Childhood In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

It is not always easy to steer a child towards the right path, sometimes they do as they please and sometimes it is the parents that make mistake. No sons or daughters truly understand their parents’ choices until they have themselves reached maturity. For example, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel Frankenstein can be interpreted as a metaphor of a kid defying his parents’ wishes and going into a teenage crisis asserting his rights over them. If the novel is deconstructed we can identify the different stages of the creature’s life mirroring the stages towards adulthood; First there is the first actions of the child and how the parent reacts to it, in second there is the learning phase where he acquire awareness of his surroundings and consequences

This volume consists of an account by the Creature of its wanderings and how he came to learn his place in the world, which was mostly achieved by the observation of a family and the reasons that led him to murder the young William Frankenstein. In its tale, the Creature reports having found shelter in an unused shed attached to the cottage of this French family, he then begins his observations to understand such complex beings as humans and the source of their apparent sadness. By doing so the creature eventually learns many skills such as the ability to speak and read as demonstrated in the following

He also learns about concepts such as love, poverty, social life, betrayal and countless others; those helped broaden his view of the world. This education compares with the education a child would get while growing up, so far the Creature’s mind is still foreign to concepts such as revenge and hatred like an innocent child still lacking experience. For example in its account it says: “For a long time I could not conceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why there were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and bloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and loathing.” This proves that its mind is still untainted by experience and still arbours hope of finding a place where it belongs, however it later attempts to approach the family hoping to be accepted and loved but the Creature is cruelly rejected and has to run away. At this point, the Creature understands that it will be forever forsaken by humanity and realises the wrong that has been done to it. It then decides to seek for his creator in order to get