English Literature
Mary Shelley’s classic, Frankenstein, can be read in a number of ways but the most common is with a focus on the monstrous creation of Doctor Frankenstein; the confusion being whether the name ‘Frankenstein’ refers to the creation or the creator. It is highly likely that Shelley would have left this deliberately ambiguous so as to raise the question of who is the real monster in the novel. It is fair to say that society is often damning of any new concept or idea and does not fail to live up to expectations in this novel. Here, we witness the birth of an innocent but strong creature whose intentions are misinterpreted by a society who is scared of anything new. Therefore, we’re left with a question: did society criminalise Frankenstein’s monster or did the creature damn himself?
Throughout the novel, Shelley chooses negative adjectives to describe the villagers: “barbarous villagers” (Shelley 86), and “horror-struck villager” (Shelley 163), for example. The effect of this is to garner a sense of how the villagers are unaccepting of anything new – they are clearly scared of Frankenstein and his creation and are reacting in a typically defensive way. However, the creation is, himself, violent and Frankenstein berates himself for making such a mistake: “My rage is unspeakable, when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose upon society, still exists.” (Shelley 158). So, arguably, it is a double-edged sword. The main argument which leans in the creation’s favour is the fact that he is fundamentally an innocent creature who does not know what he does. He is born out of the violence of electricity and thrust into life as a fully-formed, strong man whose brain is not fully-formed and who has no understanding of how to behave. He is reacted to with fear from everyone he meets and so he prescribes to that by defending himself in the only way he knows how. Many focus on the quest which Victor Frankenstein follows in the novel but many fail to remark on the true issue: not the quest itself but its realisation through the creation of the creature (Collings 291). This implies that the creature is at fault but the question still remains: are we all entirely responsible for our actions or are we products of society?
Frankenstein’s intentions are to create a new species and potentially a new society: “A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.” (Shelley 42). Conversely, it seems that, here, Frankenstein is mainly interested in the prospect of playing God than in anything else. He has adopted a utopian view of this prospective society and has failed to factor in whether or not it will have problems. Dongshin Yi discusses the idea of aesthetics in Frankenstein’s society: “Aesthetics may frame Frankenstein’s society, but, the novel reminds us, it is not what frames Frankenstein’s society.” (Yi 60). He goes on to discuss how there is no harmony between the two and herein lies the reason why society impacts dramatically upon Frankenstein’s creature: he has created a ‘man’ who is supposed to embody all the good and power of men but Frankenstein fails to factor in the unpredictability to the nature of man – the violence, the fear, the desire to defend everything he knows and attack everything he doesn’t. Society forces the creature into being the worst possible outcome of Frankenstein’s intentions.
The culmination of the effect of society on Frankenstein’s creation comes when Frankenstein dies in pursuit of his creation. The creature speaks to Captain Walton (who provides the second narrative in the story, via letters to his sister) over his creator’s dead body and states: “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my bloody boils at the recollection of this injustice.” (Shelley 175) From this quote, we are given an insight into how the creature feels and the suffering which has, in all likelihood, induced his violent tendencies. Society declared him to be a monster but treated him monstrously and, as such, he behaved in line with that label.
The villagers in the society in Shelley’s novel respond to the creature with fear and anger because “society as a sum of individuals lay in obedience to Nature’s laws and systems and that deviations from those conventions would only bring disorder upon society” (Bann 48). This means that Victor Frankenstein is at fault for envisaging a society which goes against the grain of nature and desires the secret to life. However, his creation and the impact which a fearful society has upon it are demonstrative of why no man should ever be entrusted with that secret. Society deems him a monster and treats him as such and so he behaves like a monster: society defines and creates his character in the same way that Frankenstein creates his life.
References
Bann, Stephen. Frankenstein: Creation and Monstrosity. London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 1994. Print.
Collings, David. Monstrous Society: reciprocity, discipline, and the political uncanny at the end of early modern England. New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 2009. Print.
Shelley, Mary Woolstonecraft. Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus. Boston and Cambridge: Sever, Francis & Co, 1869. Print.
Yi, Dongshin. A Genealogy of Cybergothic: aesthetics and ethics in the age of posthumanism. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2010. Print.
