“‘Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me Man, did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me?’” (Knoepflmacher 88). In essence, this quote that originates from Paradise Lost is similar to a child saying how they never asked to be born; therefore they do not deserve any ill treatment that may be received from their parents for the fact that they were born. In childhood, children are dependent on their parental figures to give them emotional support while also fulfilling their emotional needs. When placed in a nurturing, caring home during childhood, children will tend to grow up without any major problems. Yet if the childhood is filled with abandonment, rejection, and neglect, the children will most have to deal with the unfortunate …show more content…
The death of her mother would leave Mary without a maternal figure to guide her, leaving her to feel abandoned and alone. Although Mary grew up under the care of her father, she was rejected by him due to her gender. Her younger half-brother, William received favourable treatment from their father, while Mary was neglected. Due to the fact that Mary Shelley faced these traumas, it is not surprising that she would have these negative situations and outcomes showcased in her first novel, Frankenstein. The main characters are often in situations that leave them with feelings similar to what Mary had when she was growing up. By the time the three main characters, Victor, Robert and the Monster, had reached adulthood, they had all lost their mothers and all had fathers who rejected them. This left these characters in similar emotional situations as Mary was …show more content…
Victor Frankenstein faced abandonment in his youth, leading to a fear of abandonment from those that he perceived as parental figures. This fear resulted in his obsession with the connection of life and death. The first true abandonment that Victor felt was when his mother died of the scarlet fever when he was a teenager. The abandonment he felt from his mother after her unexpected death made him obsessed with death and the creation of life from death. One night after his mother’s death, Victor was dreaming of his beautiful lover, Elizabeth, who was looking beautiful until she changed into “the corpse of… [his] dead mother” (Shelley 46). Victor’s dream started with his beautiful, young lover in the prime of health, but she slowly changed into his deceased mother’s corpse. This dream reflects Victor’s fear of abandonment due to the death of a relative. When Victor started to study the possibility of creating life from death; “one of Victor’s objects in finding ‘a passage to life’ is to restore his mother and ‘renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption’... but his dream only underscores his rejection of the maternal or female model” (Knoepflmacher 108). Knoepflmacher’s
Before leaving Victor, his mother died of scarlet fever, and the family was left in the care of Frankensteins Elizabeth. Victor zealously took up the study. It turned out that the work of medieval alchemists who was fond of the young man, hopelessly outdated, so he had to study modern science, especially chemistry, with the basics. After two years, Victor has achieved great success. Fascinated by physiology, he decided to identify "where lurk start in life," and soon reached his goal - to open a way to revive the lifeless matter. To apply the knowledge in practice, he gathered from various parts of the body found in the morgues, tombs and in slaughterhouses. Victor dreamed of a perfect being, a new breed of
Frankenstein, a novel by Mary Shelley, illustrates the trials including Victor Frankenstein's triumphs, a character who owned a lovely with memorable life experiences that shaped the independent college student he became. Despite Victor growing up in a welcoming setting, he struggled to find the intellectual purpose of acquiring a college education in his physical science interest to generate the likelihood of reviving a dead corpse with electricity to acquire the comfortability to feel like God. Mary Shelley used diction and imagery to convey shifts in mood that supported the plot of chapters one through five in Frankenstein to inundate the reader with the feelings the characters of the story were facing.
