Internal Beauty In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

People should be judged on their character and personality, instead of outward appearances. It is hard to feel handsome or pretty all of the time; picking out all of the insecurities. Feeling awkward and out of place in front of friends and family can be hard to deal with. Everyone can relate to the creature every once in awhile. The theme, “Beauty isn’t skin deep, it’s what’s inside that matters”, can be found throughout Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, when the blind old man enjoys the company of the creature, the creature yearns for a mate, and at the end of the story, the creature does weep for Victor when he dies.

The many qualities that beauty contains can affect who someone truly is in the outside. But those qualities do not define who someone is from the inside. According to “Hello, beautiful: what we talk about when we talk about beauty” by Arthur Krystal, it states “beauty is a mess, a sinkhole, a trap. Approach it philosophically

Dr.Kesiraju Ramprasad said that “Beauty isn't about having a pretty face. It is having a pretty mind, a pretty heart, and most importantly a beautiful soul”. However, truthful the Doctors quote may be, it is often not what is viewed as important in real life situations. In society, beauty

As journalist Kate Fox stated, “Every period of history has had its own standards of what is and is not beautiful, and every contemporary society has its own distinctive concept of the ideal physical attributes” (Mirror Mirror). Although the standards of beauty have fluctuated over various eras, Mary Shelley confronted many concepts of beauty in her novel, Frankenstein. According to Face Research, one reoccurring standard of beauty is symmetry, as “...Evolutionary Advantage view suggests that attraction to symmetric individuals reflects attraction to healthy individuals...” This suggests that facial symmetry and human perception of beauty

Since the dawn of time, women have been judged based on their looks. In today’s society, women who are conventionally beautiful are seen as less capable than the rest of the population, especially men. As a girl in today’s society, I’ve been judged based on my looks since the day I was born. Every woman on television, in movies, or in magazines is harshly photo shopped to fit the standards society has set for physical beauty. When you grow up in that sort of environment, you have no say in whether or not that affects you. Orual, Redival, and Psyche are experiencing the same situation in Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. In their own ways, each girl’s thoughts and action were determined solely be the world’s impression of them.

INTRO: While the Age of Enlightenment emphasized reason and knowledge, the following literary period from 1800 to 1850 known as Romanticism was characterized by creativity, emotion and relationships. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, written in 1818, exemplifies this style of literature in its use of imagery, tone and symbolism. By implementing a writing technique known as frame narrative, a perspective is presented as a story within a story within another story, etc. In this particular book, the reader is introduced to an explorer named Robert Walton, whose letters begin as first-person narration, which transition into the viewpoints of the other main characters in Frankenstein. On his voyage to the North Pole, Walton writes letters to his sister in England that explain his encounter with a scientist named Victor Frankenstein, who in turn tells his story of how he created a “monster.” Frankenstein’s creation then narrates and defends the life unwillingly thrust upon him. Finally, a group known as the “cottagers” offer a different perspective of the entire matter, which primarily focuses on the creation’s interactions with society.

“I observe, that society, merely as society, without any particular heightenings, gives us no positive pleasure in the enjoyment; but absolute and entire solitude, that is, the total and perpetual exclusion from all society, is as great a positive pain as can almost be conceived.” (Burke part I, part 11) Burke’s ideas about solitude imply that Viktor’s own pain and terror come when he is at his most sublime moments. In creating the creature he is alone, and when meeting the creature for the first time since his abandonment he is alone. Not only alone but with in the mountains which is another example of the sublime. Following these encounters with the creature Viktor falls ill multiple times; as if the sublime and the creature

Nature plays a very important part in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, often making the characters and situations she places them in more believable. Using elements of the natural world to convey emotion and feeling is a key component of Romantic writing, and can especially be seen in Frankenstein. As the story progresses, however, Frankenstein’s mind becomes clouded with the thought of his monster, and nature becomes less and less important to him. Although, from the way Dr. Frankenstein uses the grand landscapes of Geneva and Ingolstadt to get his many messages across, it is easy to tell that Shelley wrote this book during the Romantic era. Using the grandiose environment around them, the characters in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein become easier

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, appearance determines your acceptance into society. Characters’ perceptions of each other, mainly based on appearances, become true. Beauty supposedly reveals or reflects positive personality traits throughout and seems to be the main way to assess someone's worth. Throughout the novel Mary Shelley associates physical beauty with positive character traits.

