“…and if I see but one smile on your lips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I shall need no other happiness.”
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus
Frankenstein; Or The Modern Prometheus is an epistolary novel written by Mary Shelley that focuses on the tumultuous, and ultimately tragic, relationship between Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the creature that he reanimated from the dead one night in a demonstration of awesome science. The Creature, as he is simply called, spends most of the novel in an existential fight with himself over the big questions that we all struggle with: who am I? And why was I put here?
Unlike the rest of us, the Creature was given the opportunity to confront his creator. Feeling that his life was a tragic mistake, he demanded that Victor create a female mate for him. From the Creature’s perspective, Victor gave him life, but he also made him hideous and grotesque. The Creature was ostracized by society and forced to live in hiding. In a moment of desperation, he revealed himself to a family who he thought would accept and love him. Instead of the acceptance he craved, he was attacked. He vowed to exact revenge on his creator unless Victor created a mate for him. Victor, horrified at his creation, and desperate to move on with his life so he could forget the abominable act he committed, reluctantly acquiesced to the Creature’s request. Victor changes his mind, though, partway through the experiment and begins destroying the Creature’s mate. The Creature sees this and begins systematically destroying Victor’s life. Before Victor destroyed his mate, the Creature murdered Victor’s son. The son’s maid, Justine, was blamed and hanged for the murder. The Creature murders Victor’s friend, Henry Clerval, and frames Victor. In a final act of vengeance, the Creature murders Victor’s newlywed bride, Elizabeth, on the night of their marriage. The shock of the murder claimed Victor’s father’s life a few days later.
Victor, in mourning, and consumed by rage, follows the Creature north where he catches up to him on an ice floe. Victor is sick with fever, and he is brought aboard a ship that is stuck in the ice. In his delirium, he tries to rally the crew of the ship to pick up the chase. He eventually succumbs to his illness. The captain of the ship, who cared for Victor in his final hours, is shocked to find the Creature standing in mourning over Victor’s body. The Creature tells the captain that he will kill himself now that Victor is dead. He throws himself overboard into the ice and the darkness, where he disappears.
The tragedy of the Creature is one that is universal and timeless. He wanted to be accepted by his peers. But he wasn’t accepted because everyone he came across saw him first and foremost as a monster and someone to be feared. He thought if he taught himself how to read and speak like a proper gentleman, he could force people to overlook his physical appearance. He taught himself to read and speak using three books: Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Plutarch’s Lives of the Romans, and Milton’s Paradise Lost. He describes reading Werther and taking interest in “its simple and affecting story” (Shelley 134) and, since Goethe touched on so many subjects, he found it “a never-ending source of speculation and astonishment” (Shelley 134). He wept at Werther’s untimely death “without precisely understanding it” (Shelley 134). In Plutarch, he learned to elevate himself above the “wretched sphere of [his] own reflections to admire and love the heroes of past ages (Shelley 135). And Paradise Lost “moved every feeling of wonder and awe that the picture of an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting (Shelley 134). He compares himself to Milton’s Adam, who “was apparently united by no link to any other being in existence” (Shelley 134). The Creature is different though because Adam was created as a perfect creature from God and was guarded by him. Adam was allowed to learn from beings greater than himself. The Creature, by comparison, was “wretched, helpless, and alone” (Shelley 136) and it made him envious. He says:
“God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.”
(Shelley 136)
The Creature’s grief was further compounded by what he read in Victor’s diary. Victor hated the Creature and hated the man he had turned into because of the experiment. Victor wanted nothing more than to forget what happened and move on with his life. The Creature was a living reminder of the horrors that Victor was capable of. So, when the Creature revealed himself to the family, it was an act of pure desperation. The last chance at acceptance for a man who had been rejected by both his creator and society at large. He gambled big and his gamble failed. He started his gamble slowly, by introducing himself to the blind patriarch of the family first. The blind man heard his voice and thought he was a normal man. There is a moment when the Creature is on the verge of crying tears of joy because the blind man was validating what the Creature always thought: that if they just listened to his voice, that if society just gave him a chance, he would be accepted. It was when the man’s son came inside the house and saw a monster talking to his ailing father that the plan devolved into chaos. Imagine the Creature’s despondency when he realized his gamble had failed. He was driven from the house and fled into the forest.
The Creature is an interesting character. Even though he spent most of the book committing violent acts, I still sympathized with him. His classification as a villain is murky. There is a parallel with the book Paradise Lost, the inclusion of which may not have been entirely random. Shelley’s husband Percy and their friend Lord Byron believed, like a lot of the Romantic poets, that Satan was not the villain of Paradise Lost but the true hero. It is possible Shelley used this ambiguous interpretation of Satan as a model for the creation of her own villain. If we went off the Creature’s superficial appearance only, we would think he was the villain. He looked and acted like a monster. He killed. But Shelley gave him depth. She gave him a tragic background. And I think most importantly, she made him the most eloquent character in the book. He speaks as if he is a character right out of Milton. The Creature’s first line in the book is when Victor attacks him in a rage. The Creature says:
“Be calm! I entreat you to hear me, before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”
(Shelley 101)
Why would the Creature, the monster, entreat Victor to listen to him? What is the suffering and anguish he is talking about? As the Creature tells Victor what he has experienced up to this point in the story, we start to see the character in a different light. We are presented with Victor’s experience and the Creature’s experience and forced to think about who is right. Shelley is challenging the reader’s idea of good and evil.
There is another parallel with Milton. Milton begins Paradise Lost “in media res”, that is, “in the middle of things”. The story then unfolds from there. Frankenstein begins in a similar fashion, with the action starting at the end when Victor is on the ship stranded on the ice. Shelley chose to use the epistolary form for part of her novel, which helped her construct the narrative through flashback. The choice of the epistolary form is also a nod to Goethe’s Werther, which was written in the same format. This technique was perfect for this book and Shelley constructed her narrative masterfully.
There is also a parallel with Goethe. Werther died by his own hand when his grief over losing Lotte could no longer be managed. Losing his love, which eventually turned into grief, consumed him and ultimately sealed his fate. The Creature, shunned by society and his creator, fell into grief, then despair, and then finally, rage, which consumed him and sealed his fate like Werther. He tells Victor:
“Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”
(Shelley 101)
It is implied when the Creature throws himself overboard that he is doing so to end his life. “He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in the darkness and distance” (Shelley 242). His tragic story comes to an end in a beautiful and poetic final soliloquy:
“I shall collect my funeral pile and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch who would create such another as I have been. I shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me, or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or stars, or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense will pass away; and in this condition must I find my happiness. Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer, and heard the rustling of the leaves and the warbling of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death.”
(Shelley 242)
A Walk Through The City 