Analyzing Mary Shelley's 'Monster'

Man changes all the time. His emotions, state in life, body figure and even peace of mind can change in a matter of moments. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, one of the themes expressed repeatedly is the mutability of the state of man. Victor Frankenstein emotions and states of life change many times in this novel. Mary Shelley uses Victor Frankenstein to show the audience that the only thing that does not change is the fact that human beings are always changing. Some of these changes come by impulse other changes may come by changes in the surrounding environment.

Our society has a very acute perception of what is and what is not normal, predicated through our upbringing and life experiences. For instance, people are viewed as weird or foreign if they have a disability. Frankenstein by Mary Shelly is about a creature that is created by Victor Frankenstein. The creature wants to understand why he was made, what his purpose in life is and why he isn’t accepted by society; in order to fulfill these needs the creature try’s to connect with his creator Frankenstein. However, Frankenstein does not want to have any personal contact with the creature. Understandably, the creature wants to connect with Frankenstein because the creature sees Frankenstein as normal and wants to be like Victor. On the same front, Frankenstein does not want to connect with the creature because he views the creature as abnormal. As a result, the creature threatens Frankenstein and ends up killing most of Frankenstein’s family and friends to purposely hurt Frankenstein. Mary Shelly shows that despite someone’s power and knowledge, acceptance in society is not guaranteed.

When certain people feel lonely with no support system around them,they often do everything in their power to seek revenge against the person who put them in their lonely state without thinking about the repercussion .In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein,Victor’s creature is treated with no dignity because of his ugly physical appearance. Since he has not receive any dignity,equity or respect the creature decides to seek revenge. It was common in the eighteenth century for people to be treated unfairly than other people because of their different physical appearance. This basic idea of inequality is shown through the text Frankenstein. Frankenstein maintains its relevancy to a modern audience through its powerful themes.These themes include the need of companionship, appearances vs reality and the consequences of revenge.

Throughout Mary Shelley’s life, she has faced many obstacles that have made her a strong woman. The events that took place in her life influenced her to create the novel Frankenstein. Shelley’s life has been documented by many biographers (Biography editors, 2016). Many people have also written about the novel 's original story, Shelley’s relationship with Frankenstein the creation, and the devaluing of life in Shelley’s Frankenstein. In the novel, Victor has a love for science. He collects body parts from the dead to use for the creation of the monster. During the time period this took place, science still was being frowned upon. The creation of the monster was impossible to everyone back then because science was not as advanced as it is now. Frankenstein is said to have many similarities with the author. As the novel of Frankenstein unfolds, you can relate parts of the novel to Shelley’s life.

I thought that ‘Frankenstein’ was really interesting and that if I had the chance I would read it my whole life and continue to read it and watch the movie my whole life. Not only would I read it with my cousins and my aunt and uncle I would read it with my brothers and parents. I thought it would be a great read and would be an interesting thing to be reading. I also thought that it would be a history type of book. Yes, it did live up to my expectations because it was an interesting read and it was entertaining. No, because it was not part history like I thought it was going to be. I would recommend it to all of my friends because it was a really entertaining book that I think that they would like it so yes I would recommend it to some

In the novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the Creature 's only need is for a female companion, which he asks Victor Frankenstein his maker to create. Shelley shows the argument between the creature and Frankenstein. The creature says: "I demand a creature of another sex, but as hideous as myself" (Shelley 139). Shelley shows what the creature wants from Frankenstein and what his needs are. Shelley gives us an idea of the sympathy that Frankenstein might feel for the creature even though he neglects him. The creature confronts Victor demanding his attention and expressing his needs. I feel a lot of sympathy for the creature based on him being able to forgive Victor for abandoning him and being able to communicate with him.

The sizzling, yet controversial novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley invites the reader into a science lab to study the unknown, which goes against the norm of society. Studying the unknown has the opportunity to create unpredictable and irreversible outcomes, along with internal conflicts with morals and ethics. Based on evidence proven in the novel, scientists should not study the unknown due to foreseeable actions and results.

The women in Frankenstein were pure, lifeless and innocent. Elizabeth stands up for Justine’s innocence but cannot prevent her execution. For both Victor and the monster, woman were the last thing they would ask for help, providing comfort and acceptance. For Victor, Elizabeth takes away his guilty conscience. The monster choses female of his kind to feel his awful existence. Both end up destroying the other’s love interest, making woman’s status from object of desire to object of revenge, which does not give women the opportunity to act on their own.