Shelley’s mother died eleven days after Mary was born ( Britton 4). Like Mary Shelley, the monster was born motherless, and this deeply affected him. The monster proclaimed, “no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses” (Shelley 86). Just as the monster longed for a family connection, so did Shelley. Barbara D’amato wrote, “The unconscious conflicts and psychic experiences of loss and of longing for connection are captured and revealed in the orphaned character of Mary Shelley’s fictional story, Frankenstein (118). Shelley and the monster also share the struggle of feeling abandoned and hated by their fathers. Shelley’s father abandoned her twice during her life. The first time was when Shelley was a young child. Shelley believed that her stepmother was interfering with Shelley’s and her father’s relationship, and this jealousy caused conflict between the family members. Shelley’s father later sent her to live somewhere else. When Shelley was older, her father disapproved of her decision to elope with Percy Shelley which resulted in him disowning Mary. This abandonment left Shelley with the feeling that there was something terribly wrong with her (D’Amato 126). The monster was also abandoned by Frankenstein, or the man that can be considered his father. The monster explained to Frankenstein why he had become the violent being that he was, when he told Victor, “Believe me Frankenstein: I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity; but am I not alone, miserably alone?” (Shelley
Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is a thought provoking story to read because the subject matter speaks to me. Dark, supernatural and gothic is exactly the style of reading I would choose in my own reading choices. It was only one step from my Victorian Vampire reading to Frankenstein therefore my choice to read the novel was almost a given to me. Several areas that I as a human can relate to are the human nature of each character, the unrelenting revenge the monster feels, and betrayal in the pursuit of self-preservation Victor bestows on his monster, his family, and mankind. The story speaks of betrayal, a strong an intense emotion that hurt the monster to the core so deeply he commits unspeakable acts. Frankenstein outlines Victor’s betrayal of his son, the monster. Victor literally created a child, a rebirth of flesh in his own design but he felt no love or sense of responsibility for the monsters well-being. This betrayal of the preverbal parent over their “child” is felt greatly by the monster and Frankenstein suffers at his own cost, unwilling and incapable to see he was his own destructor. A notable act of betrayal is when Victor can but does not save Justine from death. His own brother was dead and he was
Frankenstein defied human boundaries when he created the monster and because of this not only his life, but the lives of others have also shifted, this has caused their lives to spiral into an unjustified conclusion. Curiosity was the main cause of him learning how to create such a thing, his lack of caring for the thing that he created led to his undoing. His motivation for creating life, comes from the fact that he lost someone dear to him. Although Victor was young when his mother died, it had serious effects on the way he viewed life and maybe even himself. Once you take on the father role you have to stick to it, otherwise creating life
Throughout the book of Frankenstein, the creator of the being Frankenstein, Victor, is experienced as a suffering being. He recalls from the very beginning a time during his childhood where he was happy and surrounded by love, a time when his mother lived. Victor’s downfall or the beginning of his disgrace, initiates with the death of his mother. Victor leaves his family to start a new stage in his life, he leaves on quest for answers a true quest for knowledge. Personal motivation will lead Victor to take on the challenge of overcoming death, or to be more specific, give life to a dead body.
“Dr. Victor Frankenstein feels uncontrollably compelled to create animation in the lifeless body” (Storment) this obsession with the creation of life alienated him from his loved ones. His impending marriage to Elizabeth was one aspect of his life that he sacrificed. In chapter 22, Elizabeth writes to him “Tell me, dearest Victor. Answer me, I conjure you by our mutual happiness, with simple truth-- Do you not love another?” Elizabeth’s concern
In Shelley?s Frankenstein, Victor brings a monster to life, only to abandon it out of fear and horror. ? gThe beauty of the dream had vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart? (Shelley, 35). The reader must question the ethics of Victor. After all, he did bring this creature upon himself.
