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Elizabeth Lavenza In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Elizabeth Lavenza is the orphan child taken in by the Frankenstein family, who was lovingly raised with Victor Frankenstein; she later becomes Victor's wife and is killed by the monster on their honeymoon. Elizabeth was the daughter of a Milanese nobleman and a German mother. She was found living with a poor family near Lake Como. She was granted land, where she and Victor honeymooned, around the time she was getting married. Elizabeth is the one who keeps the family together after Caroline dies. Elizabeth survives the scarlet fever plague that takes Caroline. She writes to Victor while at school and tells him what is going on with the family. She is the source for information for Victor when he is away at the university. Her letters are important in the …show more content…

Elizabeth was a happy child and had a positive outlook on life. She is an innocent murdered merely for revenge on Victor.
Caroline is Victor's mom, and, like any boy raised right, he really loves her. After she dies of scarlet fever, he has nothing but good things to say: she "possessed a mind of an uncommon mould"; she had a "soft and benevolent mind"; she was full of "tender caresses" and "fortitude and benignity"; she was a "guardian angel to the afflicted".
Hopes and dreams? We don't know much about that, although we learn that she comes from a respectable family and that her dad was friends with Frankenstein Sr. Yeah—there was a wee bit of an age difference.
Actually, that age difference does clue us in to something: by marrying her dad's close friend, Caroline keeps it in the family—just as she desperately wants Victor to do, by marrying Elizabeth. (That's her dying wish.) So, Caroline helps us trace some of the text's creepy family romance. There's nothing like a dead mom to drive a scientist

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