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Daddy Issues In Frankenstein

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If you thought that you had daddy issues, then you haven’t read Frankenstein. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, is about a man named Victor Frankenstein, who defies the laws of nature by creating a freaky being made from science. This being, The Creature, grows up around and observes humanity. It’s education consists only from what it encounters, given by nature. Ultimately, The Creature is rejected by humanity, and he reacts by seeking revenge upon Victor, killing his friends, family, and finally Victor. The chronicles of The Creature and Victor are used by Shelly to express various aspects of her life and the time period she lived in. In Frankenstein, Shelley highlights the issues of: miscarriages, nature vs. nurture, and the roles of women …show more content…

Although The Creature was technically born, Frankenstein wanted nothing to do with the baby before its “life” had truly begun (gaining knowledge/experiences). The Creature itself had even said: “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice.”(Shelley 208). When Victor destroys the female companion, this also can be seen as a literal abortion in the text, as he is ending the life of the female companion before she is even brought to life (born). Victor also conducts a figurative abortion with his previous lifestyle after he commits himself to create a being from galvanism: “I at once gave up my former occupations; set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation; and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science, which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge” (Shelley 27). Mary Shelley might be highlighting the issue of abortion along with miscarriages to express how much sorrow she felt from her first miscarriage (as The Creature brings sorrow to Victor, its mother/father). Another concept that Mary Shelley might have implemented into Frankenstein could be the idea of Nature vs. Nurture, or …show more content…

One character, Justine, is very passive and used as a device to make Victor feel guilty for creating The Creature; as her major contribution to the plot was The Creature framing her for her brothers death and shortly after, being sentenced to death. Another female character, Safie, is used to teach The Creature how to speak: “My days were spent in close attention…and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than the Arabian…I could imitate almost every word that was spoken…I also learned the science of letters” (Shelley 106). Even the most prominent female character in the book, Frankenstein's lover and wife, Elizabeth, is killed by The Creature on their wedding night, in order to again make Victor regret creating The Creature, and eventually die of his unhappiness. Mary Shelley's depiction of women might be her indicating the roles of women at the time as inferior, a similar thesis brought about by Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication on the Rights of Women. Wollstonecraft had said, “...a profound conviction that the neglected education of my fellow-creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore, and that women, in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes…’(Wollstonecraft, 1). Between Shelley and

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