Many people know that Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, was part of a family of famed Romantic era writers. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was one of the first leaders of the feminist movement, her father, William Godwin, was a famous social philosopher, and her husband, Percy Shelley, was one of the leading Romantic poets of the time ("Frankenstein: Mary Shelley Biography."). What most people do not know, however, is that Mary Shelley dealt with issues of abandonment her whole life and fear of giving birth (Duncan, Greg. "Frankenstein: The Historical Context."). When she wrote Frankenstein, she revealed her hidden fears and desires through the story of Victor Frankenstein’s creation, putting him symbolically in her place …show more content…
In a fit of passion he destroyed the unfinished female creature, so that it could not kill him. This is the manifestation of Shelley’s repressed desire to never give birth to another child. The first creature, in anger at the loss of a future mate, took revenge on Victor. The creature led his creator across the globe and through terrain in which Victor could not survive. This chase lasted several months, ending in the Arctic Circle, and caused the death of his creator.
Another recurring theme is that of the child abandoned by the parents. Elizabeth, before being adopted into Victor’s family, was abandoned by her birth parents- her mother had died, and her father was in jail. Victor’s closest friend, Henry Clerval, was mainly neglected by his father. Henry’s father was “a narrow-minded trader and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son” (54). He denied Henry an education, though Henry wished more than anything to accompany Victor at the university. Lastly, Victor left his creature shortly after giving him life. The creature can be said to be a representation of Shelley’s id, a manifestation of all her suppressed feelings (Hicks, Elizabeth. "Psychoanalytic Criticism and Frankenstein."). He is utterly alone in the world, having been left by his creator- the one person who should care for him and be responsible for him. He is as miserable as Shelley must have felt at being
Dr. Frankenstein, the creator of the hated creature has clearly been characterized as an unfit care taker. Why has the author of this book portray her main character this way? Her reasoning can be seen through the actions of the monster itself. Following the evidence provided by Shelley, the monster symbolizes a young child. Victor was meant to take on the actions of a parent to his “child”. Rather than being focused on the role of women during this era, the main focus seemed to link to importance of parenting. The importance of a parent-child relationship is seen through this book with our main characters Victor Frankenstein and his creation and Mary Shelley herself.
This novel reflects Shelley’s own childhood, which consisted of her feeling obligated to rebel against her own father’s wishes and his choice for her marriage. Frankenstein is a way for Shelley to tell her own experiences with parental conflict and how she feels she was affected by her demanding father and the environment she grew up in, by comparing herself to Victor’s monster. Shelley analyzed her own characteristics, and the characteristics of her father, and placed them within Victor and the
Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, was raised by a single parent, her father William Godwin. She acknowledges the mentally stimulating role a father plays in the development of a daughter, presumably speaking from personal experience. She declares, "There is a peculiarity in the education of a daughter, brought up by a father only, which tends to develop early a thousand of those portions of mind, which are folded up” (Veeder). Shelley offers in Frankenstein a portrait of how children’s minds are shape, and ultimately their fates sealed, due to influences from their fathers. Alphonse, Victor’s father, made mistakes in his parenting that negatively shaped the development of Victor’s mind and how he treated other living things.
In Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein creates a creature, stronger and better than humans in every way except his looks. After Frankenstein abandons him, the Creature meets the De Lacey’s, a nice little family that indirectly teach him how to read and write. In truth, the Creature only becomes a monster after the hatred that Felix, one of the De Lacey’s, shows him. Before, he had done nothing wrong, but afterwards, all he did was fall down a slippery slope.
When man decides to assume the role of God, consequences are bound to plague such an ambition. In the case of Victor Frankenstein, the protagonist in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the product of such an ambition is a creature born of the dead. Despite the frightening process of his creation, the creature wakes into the world as a benevolent being. He simply longs for acceptance and friendship, but due to his unsightly features, the world is quick to condemn him as the monster he appears to be. With an unbearable sense of rejection in his heart, the monster begins to turn wicked. Soon enough he is responsible for multiple deaths in the name of revenge. Although many treat him unfairly, the monster is fully aware of his actions
The novel “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley involves the complex issues with the creation of life through an inanimate life. Shelley uses these character archetypes to develop a deeper meaning of the characters intentions. Shelley does an excellent job at allowing the reader to have a peak at the characters inner thoughts and feelings. The archetypes presented in Frankenstein allow readers to identify with the character's role and purpose.
