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The Concept of Nature v. Nurture in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein current debate in education
the nature vs nurture theme in mary shelleys frankenstein
The Concept of Nature v. Nurture in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein current debate in education
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The Concepts of Creation and Nurture in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818 she had lost her own mother and three children. It is against this background of loss that many chose to explore the possibility of bringing the dead back to life. As the daughter of William Galdwin, Mary would have known about many of the major scientific developments during her days. In particular she would have known Galvini and his experiment with frogs' legs, and is likely this motion of electricity was one of the factors that influenced her choice of the subject. Frankenstein is an examination of scientific success, but also brings up the question parental responsibilities, and how important nature and nurture is in bringing up a child. What Shelley asks are the consequences of taking a god like role? To answer this we must examine Frankenstein. In the very first chapter of Frankenstein it begins with an account of his parents' courtship and marriage and the first views of Victor. 'Broken in spirit' Mary Shelley's very first description of Victor is described as discontented. Therefore Mary Shelley uses this very opening to prepare the reader for the horror to follow in her description of Victors' despair. Nurturing could also be considered in this chapter where as Victors' feelings are not taken into account by his parents where then this is turning point in his life. As Victor grew older he receives less attention and was not nurtured as much. He is left to his own devices without much direction from his parents. When he recalls the moment the event at the age of thirteen he finds an Agrippa alchemist bo... ... middle of paper ... ...ole. In Frankenstein Mary Shelley strongly shows that nothing is born bad, but is the lack of nurture that decides whether a child is brought up to become either good or evil. This is shown when the creature discovers how to produce a fire, then nurtures it self that it can be used to warm itself. However due to the lack of nurturing he uses this fire for the wrong reasons such as using it to light the cottage. But the prime example of the concept of creation and nurture Frankenstein creating an monster, not realising the out come of this ambition to bring the dead back to life, then also to failing to nurture this creature and as a result brings unhappiness to this world. Mary Shelley proves that even though Frankenstein was a scientific success, he didn't nurture its child hence it is claimed as a parental failure.
In Lisa Nocks article appropriately titled “Frankenstein, in a better light,” she takes us through a view of the characters in the eyes of the author Mary Shelly. The name Frankenstein conjures up feeling of monsters and horror however, the monster could be a metaphor for the time period of which the book was written according to Nocks. The article implies that the book was geared more towards science because scientific treatises were popular readings among the educated classes, of which Shelley was a member of. Shelley, whose father was wealthy and had an extensive library, was encouraged to self-educate, which gave her knowledge of contemporary science and philosophy, which also influenced Frankenstein as well as circumstances of her life.
In Frankenstein, various themes are introduced. There are dangerous knowledge, sublime nature, nature versus nurture, monstrosity, and secrecy and guilt. I chose a main theme as nature versus nurture. Nature is some traits that a person is born with, and nurture is an environment that surrounds a person. The novel indirectly debates whether the development of individual is affected more by nature or by nurture through Victor and the Monster.
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
In Frankenstein, Frankenstein was preoccupied with the idea of creating life from nothing. On page 50, he expressed his wonderment, “I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.” He had succeeded in understanding the reasons for which life functions but he placed more importance on the discovery that he could cause it on his own. The events that take place in the novel follow as the consequences of Frankenstein’s longing for validation of his own self-worth. That desire filled his mind to a point where it haunted him. Mary Shelley consistently sho...
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. These developmental flaws caused Victor to abandon his creation, consequently leading the monster to destroy Victor’s family and friends. In this paper, it will be argued that Alphonse laid the seeds of destruction in Victor, creating a snowball effect that would ultimately lead to the downfall of the monster and Victor himself.
Nature versus Nurture is the name of a long running debate on whether an individual’s behavior is determined by their genes or by how they were raised. John Locke famously held the view that humans had a “blank slate”, which means that human’s personality and character traits are determined by a person’s environment and what they experience. But, many argue against this: for instance, twins are raised similarly, but can have completely different personalities. The real question is this: are people born monsters, or do they become monsters? In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein and in Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, both authors provide a clear warning of what makes a monster: society’s superficial nature creates monsters, and
Frankenstein Essay With the same hands Frankenstein built the monster, he holds his dying wife. Throughout Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein and his creation fight against each other as ambition, abandonment and the lack of responsibility result in the downfall of both. Frankenstein represents a parental figure in his creation. Their conflict arises through the years leading up to Frankenstein’s creation and continues for years while taking the lives of multiple people. Frankenstein’s knowledge and ambition, the creature’s life in isolation, and the poor relationship between the two result in their conflict.
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...
