It is believed by many scholars like Ellen Moers, who wrote Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother that when Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly wrote Frankenstein, she wrote the story as a reflection of her own fears and issues with parenting. I also think that Shelley may have felt that her offspring were somehow against the laws of nature and that this is why most of them died at birth or in early infancy. Where Victor only had created life from the confines of death, she herself brought death from what should have been life. This of course was no fault of her own, but I wonder if Mary Shelley did not see herself as both Victor Frankenstein and his creation. This is because in her role as Victor she gives birth to something that was not meant to exist (her children/ the creature) and as the creature she destroys that which had given her life (Shelley’s mother died during her birth/ the creature destroyed the person who was supposed to love, protect and nurture him. In this paper I will look at how both the desire to act against the confines of nature, and the lack of responsibility and nurturance of one’s creation causes one’s creation to destroy its maker.
Victor Frankenstein usurps nature’s role as creator by bringing a person back to life. It is this hubris that will bring about the deaths of his friends and family and finally his own downfall at the hands of his creation. This is a character flaw that haunts Victor throughout the story as he continually refuses to ask for help in regards to dealing with the creature. This is because he feels as though he can handle the situation on his own. The thing is Victor’s experiment was not just performed on any dead body, it was performed on a creature that he created out of a conglomeration of different people. This shows Victor’s hubris as he felt that he could give life to the ideal man. He gave his creation pale skin, black hair, and perfect teeth. He even made him eight feet tall so that he stood above all other men. The problem with Victor’s plan is that he did not take in account that muscle, tissue and fat are what gives a person a look of life. Victor while being able to animate the creature was not able to bring life to the already decayed flesh and he used. This is why the skin on the creature once awakened looked sallow and translucent over the bones and veins of the creatures face. His eyes were also had a cloudy look as there was no soul behind them.
That is where Victor made his biggest mistake in his desire to play god. He thought that just giving something life was enough to make it human, but he forgot or did not consider that humans are believed to have souls. These souls are said to be who we truly are as a person and the soul is reflected in or need to breathe. This is why when a person is declared dead when they cease to breathe on their own. Victor was not able to give the creature the ability to breathe therefore making it nothing more than an animated corpse, rather than the pinnacle of man-made life that he wanted.
This inability to see the creature as anything but a godless abomination, rather than a form of life that needed to be nurtured and guided led Victor to reject his creation “He might have spoken, but I did not hear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped and rushed downstairs. I took refuge in the courtyard belonging to the house which I inhabited, where I remained during the rest of the night, walking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively, catching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach of the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life” (Shelley pg. 90).
This leads to what I feel is the second most important theme of the story the responsibility and nurturance of one’s creation. His rejection of the creature, followed by the Victor’s refusal to create a female counterpart to the creature in order that it would not have to be alone caused a dark cycle of events to occur. This according to Ellen Moers was Shelley’s way of looking at postpartum depression. It is Victor’s depression at seeing the results of his endeavor that cause him to retreat from it. While Shelley herself never suffered from postpartum. She did lose a number of children and her mother died during her birth.
While Victor’s first crime was playing god. His biggest crime was not taking responsibility for what he created. Instead the moment he brought the creature to life and realized that it did not turn out to be the beautiful, majestic lifeform that he had envisioned. He chose to walk away from it. This is of course contradictory to the actions of most parents, especially mothers. In his role of both creator and life bringer Victor is playing dual roles as both mother and father to the creature. However instead of taking responsibility for his creation he rushes from the laboratory at the mere sight of the creature. He abandons him to his fate without any concern about how this abandonment would affect both the creature and society.
After being rejected by his parent the creature is never truly nurtured in a way that would bring about the ability to have empathy or compassion for anyone else. The creature even before he has taught himself the acquisition of language or the skill of reading knows that there is something wrong with him. This is due to both Victor’s reaction as well as the violent reaction that has taken place in anyone who has seen him. This is part of the reason that I believe that he seeks to gain language. He feels as though if he can communicate with others then they will not fear him. This is also where the knowledge that he has gain should come in. The creature realizes that it is not just speaking that is important but the sharing of knowledge and ideas.
It is not until later after the creature has educated himself and he and Victor meet at the summit of Montanvert that Victor finally realizes his responsibility to the creature. The only reason this occurs is because the creature is able to argue using eloquent rhetoric. This compels Victor to listen to him. In the end after hearing the creature’s tale of his life and how the lack of guidance and nurturing combined with the injustices he was subjected to because he was different caused the creature to become violent. He tells Victor that “I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other” (Shelley pg.116). This does not prevent Victor from denying the creature a mate after promising that he would make him one if the creature would cease his killing after he told Victor that the reason that he had lashed out against him was because of loneliness and lack of nurture “Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred' (Shelley pg.116)
In summary in Frankenstein, Victor acts against nature in two ways. The first is by playing god and creating life outside the confines of nature, the second is by refusing to take responsibility for his mistake. I am not really sure what Victor thought would happen if he just ignored the creature. I think that he was not ready to deal with the consequences of his actions and chose instead to ignore them. I also think that if the story was a metaphor of sorts for the children that Shelley had lost and/ or postpartum depression, Shelley was saying that her desire to create was averse to nature (god) and that this was the reason that her nearly all of her children died soon after childbirth.
Reference
Shelly, Mary Wollenstonecraft, and J. Paul Hunter. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: Contexts, Nineteenth-century Responses, Modern Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. Print.
