Mistakes of Modern Science Related to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

As the novel goes on everyone Victor once cared for are decimated in the path of his creation. "I was possessed by a maddening rage when I thought of him and desired and ardently prayed that I might have him within my grasp to wreak a great and signal revenge on his cursed head" (Shelley 103). Now, due to his unwavering lust for knowledge, all that was once good and innocent has been stripped from him. This has left him as a former shell of himself, to be compared with his own creation, solely driven by vengeance.

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

These chapters focus mainly on Victor Frankenstein's back-story as he was growing up. He describes his cousin Elizabeth, who he later becomes married to, and about how they came about finding her. Later we are introduced to Victors best friend, Henry Clerval. We also learn that Frankenstein became fascinated with the sciences by the 16th century author Cornelius Agrippa. This along with many of the other philosophers of that time inspired him to become a scientist. Later he also witnesses the power of electricity when a bolt of lightning strikes a tree nearby where he is staying. At the start of chapter three we learn that Victor is in the process of leaving for college when Elizabeth gets sick. In an effort

Shelley addresses romantic conventions in Victor to convey his loss of identity. Victor is impatient and restless when constructing the creation, so much, that he does not think about it’s future repercussions. One of the great paradoxes that Shelley’s novel depicts is giving the monster more human attributes than to it’s creator [p. 6 - Interpretations]. This is true as the monster seeks an emotional bond, but Victor is terrified of it’s existence. The monster later reveals, “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurred at and kicked and trampled on [Shelley, p. 224].” Victor’s lack of compassion is rooted from the inability to cope with his reality. He distances himself from others and is induced with fainting spells [Shelley, p. 59]. From this, the nameless creature exemplifies Victor’s attempt to abandon his creation to escape his responsibilities. His creation is described as, ‘wretched devil’ and ‘abhorred monster,’ eliciting that the unobtainable, pitied identity [Shelley, p. 102]. The act of not naming the creature reveals Victor as hateful, and unnaturally disconnected to his own created victim.

Victor’s blindness to what his end result will produce is immediately revealed when his final work is a hideous creature. Victor, through repulsion, neglects caring for the creature in its blank slate, gradually fuelling the ambition it feels for revenge. With the monster isolated, he begins to learn, “I learned to distinguish between the operations

Mary Shelley makes us question who really the “monster” is. Is it the creature or Victor? While the creature does commit murder, he does not understand the consequences of his actions. He is like an infant who is unfortunately left to learn about the workings of society, and his place in it, on his own. He has no companions and feels a great sense of loneliness and abandonment. The creature voices his frustration and anger and seems to try to project his feelings of guilt onto Victor, as if to show him that he is the ultimate cause of the creature’s misery while he is simply the victim of Victor’s manic impulse. Shelley utilizes words, phrases, and specific tones when the creature vents his misery to Victor and this evokes, amongst the

Shelley uses Victor’s lack of humanity as a metaphor for mankind’s negligence of the dying essence of romanticism in the time the book was written. It is evident in the chapter where Victor uses the serenity of nature to attain tranquility in a troubled mind. The visual imagery created in Montanvert accentuates the

Victor Frankenstein's characterization is slowly fed to the audience by indirect characterization, meaning we learn more about Victor through his thoughts and actions as well as how other character's act towards him. During the first few chapters, Victor is introduced to the audience as a doted upon he was "their plaything and their idol, and something better—their child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by heaven, whom to bring up to good" (31). This creates an more distance between everyone else in the novel and Victor, Shelley is already establishing that Victor is higher placed than the majority of others in the novel. Yet Victor is also a curious child he details his "vehement" passions "turned not towards childish pursuits

Though the conclusions arrived at here are of the same theoretical place as the philosophical minds had deliberated before, the explanations had by Burke and Shaw circumvented parallel processes of thought, to more rely upon their similar conclusions, both rooted in historical precedent. With Frankenstein, however, Shelley stays committed to its endgame in practicing metaphorical weight and symbolic meaning, not only for setting the classical arguments incorporated here, in definite terms. This isn’t even in creating some microcosm of a singularized case in which man had sought to defy the natural barriers, and replicate the things he saw, and experienced. Instead, interactions between characters and unfolding conflicts set upon them, are to represent both these spheres converging. They are depicted less as staunch absolutes, but more so met with being altered, and changing the perceptions drawn up all along. Conferred later in an accounted byproduct of a more recent mindset, this nonetheless stands for lessons at the underpinnings of how we have grown as a society in general, which Shelley would seem to remind us of. As opposed to some alleged “Modern Prometheus,” Victor’s pursuit comes up barely mythicized, and as Bate says, “is a healthy disorientation… to realize that the Western man may not after all be the master of all things” (Bate 480). Likewise, the creature takes on a role within the self-fulfilling prophecy, subject to the maltreatment of human benefactors, and,

He tells of the void he feels in his soul. He tells of the bitter grief one experiences after the death of loved one and what it feels like to no longer see them and hear their voice. Mary Shelley illustrates that this life is not the end, but there is another life where loved ones will be seen. Victor’s mother is demonstrating how special Elizabeth is to her and that she wants her to take care of the family and to someday marry Victor. Later in the novel, Victor leaves for school. Victor’s father tells him, “I know that while you are pleased with yourself, you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear regularly from you. You must pardon me if I regard any interruption in your correspondence as a proof that your other duties are equally neglected”(33). After, Victor leaves for school to begin his studies he becomes self-absorbed in his work. Family is very important to Victor’s father. Victor realizes that he has become too involved in his studies and knows that it is unhealthy to behave in such a way. However, he does not want to quit and begins to justify his actions. He suggests that if others had given up, then history could have been altered. Victor feels isolated and lonely. He thinks of his family and how disappointed they are that they have not heard from him. Shelly uses this quote to emphasize the importance of human relationships and how important they are to a person’s well-being. The theme of human

He recognises that his health is deteriorating and is not sleeping this is a reflection of the creation scene where he deprived himself of sleep and his health suffered, the scenes differ because then he was giving life in the first scene and now wants to take it away. Victor is in a deep depression, this is indicated when he says, “Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe”

Victor uses his knowledge not for the benefit of society, but for his own purpose of experimentation which ends up turning out the opposite way that he imagines. Knowing his own vanity, Victor says "lean from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow" (Shelley 38). After creating the monster and all the hardships Victor had to go through, he realizes that a person should be happy with the world around him/her and not try to change it. He admits that trying to become a man greater than who he could be drove him mad and his knowledge went in tow with it. From

     Romantic writer Mary Shelley’s gothic novel Frankenstein does indeed do a lot more than simply tell story, and in this case, horrify and frighten the reader. Through her careful and deliberate construction of characters as representations of certain dominant beliefs, Shelley supports a value system and way of life that challenges those that prevailed in the late eighteenth century during the ‘Age of Reason’. Thus the novel can be said to be challenging prevailant ideologies, of which the dominant society was constructed, and endorsing many of the alternative views and thoughts of the society. Shelley can be said to be influenced by her mothers early feminist views, her father’s

Shelley’s novel faces the task of creating a notable message that her audience will appreciate. In order for Shelley to effectively signify that mankind must be able to demarcate the attainment of knowledge, she takes her novel to an extreme. Shelley writes, “Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world” (Shelley 40) in order to stress Victor’s extravagant notions. As Joseph Kestner, professor of Romantic and Victorian literature, puts it, Victor positions himself as the head of all hierarchies in denying God as the sole creator of man. The intention of the author for placing Victor at such a high position

He says, "When I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated a long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it." This acknowledgment of the danger is significant as it displays Victor's conscious and his willingness to disregard it, or his inability to obey it.