In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley uses the element of nature to portray the role of a motherly figure to Victor and his monster. Victor and his monster were deprived of parental love that a child requires. Instead, the necessary love is provided to both Victor and his monster via nature. Nature was also a source of motivation in their lives and played a major role in each of their actions. Whenever they were confronted with a challenge, both characters sought help from the nature. The nature helped the characters confront their ordinary problems as well as act as a guidance for their actions. Shelley uses metaphors to describe the emotions of Victor and the monster. Throughout the novel, both characters pursue solutions to the questions such as, why were they abandoned and forced to live on their own. Neither Alphonse (father of Victor) nor Victor (so called father of the monster) obliged to the duties of fatherhood. Victor was abandoned after the death of his mother and the loneliness triggered him to form an obsession with knowledge. In simple terms, being nurtured by nature had an effect on him becoming a bizarre scientist in his lifetime that performs unorthodox experiments to continually increase the body of his knowledge. Furthermore, Victor, creator or “father” of the Monster, abandoned his own “child” in a hypocritical society. The monster was merely lift alone in a massive world where there was no other like him. Throughout the

Whether it’s good or bad, it demonstrates the imbalance of Victor’s actions and natural outcomes of being unfortunate. In Frankenstein, Victor has discovered a new idea of bringing the dead into a new life, it was considered an accomplishment of his studies and conspiracies of a new world. Unfortunately, the accomplished had major mishaps like the omen that he saw before the departure to Ingolstadt, because it cost his family from creating the creature, as a reference to a human sacrifice to bring the dead back to life. In Frankenstein, Shelley reveals of how Victor felt about the first death, “I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched of human

Sometimes considered one of the first science fiction novels of supernatural terror, Frankenstein proved itself an instant success when released anonymously in 1818. The mad scientist Victor Frankenstein and his creation provoke readers with the fear of the unknown and the power of natures forces. A deeper look into the character of Victor Frankenstein, the role of scientific experimentation and the intricate settings of nature in which the story evolves, prove Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein , a worthy example of both Romantic and Gothic representation in nineteenth century British Literature.

A reader's subconscious often disables their ability to notice moral foundations that the author develops through the text; thus, making it difficult for an individual to recognize the value the text holds and its importance. In the article “Why Study Literature?” the author explains that “literature teaches us better courses of action and more effective responses to situations”; essentially he or she says that literature has the ability to shape one’s morals; as it can teach us what do in certain situations and how we should act. Similarly, in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the author builds morality in readers by stressing the wrongs of using one’s visual appearance to determine their inner nature. At birth the monster is abandoned for his hideousness, the monster is “endowed with perceptions and passions” (Shelley, Chapter 16) after which he is “cast[ed] as an object for the scorn and horror of mankind” (Shelley, Chapter 16). For example, the monster chases for love when he assists the poor De Lacey family in collecting their lumber, however he is driven out by their horror upon seeing the face of their secret patron for the first time. Looking at this from an aesthetic stance, Shelley appears to be examining our natural tendency to judge a book by its cover. The author manifests the importance of inner beauty rather than one’s outer beauty, for it speaks more sincerely of their qualities as an individual. Had the protagonist realized the creature’s nobility from the

“But Sorrow Only Increased with Knowledge:” A Critique on Romantic Ideals in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

The main reason the word beauty has been used to describe external features rather than internal ones, so much more in the recent years, is the media. The media has evolved into something extremely influential, and the most clear message people recive from this, is what they are supposed to look like. For instance, magazines often create young girls who believe that thin as paper models seen in any magazine are what they are supposed to look like. Also, another component adding to the superficial terms people have are the celebrities that we idolize who are coached to not have even one single hair out of place; all those celebrity’s with perfect skin, hair, and body have been accomplices in the media’s outrageous spread shallow opinions. The outcome of the media’s bar being set so high is people all around doing whatever necessary to preserve their physical appearance regardless of the effect it has on their health or bank accounts.