Theme Of Parenting In Frankenstein

As Victor continues his studies, he finally feels like he has acquired everything there is to know about the body. He then dangerously seeks the deep dark and underlying secrets to life. Victor wanting to make a difference in the world says, “I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation” (Ch. 3). Vowing to this statement, Victor envisions creating a race with superior beings. He confines himself in his apartment and begins to passionately work on his creation. “Cloistered in scholarly pursuit, Victor goes into hiding in his study and fully loses touch with the primacy of physicality”

Victor obsession with his creation represents the dark side of ambition. By creating the monster, “darkness” follow him wherever he goes through the representation of deaths and daunting weather like lightning. After his release from prison, he saw around him “nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me” (Shelley 160). By trying to turn himself into a god through the creation of the monster, that is, the unnatural, Victor is deprived of joy and is tormented by fevers, anxiety, and stress because he had thrown nature into the state of imbalance. Rather than feeling a sense of accomplishment through his scientific achievement, he lives in fear and guilt knowing that he is the cause for the destruction of his

In the 19th century piece Frankenstein, author Mary Shelley presents a conflict between two main characters in a way that mirrors a conflict that would arise between father and son. This conflict occurs after Victor Frankenstein, the main character, is completely and utterly disgusted by the monster he has created, despite his initial desire for such a creation, and runs off in a severe state of absolute horror and regret.

Victor begins to possess an unnatural drive in his quest for knowledge where he begins intense study and experimentation, “These thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with unremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale from study, and my person had become emaciated with confinement” eventually isolating himself from his friends and family. As the seasons passed Victor’s obsession with his studies continued to grow, “And the same feelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to forget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not seen for so long a time” highlighting how his ambition is a fatal flaw, neglecting the outside world and his loved ones. Victor’s ambition to research and attempt to create life drains him of health and sensibility, “Every night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a most painful degree” which is ironic to the goal he wishes to achieve. Shelly’s use of irony illuminates how Victor’s obsessive ambition has become a fatal flaw.

Before Victor goes off to college, his mother dies which leaves him distraught. Subsequently he became infatuated with death and the idea of bringing life back. He said, "To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death" ( Shelley Chtr 4). Slowly, he became a monster engulfed in his own subconscious with the help of his studies in science.

The enormous difference in the way Victor views the creature before and after its completion shows that he has an altered state of mind while he works on it. As a result of Victor’s secrecy about his creation, he sacrifices his health and happiness to make a creature that disgusts him.

What differentiates Mary Shelly’s novel, Frankenstein from the majority of horror novels are the very real and timeless themes it explores.  The overriding theme of the novel - scientific investigation without consideration of morality and responsibility is still an important topic in today’s world.  “Perhaps the reality of cloning and genetic engineering makes this theme more relevant today than when Frankenstein was first published”(Patterson). This theme, along with the more subtle themes of revenge, the inability to accept those who are different, and the inability to control one's destiny are all themes which separate Frankenstein from other novels in the genre.

A predominant theme in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is that of child-rearing and/or parenting techniques.  Specifically, the novel presents a theory concerning the negative impact on children from the absence of nurturing and motherly love.  To demonstrate this theory, Shelly focuses on Victor Frankenstein’s experimenting with nature, which results in the life of his creature, or “child”.  Because Frankenstein is displeased with the appearance of his offspring, he abandons him and disclaims all of his “parental” responsibility.  Frankenstein’s poor “mothering” and abandonment of his “child” leads to the creation’s

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.

From a "chance" exposure to the works of Cornelius Agrippa, to the man with the air pump, the electricity blasted tree stump (Shelley 22-24), and the discovery of the principle of life come alive, Victor progresses through curiosity and innovation as swiftly as technology improved during the early 1800's, each promising new leaps, bounds, and capabilities and ignoring repercussions. Each of these steps provided individual accomplishment for Victor, with no concern to the benefit for the public sphere that resided at the core of Enlightenment-era knowledge (Melton 8). For example, Victor speaks of the "pursuit of some discoveries" and the ability of science to provide "continual food for discovery and wonder", then relates the benefit he receives - he "sought the attainment of one object of pursuit...which procured me great esteem and admiration at the university" (Shelley 30-31). The priority of personal reward over community creates an individual identity of accomplishment superior to others, rather than contributing to a collaborative base of knowledge, a danger of individualism expressed through Victor's eventual destruction.

Victor had an obligation to care for his creation, but chooses at first glance of his construction to abscond from its presence. The comparison of Victor as God-like highlights Enlightenment philosophers who have gone beyond the limits of humanity in order to attain knowledge. Victor is characterized then as a savant manipulating nature. The Creature acts as a balance for philosophers to stop and reflect upon their own enterprise and determine the fine line between acceptable and unacceptable knowledge as it pertains to nature. To this end, Shelley enforces that humanity must pay due respect to the limits placed in front of them by avoiding the Enlightenment philosophy that man is to find a definite definition for every phenomenon he encounters.

The gothic fictions “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley and Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw” approach the importance of a parent role and the effect of such role on the child’s life. In Mary Shelley’s novel, she uses Victors past and present to demonstrate how the poor treatment from his parents lead him to poorly fathering his own child. In contrast, James’ takes the approach of showing parenting in a more overbearing and overexerted way, in demonstrating the relationship between the governess and the children and as their guardian how she seeks to protect them from all danger. This essay will look at these two works and how critics have interpreted this theme to view the similarities in the effects of certain parenting and the differences that led to these outcomes. In looking at the main characters of both narratives and their approach with their children it is possible to see how there must be a balance in the presence and absence of parental figure in the developmental period of a child or creature’s life. Moreover, if such balance cannot be attained this could be the leading factor to the detrimental downfalls of the families in these novels.

At this point Victor is responsible for two deaths and must keep this all to himself. By suffering through the guilt and the illness it is clear that his decisions that were made in order to deepen his knowledge of the scientific world are becoming dangerous to himself and the people close to him.

During Frankenstein Victor’s mental state was altered after witnessing the power of nature firsthand when he saw lightning destroy a tree near his home in Geneva.This observation leads him to study philosophy at the University of Ingolstadt where he became obsessed with anatomy. Victor takes God’s power into his own hands, “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.” (Shelly 32) He has the gruesome idea to create his own human from the remains of the dead. Victor sneaks into charnel-houses, digs into graves to collect limbs, disturbing the resting corpses, and studies uses them to find the answer how to make life come from death. During the process of creating his monster, Victor

for resurrection, Many beliefs decree that the administration of creation is reserved only for divine beings, however, Victor breaks this unspoken law. Victor’s pursuit of an experiment that would allow him to bring life to lifeless things is his first and most desperate attempt to play the role of God Victor wanted to create a new species for the betterment of humankind. Once he completed his experiment, even he, along with the rest of human society, view his creation as an inhuman morbidity, which he did not intend it to be.