His appearance turns out to be the cause of all his problems. People are frightened when they see him, which keeps the monster from making contact with them. This inability of personal contact and the resulting isolation is what indirectly drives the monster to his crimes. He has tried to communicate with people on several occasions but he keeps on being rejected. He has somewhat lost hope as he takes refuge in the hovel near the De Lacey’s home. He observes them for months, learning their language and their habits. Through reading novels like Milton’s Paradise Lost he starts wondering about himself and his isolation because of his apparent uniqueness: “I was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence”(112). It is obvious that he longs for some kindness, protection and company. These desires become even more evident when he reads the diary that Victor kept during his creation. From these papers, the monster learns that Victor was not at all happy with his creation. This makes him feel even more lonely and abhorred.
It is only when he is convinced of the De Lacey’s goodness that he decides to try to make contact one more time. His initial talk with the old De Lacey is very positive. This is mainly because De Lacey is blind and therefore the monster’s appearance cannot lead to any prejudiced ideas. The other family members return unexpectedly, however, and the monster is beaten out of the house. He still refuses to think evil of them and blames himself for being discovered. It is only when he finds out that the family out of fear has permanently left the cottage that the monster starts feeling negative emotions like hatred and revenge. These feelings are not directed towards the De Lacey family however, but towards his creator.
He later states that all the killings did not make him feel better. He says that he was “the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested, yet could not disobey,”(199) a state somewhat similar to the Victor’s obsession with science. The monster, just as Victor, reaches a point where he has no feelings left except for hatred. When he sees that his final victim namely Victor Frankenstein, is already dead, he shows remorse. He has now accepted that there will never be any being who “pardoning my [the monster's] outward form, would love me for excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding.”(199-200) With an immense self-hatred, he promises Walton that he will “consume to ashes this miserable frame”(201) so that future curious generations would not create “such another as I have been”(201).
De Lacey he is the head of the household adopted by the creature. A blind man who is kind but has been robbed of his fortunes. Felix the son of De Lacey, he is idealistic and not afraid to stand up for what he believes in. He loves his family with all his heart. Agatha the daughter of De Lacey, she is a cheerful soul who lives to aid her brother and care for her father. She retains a level of class, even though she is poor.
Safie he betrothed of Felix, she is wonderfully exotic and beautiful. She also is cheerful, and loves to sing.
A centerlized theme in Mary Shelly s Frankenstein is that society shapes and defines the Frankenstein monster into who he became. Though the being has the physical characteristics of a monster, it is only after he is repeatedly rejected by society that he adopts the personality and behavior of a monster. Thus, society plays a large role in shaping the monster’s personality and behavior. Because society expects him to act like a monster, he inevitably becomes one. The being is clearly a victim of a stereotype.
It is clear that the being has the physical characteristics of a monster. A monster is defined as a person of unnatural or extreme ugliness, deformity, wickedness, or cruelty. The being is unnatural right from the very beginning–his “birth.” He was not carried in his mother’s womb and delivered as normal babies are. The being is merely a construction of random corpses’ bodily parts sewn together and brought to life. Naturally his appearance is utterly grotesque, thus confirming his “extreme ugliness.” Victor even remarks that “A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch” (59). Though he displays all of the normal features of a man, his are heightened to a level of deformity. He has a gigantic stature and displays superhuman speed and strength.
Just as the being’s external features are heightened, the being also exhibits heightened internal qualities of man, shown by his altruistic attitude toward humanity. The being tells Victor that his “soul glowed with love and humanity” (91). The being enjoyed helping others. He provided the cottagers with wood for their fire so Felix could devote time to other household tasks. The being risked his own life and saved a little girl from drowning. All the being wanted in return was companionship and acceptance, neither of which he received. The creation says, “Let [man] live with me in the interchange of kindness; and, instead of injury, I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance” (125). It is clear that initially the being was only monstrous in his appearance, not his actions.
However, because of the expectations held by an insensitive, hostile society, the being is forced to become a monster internally as well. The creature tries to find companionship many times, but he is only met with fear and hostility. Because the being cannot escape society’s expectations regardless of his behavior, he eventually confirms them and acts accordingly. He completes the definition of a monster as he commits wicked and cruel acts. The being has fallen into a stereotypical monster.
