Mary Shelley’s seminal science fiction novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus deals greatly with the creation of life, man’s role in it, and where the cruelty of a being can come from. In many ways, the book’s titular scientist, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, is just a pioneer attempting to expand man’s understanding of life and death, his experiments meant to help mankind cheat their own mortality and provide a better future to people. However, the creature that is created is born into a world that categorically rejects him as a freak; as a result, the monster has no choice but to fulfill this role, even while he is just misunderstood. On the issue of nature versus nurture, Frankenstein seems to categorically suggest that the latter is more influential on crafting the morality of a being.
Dr. Frankenstein’s attitudes and upbringing deal greatly with the environment he grows up in, and the effect it has on his personality. He grows up in a rich, but emotionally empty household, with a pair of parents who are affectionate toward him in a strangely ineffective way, something that Victorian society looked down upon: “The romantic educators typically placed the blame for an adolescent’s misconduct at the door of a negligent parent” (Claridge 14). Victor notes that his parents treat him just as a “plaything and idol,” as he never really feels like he is able to be a true part of the family (Shelley 3). This has a decided effect on Victor’s perspective toward parenthood and child rearing, as he notes that "every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control" (34). Interestingly enough, Victor never really exhibits these characteristics as an adult, as he is self-centered, capricious and isolated. To that end, Victor’s strangely distanced upbringing cultivates personality traits in him that would carry forward into his metaphorical ‘son,’ the monster.
Victor’s obsession with his creation seems to be an attempt to overcome the mistakes his parents made as a child; while he does not succeed, he does seem to acknowledge that he has not been as caring as he could be with the monster: "I ought to have made him happy before I complained of his wickedness" (Shelley 102). Victor’s own compassion for his creation is mitigated by his visceral disgust for the creature’s ugliness: “How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavored to form?” (Shelley 77). When his poor performance as a parent causes the death of his brother William, Victor ashamedly takes responsibility: "I was the true murderer" (Shelley 89). Given these perspectives, Shelley creates a clear line of causes and effects between the behavior and environments of people and how it affects their character, wholeheartedly demonstrating that good and evil are largely a product of one’s environment.
This debate between nature and nurture is exemplified in the morality of the creature himself. By the time Victor comes across the creature again after his original escape, he is educated and well-spoken, having been given the opportunity to educate himself. Despite these positive traits, he is still stigmatized and vilified because of his appearance – even his father, Victor, runs away in terror, which leaves the creature without a father figure to raise him. This has a decided effect on the creature, who condemns humanity for the cruelty they lay upon him: "I abhorred the face of manoh, not abhorred! I felt attracted even to the most repulsive among them" (Shelley 184-185). In many ways, Frankenstein and the creature are trapped in cultural and environmental constraints of masculinity, products of a culture that prevent them from being able to cultivate healthier perspectives on family, society and ego (London 260). Frankenstein’s environment stifles him from being able to form healthy relationships with those around him, thus making him a poor caretaker for the creature; the creature itself finds himself spurned by the outside world, creating a similar effect on his personality. In effect, both turn away from society, which makes them unable to ultimately relate to each other.
In many ways, Victor’s poor environment extends to the creature, as his bad parenting leads the creature to hate Victor for his rejection: "You, my own creator, detest and spurn me" (Shelley 99). This then extends to all of mankind, for whom the creature carries an unspeakable scorn – at one point, he condemns all humanity for being "at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so vicious and base" (Shelley 119). While this sentiment seems to paint humans as being evil by nature, the specific circumstances of the creature’s upbringing and experiences are clearly shown to steer him in the direction of evil and destruction, not something borne in him on a basic level. He is not really able to love as a consequence of Victor’s own inability to love, as evidenced by his rejection by the family in the cottage he lives hear for some time, and his eventual murder of Victor’s brother William (Williams). The creature is desperate for companionship and love, thus asking Victor to create a mate for him – if his existing world will not be hospitable to him, he wishes to create an environment that will, in isolation with his hypothetical female companion. This suggests that Shelley heavily favors the influence of one’s environment as a major force for man’s nature, given that the creature believes a different habitat will be the solution to his problems.
Looking at Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, her impetus for writing the book also deals with these concerns about parenthood and morality. The major motivator for Shelley’s writing of the book was the premature death of her twelve-day old newborn child in February of 1815. Shortly afterward, Shelley wrote that she had a “Dream that my little baby came to life again - that it had only been cold & that we rubbed it before the fire & it lived" (NLM 2005). Granted, Shelley was able to successfully have a baby boy some time afterward, her desire to explore the anxieties of bringing back the dead was a clear factor in writing Frankenstein.
This pull to bring the dead back to life is not unlike Victor Frankenstein’s own tendency to play God; while he wishes to further the advancement of scientific discovery and progress, on a psychological level Victor clearly wishes to correct the mistakes of his parents, and exert the kind of control they had over him. When the creature identifies Victor as "the author at once of my existence and its unspeakable torments," he shows the responsibility he had toward taking care of the creature, and the supreme folly that came with creating him in the first place (Shelley 220). If Victor is playing God for the sake of seeking out new frontiers, Frankenstein seems to indicate that there is a price when man’s reach exceeds his grasp. To that end, Shelley points out that man is responsible for its own fate and the problems it brings on itself, not nature.
Looking at Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from the perspective of nature vs. nurture, playing God with science, and the exploration of new frontiers, the book showcases the dangers of man’s hubris and desire to master everything around him. Victor Frankenstein, from childhood, learned from his distant parents the need to commodify people and to maintain control through distance. This extends to his creation and treatment of the creature, who in turn becomes equally capricious and aggressive, angry at the world for his father’s rejection of him. All of these characters are borne of an environment in which they are not truly loved, cared for and accepted, their drastic actions showing their desires to take revenge for these perceived slights. Frankenstein shows a vicious cycle of parental abuse toward their children, and the lessons those children learn from it – while the creature is cut from whole cloth and is not truly human, he is just as susceptible to the environment as anything else. To that end, man’s inherent inability to create a positive environment is part and parcel of the book’s warnings about the dangers of exploring the frontiers. According to Shelley, we may not have the wisdom to handle what we find.
Works Cited
Claridge, Laura P. "Parent-Child Tensions in Frankenstein: The Search for Communion."
Studies in the Novel vol. 17, no. 1. Spring 1985. Print.
"Frankenstein: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley." Duluth Public Library. 24 October, 2005. Web.
<http://www.duluth.lib.mn.us/programs/frankenstein/shelleybio.html>.
London, Bette. "Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the spectacle of masculinity." Publications of
the Modern Language Association of America (1993): 253-267.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Print.
Williams, Anne. "'Mummy, possest': Sadism and Sensibility in Shelley's Frankenstein."
Romantic Circles Praxis Series/Frankenstein's Dream, Feb. 2003.
