The Deranged Mind In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein tells the tale of a man whose entire life turns to misery after creating what he calls a monster, a demon and a fiend. However, the real monster in this story is pride and the feeling of superiority. This is evident in the novel with Robert Walton’s view of himself and his expedition, Victor Frankenstein’s attitude towards himself in comparison with the creature, and mankind’s perception of the creature and their ignorance towards him.

Frankenstein, a novel first published in the year 1818, stands as the most talked about work of Mary Shelley’s literary career. She was just nineteen years old when she penned this novel, and throughout her lifetime she could not produce any other work that surpasses this novel in terms of creativity and vision. In this novel, Shelley found an outlet for her own intense sense of victimization, and her desperate struggle for love. Traumatized by her failed childbirth incidents, troubled childhood, and scandalous courtship, many of Shelley’s life experiences can be seen reflected in the novel. When discussing the character and development of the monster, Shelley launches an extensive discussion on the

Sigmund Freud's studies in psychoanalysis are uncannily fore-grounded in the late romantic period. The works of William Wordsworth, Percy B. Shelley, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley, all function as poetic preludes to Freud's 18th century field. Particularly, it is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that creates a fictional rendering for psychoanalyst. In Frankenstein, Victor's rejection of the Monster metaphorically represents the ego's rejection of the unconscious. Following from this metaphorical paradigm, Freud's theories on narcissism, the libido theory, the doppelganger, neurosis, and the Oedipus-complex all resonate in the pages of Frankenstein. After a brief introduction to narcissism and

In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein puts the monster in a predicament that victimizes the monster. Victor creates the monster to be an “ugly wretch”(Shelley 141) therefore causing the monster grief for his entire life. The monster experiences severe loneliness for being an outcast. The monster is the greatest victim in this novel because of his creation, his loneliness, and everyone’s general fear or lack of concern for him.

In Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, the unnamed creature brings terror to civilians and commits horrific acts against his creator, Victor Frankenstein. However, his redeemable acts of kindness makes his character morally ambiguous. He struggles between doing well and causing trouble because of isolation, the excerpts of society, and his pursuit for love.

Easily one of the most notable themes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the role of nature versus nurture in developing children, recurs throughout the novel with the two main characters, Frankenstein and his creature, believing in opposite sides of this theme. Favoring nature, Frankenstein maintains that the creature was always evil from the moment of creation, regardless of the creature’s experiences. However, the creature, in his narrative to Frankenstein, argues that “[he] was benevolent and good; misery made [him] a fiend” (106). In adherence with John Locke’s concept of tabula rasa, the creature was born with a blank slate, and only through his experiences does he gain knowledge and personality. Struggling to persevere in the human world, Frankenstein’s creature merely wants humans to welcome him as one of them. The change of the creature from looking “upon crime as a distant evil” because “benevolence and generosity were ever present” in him to seeking revenge on Frankenstein results from a culmination of horrible experiences (103). While it may be hard to see the creature as a trustworthy narrator because of how he has acted and his ulterior motives, he does present physical evidence to support his tale. Facing rejection in different forms, he becomes truly evil, giving up hope of companionship as a result of his trials and lessons. From the moment of his creation, the creature encounters abandonment, violence, isolation, and rejection everywhere he turns.

In Shelley’s Frankenstein, the monster is portrayed as a grotesque abomination. However, as Hopkins states in Contending Forces, the cultural and geographical situations, or lack thereof, in which one matures in play a crucial role in the proper development of one’s mind and brain. The monster is simply a product of circumstance. The lack of social interactions alongside geographical isolation propelled the daemon to be alienated from society, ultimately resulting in a lack of morals and an underdeveloped psyche. By being a culmination of his surroundings and experiences it is revealed that the true monstrous entities are the factors that leave the daemon predisposed to fail in a modern society. Arguably, Victor created a being, while the circumstances that said being was placed in “created” a monster. Shelley purposefully terrorizes the monster with such intensity to provoke and justify the overarching theme in this novel which states that people should not be judged on their physical appearance.

Like most horror stories, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has a wretched monster who terrorizes and kills his victims with ease. However, the story is not as simple as it seems. One increasingly popular view of the true nature of the creature is one of understanding. This sympathetic view is often strengthened by looking at the upbringing of the creature in the harsh world in which he matures much as a child would. With no friends or even a true father, the creature can be said to be a product of society and its negative views and constant rejections of him. Although this popular view serves to lessen the severity of his crimes in most people’s eyes, the fact remains that the creature is in fact a cold-hearted wretch whose vindictive nature

Throughout the novel Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley, the creature is subjected to countless acts of violence and rejection. For a monster to develop, one must have been formerly exploited either by an individual or their society. The creature is not only a physical product of science, but his atrocious behavior is also an explicit result of Victor’s actions toward him. The creature was not born a monster, but slowly morphed into one as he experiences violence and rejection from his society.

In 1915, Sigmund Freud famously claimed that “evil could not be eradicated” (Schwarz 17). Freud is not the first to claim such a thing nor is he the first to be concerned about such evil. As a matter of fact, Mary Shelly raises this very issue amongst her exploration of nature versus nurture in her classic work of gothic fiction, Frankenstein. The monster, created by the ambitious Victor Frankenstein, is often considered to be evil due to his murderous path of revenge that left many dead in its wake. Yet, Mary Shelly discredits any such claims through her thorough discussion of nature versus nurture in the specific case of Frankenstein’s monster and goes onto hint at the true meaning of evil through her narrative of the monster.

In Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley, the monster which is created by Victor Frankenstein acts as a mirror to reflect and bring out Victor’s hidden thoughts. In a particular study called Frankenstein – A Critical Study from a Freudian Perspective, it argues that Victor on the surface seems to be a “healthy man” (Johnson 1). In fact, he unconsciously has many dangerous thoughts, and the creation of the monster brings out those thoughts and finally leads to his failure (Johnson 2). In specific, present paper will analysis Victor’s characters by examining his intention and decisions toward the monster he creates, and the paper is intended

In Shelley’s work, Victor Frankenstein's creation becomes a monster after Victor creates him, but when people treat him as an inferior, a hatred towards humanity awakens. Additionally, for something to be defined as a monster, it must hold certain negative characteristics (A monster has negative traits) In their respective works, Wilde and Shelley portrays the concept of a monstrosity and how society’s immense pressure forces one to become a monster. (An individual

Mary Shelley, a writer and leader of the Romantic era, was clearly influenced by the great thinkers of the Enlightenment. One such thinker was John Locke, who expressed that all humans have natural rights. Locke also had a theory that humans are born with clean slates, and the environment humans grow in, especially at a young age, has massive influences on aspects of their personalities, ideals, and motivations. Shelley’s novel Frankenstein was, without a doubt, influenced by this claim. This is evident in more ways than one, with the strongest argument being that the monster, that Victor Frankenstein created, was almost completely like a newborn baby with a fully developed brain. His actions and beliefs were merely an result of his experiences and the natural goodness of human beings. In essence, Mary Shelley is using the monster of Frankenstein as a representation of other human beings who are affected by the hate and cruelty that surrounds them and become that which they experience. In essence, the monster is an embodiment of the human condition, in a creature that isn’t classically defined as human, but meets all the criteria.