From the very beginning the being was misjudged, because of his appearance. Even the being’s creator fled when he saw him. Victor calls him a “wretch,” “monster,” “demon,” before the creation even does anything (58). The being asks his creator, “Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust?” (113). Victor completely abandoned his creation, because he couldn’t even bear to look at him. If Victor, the creator, regards him with horror, imagine the response of an unprepared society. Neither Victor nor anyone else considered the being’s feelings. They only reacted to Victor’s creation’s appearance. Victor had “endowed [the being] with perceptions and passions and then cast [him] abroad for the scorn and horror of mankind” (120).
When Victor abandoned the being, the creature left and wandered around aimlessly struggling to survive on his own without any concept of knowledge or language. When he reached a village, immediately, “children shrieked, and one of the women fainted. The whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until, grievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I escaped to the open country and fearfully took refuge” (95). Initially the being had been delighted by the sight of the village, but he was brutally driven from it for no reason other than his appearance. Because he appeared abnormal, they assumed he was evil. Just as society fears the creature, the creature fears society. The only difference is that the being has a reason to fear society; it attacked him.
The being regains faith as he believes that “When they [the cottagers] should become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues, they would compassionate me, and overlook my personal deformity” (114). However, when the being finally gains acceptance from the old man, Felix, Safie, and Agatha enter and immediately assume that the being was attacking their father. It is appropriate that only the blind man is the one who can accept the being. He can judge the creature fairly, because he cannot see him. Not once is the old man frightened when he is alone with him. This shows how deceptive appearances can be. Expectations based solely on appearances are groundless. Because the being looks abnormal, the three cottagers assume that he is evil and wants to harm them. It is ironic that the creature was, in fact, trying to befriend them. After all, the creature had been helping them with their daily chores. The being is thanked by getting attacked as Felix “dashed me to the ground and struck me violently with a stick. I could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope. But my heart sunk within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained” (117). The being didn’t even defend himself. Yet the being is the one who is regarded as a monster, not Felix, even though Felix ruthlessly attacked the being.
Despite this encounter the being performs another good deed; he risks his own life to save a little girl who is drowning. As he rescues her and attempts to revive her, the girl is torn from his arms and he is shot. The man automatically assumes that he was trying to kill the girl, when, in fact, he has saved her life. At this point, the being cannot avoid a stereotype. When the being is punished for committing noble acts, why should he continue to repeat them? The monster discovers that performing good deeds causes just as much harm and certainly more suffering than doing evil. After all, he was hurt by the ones he had helped. Why would he ever want to do any good if man still rejects him? Because of his inability to befriend man, at least by doing evil, the monster will be able to attain satisfaction by destroying the one who has placed him in these unalterable circumstances. At least then the monster will deserve his mistreatment.
The monster’s last attempt for companionship ends his search and thus marks the start of his evil acts. When he comes across a young boy, he decides that since the boy hasn’t lived long enough to develop prejudices, this is his chance. The being tells the boy that he won’t hurt him, but the boy responds, “monster! ugly wretch! You wish to eat me, and tear me to pieces–You are an ogre” (123). The child thought the being wanted to eat him, when the being had only hoped to befriend him. As a result of these continuous rejections and unfair assumptions, the being vows for revenge. When the creation discovers that the boy is Victor’s brother, he strangles him and his “heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph” (123). The being then becomes a monster both externally and internally, ultimately confirming society’s previously groundless expectations.
The monster moves from one horrid act to another, indulging in evil. First, he kills William. Then he frames Justine as the murderer and she is hanged for his crime. He warns Victor that “if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear;” (125) and “if I have no ties and affections, hatred and vice must be my portion” (126). He takes the lives of Clerval and Elizabeth– both innocent victims. The monster intensely desires to be a part of society and if the only way he can participate in society is to indulge in evil, then he will. Thus, the being truly becomes the monster that society had feared from the start.
The danger of a stereotype is that people become that which they originally were not. As a result, they are unable to live with the person that they have become. The being was not a monster on the inside initially. As the monster says, “I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend” (90). Society created his misery by rejecting him. Thus, Victor created the being, but society created the monster. None of these tragic murders would have occurred had someone, anyone, accepted him. The being even says, “If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an hundred fold; for that one creature’s sake, I would make peace with the whole kind!”(125). His repeated rejections and his intense loneliness lead him to commit acts which he never thought himself capable of committing. Society’s expectations are fulfilled, but at the expense of the creature’s soul. The monster confesses to Walton, “My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love and sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did not endure the violence of the change, without torture such as you cannot imagine” (182). The monster has fulfilled the stereotype, but he cannot live with what he has become. Thus, the being ultimately takes his own life.
In Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, families are a very important theme in the novel. Frankenstein’s family is critical because the reason why the monster was created lies within the family. Almost every family mentioned in the novel was either incomplete or was dysfunctional. Frankenstein’s family in particular was missing a female role. The Frankenstein family had no mother, but they did have Elizabeth who was the only other female in the house and she was adopted when she was just a child. The monster was created because of this absence, not necessarily to fill the role of the mother, but to fill in the role of the missing family member. However, the monster is shunned away when he is animated and the fall of the Frankenstein family awaits them.
Victor Frankenstein’s family was normal to begin with. He had a mother and a father, but later on when Elizabeth becomes sick with a fever, his mother nurses her back to health at the cost of her own life. On her deathbed, Victor’s mom says, “Elizabeth, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children. Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not hard . . . a hope of meeting you in another world” (42). Elizabeth is expected to fill in as the role of the mother by taking care of and protecting the young children. Although she replaces the role of the mother, there is still the fact that a family member is missing. A mother is impossible to replace; you can’t have a stepmother because she will never be a replacement for an original mother. Nor can a mother be bought, but Victor uses his knowledge from Ingolstadt to create a being to fill in that missing figure.
In the later part of the novel, the monster stumbles upon a family where he learns the basics of living and surviving. The monster is very intelligent and can learn at a exceedingly rapid rate. The family that he crosses is the De Lacey family. This family is also incomplete because they are also missing a mother figure here. Yet they have a substitute as does the Frankenstein family has. For the De Lacey family, Agatha, the sister, plays the womanly role here. Felix her brother always takes care of her and tries to make life as easiest as possible even though they have gone through many hardships. The problems that this family faces are numerous indeed. Their father is blind and cannot help them in any way. Besides this fact, the De Lacey family was expelled from their native land and forced to live in poverty in a foreign place. “He did not succeed. They remained confined for five months before the trial took place; the result of which deprived them of their fortune and condemned them to a perpetual exile from their native county” (122). During the time of the exile, Felix was unable to see his loved one, just like while Victor was away studying, they both could not see the one they cared for. The monster at this time learns of emotion and compassion. He can sympathize with his “benefactors” and he also wants to help them, but he can’t because of his appearance. The missing family member of the De Lacey’s is directly correlated with the missing family member of the Frankenstein’s. The existence of the De Lace’s in the novel proves that Mary Shelly wanted to include the importance of a family and how being close in a family can make everyone happy. This happiness that Victor is trying so hard to pursue by creating the monster.
Near the end of the novel, the Monster requests from Victor to create for him, a female counterpart. When the Monster says, “You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do; and I do demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse to concede”(140). The Monsters longing for a person he can communicate with is very important. It signifies that he wants to be included in some kind of family situation as he has observed from before. He wants a person who can understand the way he feels and why he feels this way. When a person usually has problems, he/she turns to family for help, but in the case of the Monster; he has no family and must ask his creator to make him one. Not a whole family, but a single person, who could be his companion for life. The way the Monster needs a member is the same as Victor wanting to create a new member himself. By creating the female one, Victor is attempting to make a new family for the monster, but near the completion of the female monster, Victor decides to destroy it. He contemplates that making this female version of the Monster will allow the male one to be able to produce offspring’s and this he thought would be a horrendous idea. A lot of little monsters with superhuman powers running around.
Not one family in this novel was complete. Even in the beginning when the Frankenstein family took in Elizabeth from the poor family, they were breaking up another family. Although Elizabeth was not a part of that family to begin with, she was still taken from her original foster parents. “She was not her child, but the daughter of a Milanese nobleman. Her mother was a German, and had died on giving birth”(34). The additional family member from early on might have given Victor the idea of bringing in his “own “family member when his mother passed away. Elizabeth was very precious to him and he cared for her tremendously. “No word, no expression could body forth the kind of relation in which she stood to me my more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only” (35). This phrase right here shows his feelings for her from early on in the novel. As the novel proceeds, his feelings remain unchanged. This kind of relationship was mutual between the both of them and since they were not really brother/sister it was okay for them to have this kind of relationship in the family.