(Nocks 3)” The second assumption is that “our natural impulse to continually recreate the universe quiet often ignores fundamental human needs: Besides depriving himself of health and companionship during the two years that lead to the reanimation experiment. (Nocks 3)” Nocks goes ahead to point out that some biographers have relate the relationship between Victor and the monster to that of Shelley and her father. Shelley’s father was said to have abandoned her after she eloped with her husband Percy Shelley, who was still married at the time. Another great observation by Nocks is that, Shelley’s mother, who died two weeks after she was born, also left her with feelings of abandonment; she was said to have spent many hours over the years at her gravesite. One can imagine the level of abandonment felt by a young motherless girl. Shelley must had thought about this fact in writing Frankenstein; it probably aided Victor’s acquiring the body parts for his monster. Shelley understood what true sadness abandonment meant; she it lived the life she wrote and Nock enlightens the reader of this in her
Frankenstein gets sicker- eventually dying from the disease. Through Mrs. Frankenstein dying, Elizabeth takes the place as the mother in the household, thus becoming the mother in Frankenstein’s eyes. Mrs. Frankenstein’s last wish is for Victor and Elizabeth to eventually get married. Frankenstein cannot come to terms with the union and decides that he needs some time to think about it, this shows that he is not ready to move on and accept his mother’s death, thus having to love another. Frankenstein uses Elizabeth as a substitute for his mother; Mrs. Frankenstein and Elizabeth share a similar past; they were both orphan children in a small village, saved by a loving wealthy man/family. Elizabeth is a mirror image of Mrs. Frankenstein which is why Frankenstein is drawn to her. After creating the monster, Frankenstein has a dream: “I thought I saw Elizabeth, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets of Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I imprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of death; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the corpse of my dead mother in my arms; a
An idea becomes a vision, the vision develops a plan, and this plan becomes an ambition. Unfortunately for Victor Frankenstein, his ambitions and accomplishments drowned him in sorrow from the result of many unfortunate events. These events caused Victors family and his creation to suffer. Rejection and isolation are two of the most vital themes in which many dreadful consequences derive from. Victor isolates himself from his family, friends, and meant-to-be wife. His ambitions are what isolate him and brought to life a creature whose suffering was unfairly conveyed into his life. The creature is isolated by everyone including his creator. He had no choice, unlike Victor. Finally, as the story starts to change, the creature begins to take control of the situation. It is now Victor being isolated by the creature as a form of revenge. All the events and misfortunes encountered in Frankenstein have been linked to one another as a chain of actions and reactions. Of course the first action and link in the chain is started by Victor Frankenstein.
In the nightmare, Elizabeth turns into his mother’s dead body. His mother is part to blame for him having to attend the university of Ingolstadt, which lead him to create the monster. By Mary Shelley relating the two characters here, this leads us to believe that they have some type of direct correlation together with Victor. He is happy to see Elizabeth, but then frightened to see his mother’s body, and then freaked out again when he opens his eyes and sees the monster looking over him. He loves Elizabeth, but it is because of her that he has the relationship he has with his mother that sent him to the university of Ingolstadt, which led him to create this hideous
“Allure, Authority, and Psychoanalysis” discusses the unconscious wishes, effects, conflicts, anxieties, and fantasies within “Frankenstein.” The absence of strong female characters in “Frankenstein” suggests the idea of Victor’s desire to create life without the female. This desire possibly stems from Victor’s attempt to compensate for the lack of a penis or, similarly, from the fear of female sexuality. Victor’s strong desire for maternal love is transferred to Elizabeth, the orphan taken into the Frankenstein family. This idea is then reincarnated in the form of a monster which leads to the conclusion that Mary Shelley felt like an abandoned child who is reflected in the rage of the monster.
Victor Frankenstein's upbringing in a perfect society ultimately led to the destruction of his life which coincided with the lives of those emotionally close to him. Victor was raised in an atmosphere where beauty and physical appearance define one's quality of life. This superficial way of life results in a lost sense of morals and selfishness, which in turn produces a lost sense of personal identity. This can cause a feeling of failure and resentment in the later stages of life which, in Victor's case, can be externalized into a form of hatred directed toward himself.
In Frankenstein, Shelley creates two very complex characters. They embody the moral dilemmas that arise from the corruption and disturbance of the natural order of the world. When Victor Frankenstein is attending school, he becomes infatuated with creating a living being and starts stealing body parts from morgues around the university. After many months of hard work, he finishes one stormy night bringing his creation to life. However, “now that [Victor] had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled [his] heart” (Chambers). Right after Victor realizes what he has done, he falls into deep depression and must be nursed back to health by his friend. Victor spends the rest of the story facing consequences and moral problems from creating unnatural life. When he realizes that the ‘monster’ has killed his brother, even though no one believes him, he feels responsible for his brother’s murder because he was responsible for the existence of the ‘monster’. Also feeling responsible, Victor...