If Victor Frankenstein had such a perfect childhood, why did his life play out the way it did? In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Victor insinuates that growing up, his life was faultless. However, the relationship with his parents–his father specifically–is the basis of his haunting mistakes and misfortune. Furthermore, the Frankensteins’ family troubles are the outcome of Shelley’s own burdened upbringing. Victor’s relationship with his father is caring and supportive, and his treatment of Victor as a child greatly impacts his later decisions in life. Victor’s parents raise him with attention and lavish him with gifts but fail to raise him emotionally; they put pressure on him to fulfill their every wish. Victor describes his childhood as idyllic …show more content…
Victor's ambition, or pressure to win his father’s approval, urges him to make a creature that would be “inferior, in size, to no one” (Claridge 18), and this action is one of anger towards his family and one to compensate for the insecurity he felt under the expectations of his father. Victor was driven by only retaliation and desperation, and so he was not considering all of the morals of science stacked against him: “Frankenstein, being a mere man and not God, was incapable of manufacturing the goodness-instilling portions of the soul” (Foht 84). He says his father never corrected his studies with modern science or limited his aspirations, so Victor says, “My dreams were therefore undisturbed by reality” (Shelley 26). Victor’s parenting is not much of a contrast to that of Alphonse Frankenstein. 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
In Frankenstein, Victor is consumed by his ambition to create life that he pays no attention to his personal relationships with his family. Mary Shelley writes, “I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation” (35). Victors ambition drove him to isolate himself for two years he pursued his goals to such extremes that he disregarded his own health and relationships.
At the beginning, Victor is introduced to be a young, driven scientist with a desire to discover new things. He broken heartedly pleaded to Henry and Professor Waldman, “listen. You love someone, they have a sick heart-wouldn’t you give them a healthy one?”(scene 6) He genuinely saw it that way, to help others not feel the pain and sorrow he felt. Frankenstein’s innocent ambition quickly goes downhill as his craving for knowledge and the ability to create a being that will not grow old or sick takes over.
Victor’s father was around most of Victor’s life, yet he did not support Victor. When Victor fell ill, his father did not visit him to take care of him. Clerval attends to Victor when he is sick, breaking gender norms by playing nurse. When Victor told his father about studying alchemy, he told Victor that he would be wasting his life. In Victor’s mind, being a good father is not being there for his son, the monster.
This seemingly selfless decision to finally place his family’s needs above his work did not occur without negative consequences though. The creature had to learn about life, without the parental guidance most children receive, through trial and error. Upon meeting with Victor, he began pleading his story. The creature exclaimed that Victor had “endowed [him] with perceptions and passions and then cast [him] abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind” and therefore will pay for such maltreatment (Shelley 150). Victor completely shunning his accomplishment to focus on his family and himself harmed the creature in unimaginable ways and in turn risked his family’s lives.
Frankenstein and his creature’s parent-child dynamic is evident as the monster refers to Frankenstein as his creator, asking him to destroy him if he desired to: “‘Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom you art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life?’” (68). Frankenstein’s creature questions Victor’s motives in creating him since it is inconsistent with his goal of destroying him.
Upon seeing the creature, Victor saw horror and felt intense guilt. In an attempt to make a creature, Victor soon realizes his knowledge would bring about his own misery and in his “attempts to steal knowledge” it “brings about his own destruction” (“Frankenstein” [Nineteenth]). Victor, because he rejected the monster, was “isolated emotionally” causing him to feel even more alone and sick (“Frankenstein:Or” [Knowledge]). Victor later moves “further away from civilization and closer to feelings of isolation and depression” (“Frankenstein” [Novels]).
However, he soon exposes his flawed and unreliable perspective when his repeated insistence that he loves his family is met by his incongruous ambivalence at best, and cold apathy at worse; Victor has not been home in five years, and despite his family’s concern for his health, he refuses to reach out to them. This inconsistency in description and reality convincingly suggest a “strained emphasis on felicity” (2). As Claridge further argues, Victor’s father is “insensitive to his son,” “disapproves of [Victor’s] grief” after his mother’s passing, and
DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS The role of victor is subverting the mythical norms in Frankenstein. Usually the creator is considered superior and perfect in his qualities however, in this novelette, the creator himself is flawed he fails to own his own creation. On the complete contrast, Mary Shelley portrays the Creature to be an isolated figure that spends his life desiring a companion and friendship. The Creature is so rejected by society, so abandoned by Victor and the people he come across, that he becomes filled with hatred towards everyone, particularly for the one who placed him into this terrible state in the first place – Victor.
(page 36) Growing up Victor also had a strong desire to learn about things
In 1818 Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, a novel that follows Victor Frankenstein, an ambitious man on his journey to defy the natural sciences. In Volume I of the novel, Victor discusses his childhood, mentioning how wonderful and amazing it was because of how his family sheltered him from the bad in the world. “The innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me” (35). When Victor brings up his childhood, he suggests that parents play a strong in how their kids turn out, either "to happiness or misery" (35). In particular the main character was sheltered as a child to achieve this “happiness” leading to Victor never developing a coping mechanism to the evil in the world.
The monster then wants to monitor all of Victor’s progress. After agreeing to create a female monster, Victor starts to doubt his decision. Victor’s father has realized that Victor looks troubled most of the time. Victor at this time
The pleasure in attaining his desires persists in being the most important aspect for Victor, rather than family. During his journey, Victor deprives himself of his family and friends so he can advance his course to grandeur. The self-centered mind of Frankenstein, as well as many individuals, puts the achievement of their own desires before the compassion of others. This reality conveys the lonesome campaign individuals face when only finding pleasure in the attainment of their ambitions. Instead of this undesirable lifestyle without family, Victor’s journey could have been more satisfying with family and friends by his
Although Victor had an abundance of nurture, it was in his nature to be monstrous. In comparison, Victor’s monster Frankenstein was created in a lab and abandoned at birth. While Frankenstein did not grow up with any friends or family, he was a good being for majority of his life. Frankenstein was attacked and taunted by villagers, and did not fight back. He also took joy in being outside and observing nature.
Victor’s childhood, as well as the situation in which he unnaturally creates and raises a monster, presents the effects of destructive parenting on a growing individual and the demand of a loving family in a successful life. Given the affluent family he lived in,
Now a woman may have a child expecting the child to be perfect in what they find perfection to look like in looks and skills. Yet they are unprepared for the child to turn out as anything than what they expected. The wealthy women will be able to have a nanny come in to take care of the child, so they don’t have to deal with the imperfect child. There are times when a child does not turn out how the parents wanted so they may emotionally, or even physically, abuse the child. This is the relationship she portrays with Victor and his creation.