Draft Essay #3

Frankenstein

            Throughout history literature has shown us hardships, friendships, loves, death, and everything in between. There is no wonder that Frankenstein has a story of true friendship, loss, and love, even if the main character is not a woman. Mary Shelley was able to take her own life story and interlace it into her master piece. Frankenstein takes us on this exact journey through Mary Shelley’s own life as a muse.  

            At the beginning of Frankenstein Robert Walton is writing to his sister about a true friendship that he wishes so deeply for. In one of his letters to his sister back in England he tells her “You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend” (Shelley pg 10). Robert only wants what any human being or animal on this Earth wants in their lives, someone to share it with. Shortly after writing his sister this letter, Robert is greeted with a stranger that they find in the middle of the ice. Once they take the stranger aboard, Robert is delighted to find out that this is the friendship he’s been looking for. Robert and the stranger have a lot more in common than they think. George Levine, who wrote “Frankenstein and the Tradition of Realism” states: “ambitious for glory, embarked on a voyage of scientific discovery, putting others to risk for his work, isolated from the rest of mankind by his ambition, and desperately lonely” (Levine pg 210). This is a perfect comparison of Robert and the stranger, even if they don’t know each other all that well. “Frankenstein becomes his one true friend his one true friend, and he is a friend who dies just at the point when their friendship is becoming solidified” (Levine pg 210). Levine sums up Robert and Victors relationship perfectly with this statement, just goes to show the reader that they could have been best friends when fate tore them apart. This need for a friend repeats itself throughout the book.

            Not only is Robert looking for a true friendship, so is the creature that Victor ends up creating. This creature is left at the time of life knowing nothing, and having to figure it out all for himself. After his travels, he finds a cave behind a cottage. There he sits and watches the family of three throughout the day, figures out their routine, and at night helps them anyway that he can. The monster also learned how to read, speak and some geography by watching the cottagers through his hole in his cave. Finally, the thought popped into his head that he could make friends with the ones he watched and helped constantly. “I persuaded myself that when they should become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues, they would compassionate me, and overlook my personal deformity” (Shelley pg 88). Even though he knew what he was and that he was not like the cottagers, he still held the hope that they would take him in as their own. The creature finally makes himself known to the cottagers only to be shut out, just like every time in his life he tried to connect to people. Is it wrong for even a “monster” to want a friend or a loved one at their side? The creature then seeks out Victor to have him make another like him so he won’t be alone. After Victor agrees to make another hideous creature, he changes his mind sending the monster into a downward spiral.

            “I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally, and looked upon Elizabeth as mine- mine to protect, love and cherish” (Levine pg 211). Victor was, at a young age, presented with the fact that his cousin, Elizabeth, would be his beloved. Throughout Victor’s childhood he was shown love and affection, learned to love, but nothing compared to the love he had for Elizabeth. “Given the egotism of his ambition, it comes as no surprise that Frankenstein’s love for his family is the first victim of his growing obsession” (Poovey pg 254). The monster that Victor created starts to take out his unhappiness on the innocent. He finds Victor’s brother, William, and strangles the poor boy to death because of what Victor has done. This is not the only one that the monsters starts to take out of Victors life as a form of punishment. “Little happiness remains for us on earth; yet all that I may one day enjoy in concentered in you” (Shelley pg 131). Victor writes this to Elizabeth when he about to wed her and remembers that the monster told him that he would be with him on his wedding night. Sure enough, the monster showed up on that night he promised, but not Victor. The creature took Elizabeth from Victor before they even had a chance to spend forever together.

            “Mary Shelley, here, rather than speaking into a mirror, is speaking as an appendage to a text” (Johnson pg 244). Shelley used her novel to show the pain and sufferings that she herself went through. Mary was the mistress to the poet Shelley, and later became his wife. She had lost her babies shortly after they were born from age sixteen to twenty-one. “In the motif of revulsion against newborn life, and the drama of guilt, dread, and flight surrounding birth and its consequences” (Moers pg 218) states it perfectly. Frankenstein running away from his newborn creature is like Shelley’s newborn children abandoning her. When the monster cries out in the end “I, the miserable and the abandoned, I am an abortion to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on…I have murdered the lovely and the helpless….” (Moers pg 222-223), shows us how Shelley’s love of her newborns, yet the abandonment she felt, helped her to relate to the monster that her main character created.

            Mary Shelley not only takes us on a journey through friendships, love and loss, but also the journey of inner demons. “Victor Frankenstein cannot do scientific research and think lovingly of Elizabeth and his family at the same time” (Mellor pg 275) Anne K. Mellor states it perfectly in her Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein. Since the roles are so different between men and woman during Victor’s time, he is not able to maintain his work at school and his love for his loved ones at home. This ultimately is the end of everything that Victor cherished as a child since his inner demons would not work together. In the end, Victor is the cause of the death and destruction that unfolds all around him. Once he loses all of his family and loved ones, he decides that his next step in life is to track down this monster and ride the world of him. Thus, Victor’s story ends with his own death, and the monster living on.

            There is nothing wrong with wanting a friend in this world to have your back, or hold your hand when you cry. Robert wanted it from the beginning of his journey when he left his sister back in London, Victor had it his whole life until his own decisions to defy nature took it away, and the monster wanted it since Victor abandoned him on his very first day of life. These choices we make will make or break our life into what we want or don’t want. All the way throughout Frankenstein Mary Shelley shows us how to love, loose, and what happens when we lose. Something different takes over our body and mind to obsess over something like revenge. No matter what we are taught throughout our lives, what happens will dictate our actions, whether they be good or bad.   

            “As long as domestic relationships govern an individual’s affections, his or her desire

            will turn outward as love. But when the individual loses or leaves the regulating influence

            of relationship with others, imaginative energy always threaten to turn back on itself”        (Poovey pg 254).   

             

           

           

           

Work Cited

Johnson, Barbara. “My Monster/My Self.” Frankenstein. J. Paul Hunter. Norton Critical

            Edition. New York City, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc 1996. 244

Levin, George. “Frankenstein and the Tradition in Realism.” Frankenstein. J. Paul Hunter.

            Norton Critical Edition. New York City, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc,

            1996. 210-211

Mellor, K. Anne. “Possessing Nature: The Female in Frankenstein.” Frankenstein. J. Paul

            Hunter. Norton Critical Edition. New York City, New York: W.W. Norton & Company,

            Inc, 1996. 275

Moers, Ellen. “Female Gothic: The Monster’s Mother.” Frankenstein. J. Paul Hunter. Norton

Critical Edition. New York City, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1996. 218-223

Poovey, Mary. “My Hideous Progeny”: The Lady and the Monster.” Frankenstein. J. Paul

            Hunter. Norton Critical Edition. New York City, New York: W.W. Norton & Company,

            Inc, 1996. 254

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York City, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1996.

            10,88,131

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