mindedness to their goals and detach themselves from domestic matters.
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
Morgan Boyd Ms. Coke English 12 Honors 20 March 2023 Feminism in Frankenstein Patriarchies are one of the most common, yet inequitable societies that are “acceptable” of mankind. Male dominated societies are predominant throughout the past and present and oftentimes under this authority women are exploited and oppressed. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley delves into patriarchy and portrays how women fit into this social system. Women are important to the story but are not present.
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