The wise Uncle Ben once told Peter Parker, “remember, with great power. Comes great responsibility.” There is no greater power than that acquired by the infamous Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when he discovers the secret to creating life. Shelley’s Frankenstein is a tale of creation that depicts acts of human conception and discovery. The Oxford English Dictionary defines creation as “the action or process of bringing something into existence from nothing by divine or natural agency; the fact of being so created.” It defies the natural order of things and creates a world of its own. The multiple acts of creation and discovery bring upon a certain set of responsibilities and implications as depicted by David Collings who analyzes the responsibilities that come as a result of these acts in his essay “The Monster and the Maternal Thing: Mary Shelley’s Critique of Ideology”. The main act of creation is evident through Victor Frankenstein’s creation of the Being which is depicted most prominently in the novel. However, there are multiple other acts of creation and discovery that may not be apparent at first sight. One of the most important being, Victor’s discovery of the knowledge required to create life. Apart from initially creating the Being, Victor also plays a critical role in the Being’s evolution into a raging and vengeful creature. Perhaps above all other acts of creation and discovery is Victor’s personal creation of himself into a monster. As stated by Collings most of these acts of creation on Victor’s part are subconsciously brought upon because of their lack of a maternal figure but also in part because of his desire for fame and glory. However, he is blinded by his motives and forgets that with his...
What would happen if man created life without the help of woman or God? What happens when the creator rejects its own creation? Mary Shelley, in the timeless story of Frankenstein, explores these life altering questions. The idea of a human being self-created is so controversial and intriguing to readers that Frankenstein remains a popular novel nearly two centuries later after being written in 1823. This could mean Mary Shelley’s work is still teaching readers something about themselves and the contemporary world in which one lives. Shelley’s novel goes against all previous beliefs that woman, man, and God are involved in making new human life. Through the analyzation of a religious, critical lens, the idea of recreating man is not morally right in God’s eyes because it is unnatural, and humans are not Christ like. When looking at bringing the dead back to life with human capabilities the process is challenging even with the scientific advancements today. In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it is proved that man is not fit to be creator through the perspective of the various characters in the story and through the perspective of the reader.
In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley highlights on the experiences her characters undergo through the internal war of passion and responsibility. Victor Frankenstein lets his eagerness of knowledge and creating life get so out of hand that he fails to realize what the outcome of such a creature would affect humankind. Mary Shelley’s novel, Frankenstein, highlights on how Frankenstein’s passion of knowledge is what ultimately causes the decline of his health and the death of him and his loved ones.
An important subject that everyone has to consider at some point in their life, when making decisions that influence others, is human behavior. The make-up of human nature has been long contemplated in the fields of philosophy, psychology and sociology. Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein once again introduces this question into debate. The interactions between Victor and his monster has readers question whether, despite appearances, the monster is just as human, if not more human, than Victor himself. Many of the characters of Frankenstein are prime examples of what it means to be human. Specifically, the characters Elizabeth, Victor, and Walton show three of the core building blocks of human nature: sympathy, revenge, and, lastly, a need for
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Creature educates and learns more about what he is through reading famous books of the past. One of the more important books The Creature reads in the novel is John Milton’s Paradise Lost. By having The Creature read Paradise Lost, Mary Shelley is able to contrast the very idea of creation, and what it means to be a “Creator” versus what it means to be a “Creation”. John Milton presents creation in Paradise Lost as a symbiotic relationship between creator and creation, as without one, the other will not thrive to full potential. On the other hand, Mary Shelley’s presentation of creation is completely opposite to John Milton’s. In Frankenstein, the entire novel focuses on an ongoing battle between creator
What is the creation of Frankenstein? Firstly, it is a creature artificially created by a person from parts of the body of deceased people and remotely resembling the person himself. Secondly, this being is self-conscious, learning, developing, and also able to feel. Thinking began to appear in him almost from the very moment of its creation, self-awareness, in the process of his acquaintance with nature and the surrounding world, which he perceived categorically enough, and language. The result of his observations of the inhabitants of the hut near which he founded his home. “ By degrees, I made a discovery of still greater moment. I gaunt that those people possessed a method of communicating their experience and feelings to one another by
To hear the miserable cry of an unfairly punished child weeping “I never asked to be born!” is a terrible sound. And In 1823, the first literary work to whimper those words was released; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published in London, England. Although many people think they know the real story, they don’t. A young man by the name of Victor Frankenstein, unable to understand the intricacies of giving life, is spurred on by his lack of knowledge into an intense urge to produce it. But when his creation actually appears before him, he is overcome and unable to submit to the responsibilities of his child. So instead he backpedals and leaves the child to stand on it’s own two feet. Therefore it submits itself to the cruel bashing and beating of the world, and in turn conceiving a broken and banged up child due to it’s lack of care and no one to look after it. In Frankenstein, Shelley uses Victor to act as a symbolic mother who thoughtlessly bestowed life, but after seeing the severe repercussions it can have on his future – he aborts. In turn leaving the creature to be battered and beaten alone in the world: “a man left to himself from birth would be more of a monster than the rest” (Shelley 46). Thus showing how the state of a child relies on the responsibility of the parent, for if not given the proper means of growth in a stable environment, it can turn into a monster. Specifically, if Victor had acted as an ideal adult bound by the moral obligation of a creator, the creature would not have become a monster. This is important to Shelley because her mother died giving birth to her. After her death, her father never forgave her; he alienated her as if she was an orphan. Therefore Shelley makes an urgent request to her readers ...