After creating the creature, Victor comes down with a “nervous fever which confine[s] [him] for several months” (Shelley 63). The reader sympathizes with Victor because his near death shows how he regrets his mistakes. Upon discovering that his creature has killed Henry, “[Victor] was a mere skeleton, and fever night and day preyed upon [his] wasted frame” (198). Here Shelley uses the fact that humans are inclined to want to help those that are sick and in need so that they sympathize for Victor. When Elizabeth is murdered he begin to cry when he realizes that the creature had “snatched from [Victor] every hope of future happiness; [and that] no creature had ever been so miserable as [he] (214). Shelley further earns the reader’s sympathy for Victor by saying that the creature has deprived it of any future
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the main theme and the reason why the novel was created is the concept of human rejection. For Mary Shelley, rejection was what made her into the person she was at the time and why she wrote Frankenstein. When she was born, her mother died and her father wanted nothing to do with her because he thought that her birth caused her death. Feeling the way he did, he abandoned her creating a feeling of rejection in Shelley for the rest of her life. Her pain of dealing with rejection, especially feeling the rejection of father after her mother died, is reflected in Frankenstein. In the novel, a little girl named Caroline appears early on and she does not have a mother. This example and the fact that all mothers die shows the relationship between them and Shelley’s mother dying. The feeling of rejection felt when her father rejected her is depicted in the monster that Victor Frankenstein creates
In the Gothic novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley... she uses the sense of abandonment to convey the relationship between a parent and child. Both Victor and the Creature are both abandoned in a way that influences their actions and how they behave in life. Throughout the novel, Victor and the Creature choose to follow a path that endangers many innocent people and, by doing so, lose their sense of identity. Shelley uses the characters of the victims and the Creature to reveal how a parental figure influences day to day life and how it alters life changing decisions.
When we all write, we are somehow influenced by the events in our own life. Whether it be experiences we have encountered, events, people, or desires; all are entangled with the pleasurable and not so pleasurable. Some believe Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, was written to show the painful life she endured. She presents a novel about Victor Frankenstein, a man who creates a living creature only to be horrified by him. Shelley’s personal fears become evident in Frankenstein as the events and characters throughout the novel are also found in her own life. The life of Mary Shelley had a significant influence on her writing of Frankenstein, one of the most famous stories of all time.
Brennan explains how Mary Shelley has several characters (Victor, the monster, and Walton) dealing with the loss dealing with the loss of their mother. My Monster / My Self, written by Barbara Johnson tells how “Frankenstein” is more than a story, it is an autobiography of Mary Shelley’s life. In this essay Barbara Johnson explains how Mary Shelly was capable of telling her story through male characters in a time when her own personal autobiography would have been highly unacceptable. Laura P. Claridge ’s essay Parent-Child Tensions in Frankenstein attempts to convince readers that certain characters (Victor, the monster, and Walton) are examples of what happens to children who are not parented correctly.
Victor had a dying need inside of him to control everything that he felt was below him in status, and this wasn’t something that he was aware of, it was something that he was accustomed to doing. There were many women in the story, as well as the male creature, who fell victim to his actions. In the novel, Victor agrees to make his creature a mate, who is a female, but decides to go back on his word when the possibility of the female creature having her own opinion struck him. This is a prime example that Mary Shelley uses in her text to show how women were not allowed to have their own opinion, because it was feared that women would do things that men did not like. At the end of the novel though, Mary Shelley punishes Victor for all of his degrading actions, which makes it very apparent to the reader that she does not agree with those point of views, and is a women with a
The forest’s smells were overwhelming, the fresh, earthy smell emitting from the dirt and plant life around me, was intoxicatingly sweet while the air was sour making my nose tingle . Creating the perfect mix of sweet and sour. I kinda liked it, very calming. I continued walking down a path in the foliage, where the trees and bushes wouldn't grow there as if aiding me in my search. Belatedly I realized that, I have been walking aimlessly. Gradually, without my noticing as I had been walking my body began to feel numb my natural sense of direction fading. My tongue was thick, my ears had a sound blocking bubble in them, yet I still kept going desperate for some reason to find whatever I was searching for. Unfortunately the longer I walked,
Victor Frankenstein’s characterization and family background establish his nature as the true “monster” in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Victor had an idyllic childhood, which laid the foundation to his self-absorbed and uncaring behavior later in life. As a child, both Victor’s mother and father provided him with excessive care, love, compassion and the freedom to pursue whatever his heart desired. In describing his relationship with his parents, Victor states, “They seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of love just to bestow them on me” (Shelley 19). This idea of showering their son with excessive affection is further demonstrated when Alphonse and Caroline adopted Elizabeth Lavenza into their family
My feelings have changed from Very Sympathetic to Sympathetic and Antipathetic in between Chapters 5 and 6. The reason my feelings changed toward the creature is because he stated acting like a real monster in the beginning of Chapter 6. In Chapter 5, I still had sympathy for the creature, since he was helping a poor family with wood for fire since they they not have a stove for cooking or warmth and since he got beat up by some character while speaking to an old man. However, in Chapter 6, the creature starts acting more like a demon because he killed William, Victor's brother, and he burned down a house in which a family lived in. At this point, I was very antipathetic, but the creature also saved a women from drowning and got shot by a man,