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An Analysis Of Nature Vs. Nurture In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

1678 Words7 Pages

Are we as humans formed by ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’? Since the first genetic experiment by Gregor Mendel in the 1860s, eugenicists have tried to determine why some people have certain physical and behavioral traits and some do not. The nature-versus-nurture discussion has continued to thrive as scientists, historians, and sociologists debate why certain people’s behavior follows a trend line while other’s represents behavioral digressions shunned in the societal construct, even in the same environment. The people who diverge from the established societal norm of success where other people flourish typically become stigmatized as ‘the Other’ in a society, an outsider who does not conform to that society's ideal image. These questions are the approach that Mary Shelly attempted to develop throughout her novel. A prominent motif in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is alienation and how alienation sets the wheels of the plot into motion. In Frankenstein, loneliness due to its milieu and isolation from society make the creature dangerously capricious. Therefore, the creature’s isolation from society expresses a person's traits which are affected more by nurture (alienation) than by Nature. Frankenstein grounds its argument in a symmetrical pattern, with social …show more content…

The creature longs for a family, to belong to something and at last be accepted. It has no equal and no lineage; it is just joined together by limbs of different corpses. This also reflects alienation, the creature has human features; the desire to be loved and to love, but still it does not fit into human society. The family symbolizes the creature’s first “school” of human nature, and the lesson it learns is that it does not fit in. This reflects both human and society’s basic view of our fellow creatures. Shelley hereby argues that deviance is not accepted by society and is frowned

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