In the nineteenth century gothic novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses numerous allusions within her novel that can easily be interpreted by the reader. These allusions make it easier for readers to understand the characters and compare their circumstances throughout the story. The most significant and most used was from John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. “…Paradise Lost stands alone in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries atop the literary hierarchy, and Milton’s epic is clearly rooted in the history of Puritanism and in the bourgeois ideal of the individual, the ‘concept of the person as a relatively autonomous self-contained and distinctive universe’” (Lamb 305). This book has numerous parallels that readers can easily interpret to Frankenstein. Victor Frankenstein and his monster can both be identified with several characters from Paradise Lost. Among these characters are Adam, Eve, Satan, and God. Paradise Lost is even mentioned in chapter 15 after the monster that Victor creates reads the epic as if it was a history book. The Creature explains to Frankenstein, “But Paradise Lost excited different and far deeper emotions. I read it, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a true history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting” (Shelley 116). He is able to relate himself and the situations that he goes through in his life to this epic. Shelley’s use of

The following circumstances that Mary Shelley was in while she wrote the novel Frankenstein were not the average circumstances that an average author has. For an average author the typical setting setting would be in a peaceful calm environment where your head is clear so you can think only about the task in front of you. Mary Shelley did not have this at all but it was simply a blessing in disguise. Shelly comes from a very interesting background. Unlike others she has experienced tragedy throughout her life. Her first two children have died shortly after their birth, her sisters have died, and one of her first husband have died. This is quite an important aspect to her life considering she must have been a depressed

Frankenstein is a novel that is practically devoid of any female presence, yet author Mary Shelley pens a story that is lush with portrayals of feminine ideology. Throughout the course of this novel, the audience is introduced to three different female characters. The first is Elizabeth Lavenza— Victor Frankenstein’s wife. She is presented as a passive and weak woman who embodies the traditional role of women in the 19th century. Caroline Beaufort is present in the novel, but her role is limited to the ways in which she influences Victor, as she dies early in his childhood. The one strong female voice in this novel is that of Justine Moritz. Justine lives in the Frankenstein household, and she possesses a womanly voice that she can

Shelley 's narrative is seen to symbolize romantic fears, offering a tale of certain demise, one that gives technology negative connotations in the form of the creature whom is represented as an outcast of society. To emphasise this, the sublime settings in the text, provide a space where the marginalised can be heard, however, for in contrast to the power of beauty which works to contain and maintain social distinctions, the sublime in Frankenstein opens the way for the excluded to challenge the dominant discourse and this appears to be one of many things the creature substantially appears to represent.1

“I don 't understand why society is so interested in speculating about my appearance, anyway. What does my face have to do with my music or my dancing?” (“Michael Jackson”). Michael Jackson was a very talented musician, known for his singing and dancing. However, most people only knew him for how he intentionally changed his appearance, rather than focusing on his incredible talent. In a society that often judges only what is on the outside, beauty trumps talent nearly every time; an aesthetic society makes average looking people impotent. In a society such as this, it becomes difficult for a person to find their identity in the world or to use their talents for better. In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, it shows how difficult it is to avoid the negative consequences of corruption within a narcissistic society. For example, in Frankenstein, the monster was ostracized solely because of his appearance which was so wounding to him, that he lashed out against his tormentors. Mary Shelley’s novel reveals how the search for personal identity in a society focused on beauty can lead to tragedy through the use of a destructive Jungian shadow.

Mary Shelley chose to write Frankenstein from the perspective of three narrators, which, not surprisingly, were all male. We are presented with the accounts of Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the Monster. The women that are portrayed in this novel are simply tools used by the author to further develop the importance of the male experience of the narrators. They are portrayed as beautiful, capable of self sacrifice, delicate and nurturing to their men, yet at the same time they have very little influence over the actions of these men. In the few instances where Shelley gives women power, she quickly takes it away. Such as the phenomena of creating life that women have when they give birth, she gives to women, but then takes it away and hands to Victor, allowing him to play God. By looking at Frankenstein through the lens of Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, it becomes apparent that Shelley has written the novel with a focus on the patriarchal perspective that in turn points out the simplification of the female persona in the novel. This is important to acknowledge because Mary Shelley uses this as a mechanism to create an image of women that lacks proper representation and negates their contribution to the life cycle. Women are made to appear grotesque in a sense, similarly to the way that the commonwealth is made to appear in Burke’s text.

The novel of Frankenstein was written by Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, later known as Mary Shelley, whose parents William Godwin; philosopher and political writer, and Mary Wollstonecraft; famed feminist philosopher who died only 11 days after her birth. Even though Mary Shelley couldn’t spend time with her mother, she inherited her mother’s feminist thoughts. Mary Wollstonecraft was a strong advocate of woman’s rights and she lived to challenge for women to be treated as equals as men in patriarchal society and their right to education. When Frankenstein was still being written, it was the time women authors newly emerged and tried to take a stand in patriarchal society and its structure. Even though Mary Shelley inspired by her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft who believed in equality in between sexes, chose to write her story using three narratives, all men. All the women characters represented society’s expectation of women at that time through male perception. Frankenstein appears to contradict with her mother’s work with the weak, passive and submissive female characters. Unsurprisingly, many female characters’ faiths are the death; Elizabeth is murdered by the monster and Justine’s death by the justice system. However, The Arabian girl Safie displays a strong character in the novel. She is the only female character who disobeys