Many cultures have sayings or proverbs regarding the importance of not defining an individual by his or her appearance. Many fairy tales and fables deal with the importance of understanding what truly makes something or someone monstrous; often, it is not necessarily an individual’s appearance that defines their monstrosity, but their actions, beliefs, and inner moral compass. In Frankenstein, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Lolita, the authors each take a different path to examine what makes their characters monstrous, and in the interim, challenge the reader to re-examine his or her own definitions of what makes an individual or a being monstrous.
Perhaps the most important element when it comes to defining monstrosity is choice. In the legal system, an individual can only be held accountable for his or her actions if he or she had knowledge of right and wrong at the time he or she committed the crime, and chose to commit the crime anyway. In Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein creates his Creation with little thought as to what the Creation would do once it was given life; the Creation is intelligent, and becomes a victim of his circumstances, saying: “I knew that I was preparing for my self a deadly torture, but I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse I detested yet could not disobey. Yet when she died! Nay, then I was not miserable. I had cast off all feeling, subdued all anguish, to riot in the excess of my feelings. Evil thenceforth became my food. Urged thus far, I had no choice but to adapt my nature to an element which I had willingly chosen” (Shelley). Shelley’s work explored the idea that Frankenstein-- not his creation-- was the monstrous one; he created life with little thought and no plan, playing God with no thought to the responsibility that it entailed. For this reason, it is not the creation-- who had no choice in his inception-- but the doctor himself who was the monster in the text.
Although the creation in Frankenstein does some terrible things, the creation himself has no control over his circumstances. This is important, as the idea of freedom of choice-- the freedom to make good choices or bad choices-- is fundamental when considering whether or not a character should be considered monstrous. The creation in Frankenstein acts out in terrible ways, but he is not responsible for his actions; his creator, Dr. Frankenstein, is. For this reason, the creation is not the monster in the text.
Conversely, in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the character that is considered monstrous is contained within the same consciousness and body as the character that is considered virtuous. While Dr. Jekyll is considered the character that is virtuous, it is Dr. Jekyll that demonstrates the ability to make conscious choices, and Dr. Jekyll consciously chooses multiple times throughout the novel to become Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde, as a character, has little control over his actions; however, Dr. Jekyll is aware of the terrible things that Mr. Hyde does, and allows himself to become Mr. Hyde anyway. Dr. Jekyll himself knew this, saying: “Between these two, I now felt I had to choose [] To cast in my lot with Jekyll was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly indulged and had of late begun to pamper. To cast in with Hyde was to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow and for ever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal, but there was still another consideration in the scales; for while Jekyll would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would not even be conscious of all that he had lost” (Stevenson and Schreiner). The acknowledgement that Mr. Hyde is not conscious, but Dr. Jekyll is is the turning point for the character; it is during this time when the character truly accepted that his behavior was monstrous and evil.
Lolita presents a slightly different type of monstrosity than The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein. Unlike the two other texts, Lolita presents the monster of the novel in a sympathetic light; although the other two novels present the monster as a foil to a character who has no choice about committing monstrous acts, Lolita follows a man who commits a multitude of monstrous acts with no apparent guilt. In Lolita, the main character laments the loss of the child he had been molesting: “What I heard was but the melody of children at play, nothing but that, and so limpid was the air that within the vapor of blended voices, majestic and minute, remote and magically near [] but it was all really too far for the eye to distinguish any movement in the lightly etched streets. I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope [] and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord” (Nabokov). The main character of Lolita convinces himself that he is in love with the child, and goes about thoroughly ruining her life by molesting her. He thinks nothing of the outcome, only of his desires in the moment. This is what makes the main character a monster: he plots, plans, and creates situations in which he can carry out his monstrous acts, although he knows they are wrong and hides them from Lolita’s mother and the outside world.
Looking like a monster is not enough to make someone or something into a monster. Outward appearances can often be deceiving, and the most angelic look can hide an individual who carries out monstrous acts. It is only by getting to know the true character of an individual that a judgment can be made about his or her character; without knowing about the fabric of an individual’s being, it is difficult to know whether that person is a good person or a bad person. Indeed, most people are neither wholly good or wholly bad; it is the choices that they make that defines who they are in the long run.
Works cited
Nabokov, Vladimir Vladimirovich. Lolita. New York: Knopf, 1992. Print.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein. Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Library, 1996. Print.
Stevenson, Robert Louis and Olive Schreiner. The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Chicago: M.A. Donohue & Co., 1896. Print.
