The Role of Poor Parenting in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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.

Alphonse Frankenstein plays a significant part in the development of Victor, his oldest son. Alphonse is a leader in the town of Geneva and is very old fashioned in his thinking. During the 19th century, fathers took on a patriarchal roll and made most, if not all, of the household decisions. Alphonse made decisions that greatly impacted Victor’s development. When Victor was a young child, his father took in Elizabeth, his sister’s daughter, and presented her to Victor almost as if she were a present. Victor mentions, “I loved to tend on her, as I should on a favorite animal” (Shelley 20). Victor admits, "I looked upon Elizabeth as mine" (Shelley 35). He sees Elizabeth...

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...her – the superior excellence – was instrumental in the development of the mind of Victor. Victor’s primary companion, his father, retained power over him until the end. Alphonse made sure that Victor was educated and taught him the ways of society. Although he showed Victor unconditional love and cared about his well-being until his death, his parenting can be seen as overbearing and lacking in true caring—the kind of parenting that isolates instead of embraces. It was this faulty fathering that ultimately led Victor to become the “mad scientist,” capable of creating life but with no capacity to love what he had created.

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Norton, 1996.

Veeder, William. “The Negative Oedipus: Father, “Frankenstein”, and the Shelleys”. Critical Inquiry 12.2 (1986): 265-390. September 2010 .